I tossed the ball of cotton up in the air, watched it float to the ground, then turned and walked back the way I had come. Slowly I began humming the tune we’d sung on my birthday, then started softly singing it as I walked back to the house.
“We planted this cotton in April, on the full of the moon.
We’ve had a hot, dry summer. That’s why it opened so soon.
Cotton needs a-pickin’ so bad, cotton needs a-pickin’ so bad, Cotton needs a-pickin’ so bad, gonna pick all over this field.”
While I’d gone out to the field, Katie had called Aleta and Emma together for a serious talk.
“Aleta,” said Katie when they were together in the kitchen, “I need to have an important talk with you.”
They sat down. Aleta could tell from Katie’s voice that whatever it was, it was serious. She looked into Katie’s face waiting, and a little afraid that Katie was getting ready to send her away.
“I want you to tell me where you and your mother lived,” said Katie.
“Oakwood,” answered Aleta nervously, glancing over to where Emma sat quietly waiting and worrying about what Katie would say to her next.
“That’s where you were riding away from when your daddy was chasing you?”
Aleta nodded.
“What is your last name, Aleta?”
“Butler.”
“Aleta Butler … that’s a nice name. What is your father’s name, Aleta?”
Aleta looked down and remained silent.
“You know, Aleta,” said Katie, “we have to do something about getting you back with your father. We must tell him about your mother. Don’t you want to live with him?”
“No. I don’t ever want to live with him again.”
Katie was quiet for a bit, thinking what to say.
“You know, it’s real special having a daddy,” she said after a minute. “Mayme and I don’t have daddies.”
“Why not?”
“Because they are both dead.”
At the word dead, Aleta looked up into Katie’s face with a sober expression.
“So you have something we don’t have, Aleta,” Katie continued.
“But my daddy’s mean.”
“He is still your daddy.”
“What about your mamas?” Aleta asked.
Katie hesitated.
“They are both dead too, Aleta. That’s why Mayme and I were here alone before Emma came.”
There was another long pause. Again Aleta seemed sobered by what Katie had said, though also a little confused.
“But you tell people that she’s not here,” she said.
“She isn’t here,” said Katie. “But sometimes I don’t tell them that she’s not coming back.—Do you want to keep staying with us for a while?”
“Oh yes.”
“Then we will let you, for a little while longer, until we decide what is best to do,” said Katie. “You might have other relatives, like I do, that you might want to go stay with someday.”
“Please let me stay here with you,” said Aleta.
“You have to promise something, then,” said Katie. “I normally wouldn’t ask a little girl to keep a secret from grown-ups, but this is very, very important.”
“Yes … I will do anything you say.”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone what we are doing, that we are alone here. No one can know. You know the danger Emma is in from that bad man who wants to find her. And you know what they did to poor Mayme. You saw the wounds on her back.”
Aleta nodded.
“So no one must know there are no grown-ups here, for Emma’s sake and for Mayme’s sake. Some white people want to hurt black people like Emma and Mayme. So we have to make sure they’re safe here, don’t we? So can you keep our secret?”
“I promise, Katie.”
“Even after you leave later, you can never tell.”
“I promise.—But … are there really no grown-ups? None of them are coming back? I just thought your mama was on a trip or something.”
Katie nodded. “We are doing everything ourselves,” she said. “We are just pretending that the grown-ups are still here.”
“What about that colored boy?”
“Jeremiah? Yes, he knows a little. But we haven’t told him even as much as we have you. And he’s promised not to tell either. If people knew it was only four girls by themselves on a plantation, they would take us away and do bad things to Emma and Mayme.”
“You mean … it’s all pretend?”
“The work isn’t pretend. You see how hard we work to do everything. The only thing that is pretend is that we are alone. And now we have to work harder than ever to pick the cotton to sell so that the bank won’t take the house away from us. So, Aleta, if you want to stay, you have to promise never to tell the secret of Rosewood.”
“I will … I will, Katie!” said Aleta, eyes wide with excitement.
“It also means you have to work hard. Look at my hands. I’ve never had blisters before. Now I’m sunburned and my hands are rough. Can you do that … can you help with all the work?”
“Yes.”
“And you promise not to tell?”
“I promise.”
“Then you are one of us now. Just like Mayme and I became sisters and then a little while later Emma came, and now you are our sister too. Someday we’ll find your daddy, and by then I’m sure you’ll want to go with him. But for now you may stay with us.”
Then Katie turned to Emma and explained to them both about the loan and what would happen if they didn’t get a lot of money, and that they were going to pick the cotton.
“Do you think you can help some too, Emma?” she asked. “That is, when William doesn’t need you?”
“Yes’m, Miz Katie. I kin do it. After what you an Miz Mayme done ter save me from dat William McSimmons, I’ll do anything fer you, Miz Katie. I owes you my life, an’ I’s help, Miz Katie. You jes’ show me what ter do.”
“Good, then let’s go find Mayme and help her pick that cotton.”
KING COTTON
46
WE BEGAN THAT SAME MORNING.
