A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

by Michael Phillips

  And it was too quiet. Except for baby noises coming from the house every once in a while, it all seemed deserted. If anybody was to come and take a look around, they’d figure nobody lived here, though having Emma around would keep it from ever being altogether quiet!

  We had to figure out a way to make it look more full of life. Somebody would come again as sure as anything, and we had to make it seem like a normal place where people lived and were doing things.

  After Katie and Emma were up and as we fixed our breakfast, I told Katie what I’d been thinking.

  “We gotta make the plantation look right, Miss Katie,” I said. “Sometime more people are gonna come, and eventually somebody’s gonna realize it feels all wrong.”

  Talking about people coming around set Emma right off.

  “Dey be lookin’ fer me too, sure as sin! What’s gwine become ob me when dey come?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Emma,” said Katie. “We’ll hide you if we have to.”

  “Who do you think’s gonna come for you, Emma?” I asked, still hoping to get to the bottom of what her predicament was all about. We’d asked her questions about it several times, but she hadn’t ever been too eager to tell us much. But for some reason, on this day she started talking more than before.

  “Some frien’s er da master’s son.”

  “Was one of them the father of your baby?” I asked.

  “No, none er dem. It was der master’s son himse’f.

  When he come back from da war an’ foun’ me fat wiff his baby from wen he’d come visitin’ one time, he took one look at me an’ I knew what he wuz thinkin’, ’cause he was ’gaged ter be married ter some rich white lady from some plantation roun’ ’bout dere somewheres. An’ I knew dat da wedding wuz supposed ter be soon ’cause everyone wuz talkin’ ’bout it in da big house. I don’ know what dey thought ’bout me gettin’ so fleshy, but nobody said nuthin’ till he came home.”

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  “He figgered me fer a loose-tongued fice, dat’s what I heard him say ter his frien’s. He said dat if his father—dat’s da master—wuz ter fin’ out, he’d cut him off wiff no money or lan’ nohow, dat’s what he said, an’ dat dere’d likely be no weddin’ either. So he tol’ his frien’s ter git rid er me. He said not ter hurt me none, but I knew dose frien’s er his wuz bad. But all dere talk din’t matter, ’cause den da master, he foun’ out anyway. Somebody musta tol’ him I was fat wiff his son’s baby. He dun flew inter a wrathy rage. Dey din’t know I wuz listn’n, but I heard ’em from da other room. Dat’s when I heard what dey wuz fixin’ t’do ter me.”

  “What did they say?” asked Katie, her eyes getting big as she listened.

  “Der master, he was shoutin’ at his son, callin’ him a fool fer rapin’ a dumb nigger girl, an’ den he say, ‘You git rid ob dat nigger an’ her bastard baby!’ Wen I heard dat, I got plumb skeered outta my wits.”

  “What were they going to do to you?” asked Katie.

  “I listened real careful da next day, skeered fit ter faint,” said Emma. “I wuz in da house ’cause I wuz a house slave, an’ I heard William say dey gwine preten’ ter take me down ter da colored town ter clean up after what had happened, though all da others wuz dead by den—”

  My ears perked up as I listened. What had she meant—that all of the others at the colored town were dead! Had it happened to more plantations than just where I lived?

  “—an’ on da way,” Emma continued, talking fast and excited, like she was scared all over again just from remembering, “his frien’s wuz gwine nab me an’ take me somewhere far away. But I knew dat dey wuz gwine dump me in da river in a sack full er rocks, in a deep place where nobody’d eber fin’ me. But dat night, I got up an’ snuck outta der house, an’ I hid in a wagon full er some cotton from las’ year’s crop dat wuz headin’ fer town da nex’ day. An’ jes’ when da wagon pulled outta da yard in da mornin’, I heard someone callin’ my name. I wuz skeered dey’d stop the wagon and search it, but dey din’t. An’ when we got close ter town, I jumped out an’ ran fer da woods. An’ I kep’ runnin’ an’ runnin’ fer my life. I knew dey’d be after me come midday wen dey hadn’t nobody seen me. An’ so I ran an’ ran an’ kep’ hidin’ in da trees, an’ I got wrathy hungry so I cud hardly keep goin’, an’ skeered too—I wuz so skeered. An’ two or three days went by, an’ I hid in da woods an’ drank water when I foun’ it. An’ I thought I’s a goner when dat dog er yers came a’chasin’ me dat mornin’ wen you two wuz walkin’ across da field an’ I was hidin’ in da trees an’ here come dis ole dog barkin’ up a racket.”

