A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton (11 page)
O
NE THING ABOUT
K
ATIE, SHE CAN SLEEP.
S
O SHE
slept the rest of the night, which was a mercy. When she woke up next, it was morning. Emma had fed William when he woke up in the middle of the night and then they’d gone back to sleep and Katie had never heard a thing.
She jumped out of bed and went running into her brother’s room.
“Mayme … Mayme, are you back?” she called.
But one look in the bed answered the question clear enough. I was still sound asleep on the grass by the stream about five miles away.
Now Katie’s heart nearly sank for good. All kinds of thoughts were starting to come into her mind of what had happened to me, that I’d been hurt, or that my master had made me stay and go back to work, or even that I’d decided not to come back.
Her brain played all kinds of tricks on her, and she was just about beside herself with worry.
But having the sun shining outside made it a lot easier than if she’d lain awake all night hounded by those kinds of thoughts. So she got dressed and got about the business of the day, like she knew she had to do whether I was there or not. And once Emma and William were up, there was plenty to do and enough noise for five or six people.
Sometime about the middle of the morning, after the cows and pigs were all taken care of and Katie was in the kitchen thinking about making something different for dinner that night, she heard a soft knock on the door.
She nearly jumped out of her skin because she knew Emma was upstairs. Now she realized the dogs had been barking for a minute or two, but she hadn’t paid any attention because she hadn’t heard the sound of a horse.
She’d been waiting so anxiously for me, she wanted to run and open the door and see me standing there. But she knew it couldn’t be me. She knew I wouldn’t just knock softly and not say anything.
She sat for a second, paralyzed on the floor. Her first impulse was to run and hide. But then whoever it was would probably hear her. She didn’t have any choice but to go answer it.
Slowly she walked toward the door, reached out and took hold of the latch, then opened it. There stood a bedraggled little girl who Katie said couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, dirt smeared all over and her dress torn. Katie had never seen her before.
The minute Katie appeared, the girl started crying.
At first Katie just stood and stared, then looked around beyond her to see if there was anybody else. But the girl was alone.
“What’s the matter?” Katie asked, stooping down and looking into her face.
“Something’s happened to my mama,” said the girl.
“What do you mean?” asked Katie.
“I don’t know,” said the girl, sniffling and wiping a dirty hand across her face. “We were riding and the horse stumbled and fell. I got up from where I got thrown on the grass. But I couldn’t get my mama to wake up.”
Katie went back into the kitchen to get a dish towel. She wiped the girl’s face and nose and eyes.
“Where did this happen?” she asked.
“Over there,” said the girl, pointing along the road leading west.
“How far away? I didn’t hear anything.”
“I don’t know,” said the girl.
“You walked here?”
She nodded.
“Did it take you a long time?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Show me,” said Katie, hardly noticing that she’d been called “ma’am” for the first time in her life.
Katie stepped outside, then suddenly remembered Emma back in the house.
“Wait here just a minute,” she said to the girl.
She ran back inside, opened the door to the cellar, hurriedly lit one of the extra lanterns, and took it down the ladder and set it someplace safe, then went back to find Emma.
“Emma,” she said, “I’ve got to leave for a little while.”
“Leave! Where to, Miz Katie?”
“I don’t know. Somebody’s here who needs help. I don’t know how long I’ll be. I want you and William to wait for me in the cellar.”
“But I’ll be skeered, Miz Katie!”
“Don’t worry. I lit a lantern. We’ll take several blankets so you won’t be cold. Now come with me, Emma.”
A few minutes later, Katie walked out of the house again. The little girl was waiting patiently for her. She reached up and took Katie’s hand as she approached, then led her along the road away from Rosewood, the three dogs following excitedly.
“What is your name?” Katie asked.
“Aleta,” said the girl.
“I’m Katie,” she said.
If she had known how far they were going to walk, Katie would have hitched a buggy. But the girl was so vague and obviously upset, she thought the accident with the horse must be somewhere close by. But they kept walking and walking, and pretty soon Katie wondered if she’d made a mistake. But the girl tugged and pulled her along as fast as they both could go, and Katie couldn’t do anything but follow.
They walked for an hour or so. By the time they came to the place where the horse had apparently fallen, they were two or three miles away from Rosewood. They’d long ago passed the turnoff for Mr. Thurston’s plantation, and Katie didn’t recognize anything around them. Then she saw some scuff marks on the dirt and at the edge of the road and a woman’s bonnet. The girl led her off the road and down a little bank.
“She’s over here,” she said. “We were riding on the road, but the horse stumbled down this bank. That’s when we fell.”
“Was the horse galloping?” asked Katie.
“Yes, we were riding real fast.”
“Why were you going so fast?”
“We were trying to get away.”
“Get away … from what?”
“From my daddy. He was drunk and my mama was afraid.”
“Why was he drunk?”
“He got drunk every night,” said the girl, pulling at Katie’s hand. “When he came back from the war, he was mean and angry. He yelled at my mama and hit her sometimes. That’s why we ran away.”
“Where were you going?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere Mama said we’d be safe.”
They were down the embankment now. The minute Katie saw the woman lying beside the stream at the bottom of it, she knew she was dead. Her face was gray, and her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. From what Katie could tell, she must have hit her head on the rock beside her when she fell. There was no sign of the horse.
“Mama … Mama, please … get up,” the little girl cried, running to her.
Katie knelt down beside her and started to cry herself. “Oh, God … not again,” she whispered silently. “What should I do!”
