A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

by Michael Phillips

Suddenly everything had changed. Everything! I didn’t have to wonder if someone was gonna grab me and make me a slave again. I wasn’t a runaway anymore!

  But then … who was I? Who was I now that I was free?

  I felt like the same Mary Ann Jukes … but at the same time I didn’t feel the same at all. I felt like yelling for joy and screaming at the top of my lungs, I’m free! I’m not a slave! and crying all at once.

  So who was Mary Ann Jukes … now? What kind of worth did she have?

  Always before that moment, any worth I’d had was just measured by being a slave, by how much work I could do, how many babies I would have, what kind of price I could fetch my master.

  Now all of a sudden … did this mean that I might have worth … just as a person, not because I could fetch some white man ten dollars, or thirty, or fifty? Who owned me now?

  For the first time in my life, I wondered who that person was. Did I own myself?

  While I was still thinking about it, I came to a place on the road where there were two signs. I looked up at them kind of absently, and all of a sudden I realized that I could read them. I could read what they said!

  One of the signs said, Greens Crossing—3 miles. That was the road I’d come on. The other that pointed in the opposite direction said, Oakwood—2 miles.

  It was getting on in the afternoon by now. I don’t know what got into me, but suddenly I found myself leading the horse in the opposite direction from the way I’d come, toward the town of Oakwood. I’d heard of it but had never been there in my life.

  I think my brain was swirling so fast around the idea of being free that inside I just wanted to do something to show it was really, really true. There had never been a time in my life when I’d just been free to do anything I wanted. Even when I was running away after the men had killed my family, I hadn’t been actually thinking of what I was doing, I was just trying to get as far away as I could. And for the last couple of months, I didn’t do anything without thinking how it affected Katie.

  But when I sat there looking at those two signs, I was really free to go either way I wanted. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to go to Oakwood, I just wanted to see what it was like to do something I had decided just for myself.

  I came to the town about twenty minutes later.

  As I rode through the streets, I started to get afraid again. For a minute I thought about turning around and galloping away. But something inside me wanted to see if I could go into town, as a free person, and see what would happen. I’d never been in a town by myself in my life.

  So I kept riding through the main street. A few people looked at me, but I pretended not to notice. I just kept going.

  I was doing it! I was alone and free and nobody was trying to stop me!

  Up ahead I saw a great big sign painted on a building. I recognized it from being in Greens Crossing with Katie. But again it made me feel good to realize that I could read the two words painted there … General Store … and knew what they meant.

  I went toward the building, got off the horse, and tied it onto the rail outside, then went up onto the boardwalk and into the store.

  I was trembling from head to foot. For a colored girl to just go into a store like that, all alone, that was a pretty bold thing to do. But if I was free now, why shouldn’t I?

  I tried to pretend I wasn’t nervous as I looked around at all the pretty things. The man at the counter stared at me and didn’t look none too pleased about having me in his store.

  I wandered slowly around, nervous but trying to pretend I wasn’t. The whole time the man was watching me like a hawk, as if he thought I was gonna steal something.

  Some pretty lace handkerchiefs caught my eye, a little like the ones I’d seen that were Katie’s and Katie’s mother’s. But now that same feeling I’d had looking at the signs filled me, the feeling that maybe I could do anything I wanted because I was free now.

  And besides that, I realized I had money in my pocket!

  People bought things with money, I thought. And what if … what if I could actually really buy something pretty like this for myself !

  I reached out and touched one of the lacey handkerchiefs.

  “Hey you!” the man called out to me. “Don’t touch the merchandise if you aren’t going to buy.”

  I jerked my hand back. But then I thought about the money again.

  “Maybe I am going to buy,” I said. My voice came out like a little squeak.

  I was trembling inside as I said it. I wasn’t trying to be a white person. I just wanted to know that I could do the same thing a white person could do. I was scared to hear my own timid voice talking back to a white man. But what business did he have to talk that way to me if I was free? I wasn’t his slave. I wasn’t anybody’s slave.

  So I got my courage up, then reached out and touched the hanky again.

  “How much does this one cost?” I asked.

  Gruffly he came over to where I was standing.

  “Nine cents,” he said after looking at it and then scowling at me like he was mad I’d asked.

  “Please, sir, could you tell me how much I have?”

  I opened my hand and held the coins toward him.

  “What kind of a question is that?” he said in the same voice. “You have eleven cents—a nickel and six pennies.”

  “I want to buy it, then.”

  He looked at me as if to say, what could someone like me want with a pretty handkerchief? Then he took it and walked back to his counter. I followed him.

  “How much is that pretty red ribbon hanging up there behind you?” I asked.

  “Half a cent a foot,” he answered, “or two feet for a penny.”

  “Then I would have enough for two feet of that too, right?” I asked.

  “Of course you would. You must be a simpleton, which is exactly what you look like! You would have one penny left over.”

  “Then please give me that too,” I said.

