Together is All We Need

by Michael Phillips

  CELEBRATION

  48

  IT WAS NEAR THE MIDDLE OF SEPTEMBER WHEN WE finished the last field of cotton. Just the faintest hint was in the air of the weather thinking about starting to turn. We were all exhausted but ecstatic. Our hands were dry and cracked. But there’s no feeling quite so good as having the harvest in. The two brothers and Katie were so brown from the sun that from a distance a stranger might have thought we were all coloreds— except for Katie’s light hair, that is!

  We took the last load into town, Katie and I and Papa and Uncle Ward, just like we had the first time. When Mr. Watson came out and handed Papa a check, he and Uncle Ward looked at it in as much astonishment as Katie and I had felt after our first harvest.

  ‘‘That’s over a thousand dollars, Templeton!’’ said Uncle Ward. ‘‘Tarnation . . . I didn’t know there was that kind of money in cotton. This is a dang sight better than gold!’’

  The four of us walked down to the bank together, the two brothers still incredulous at how much money our harvest had raised. I hesitated when we got to the front door. I was always conscious that the color of my skin was different from the others, and that people looked at me different, especially when I was with them. If I’d have been alone, they might have turned up their noses a little but that’s all. But whenever people saw blacks and whites together and being friendly with each other, they didn’t like it. If a white was yelling at a black or treating him rudely, nobody minded. But when someone like Katie or my papa treated a colored person with respect or worse, familiarity, for some reason they hated that. It made them despise the white person and hate the colored person all the more. Katie knew instantly what I was feeling.

  ‘‘Come on, Mayme,’’ she whispered to me. ‘‘You’re part of this family too.’’

  When we all walked into the bank together, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so proud. There we were, the four of us. We didn’t have anything to be ashamed of now. Rosewood was a plantation we could be proud of.

  ‘‘Mr. Taylor,’’ said my papa, shaking hands with the bank manager, ‘‘I want you to meet my brother. This is Ward Daniels.— Ward . . . Mr. Taylor, the manager of the bank.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I . . . uh, saw you a few months ago,’’ said Mr. Taylor, ‘‘during the proceedings with, uh . . . Mr. Clairborne.’’

  The two men shook hands.

  ‘‘Our harvest is in,’’ my father went on, ‘‘and we want to deposit this into Rosewood’s account—all except for a hundred dollars of it. Ward and I have some plans for that.’’

  I glanced at my papa, wondering what he meant. Then I saw Katie whisper something in his ear.

  ‘‘Make that a hundred twenty,’’ said my papa. ‘‘Deposit all but one-twenty.’’

  The banker took Mr. Watson’s check, handed it to one of his assistants, said a few words, then turned back to us.

  ‘‘I have been meaning to talk to you, Mr. Daniels,’’ he said. ‘‘As it presently stands, the Rosewood account is still in Rosalind Clairborne’s name. I need to have you sign new papers in order to effect a change of ownership on the account. Whose names shall I place on the documents, yours and your brother’s?’’

  ‘‘All four of ours, Mr. Taylor,’’ answered my papa. ‘‘Templeton Daniels, Ward Daniels, Kathleen Clairborne, and Mary Ann Daniels—all to be equal owners of the account. You draw up the necessary papers, and we will all sign them.’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir, I shall attend to it. But I am a little confused,’’ he added in a puzzled tone. ‘‘Who is Mary Ann Daniels?’’

  Just then his assistant returned with the hundred twenty dollars. He handed it to Mr. Taylor, Mr. Taylor handed it to my father, who handed one of the twenty-dollar bills to Katie, who then handed it to me.

  I looked back at her in question.

  ‘‘It’s for you, Mayme,’’ she said quietly, ‘‘for your account, just like I gave you last year and the year before. Go on . . .’’ she added, nodding toward Mr. Taylor.

  I turned to the bank manager.

  ‘‘Mr. Taylor,’’ I said, ‘‘I would like to deposit this in my account.’’

  ‘‘Uh, yes, miss . . . of course.—That’s Jukes, is it not?’’

  ‘‘Yes, sir. But if you don’t mind, I would like you to change the name on my account.’’

  ‘‘Of course . . . but what kind of change?’’

  ‘‘Change the name to Mary Ann Daniels.’’

