A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

by Michael Phillips

  “Mayme, you’re back … I missed you so much,” she said. “I was so worried about you!”

  “I’m fine now, Aleta,” she said.

  Still she kept clinging to me and didn’t want to let go.

  “I love you, Mayme,” she said.

  Tears filled my eyes. I looked over at Katie. Her eyes were wet too.

  “Welcome back, Mayme,” Katie said. “Welcome home.”

  Jeremiah lifted me in his arms and carried me toward the house. Katie led the way inside and up the stairs. I don’t know what Jeremiah thought, but he didn’t ask any questions. A minute or two later I was lying on the bed while Katie and Emma and Aleta were scurrying about fetching water for the tub and talking about getting some food and liquid inside me.

  Whatever Jeremiah was thinking as he stood in the kitchen watching all the commotion, he kept to himself. But he couldn’t be in much doubt that Katie’s mother wasn’t anywhere around, or that there wasn’t a sign of any other grown-up either. It was clear enough that Katie was mistress of the place.

  Once she had Emma and Aleta about their jobs—one stoking the kitchen fire to warm some soup and the other carrying water upstairs for a bath—she went over to Jeremiah and led him outside.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Jeremiah,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I’m jes’ glad Miz Mayme’s safe,” he said, “an’ dat I could help.”

  A moment of silence passed between them.

  “Please …” began Katie after a few seconds, “you won’t tell … will you? Someday … maybe we can explain what is going on here. But for now, nobody can know.”

  He stood looking at the serious expression on Katie’s face.

  “I reckon I can do dat, Miz Clairborne,” he said slowly. “ ’Tis mighty strange, I gotter say, seein’ two coloreds an’ two white girls all livin’ in a big house like dat together. But I reckon I can keep my mouf shut fer a spell. But you’ll tell me someday, I hope, ’cause you got me mighty curious.”

  “I will try to,” said Katie with a relieved smile. “Thank you, Jeremiah.—Do you mind walking back to town? I’d let you take one of the horses, or ride you in myself, but …”

  “Don’ mention it, Miz Clairborne,” said Jeremiah. “Dat’ll give my pa an’ dose other folks in town dat was watchin’ us wiff dere big eyes a chance ter settle down an’ ferget what dey seen. I’ll jes’ sneak in a round’bout way so no one sees me.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” laughed Katie. “Thank you again!”

  A NEW CRISIS

  43

  MY NIGHTMARE WAS OVER, BUT ITS EFFECTS LINGERED for several weeks. I was exhausted and the wounds on my back were so painful I could hardly move for three days. Most of that time I spent in bed, relishing my freedom and never appreciating so much what it meant. The other three waited on me hand and foot. Once she saw my back, Aleta was all the more sensitive and compassionate.

  The incident seemed to change us all. We knew this was no game. It was a risky adventure we had undertaken, and we were all in danger. If we hadn’t realized it before, we certainly did now, especially now that Jeremiah knew. Katie was deeply concerned about Emma and me and all the more committed to protecting us. Emma seemed quieter and more thoughtful, like she’d suddenly grown up several years in knowing that I hadn’t betrayed her, even when my own life had been at stake. I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms, but she kept saying over and over, “I can’t believe you did dat fer me, Miz Mayme. I jes’ can’t believe it!”

  Aleta seemed most changed of all by what had happened. She didn’t seem like such a little girl anymore, but like she was really one of us.

  But though the nightmare was past, we all knew the danger was still with us. It would always be with us as long as William McSimmons and his wife were worried about Emma and her baby. I think for the first time Katie realized just how much danger would be part of our lives from now on. But luckily, the man from the McSimmons place asking about black babies and pretending there was some disease going around never came back.

  One thing I knew, and it made me sad, was that I could never visit Josepha again.

  But though we expected trouble every day, no more trouble came for a time—at least of that kind—and I gradually recovered and got my strength back and began getting up and helping again with the daily chores. And after a while we settled into the old routine from before, though we were all more wary, always watching and listening for the sounds of horses coming.

  September came and the crops all about Rosewood were ripening. Katie still had most of the ten dollars left from the gold coin she’d changed to smaller money and the two dollars she’d found in the pantry, and so money was the last thing we were thinking about. To girls like us, ten dollars seemed like enough to last us a lifetime.

  And the fact that there was a loan coming due real soon, from when Katie’s mother had borrowed against Rosewood, was a fact that neither of us really knew what it meant. We knew that you had to pay back loans, but it never dawned on us what might happen if you didn’t.

  So we didn’t think about it and didn’t realize we should be thinking about it, and all the while an even bigger danger to our scheme of keeping the plantation going was sneaking up on us a little closer with every day that passed.

  Then a new danger came calling, and we suddenly had a new crisis on our hands that neither Katie or me had any idea how to get out of.

  One day a carriage drove up to Rosewood. As soon as I heard it in the distance, I hurried Aleta to the blacksmith’s shed and got her pounding on the anvil. Then I hurried to light a couple of fires in the slave cabins while Katie got Emma and William into the cellar with a lantern. When the fires were lit I walked through the yard with the laundry basket we always had ready full of rags and old blankets.