  Katie couldn’t help laughing to hear her tell it.

  “I remember that day,” she said. “I thought Rusty was after some critter in the woods.”

  “Dat critter wuz me, Miz Katie!” said Emma. “An’ den I stole yer bread, ’cause I wuz like ter starve, an’ snuck inter yer barn. I’m sorry ’bout dat bread, Miz Katie.”

  “Don’t think anything of it, Emma,” said Katie. “I’m just glad we found you, that’s all.”

  “An’ den you came ter da barn totin’ dat big gun, an’ my heart wuz poundin’ so hard I thought you wuz gwine ter kill me yerself.”

  Now I couldn’t help laughing. Katie’d told me about it, but I still had a hard time picturing her with that gun!

  After she and Katie talked awhile more about when William was born, I tried to ask Emma more about where she’d come from. I was mighty curious as to how far she’d wandered and how likely those men she was talking about were to wind up at Rosewood looking for her. But she said she didn’t know where it was or how far she’d come. And trying to squeeze information out of Emma was like trying to squeeze meat drippings out of a turnip, and so I finally gave up trying.

  MAKING ROSEWOOD LOOK

  RIGHT

  6

  LATER THAT DAY, AFTER HEARING HER STORY, I got to feeling real guilty for being so hard on Emma when she’d first come. She was in the same fix as I had been. I was glad Katie’d taken her in and was ashamed of how I’d behaved. But all that was behind us now.

  “How’s you gwine make dis place look right, Mayme?” asked Emma that evening when we got back around to talking about what to do next.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “First thing, we gotta clean everything up so it looks more tidy—the junk that’s around, the weeds in the garden.”

  “Elvia used to weed the garden,” said Katie.

  “All right, that’s good,” I said. “And you gotta try to think back to other things your mama and the others did. We gotta do things to make the house look lived in too, like making sure a fire’s always burning. On warm days we don’t even build a fire. But maybe we should have one burning every day so there’s smoke coming from the chimney. And the slave cabins all looked deserted too.”

  “But no one’s there. How can we make it look any different?”

  “I don’t know, maybe building a fire there too, so it’ll look like somebody’s cooking.”

  “Just build a fire for no reason—we can’t do that every day.”

  “Why not?”

  “It seems like a waste of time.”

  “Not if Mrs. Hammond comes again, and it keeps her from getting too nosy.”

  “Who’s Miz Hammond?” asked Emma.

  “A busybody white lady from town,” I answered. “She’s a suspicious type who we don’t want asking too many questions.”

  “I don’t think she’ll come again, Mayme,” Katie put in.

  “But she might. Didn’t you see how she was looking at us when we were in her store? She was mighty curious, I know that much. And she didn’t like me no how.”

  “I don’t think she likes anyone who’s black.”

  “That’s all the more reason we gotta be careful. You never know about somebody like that.”

  “Then we’ll put clothes out on the line to dry and maybe have a horse tied in front … I don’t know, Miss Katie. It was you
r idea to pretend to make the plantation look like your mama and the slaves were still here. And I’m telling you it looks mighty deserted. So we gotta find things to do to start pretending, like you said that night you thought of it.” Katie was quiet a few minutes.

  “You’re right, Mayme,” she said, starting to look around herself. “I hadn’t realized how much work it would be. We’ll have to start doing those things every day.”

  “What else do we needs ter be doin’?” said Emma, already starting to think herself one of us and getting excited too as she began to catch on to Katie’s scheme. “I kin help. Please let me help!”