  The banker glanced toward the two Daniels brothers, then back at me. He was more stoic than Mrs. Hammond, so you couldn’t so easily tell what he was thinking. Whatever it was, he kept his thoughts to himself.

  ‘‘And one more thing, Mr. Taylor,’’ said my papa. ‘‘Would you draw up a draft for three hundred dollars and wire it to a Clinton Roscoe in Ellicott City, Maryland, and withdraw the amount from the account.’’

  ‘‘I shall see to it, Mr. Daniels.’’

  When we left the bank a few minutes later, I felt rich. I had sixty dollars of my very own in the bank, more money than I ever thought I would lay eyes on in my life. And instead of owing the bank money, Rosewood’s account would have almost six hundred dollars in it after my papa’s debt was all paid.

  ‘‘What’s the hundred dollars for, Uncle Templeton?’’ asked Katie as we returned to the wagons.

  ‘‘You’ll just have to wait and see, young lady!’’ he replied.

  We all found out soon enough what they had planned to use the money for.

  That same evening at supper, Papa announced that they wanted to take us all into Charlotte again to celebrate the successful harvest.

  ‘‘Just like last year,’’ he said. ‘‘I told Ward about it and he suggested we do it again. We’ll make one of the wagons as comfortable as we can, and we’ll all go together. That includes you too, Josepha. And we’ll see if Henry and Jeremiah can join us.’’ Maybe we can find one of the neighbor boys to come over and tend the animals.’’

  ‘‘Lan’ sakes,’’ said Josepha, hardly able to imagine it. ‘‘I ain’t neber slep’ in no hotel afore. Does dey really let black folks stay in hotels?’’

  ‘‘Not all hotels do, Josepha,’’ said my papa. ‘‘But we know a nice hotel where we went last year where they’ll let anyone stay.’’

  ‘‘But won’t it cost too much,’’ said Katie, ‘‘—that many people?’’ She’d been under the debt of her mama’s loans for so long she could hardly imagine Rosewood having enough money to spend frivolously on ourselves like that.

  ‘‘What is money for if you can’t enjoy life?’’ said my papa. ‘‘We’re a family, so we’ll all enjoy it together. We all picked the cotton together, so we’ll all celebrate together. We’ll make it a yearly Rosewood tradition.’’

  MAKING PLANS

  49

  WE SPENT FOUR DAYS IN CHARLOTTE AND HAD such a good time. I don’t know what people thought when they saw us, whites and blacks together in the hotel and eating in restaurants and laughing and talking. And all of us women got new dresses. I think it is safe to say that we turned a few heads in Charlotte!

  One thing we didn’t do when we were there was go visit Katie’s uncle Burchard, who lived just outside the city. I think Katie was still a little afraid of him, though my papa said there was nothing more he could do.

  A few days after we returned to Rosewood and things settled down and we were trying to get back to normal, Katie said she needed to talk to her two uncles. She wanted me there too.

  We sat down in the parlor one afternoon and Katie closed the door. She didn’t want Emma or Josepha to hear. She was acting so serious that at first I was worried. It wasn’t like her not to share with me what she was thinking, so I didn’t know what to make of it. But as soon as she began to talk, it was obvious she’d been doing a lot of thinking about our future. She had been a little amazed too, about how much money the harvest had brought in, but realized how much more could be done if we applied ourselves all the harder.

  ‘‘We’ve g
ot to start making plans for next year,’’ she began when we were all seated.

  ‘‘Already!’’ exclaimed my papa. ‘‘We just finished this year’s harvest.’’

  ‘‘If you don’t make plans in advance, there’s never a next year’s crop,’’ said Katie. ‘‘The weather’s still good, and now’s the best time to plough and prepare the land for planting.’’

  ‘‘When do we plant?’’ asked Uncle Ward.

  ‘‘Just as next winter begins to turn,’’ answered Katie. ‘‘In late February or March. Different crops have different growing seasons. But you have to have the fields ready to plant before that. And I’ve been thinking that we ought to get more land ready for next year.’’

  ‘‘How much land do we have?’’