  He sighed, then cut off a piece of ribbon and put it with the handkerchief, wrapped them up in brown paper, and handed the little packet across the counter to me. I handed him all the coins except one of the pennies. I reckoned all storekeepers must be like him and Mrs. Hammond. Maybe people who didn’t know how to smile ran general stores. He didn’t say anything else to me, and he didn’t seem none too pleased about making a sale.

  But I didn’t care. I turned and walked out of the store, beaming with pride.

  I’d actually bought something … just for myself!

  I sat down on the ledge of the boardwalk with my feet in the street next to the horse. There was a bench next to the store, but it didn’t even occur to me to sit down there. Slaves might have been set free by some man named Lincoln, but coloreds were still coloreds, and I knew my place. It was a white man’s world, whatever the man called Mr. Lincoln had done. I’d just gone into a white man’s store ’cause I had money to spend. But I knew he’d more’n likely chase me off if I sat down on his bench.

  I opened the packet and unfolded the handkerchief on my lap, then took the last penny Josepha had given me and set it in the middle of it. I folded the lace handkerchief around the penny and tied it together with the red ribbon, and tried to make a little bow out of the ends that were left over. I had to do it several times till the end of the ribbon came out even. Then I held the pretty little package for a long time just looking at it.

  A pretty little white lace handkerchief tied with red ribbon.

  I reckon it was kind of a silly thing to buy. But it was mine. Only mine. I had bought it with my own money all by myself.

  I just sat and held my little bundle with the penny in it for a long time, looking at it and thinking more about being free.

  I can’t even remember exactly what I was thinking. At first I felt like yelling and jumping and screaming. Now I was quiet inside. I don’t know if I was exactly thankful. I don’t even know if I’d say I was happy. It was more like a place was opening up inside me that had never
been there before. I don’t know how to say it other than that.

  There ain’t no way to describe the feeling of having that word slave lifted from your shoulders, like a great big chain that had been around your neck all your life. And as I sat there staring at it, I knew that this little white handkerchief with the penny inside would always be my reminder of this day. A reminder of something special that had happened to me, a reminder that I was a new person from this day on … a reminder of freedom, and the freedom to do something just for myself.

  I would never forget this moment for all the rest of my life. I would always remember this as the day I found out I was free, the day I walked into a white man’s store all by myself and bought a white woman’s pretty lace handkerchief.

  SIGN IN A WINDOW

  12

  FROM WHERE I WAS SITTING, I LOOKED UP AT THE horse standing there patiently waiting for me.

  Finally I got up. But instead of getting back on the horse, I stepped back up on the boardwalk and started walking along it and looking into some of the other shops. My mind was still full, and I just wanted to know what it felt like to walk through town along a boardwalk like white people did, just taking my time and seeing what was in the store windows.

  I passed a linen store. Two ladies were just coming out. Not knowing what to do, I half smiled at them as I walked by. They seemed surprised to see me and moved away to the other side of the walkway, as if they didn’t want to get too close to me. I reckon I had been riding all morning. Maybe I smelled bad, though I couldn’t tell myself. They said a few unkind things as they walked away. But I didn’t mind. They couldn’t hurt me and I was free, so what did I care what they said?

  There were other people about as I walked too, and most of them acted the same, either saying something like, “Get off the walk, girl!” or “This ain’t no place for you!” or else just moving to the other side to avoid getting too close to me. I pretended not to notice and just kept going, but after a while it kinda stung to hear what they were saying. Even when I was a slave, nobody said those kinds of things to me. Maybe the white folks were mad to think that I was now free just like they were and could walk anywhere I wanted, even right through a town full of white folks.

  I passed a baker’s shop, and for the first time almost wished I hadn’t spent the nine cents on the handkerchief. There were some mighty good smells coming from inside!

  But I kept going and came to a store with some equipment in it, then walked past some offices, and then a bank. Across the street was a saloon with music and loud voices coming from the open swinging doors. I had no interest in getting too close to it, so I turned at the bank and went along the walk in the other direction from it.

  People kept staring at me and sometimes saying rude things. I still hadn’t seen any other coloreds. Maybe I was the only black person in this town. Maybe that’s why none of them seemed to like me being there.

  Up ahead I saw a hotel and restaurant. There were people walking in and out of it. I started to turn around, but then I saw a notice in the window and for some reason it drew my attention. I walked toward it, curious to see if I could read it. I stopped in front of the window and slowly tried to make sense of the words. I was surprised at how easy it was. It only took me a few minutes before I knew what the whole thing said:

  Wanted: white maid, 25 cents a day plus room and board.

  Wanted: colored girl for cleaning, 10 cents a day plus r & b.

  I turned and slowly started walking away on the boardwalk back in the direction of the bank. But the words from the sign kept repeating themselves over and over in my mind.

  Wanted … colored girl … ten cents a day …

  What if—my brain was spinning around and around with the thought of it!—what if I was to … could someone like me really get a job? One that actually paid money? That was more than Josepha got in a day. If I took a job that paid ten cents a day, would that be what I was worth?