We hitched up the big wagon. Even with all four of us, we could barely lift the baling box up into the back of it. But we managed it, then drove the wagon to the field closest to the house, where I figured would be the best place to start. We parked the wagon and unhitched the horses and took them back to the house. It would take us several days, maybe a week—I didn’t know—to get the wagon full. We got the smaller buckboard fixed up with blankets and water and shade for a comfortable place for William to lie and sleep and for Emma to sit with him when he needed her, but so she could help us some of the time.
Once we had everything ready, we went out into the fields with satchels slung over our shoulders and widebrimmed hats on our heads to keep us from the sun, and I showed Katie and Emma and Aleta how to do it.
“You gotta circle the fingers of your right hand around the ball of cotton from the top—see … like this,” I said, stooping down to one and showing them, “while your left hand keeps hold of the stem. Then you squeeze the fingers of both hands together at the stem and the base of the cotton and pluck it out with your right so it comes off at the bottom … like this.” I squeezed and pulled the ball of cotton off the stem and stuck it into my satchel.
They each tried it a couple of times. It was a little awkward at first. It was something they’d have to learn by doing.
“The main thing is to not get leaves mixed in with the cotton,” I said. “Once you know how to do it, we gotta try to work fast. Cotton doesn’t weigh much, and we’ll get paid by how many pounds we bring in. So stuff your satchels as full as you can, then go dump them in the wagon and go back and fill them again. And you gotta drink lots of water, ’cause the sun can tire you out more than the work if you don’t.”
Then we started. We each took a row side by side and started out together. At first we were talking and having fun. But within just a few minutes
I was moving ahead of Katie, and then Katie started moving ahead of Aleta in her row and Emma in hers. Within fifteen minutes the four of us were scattered apart in the field, and it was hard to do much talking after that.
We picked all day in the hot sun, taking time out for eating and drinking plenty of water and taking a break every now and then. I’ve got to hand it to Emma, she worked harder than I ever thought she could. She’d stop to check on William, or sometimes feed him, every ten or fifteen minutes. But when she worked she worked pretty fast and after a while was picking twice as much cotton as Aleta could. I dumped about two satchels for every one of Katie’s, and Aleta was even slower than that, and pretty soon Emma was keeping up with Katie, even having to stop like she did. They all learned fast. I was mighty pleased and thought we did real good for our first day.
By late afternoon, Katie, Emma, and Aleta were exhausted. And after a whole day, the wagon wasn’t even half full. I didn’t know how much it would make when we pressed it down and made it into bales. I hoped what we had picked would make a whole bale. I knew a slave doing real good could pick three or four hundred pounds in a day. Master McSimmons used to give his man-slaves a dollar for every day they picked over four hundred fifty pounds. I figured if the three of us together could get so we could even pick a hundred pounds a day, then we would get a lot of hundred-pound bales picked in a month. Maybe we could make the money Katie needed, although I had no idea how much you got paid for cotton. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to get it all picked. Rosewood probably had forty or fifty acres in cultivated cotton, from what Katie had shown me. But we’d pick as much as we could, and it seemed it oughta help.
The next morning we were all sore and tired. We went out again, but we couldn’t put in as long a day. We only worked till early afternoon. Then we went back to the house and slept.
By the third day we started to get used to it, though it was also getting tedious. And we were barely starting on the field. We still had miles of rows to go!
Five days later the wagon was almost up to the top. We had four packed bales of picked cotton. We were all pretty excited to see the full wagon sitting beside the field.
“Shall we take it in to Mr. Watson’s?” asked Katie excitedly.
“Let’s try to get one more bale,” I said. “We’ll roll one of the bales on top of the others. That will give us room to pack one more and tie it, and dump it out of the baling box and take the box off the wagon. Then tomorrow or the next day you can take the five bales into town.”
“This time I won’t even be nervous to take it in to Mr. Watson’s,” said Katie.
“Do you want me to go with you?” I asked, “… or if you want to go in alone, I can stay and keep picking.”
“I think I can take it alone,” Katie said. “And I’m nervous about you being seen now, after what happened. What if any of those McSimmons men were there? I’d rather take it alone.”
Two days later she was on her way into town while Aleta, Emma, and I got started on filling up a second wagon.
A few stares followed her along the streets of Greens Crossing, seeing as she hadn’t been to town since the incident with Jeremiah. But she didn’t return the stares, and purposefully avoided the livery stable as she made her way through town.
Katie pulled up to Watson’s mill two and a half hours after leaving Rosewood, got down, and went inside to tell Mr. Watson she had a delivery. He came out and looked over the load.
“Hundred-pound bales, I see,” he said. “Your mama should know I can’t pay as much since I have to repack them into quarter tons before shipping them out.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Watson,” said Katie. “She knows.”
He jumped up onto the wagon and lifted one of the bales by the straps we’d tied.
“Those aren’t a hundred pounds either,” he said. “Your hired darkies aren’t pressing them none too tight. This feels barely eighty-five.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, it’ll all be weighed.—Does your mama want me to credit her account?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I haven’t seen her in months, maybe a year or more. She doing okay?”
