A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

by Michael Phillips

  “Kathleen,” said Mrs. Hammond after a few minutes, “I’ve put the things on your list on the counter.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “I notice this is not your mother’s handwriting,” she said, and I could feel that suspicious tone coming back into her voice.

  “No, ma’am,” said Katie. “It’s mine.”

  “Ah … I see. Yes, well, Kathleen … in checking your mother’s account, and with today’s order, I find that she has one dollar and thirty-seven cents left over. Shall I just keep it and apply it as credit to her account?”

  “No, ma’am,” replied Katie. “I will take it home if you don’t mind.”

  Disappointed, Mrs. Hammond fished about in her cash drawer, then handed Katie the money, in small silver coins this time.

  “Put that in your pocket, Kathleen,” she said quietly. “Don’t let that girl see it. It’s not good for them to know about money. It puts ideas in their heads.”

  “Yes, ma’am.—Mayme,” she said to me, “get those things on the counter and take them to the wagon.”

  “Oh … and, Kathleen,” said Mrs. Hammond as Katie started to follow me out, “here is the mail that has come.”

  She stooped down behind the counter, then handed it to Katie across the counter. I slowed my step because I was curious and wanted to hear whatever else she might say.

  “Some of it looks important, Kathleen,” said Mrs. Hammond. “You be sure your mama gets it. I don’t want somebody blaming me if you lose it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I continued on with the sugar and flour and a few smaller things, and Katie followed me out the door.

  We walked back to the buckboard, climbed up, and Katie took the reins, still holding the letters, and swatted the horse with them and we bounced away, knowing all the time that Mrs. Hammond’s eyes were glued to our backs through the window of her store.

  Don’t move under those blankets, Aleta! I was thinking to myself.

  A few minutes later, Katie pulled up and stopped in front of the bank.

  “Why don’t I just wait here, Miss Katie?” I said. “I don’t think they’d like the idea of a colored girl going in there.”

  “I don’t care what they think,” she said.

  “I know, but we don’t want to raise too many questions.”

  “All right, Mayme,” said Katie.

  She walked inside, looked around a second, then walked over to where Mr. Taylor, the manager of the bank, was sitting at his desk.

  “Hello, Kathleen,” he said as she walked up. “Doing errands for your mother again?”

  “Uh … yes, sir. I have a payment to make on her loan.”

  She stuffed her hand into the pocket of her dress, deposited the letters, and in their place pulled out five gold coins and set them on the banker’s desk.

  “Where did you get these!” he exclaimed, reaching out and taking the coins in his hand.

  “From my uncle, sir,” replied Katie. “He found gold in California and gave it to my mother for safekeeping. She didn’t want to use the gold before this, since it wasn’t hers.

  But now she finds she must.”

  “Ah, yes … yes, of course.”

  “Will this pay off my mama’s loan, Mr. Taylor?”

  “I’m afraid not, Kathleen,” he said, still clutching the coins. “But it will make a nice dent in it. I shall apply it to the loan immediately.”

  Before Katie had a chance to think about whether it was a good idea to let him keep all the money or not, the banker opened a drawer, put the coins inside, then pulled out another drawer and removed a sheaf of papers and made a few notes on it.

  Katie was glad she’d kept the last coin in her pocket or he might now have that too!

  A few seconds later, he glanced up. “I’ve made the entry,” he said. “This will be a good start on the loan. Is there anything else, Kathleen?”

  “Yes, sir. Would it be possible to get small money for this one?”

  She pulled out the last ten-dollar gold piece and set it on the desk.

  “There’s more?” said the banker.

  “Just this one.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to apply it to the loan as well?”

  “Yes, sir. We … my mama needs some coins for smaller bills.”

  “I see … right, well, I see nothing wrong with that.”

  Holding the coin, he rose and walked across the floor to the cashier’s window. When he returned a minute or two later, he was holding a number of smaller coins in his hand.

  “Here you are, Kathleen—ten dollars in coin. Tell your mother thank you for the payment. And tell her that we still need to discuss arrangements for the balance. It is really most urgent that she clear up what now remains on the first loan. Time is getting very short.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”

  Katie turned to go, but then paused and turned back toward him.

  “How much is the loan, Mr. Taylor?” she asked.

  “Both loans together originally totaled five hundred twenty-five dollars,” he answered. “After today’s payment there is a little over a hundred fifty dollars left on the first, which is the more immediately pressing. But your mother knows that.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”

  Katie walked out of the bank, her pocket jangling full of ten dollars’ worth of smaller coins. I could tell from her face that she felt like the richest lady in the world.

  Again she climbed up, and it was all we could do to keep from talking or smiling at each other before we got far enough away where no one could see us.

  When we were about a half mile out of town, Katie reined the horse to a stop.

  “You can come out now, Aleta,” she said. “We’re out of sight of town now. You did well.”

  “That was fun!” said Aleta, and she jumped up beside Katie. It was the first time either of us had seen her smile.