  ‘‘Oh, lots more, Uncle Ward. But some of the fields have just gone to grass and weeds. My mama couldn’t keep it up during the war after the slaves left, and I was too young to be much help. There’s lots more land. If we get it cleared, then we can replough it too and use it for more cotton or other crops, like wheat and everything else my mama and daddy used to grow.’’ By now Katie was talking more and more excitedly. ‘‘You have to plant different things, so that if one crop isn’t good in a certain year, you’ll have something else that is.’’

  My papa and Uncle Ward looked at each other almost dumbfounded.

  ‘‘Who will do all that?’’ my papa finally asked.

  ‘‘You’ve got to learn everything, Uncle Templeton . . . Uncle Ward. Henry can show you how to plough. I could too, though I’m not strong enough to hold a plough very well. But I’ve seen it done a lot.’’

  ‘‘Hold on, Kathleen!’’ laughed my papa. ‘‘That sounds like a pretty major operation you’re talking about.’’

  ‘‘No more than what Rosewood used to be.’’

  ‘‘But we don’t have enough people to do all that . . . do we?’’

  ‘‘We can hire more, Uncle Templeton. There are other blacks who used to be slaves who need work that we can hire to work the fields with us. And we need to get the vegetable garden even bigger too, though we girls and Josepha can do that. And then there are repairs that haven’t been made for a long time, fences and the barn and corral. And if we’re going to do all these things, we might need some new equipment. We also need to salt and smoke enough meat for winter. With so many of us now, we’ve got to be putting lots more food away than we did when it was just Mayme and Emma and me.’’

  ‘‘But we don’t know anything about any of that, Kathleen.’’

  ‘‘Mayme and I will show you. And Josepha—if it’s got anything to do with food, she will know what to do. We should probably butcher a cow pretty soon, don’t you think, Mayme?’’

  ‘‘We’ve still got about a month’s worth of dried beef,’’ I said.

  ‘‘That’s not too much.’’

  ‘‘Who does the butchering?’’ asked Uncle Ward.

  ‘‘Last time Henry helped us,’’ said Katie.

  The two brothers looked at each other and kind of shook their heads in bewilderment, wondering the same thing they’d wondered so many times before, if they’d gotten themselves into more than they had counted on. Their young niece was reminding them more and more of her mother!

  ‘‘And that brings up one other thing I need to talk to you about,’’ Katie went on. ‘‘I don’t know how much you know about how the war changed everything here in the South. After the slaves were set free, nobody owned slaves anymore. A lot of them stayed at the plantations where they were, but then the owners of the plantations had to start paying them. That’s how it was with Josepha before she came here. She was getting paid five cents a day. Henry was already a freedman and so he was getting paid at the livery even before that. But what I’m trying to say is that we need to pay Emma and Josepha, and Henry and Jeremiah too, for all the work they did helping us with the cotton. I don’t think Emma or Josepha expect it because they are living here and have plenty to eat, and I don’t know if Henry expects it either. Henry just helps us because he’s a friend and we’ve been alone. I’ve been trying to pay them all a little whenever I could, but now that Rosewood is starting to make money again, it’s only right that we pay them.’’

  ‘‘That makes sense, all right,’’ said my papa. ‘‘There’s no reason the money from the cotton shouldn’t be shared with everyone. How much should we pay them?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Katie. ‘‘After every harvest I’ve been giving Mayme twenty dollars. But I don’t know what we should give the others. What do you think, Mayme?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said. ‘‘It always seems like you are giving me too much. But colored folks don’t have much experience with money. It still seems strange to have any money to call your own at all. I’m still trying to get used to it. All I know is that Josepha told me she was getting five cents a day at the McSimmons place. And if I know Master McSimmons, he wouldn’t pay any more than he had to.’’

  ‘‘Well, then, why don’t we pay her, say, three dollars a month,’’ suggested my papa, ‘‘—that’s fair, isn’t it, along with room and board?’’

  Katie and I looked at each other and nodded. It seemed like a lot of money to me. But maybe it was fair.

  ‘‘What about Emma?’’ said Uncle Ward. ‘‘She doesn’t do much work.’’

  ‘‘I don’t think she needs to be paid,’’ said Katie, ‘‘as long as we’re taking care of her and William. At least not every month . . . though maybe something from the harvest money. We just need to make sure she’s got everything she needs. She’s got no one else but us.’’