  All of a sudden I found myself turning around and walking back, and then I was walking into the hotel, walking right past the white ladies in fancy dresses and hats, and past the white men in black suits. I walked up to the counter and stood waiting there till the man behind it noticed me. I reckon the work dress I was wearing wasn’t none too pretty, and maybe I did smell, for all I knew. But I didn’t care. They weren’t asking for somebody who smelled nice and was dressed pretty, but for someone who knew how to work. And that’s something I knew how to do all right.

  Finally the man looked over the counter at me. He just stood there and stared.

  “I … I want to ask about that sign you got in the window,” I said, “saying you’re wanting a colored girl.”

  “I’ll get the manager,” he said, then turned and left.

  My heart was pounding, but I stood there and waited and tried to calm my insides down.

  A minute or two later the same man appeared again from through the door where he’d gone. He was followed by another man, a little older and half bald and kinda fat, though nowhere near as large as Josepha. He was wearing a shiny black vest and a funny-looking thin string tie around his neck and down the front.

  “What’s your name, girl?” he said when he got to me. He was just like all the white people in this town—he didn’t seem to know how to smile.

  “Mary Ann,” I said.

  “Mary Ann what?”

  “Jukes.”

  “Where you from? Who was your master?”

  “Master McSimmons, sir.”

  The man nodded.

  “You still living there?” he said.

  “No, sir.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Uh … somewhere else … where I went after I left Master McSimmons,” I said.

  The man looked at me a little suspicious. “Well, I don’t suppose that matters. You know how to work?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know how to keep your mouth shut and mind your betters?”

  “Uh … yes, sir.”

  “And do what you’re told?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come along, then, I’ll show you the room.”

  He came out from behind the counter and walked through the hotel. I followed him. We walked through a long hallway and pretty soon came out at the back of the building and outside. I kept following until we came to a little building out at the back. We went through a door into another dark hallway, walked almost all the way to the other end, turned a corner, went up a narrow stairway, and then stopped. He opened a door and walked in.

  “This is where you’ll stay,” he said. “You got any things with you, put them in here. Then come to the front desk and I’ll put you to work.”

  I glanced around. The room was so tiny, there was only room for the bed against the small wall and a tiny table and chair. It didn’t look too clean, and from where I was standing I thought the mattress on the bed was stuffed with straw, like my old one had been at the McSimmons colored town. The place didn’t particularly strike me as where I wanted to live for the next few years, even for ten cents a day.

  “I don’t know if I want to take the job yet, sir,” I said.

  “What! An uppity one, are you? I should’ve seen it in that ugly face of yours. What are you wasting my time for!”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I just wanted to know about it.”

  “Get out of here, and don’t show your face around this hotel again unless you’re ready to go to work.”

  He huffed out of the room and down the stairs, leaving me to find my own way back out to the street in front.

  DECISION

  13

  IWALKED OUT OF THE HOTEL, FEELING THE SCOWL of the manager’s eyes on my back from the counter, where I knew he was watching me.

  I came out onto the boardwalk and started back the way I had come. As I retraced my steps from earlier, all kinds of new things to think about were swirling in my brain.

  A job!

  A real job, a room of my very own … and real m
oney! It wasn’t much of a room, and maybe the ten cents a day wasn’t even half what the white person’s job got. But it would be mine … my own room, my own money.

  I could buy things, clothes for myself, a pair of shoes …

  I looked down at the white handkerchief I still had clutched in one hand. If I took that job I could buy all the lace handkerchiefs I could ever want. I could buy a dozen of them if I wanted to! With every kind of colored ribbon I could think of!

  All at once my future was full of so many possibilities and opportunities. Not only wasn’t I a runaway slave … why, I could be and do anything I wanted to!

  I was walking slow, thinking about so many things.

  Did I … did I really want to take that job? Even with the gruff hotel manager and lumpy straw mattress and dinky little room.

  What a change it would be!

  Once I started getting paid, maybe I’d even have to open an account in that bank, just for me, in my own name—a bank account that said Mary Ann Jukes on it.

  But then the question came to my mind—did they let black folks have bank accounts? I didn’t know the answer to that. And I was still just a girl, I wasn’t even a grown-up black yet.

  Well, if they didn’t … then I’d keep my ten cents a day someplace else. If I worked long enough at that hotel, I could get rich!

  My steps slowed, then came to a stop. I had come to the corner again by the bank where the saloon was across the street.

  I stopped right at the corner. Down the street past the baker’s and offices and linen store, there was the horse still standing in front of the general store waiting for me.

  Still thinking about the money, I looked inside the bank. Just thinking about having a bank account with my own money in it was so exciting a thought!

  Then I glanced back down the street behind me at the hotel.

  I just stood there for a whole minute or two. I knew I had to decide. It was nobody’s decision but mine. I was free. I could do whatever I wanted. I could take that job if I wanted. Or—

  A sound disturbed me out of my daze as I stood there on the corner of the boardwalk next to the Oakwood bank. I don’t know why I noticed, ’cause there were people about and horses and a few buggies clomping and rattling along the street. But in the midst of all the noise and movement and activity, I heard the sound of a man’s voice calling out to a team of horses from the middle of the street coming behind me from the direction of the general store.