  THE TEARDROP

  21

  AS MUCH WORK AS WE’D BEEN DOING AROUND the place, and from all the other things we had to think about, I hadn’t been in the barn much in the last couple weeks, except the far end where the cows came for milking. One day I went inside and looked over and noticed the pillow and blanket and a few other things still there from when Katie’d found Emma and when she’d given birth to her baby here in the barn. None of us had ever thought to clean them up.

  So I went over and picked up the blanket to take it outside to wash. Then I was going to take out the straw and dump a new bale down from the loft above, and was fixing to clean up the area a little.

  All of a sudden as I swept back the straw, a little blue-and-white bit of color sparkled up at me on the hard dirt floor from the sunlight coming in through the door I’d left open. I stooped down and picked up the tiny gold piece of jewelry with its flat blue top and white gold letters in the middle of the blue.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes!

  I recognized it. It had been my mama’s! Now that I saw it again, I wondered why I hadn’t found it with her things.

  I held the little object for a minute, filled with reminders of my family. Mama’d had it as long as I could recollect, though I still hadn’t a notion what it was. It didn’t look like any kind of white woman’s jewelry I’d ever seen, and was such an odd shape.

  The first time I’d seen her holding it years ago and had asked her about it, she’d just smiled a sad smile and said the letters stood for a teardrop. What did that mean? I asked her. She just said, “Some memories are best left unremembered,” and then she would answer no more of my questions about the thing.

  Then all of a sudden I came to myself standing there in the barn, realizing that the thing hadn’t got there with me.

  So how had it gotten here?

  I wandered outside and back to the house where I heard Katie and Emma and William in the kitchen and was going to ask Katie about it. It was a good thing Aleta was upstairs in Katie’s room right then. The instant I opened
my hand to show it to her, Emma burst out.

  “Where’d you git dat?” she said, trying to grab it from me. “Dat’s mine!”

  I pulled back and closed my palm.

  “What are you talking about, girl?” I said, confused at first.

  “It’s mine,” she repeated. “I lost it. Where’d you fin’ it?”

  “Out in the barn. It was under the straw where you were lying that day we found you.”

  “Dat’s it—jes’ like I tol’ you. I was holdin’ it an’ I lost it. Gib it to me.”

  I saw Emma’s eyes flash and took another step back, still clutching it tight. And now I was starting to get angry myself.

  “What is it, Mayme?” asked Katie, confused over what we were arguing about.

  I opened my hand and showed it to her.

  “It’s a cuff link,” she said.

  “What’s a cuff link?” I asked.

  “It’s a thing a man wears to hold the cuffs of his shirt together. Where’s the other one?”

  “There isn’t another one. I found this out in the barn just now, under the straw where Emma was laying when she had William.”

  “So it is Emma’s, like she says?”

  “No, Miss Katie,” I said. “This used to belong to my mama. She had it for years.”

  “It’s mine!” Emma said again. “I brought it wiff me when I ran away.”

  Katie looked back and forth between the two of us, more bewildered than ever.

  “What do the letters stand for, Mayme?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “All my mama would tell me is that they meant ‘teardrop.’ ”

  “Maybe this one of Emma’s is the other one,” she suggested. “There are always two.”

  “My mama only had one,” I said. “How could Emma have gotten the other one.—If it’s yours, Emma,” I said, turning to her, still a little riled, “where’d you get it?”

  “Neber min’ where I got it. I got it, dat’s all.”

  “It had to come from someplace, Emma,” said Katie gently. “Won’t you tell me where?”

  “I foun’ it.”

  “Found it … where?”

  “I foun’ it in a place when dere weren’t nobody aroun’ … an’ it wuz dere an’ it was pretty an’ it din’t belong to nobody, so I jes’ took it.”

  Suddenly I remembered something Emma had said about the time she’d run away from her plantation, about going down to the colored town after everyone was dead. A chill swept through me. Why hadn’t I thought of it before—William McSimmons was one of the McSimmons boys! And the instant the name came to my mind, with it came back the memory of the man Katie and I had seen asking about Emma in Mrs. Hammond’s store.

  It had been him!

  “Was that before they killed the black folks, Emma?” I asked.

  “Yes, dat was before den, but dey was all out workin’.”

  “All the slaves, you mean?”

  “All da field slaves. I was a slave too, but I stayed at da house.”

  “But you went down to the colored village that day, when everyone was gone, and you found it then?”

  “Yes’m, an’ when I went inter da house, I saw it—

  ” All at once Emma realized I’d found her out, and she shut her mouth up tight.

  “You saw it and you stole it—is that what you were about to say?”

  Emma did not reply.

  “You found it in one of the slave houses, didn’t you?” I persisted. “The slaves were out working and you went in and saw it and took it?”

  Still she remained silent.

  “That was my house, Emma. And that cuff link was my mama’s!”

  Emma glanced away. I think her anger at me was starting to turn to embarrassment, though I think she was still mad that I’d found out her secret.

  “What were their names, Emma?” I said. “When you were telling us about what happened to you—what was your master called?”

  Still Emma wouldn’t answer.

  “Emma, answer Mayme’s question,” said Katie. Her voice was insistent, like she was Emma’s mistress.

  “Master McSimmons,” Emma finally whimpered.

  “So it did come from my mama!” I cried. “You took it from our house!”