“Yes, sir. But we’re shorthanded, and she needs me to bring you the cotton.”
“All right, then. I’ll get this unloaded so you can get the wagon back to her.”
DIRE NOTICE
47
THE WEEKS WENT BY AND WE TOOK A WAGONLOAD into town every four or five days. Gradually as we picked we got faster.
The man at the mill was a little curious why it seemed to be going so slow when he was getting deliveries from the other plantations by the thousands of pounds. But as long as the cotton came in and looked okay, he didn’t ask too many questions.
One day Katie returned from town and came out to the field where I was working. Aleta had gotten tired and gone back in, and Emma had been with William all day because he had become a little sick and fussy for a day or two.
As Katie approached I saw that she was holding an envelope. From the look on her face, I’d have thought somebody was dead.
“This was in the mail, Mayme,” she said, showing it to me.
“What does it say?”
“ ‘To Rosalind Clairborne, Rosewood,’ ” Katie read. “ ‘This is to inform you that your loan of $150 is due and payable on September 29, 1865. If not paid in full, foreclosure proceedings will begin immediately.’ ”
She looked up at me with a forlorn expression on her face. “That’s three days from now, Mayme! What are we going to do?”
“We’ve got to pick as much cotton as we can before then!” I said.
The rest of that day we picked faster than we’d picked the whole time. Katie explained to Aleta and Emma how dire the situation had become.
“I know you’re tired, Aleta,” she said, “but we’ve got to keep working together. And, Emma, do you think William could come back out?”
“Yes’m, Miz Katie. I’ll bring him out an’ den I’ll help too. We gotter save Rosewood fer you, Miz Katie, we jes’ gotter.”
We picked till we were exhausted, then took time out to milk the cows and eat something. After that Katie and I went back out ourselves and were still picking when it was finally so dark we couldn’t see the white of the cotton anymore.
“We’ve got to quit, Katie,” I said. “We can start up again tomorrow. It’s no use going any more now.”
She didn’t say a word. We walked back to the house together in silence, completely worn out. Aleta was already asleep. Emma and William had fallen asleep together on the couch in the parlor. We went inside, dragged ourselves up the stairs, and flopped into bed without even washing or getting undressed.
When I woke up the next morning the sun was barely up. I poked my head into Katie’s room, but she wasn’t there. I went downstairs but couldn’t find her anywhere.
I went outside and walked toward the field where we’d been working. There was Katie in the distance, bending down and working her way along a row like she’d never gone to bed at all. I went back into the house and quickly ate something, then packed up some bread and milk for her and went out to join her.
She glanced up as I came. From the pale look on her face, I could tell she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink yet. I gave her the bread and jug of milk. She smiled wearily and ate it, though I think by now her complete exhaustion had made it so she didn’t feel hungry anymore.
An hour later Aleta wandered out, hair messy and sleep still in her eyes. Then a little while after that Emma walked out, holding William.
“Katie,” I said, “you’ve been working hard. Why don’t you go in with Aleta and Emma, and the three of you have some breakfast?”
“What about you, Mayme?” she said wearily.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m feeling good. Then you three can come join me after you’ve had something to eat.”
She didn’t argue but just turned and started walking toward the house. Aleta and Emma followed her
. An hour later we were all four working again in the field.
About the middle of the morning, I glanced up and saw a tall black figure walking toward us. We’d been so occupied that none of us had noticed him.
I paused and stood up, stretching my back. About the same time Katie noticed him too and walked over to meet him near where I was standing.
“You ladies is workin’ mighty hard,” said Jeremiah. “I been watchin’ the goin’s on at Mr. Watson’s mill,” he went on. “It seems t’ me dat you could use another couple er han’s at dis cotton o’ yers.”
Katie smiled a weary smile.
“I’m not going to pretend that we don’t need help, Jeremiah,” she said. “But what about your father? Does Henry—?”
“He don’ know where I went. I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t been askin’ lots er questions. But I ain’t tol’ him nuthin’ ’bout what I seen here.”
“Thank you, Jeremiah. We are all very appreciative of your help.”
Katie went back to the row she was working on. I started in picking again too, and Jeremiah fell in beside me, putting his pickings in my bag. He was even faster than me, and we could notice a difference right away in how fast the wagon filled. We found another bag in the barn and now started moving even faster. As we went we talked a little, mostly about how life used to be when we were both slaves. I suppose picking cotton couldn’t help but remind us.
We were dumping our pickings into two wagons on each side of the field. By the end of that day, with Jeremiah’s help, we had one of them nearly full. I don’t know what he was telling Henry, but he came back the next day, and the day after that. We were up every day at dawn. On the twenty-ninth, we worked till about noon, then finally stopped to get ready to take both wagons into town. However much we’d picked in these three weeks, we’d run out of time. But we’d done better than I’d expected. Whether it came to anything close to the one hundred fifty dollars Katie needed, neither of us knew.
A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton Page 22