  I didn’t recognize who the visitor was, but Katie did. It was the man from the bank.

  Katie met him outside the back door. He rode up and stopped in front of the house.

  “Miss Kathleen,” he said in an abrupt tone as he started to get down from his carriage, “tell your mother I am here to see her.”

  “She’s not at home, Mr. Taylor,” said Katie.

  “What—after I have come all this way?”

  He shook his head and let out a frustrated sigh. You could tell he was getting tired of never seeing Katie’s mother.

  “I must see her,” he said. “The financial situation since you were into the bank to make that small payment has grown very serious. The balance of one hundred fifty-three dollars on your mother’s loan is due next month, and I am being pressured to take action.”

  “Uh … what will happen if the loan isn’t paid, Mr. Taylor?” asked Katie.

  “I am afraid I will have no choice but to begin foreclosure proceedings.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Katie.

  “It means that the bank will take Rosewood.”

  “You mean … take the house away from my mother?”

  “I am afraid so,” said the man as he climbed back into his carriage.

  “You wouldn’t really do that … would you, Mr. Taylor?”

  “It would not be my decision,” he replied. “I don’t own the bank, I only work for it, Kathleen. There are policies that I have to follow. Those policies protect the bank’s interests and enable it to make loans in the first place. Now I do not want to foreclose on Rosewood. I will do everything I can to help. But if your mother continues to avoid coming to talk to me, there will be nothing I can do … or that anyone can do. I am sorry. I will be sending a team of auditors out to Rosewood in a few weeks to valuate all the assets and the house. They will have to look at everything. A public notice will then go out for the auction.”

  “What’s that?” asked Katie.

  “When all the assets of the plantation will be sold. It will be announced in all the newspapers. Tell your mother to come see me immediately. These delays are hurting no one but her. I
f she doesn’t do something, and soon, she will lose everything.”

  He climbed back into the seat, flicked the reins, called to his horses, then turned the carriage around as they moved off and bounced back in the direction of town.

  As soon as he was gone, I asked Katie what he wanted. I could tell from her face that it was serious. She tried to explain to me what he’d said.

  “Mayme,” she said, “he’s going to send people here and announce in the newspapers that Rosewood’s for sale! Everyone will find out. The bank’s going to take Rosewood away from us. They’ll find out about me and Emma and Aleta and you … everything.”

  “Then we have to do something,” I said.

  “How can we? He said we had to pay back the whole loan. We don’t have a hundred fifty dollars. All we’ve got is what’s left over from that one ten-dollar coin. Oh, Mayme … what are we going to do!”

  “I reckon it’s time to start praying again,” I said. “God’s helped us out of every fix we’ve been in so far.”

  Katie’s momentary despair was cut short as we both suddenly realized we were hearing the clanking of iron on iron coming from the blacksmith’s shed. Poor Aleta—her arm must have been about ready to fall off from pounding the hammer on the anvil!

  We turned and ran toward the sound.

  “He’s gone,” called Katie. “You can come out now, Aleta.”

  I HAVE AN IDEA

  44

  A WEEK PASSED. KATIE WAS REALLY DOWNCAST, like I’d never seen her before. She went through her daily chores hardly saying a word. The thought of us all having to be separated and leave each other weighed her down something dreadful. I think she felt it was somehow her fault because of the loan, and if it hadn’t been for that, everything would be fine.

  I was pretty well recovered now and feeling good, though my back still had a lot of scabs that hurt if I twisted the wrong way. But we were still being real careful about watching for anyone coming and had a plan to hide Emma and me if anyone from the McSimmons place came snooping around.

  One day I went out to the fields. I was just looking about, not thinking of much in particular. I found myself in one of the fields that had been planted with cotton. Cotton was so familiar that I didn’t think anything of it. We hadn’t been paying any attention to these fields because cotton was of no use to us. But on this day I found myself looking at it. Most of the bolls were bursting open. I recognized the look and knew it was ready to be harvested.

  Suddenly my eyes shot open wide. I turned and spun around and around—everywhere I looked, cotton was bursting!

  Cotton!

  It was the crop that had built all the huge plantations through the South. It was the reason there had been slaves.

  They picked it so their owners could sell it! Maybe it could be of some use to us after all!

  I turned and ran back as fast as I could.

  “Katie,” I said when I got to the house out of breath. “Maybe there is a way we can make some money for that loan with the man at the bank.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “Pick the cotton,” I said. “Pick it and sell it!”

  “Could we, Mayme … could we really?”

  “We could pick some of it anyway.”

  “Do you know how?” she asked.

  “I know how to pick it all right!” I laughed. “I reckon every black person in the South could pick cotton in their sleep! Well, most black folks anyway—I’m not sure about Emma. But I don’t know what to do with it after it’s picked. What do you do then? How do you sell it?”

  “I know how to do that,” said Katie.

  “You do!”

  “Yes—there’s a man in Greens Crossing who buys it.”

  “What about baling it?” I said. “That’s another thing I don’t know how to do.”