  “I still don’t understand, Mayme,” said Katie, now glancing toward me.

  “Now we know why the baby’s name is William, Miss Katie,” I said. “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Me and Emma came from the same place!” I said. “The father of her baby is William McSimmons, the son of my own master, who has about as bad a reputation as a man can have about what he does to women. I’ve heard talk about him and slave girls, and Emma’s baby is obviously his doing. He’s who was asking Mrs. Hammond about her that day.”

  “What dat you say?” shrieked Emma. “He been ax’ing ’bout me! Oh no … no!” she wailed and then started crying.

  “But why didn’t you know each other?” asked Katie, for the moment ignoring Emma’s ruckus.

  “I don’t know, Miss Katie,” I said. “I can’t figure that out either. I don’t know why I didn’t see her at the plantation. I’d figured the McSimmons were all dead till just a few days ago.”

  Again I turned to Emma.

  “How long had you been at the McSimmons place?” I asked.

  “I don’ know,” whimpered Emma, “maybe a year. I wuz always gettin’ bought an’ sold. Da master hadn’t bought me too much before dat, I reckon. I’m sorry, Miz Mayme. I din’t know it wuz yer mama’s. I din’t mean ter steal it. It wuz jes’ so pretty an’ I neber had something so pretty, but I din’t mean ter steal it.”

  She was so sad and pitiful when she cried and blubbered like that, how could I stay mad at her?

  “It’s all right, Emma,” I said. “What’s done is done and it’s over now.”

  “Thank you, Miz Mayme. Yer so good ter me too, jes’ like Miz Katie.”

  Her words didn’t go down too easily in light of how angry I’d gotten at her. I was angry with myself for getting so upset. With Aleta here now, and five of us to take care of instead of just me and Katie ourselves, I couldn’t let myself be angry and selfish over something so little as a cuff link. Katie was acting like a grown-up, and I had to too. I had some serious growing up to do, that was for sure.

  Even though we’d temporarily solved the riddle of the cuff link’s origin, the incident still raised a lot of questions in my mind that I didn’t have answers for. Along with the gold from the cellar and where Aleta had come from, there were sure a lot of mysteries to think about all of a sudden.

  RESPECT

  22

  I STILL HADN’T HAD A CHANCE TO TELL KATIE everything that had happened when I’d been gone. It was such a private and personal thing, I couldn’t just blurt it all out with Aleta around glaring at me, or when we were milking the cows and doing our chores, or when Emma was likely to start yammering away or asking me a lot of questions about if she was free too. It had to be the right time. I wanted to tell her when we didn’t have to worry about getting interrupted by something.

  Aleta had been with us a few days, and we were doing our best to get back to our normal routine, even though nothing had been normal since Emma got there. Having other people around made everything so different than it had been before.

  One night Katie came into my room and got under the blankets with me.

  “Is Aleta asleep?” I asked.

  “I think so,” answered Katie.

  We both lay there a minute or two just enjoying the silence of being together under the covers, warm and safe and content.

  “It’s nice with William sleeping through the night,” said Katie.

  “Emma’s starting to get the hang of mothering a little, isn’t she?” I said. “That little boy’s mighty special to her.”

  “I walked in on her today and she was babbling away in his face—I couldn’t understand a word she
was saying!”

  “Black folks have a baby talk all their own,” I said.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it, Mayme, having other people to take care of? It makes me feel like I’m doing something important.”

  “It’s helps us forget our own problems for a while, that’s for sure,” I said.

  We lay quietly for a while.

  “What happened when you went back home?” Katie asked after a bit. “You said it was something really exciting.”

  I’d been wanting to tell Katie about it ever since getting back. But it took me a little while to settle my thoughts and know what to say. Sometimes the most important things are hardest to talk about, and you wind up spending all your time talking about little things that don’t really matter. But I waited till I was ready because I really wanted to tell her about what I’d found out and everything I’d been thinking and feeling.

  “I saw the housekeeper at the big house,” I said finally. “Nobody there had been hurt, only the slaves at the cabins. I wish I’d have known about Emma then so I could ask about her. I still can’t figure why I never saw her. But Josepha—that’s the housekeeper’s name—told me that the war was over and all the slaves had been set free.”

  I looked over at Katie. The news didn’t seem to shock her when she heard it like it had me.

  “Like Henry’s son?” she asked.

  “All the slaves, Miss Katie,” I said. “Everywhere. It’s against the law for anyone to own slaves now.”

  It still seemed like the idea wasn’t altogether getting through. Maybe it was, but it wasn’t affecting her like it had me. How could it? She hadn’t been a slave all her life, so maybe the news didn’t seem so huge to her.

  “But she was still there,” said Katie, “the housekeeper, I mean. Wasn’t she still your master’s slave?”

  “No, Miss Katie. She didn’t have to stay no more. She wasn’t a slave anymore. She was free to go.”

  “Then why was she there?”

  “She wanted to stay. She was getting paid now to be the master’s housekeeper. And if I’d have stayed, I’d have gotten paid too. She tried to get me to stay and work for Master McSimmons for pay like she was doing. If a black person works for a white now, he’s gotta get paid just like a white person would.”