  “You need to get yourself strong again,” said Katie, “and take care of William,” she added, nodding to the little bundle asleep in her lap. “When the time comes, you’ll get to do plenty of work around here—won’t she, Mayme?”

  “I reckon so,” I said, smiling over at Emma. “Don’t you worry none, girl—there’s gonna be plenty for us all to do.”

  “I kin work, Miz Mayme. I’ll work real hard!”

  I turned again to Katie.

  “You lived here with your mama, Miss Katie,” I said. “You know what it was like. So you have to remember the things we need to do.”

  “I’ll try, Mayme.”

  “We’re gonna have to go into town again too. We’re gonna need things, and we need to keep Mrs. Hammond thinking that everything’s normal.”

  “The first thing I’ll start doing is to weed the flower garden,” said Katie. “I’ll do that today.”

  “And I’ll clean up the broken dishes. You’ll have to show me where you put the garbage.”

  The next day we both worked pretty hard. Emma tried to help some but was mostly in the way, pestering us with her scatterbrained talk all the time. I must admit, she tried my patience! But we were a little excited now that we had a plan and knew what we needed to do. It wasn’t much, but even by the end of that day I thought the outside looked a little tidier, and Katie had made the flower garden look real nice.

  Every once in a while the old Katie would suddenly erupt from out of nowhere.

  “I hate all this work and this dirt and sweat!” she burst out once in the middle of the afternoon.

  Usually I didn’t say anything and she’d calm down and remember that everything was different now, and then slowly start in working again. Or she’d take a look at Emma and then she’d realize that we had a new mama and her little baby to take care of and that was even bigger and more important than just keeping Rosewood functioning.

  It had to be a lot harder for the other two than it was for me. I’d had to work hard all my life. But tragic circumstances had thrown us together, even though we were from two different worlds—maybe even three different worlds—and now we had to learn to survive together. As Katie seemed to recognize the fix we were in, knowing that we had to depend on each other and help each other, she’d seemed to grow up again all of a sudden, like she had when Emma had come and William had been born. She was turning into a grown-up girl who was ready to take charge.

  We were tired by the end of the day. But as we worked and talked, more ideas kept coming to us. Pretty soon I found myself thinking that maybe we could make Katie’s plan work after all.

  THE OLD PAGES

  7

  IWAS STILL PRACTICING MY READING AND WAS GETTING better. I was reading more in the McGuffey Readers. Sometimes Katie would read to Emma just to settle her down, especially in the evenings, almost like she was reading to a child. I reckon she was doing just that after all. I don’t think Emma had ever had anyone treat her so kindly as Katie treated her, and before long when she was nursing little William at her breast, she’d ask Katie to read to her, which she always did. I’d never seen anyone as devoted to another human being as Emma was to Katie. And Katie was so loving and patient to her that it just couldn’t help making me respect Katie in a new way. Whatever Katie might have said about herself when I’d first come, about not being as smart as me, I’d never seen anyone with a heart that was able to love as much as her. I think I’d heard somewhere about tragedy making a body more capable of love. I don’t know if that was true, but it sure was with Katie.

  And when Katie and me were alone at night, after Emma was asleep, we still read and told stories to each other after getting ready for bed. I found myself wondering if we could teach Emma to read too. Black folks had to get started learning how to improve themselves sometime, and maybe if Emma learned to read, then William could grow up reading himself, and by the time he had children of his own, they would take things like reading and writing for granted, just the same way white folks did.

  One day I remembered my old diary papers that I’d found under my mattress back at the McSimmons place. I thought that now I was ready to look at them again.

  I went and got them out of the drawer where I’d put them and sat down on the edge of the bed and started to read them. I hadn’t looked at them once since that day. Now as my eyes fell on the old, smeared, tattered pages, so many feelings swept through me. It was like reading words that somebody else had written. They looked so awkward and crude, like a little child had written them, which I reckon was the truth. I had been a child.