  ‘‘What about you?’’ asked my papa. ‘‘Do you get paid?’’

  Katie laughed. ‘‘We’re kin, Uncle Templeton. I know your name’s on Mama’s deed, Uncle Ward,’’ she said, turning to Uncle Ward, ‘‘but it’s kind of like Rosewood belongs to all of us, isn’t it, since we’re all part of the Daniels family? You don’t have to pay family.’’

  ‘‘You said you’ve been paying Mary Ann.’’

  ‘‘Not for her work, just because she’s my friend . . . I wanted to do it for her. I wanted her to have a bank account with her very own name on it.’’

  ‘‘So what you’re saying, Kathleen, is that we need to pay Henry and Jeremiah some of the harvest money, and also Josepha and Emma, and then start giving Josepha a wage too?’’

  Katie nodded.

  ‘‘Well, then . . . if you paid Mayme twenty dollars and she’s family, would it sound fair to pay Henry forty dollars because he picked more cotton than any of us, and then pay Jeremiah and Josepha both twenty dollars each, and Emma ten. What does that sound like?’’

  ‘‘I think that sounds fair, Papa,’’ I said. ‘‘I know they will all appreciate it.’’

  ‘‘Do you have a bank account, Kathleen?’’ asked my papa. ‘‘One with your name on it?’’

  ‘‘No. I just used my mama’s.’’

  ‘‘All right, then, here’s what we’ll do—the Rosewood account will belong to all of us. But we’ll open a new account just for you too. It will have Kathleen Clairborne’s name on it, no one else’s. Then we’ll put sixty dollars in it for you, just like is in Mary Ann’s.’’

  ‘‘Thank you, Uncle Templeton,’’ said Katie.

  ‘‘Good, then it’s settled. Why don’t you talk to them all, Kathleen, and I’ll get the money from the bank next time I’m in town.’’

  ‘‘I think it would mean more coming from you, Uncle Templeton,’’ said Katie. ‘‘I think you ought to give them the money. And I think you should talk to Josepha and tell her that you and Uncle Ward want to start paying her a monthly wage for all her hard work.’’

  ‘‘All right, if you think that’s best, we’ll talk to her. I’ll talk to Henry too.’’

  We were all quiet for a minute.

  ‘‘Now that we’re getting all these financial dealings settled, and all these plans made,’’ said Uncle Ward, ‘‘I got one more
item of business to bring before this here family committee . . . if you all don’t mind.’’

  ‘‘Go on ahead, Ward,’’ said my papa. ‘‘We’re listening, aren’t we, ladies?’’

  We all turned toward Uncle Ward and waited.

  ‘‘Well, it’s like this,’’ he began. ‘‘You know that when I came here I didn’t know what I was getting into. I never took much stock in my name on that deed of Rosalind’s, though I’m sure glad I kept it all those years. Otherwise we’d all be picking Burchard Clairborne’s cotton instead of Kathleen’s. But to tell you the truth, I’m still a mite uncomfortable when I think about that deed. And I been thinking that if anything should happen to me—I ain’t no spring chicken, you know— there’s no telling what that Burchard fellow might try to do. I know you all been mighty kind telling me you wanted me to stay on here and that I was the rightful owner and all. But you gotta admit that having my name just handwritten on the back of it don’t sound too altogether the way it oughta be.’’

  ‘‘What are you driving at, Ward?’’ asked my papa.

  ‘‘I been thinking that maybe we oughta go see that Sneed fellow, and have him draw up a brand-new deed, like he done for Richard’s brother, and make it all legal so nothing could ever happen, and put all our names on it—all four of us. It’s just what Kathleen said a little bit ago. It’s like all four of us kind of own Rosewood together, now that Richard and Rosalind are dead and there’s no one else. If that’s true, I don’t like only my name being on it.’’

  We sat a minute in silence thinking about what he’d said. My brain was spinning at the notion! He couldn’t mean me too!

  Finally my papa spoke up.

  ‘‘I see what you’re saying, Ward,’’ he said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘‘Makes a lot of sense. Not that I want to take anything from you, but what you say makes a lot of sense.’’

  ‘‘I’d feel a darn sight better about it myself,’’ said Uncle Ward. ‘‘You’d be doing me a favor and lifting a big load off my mind.’’