  “I watched Jeremiah and Mathias do it,” said Katie. “You just put it in the baling box, press it all tight, and tie the baling string around it.”

  “But the bales are so huge,” I said. “I’ve seen them. They’re as big as a wagon. We could never move them.”

  “I’m talking about small bales,” said Katie. “We’ve got a hundred-pound baler box.”

  “A hundred pounds is the small size! We couldn’t lift a hundred pounds either. That’s as much as you and me weigh, Katie.”

  “We could put the box up in the wagon first and do the baling and tying in the back of the wagon so we don’t have to lift the bales into it when we’re done.”

  I could tell Katie was getting excited at the notion.

  “And you really think we could sell it,” I said, “that is, if we could pick it and get it into bales?”

  “I did it once before,” said Katie. “I took a wagon into town for my mama.”

  I pondered the idea some more. There was an objection that had come to my mind.

  “There’s one more thing, Katie,” I said. “You’re going to have to let me do the picking.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Katie.

  “Just what I said. I’m used to it, so I’ll do it.”

  “And I’ll help you,” she insisted.

  “Picking cotton’s slave work, Katie,” I said. “It’s the hardest, hottest, most tedious work there is.”

  “Mayme, we’ve got to do something,” said Katie. “Mr. Taylor’s going to take Rosewood away from us if we don’t find some money for that loan.”

  “It doesn’t seem right for you to pick cotton,” I said again. “If it was anything but picking cotton. Maybe Emma could help me.”

  “There aren’t any such things as slaves and masters anymore, Mayme,” said Katie. “Everything’s changed. There’s just you and me and Emma and Aleta. We can’t let Mr. Taylor take Rosewood or it’ll be like you told me before—I’ll have to go to one of my uncles or an orphanage or something. Aleta would be taken back to her father, or taken to an orphanage too if she’s not who Reverend Hall was asking about. And they’d find Emma, and what would become of her without us? And what would happen to you? So we’ve got to do something, Mayme. We can’t harvest the wheat to sell. We can’t sell the cows or chickens—we need them. And we couldn’t get more than a few dollars selling eggs. It was a great idea you had. The cotton’s the only thing we’ve got. And it’s my cotton now, Mayme, and I want to pick it.”

  “All right, you win,” I said. “I’ll show you how to do it, and we’ll pick it together.”

  “What about Aleta?” asked Katie. “Do you think she could help us too? Is it work she could do?”

  “I was picking cotton when I was younger than her,” I said. “It’s hard work, but I reckon if you’re going to do it, she could help too.”

  “Then maybe it’s time we told her what we were doing, Mayme. Maybe it’s time to make her part of our plan. If she’s going to help us save Rosewood, she’s got a right to know.”

  “You should be the one to talk to her,” I said.

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  We both sat quietly thinking as everything we’d been talking about gradually sank in.

  “When can we start picking the cotton?” Katie asked eagerly. “There’s no time to lose.”

  “Any day,” I said. “I’ll go out and check the fields again just to make sure. Then we’ll start getting things ready this afternoon.”

  MORNING IN THE FIELD

  45

  THE DAY AFTER OUR TALK, BOTH KATIE AND I got up with a sense of anticipation.

  We knew we were facing a crossroads. If we didn’t do something, and soon, our little game of trying to make this plantation work by ourselves would be over. People would take us away and all four of us would go our separate ways.

  We looked at each other with serious expressions, sort of saying, Well, I guess this is it. Then we both went about our business of getting ready for the day.

  There was just about nothing in the world I hated more than picking cotton. But for some reason now I was almost looking forward to it. Having it be our o
wn cotton, and knowing we had to do it to survive and keep going and eat and take care of ourselves and to protect Emma and William and save Rosewood for Katie—all that made it seem completely different. Of course, it wasn’t really mine, it was Katie’s. But it felt like it was part mine, because in a way it was all of ours. It was our plantation now, just like Katie had tried to tell me a while back.

  I went out to the biggest field to look over the crop again. It was full of weeds growing as high as the cotton, but the field was full of white too. The bolls had opened and the white fluffy balls were exploding out everywhere. It was the white that mattered, not the weeds.

  The field was ready!

  Could we do it? Could four girls trying to fend for themselves really harvest enough cotton to sell for real cash money?

  How much could we pick? I didn’t know. For a field this size a year ago, there might have been twenty or thirty colored men and women. But then the field might all be picked in three or four days. If it didn’t rain, maybe it’d take me and Katie two or three weeks, maybe more. I had no idea. If Aleta and Emma could help us, it would go faster. But would that be in time?

  I reckon we’d find out. And maybe the whole future of Katie Clairborne’s and Mayme Jukes’s crazy scheme would depend on whether we could.

  I walked slowly through the field, white puffs of cotton all around me. I stopped, then reached down and picked off one of the little white balls from a nearby plant.

  I held it in my fingers and looked at it for a few seconds, then again around at the field surrounding me.

  Well, you old cotton field, I said, here I am again. But I don’t hate you no more, ’cause I reckon the day’s come when you’re my own cotton now too, just like Katie said, or something like it anyhow. And I’m gonna pick as much of you as I can!