  Maybe I hadn’t realized how much I’d changed till that moment. All of a sudden, I saw how different my life was now. I guess that was pretty obvious. I was living like a white person! But sometimes you realize something in a whole new way. And even if it’s a little thing, the realization seems big and changes you inside. I guess it makes you grow up a little more just in realizing it. And this was one of those times for me.

  I had grown up in other ways too. I was thinking about things for myself, thinking about things maybe a little like a grown-up would think about them. It had only been a couple of months. But in another way it seemed like years since I’d run away from the McSimmons colored village, where I’d lived the first fifteen years of my life.

  I looked down at the gray writing from a dull pencil in my hand and started to read.

  Wee pikt kotin today. Roes a kotin iz soo long. I got whipt cuz I fell down. I tol Rufus a storee bout to foxs chasin chikins. Master kame an lukt at me en stuk his han in my mouf. I lukt at him an hated him, but dint say nuthin. Mamas sik an babys cryn all nite. Had to git up in dark agin to pik at da weeds all day. Im soo tird. Sumtimes I wunder whats gonna happn to me an ef masters gonna mak me have a baby to an ef itl hurt, but I git skeered an don think bout it. Why is white men soo meen. Granpapa got whipt for just wakin to sloo. I hated da man dat dun it, but I lukt da other way so I wudnt see granpapas teers cuz I nowd deyd mak me cry to see em an den Id git whipt fer cryn.

  A sad smile crept over my lips and tears filled my eyes and I sniffed a few times. That life seemed so long ago.

  Who was the girl that had written these words? Had it really been me? Those years had been so long. I thought they’d never end. One day out in the fields seemed like a year sometimes, every minute going by seemed like an hour.

  But then all of a sudden … it was gone.

  Now here I was pretending to be helping to run a great big plantation with a white girl I hadn’t even known three months ago and a slave girl who likely wouldn’t even be able to keep alive without Katie and me helping her.

  How quick things could change!

  I couldn’t keep from crying as I sat there, even though I was still half smiling too as I looked at my words. Finally I took a deep breath and put the pages away.

  Good-bye, little girl of my past, I said quietly. I don’t think I’ll ever be you again. Whatever my future holds, I gotta look ahead, not behind. Whoever I’m going to be, whoever I’m growing into, it’s somebody I don’t know much about yet. But it’s not that little girl anymore. I’ll try to make you proud of me … and Mama, I’ll try to make you proud too, and to grow up to be a woman that’s worth something mighty fine.

  I closed the drawer.

  Good-bye, little slave girl, I whispered again.

  I turned arou
nd back into the room, wiped at my eyes, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  That was my past. But now was now. I would keep those pages as a reminder of that life. Not a good life, but a life that had made me who I was, and even a life I could be a little proud of in a different kind of way. I guess it wasn’t only happiness that went into making you who you were. Maybe sadness made better things inside you than being happy all the time. I didn’t know. I felt good about who I was anyhow. But I didn’t know if I’d read the pages again.

  Just looking at my old writing made me realize how much I’d already learned just in this short time. I could read a lot better. I wondered if that meant I could write better too.

  I would try. I would get some new paper and start writing again about now, about what me and Katie were doing, and about who this new me was who was changing from the little girl I used to be.

  In fact, I thought, I would try it right now!

  I got up and went to find Katie and told her what I wanted to do and asked if she had some paper and a pencil I could use.

  “I have something better than that,” she said. “I have a journal you can have.”

  “I don’t want to take your journal, Miss Katie,” I said.

  “It’s an extra one my mama gave me.”

  “But don’t you need it?”

  “Not yet. I have two others already. I use one for my poems.”

  “What’s the other one for?”

  “Thoughts and things I want to write down and remember. But there’s not much in it. Here, I want to give you this one,” she said. She took a brown book down from a shelf and handed it to me. It looked just like a regular book, but when I opened it I saw that all the pages were blank.

  I held it a minute, thinking how beautiful it was.