“Please, ma’am,” said the girl, looking up into Katie’s face with the most forlorn look Katie had ever seen, “please do something to help her. Can’t you make my mama wake up!”
The girl bent down to touch her mother’s face. When the coldness of death met her touch, she pulled back with a start, seeming to realize something was terribly wrong. Katie took the girl in her arms and pulled her close. Now Katie was the older girl who had to comfort someone younger. They were both crying. As the girl wept in Katie’s arms, the instinct that comes to people at such times told the little girl that she would never see her mother again.
For several minutes they remained just weeping. Then slowly Katie stood, took the girl by the hand, and led her back up the hill to the road.
When they were out of sight of her mother’s body, Katie stopped. She stooped down to one knee, took both the girl’s hands in hers and looked into her eyes while she fought back her own tears.
“Aleta,” said Katie softly, “your mother can’t wake up.”
“Why?”
“Aleta … your mother is dead. We will have to let God take care of her now.”
Huge new tears welled up in the girl’s eyes.
Katie took her in her arms again and held her, both of them starting to cry all over again.
“Don’t worry, Aleta,” said Katie. “We’ll take care of you until we think what is the best thing to do. We’ll go back to my house and get you washed, and I’ll give you something to eat, and we will decide what to do.”
“But what about my mama?” wailed the despairing girl.
“We’ll bring a wagon back. I’ll take care of her, Aleta.”
A
S
I
WAS STILL STANDING IN THE PARLOR HOLDING
the three gold coins in my hand that Emma had found in the basement, I suddenly realized I heard dogs barking outside. I stuffed the coins into the pocket of my dress and ran outside as Emma climbed out of the cellar with William. There was Katie in the distance walking toward the house. I was so happy to see her I didn’t even notice at first that she wasn’t alone. By then I had all but forgotten the coins.
I ran toward them, then all of a sudden saw the girl at Katie’s side, holding her hand. I was still overjoyed to see Katie, but I slowed down as I ran.
“Who’s that?” said Aleta as she saw me coming.
“That’s Mayme,” answered Katie. “She’s a girl who lives with me at my house.”
“But she’s colored,” said Aleta.
“Mayme’s my friend. I don’t even think about what color she is.”
Katie let go of Aleta’s hand and ran toward me. I started running again and we ran right up to each other, then slowed down, hugging and laughing as we met. I’m not sure we didn’t shed a few tears mixed in with it too. It seemed like we were always crying, either happy cries or sad ones.
“I was so worried about you!” I said as I stepped back. “I got home and couldn’t find you anywhere! I discovered Emma in the cellar just a minute ago.”
“What about me!” laughed Katie. “I thought you’d be back yesterday, and you never came and never came, and then all night … I was so worried that you might not come back at all.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Katie.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you all about it. So much exciting happened, you won’t believe it!”
Before we could say anything more, Katie’s new little friend slowly approached and stood at Katie’s side, looking over at me like I had the plague or something. It reminded me of the looks I’d gotten from the white ladies in town the day before. On top of her grief over losing her mother, the poor girl had never in her life seen anything like what she’d just witnessed—a white person and a black person hugging each other and laughing and talking like friends. Yet the expression on her face was not just one of bewilderment, but of something I’ve seen many times throughout my life and could never quite understand. It was a look of anger. I reckon if somebody doesn’t want to like black people, or if a black person doesn’t want to like white people, maybe that’s their own affair. But I could never see why they’d get so
angry
if other folks saw it different. If I wanted Katie to be my friend, why should that make any other colored person mad? And if Katie wanted me for a friend, why should that make Aleta mad?
From the look on the girl’s face, I’d never have suspected that she’d just lost her mama.
“Mayme,” said Katie, “this is my new friend, Aleta.”
“Hello, Miss Aleta,” I said with a smile, holding out my hand toward her.
She pulled back with a look of disgust on her face, eyeing my hand as if it was a snake trying to bite her.
“Don’t you touch me!” she snapped.
Katie looked at me apologetically, then added softly, “There’s been an accident. Aleta’s mother …”
Then she stopped.
“Aleta,” she said, turning and looking back at the girl. “Why don’t you run on ahead to the house,” she said, not thinking at first that
another
surprise was waiting for her there just as bad as the one she’d just had! “I need to talk to Mayme for a minute,” she added. “I’ll be right there.”
Aleta dashed off, followed by the dogs. I think she was glad to get away from me.
“I’m sorry, Mayme,” said Katie. “I had no idea she would do that.”
“It’s all right, Miss Katie. What happened?”
Katie filled me in as we walked back to the house.
“You’re sure she’s dead?” I said. “You want me to go out and look?”
“Her skin was cold, Mayme,” said Katie with a little shudder and a look like she was going to be sick. “She was cold and pale, with her eyes half open—ugh! When you see a face like that, you know a person’s dead.”
I nodded.
It was a little awkward figuring out what to do about Aleta’s mother. I’d have been glad to go bury her myself, but I didn’t know where she was. And Katie didn’t think that’d be such a good idea with how the girl felt about me, especially since she’d told her she would take care of it. But she couldn’t very well take the girl with her. But neither could she leave her with me.
“I’ll go down to the colored cabins, Miss Katie, if you want to do the burying by yourself,” I said. “I’ll just wait there till you get back.”
“Oh, Mayme, I don’t want you to have to—”
“It’s all right, Miss Katie,” I said. “I don’t mind. I’ll take my reader and the journal you gave me and the pen and ink. I gotta try to write down about everything that happened yesterday.”
Katie nodded.
“I’ll give her something to eat,” she said, “and see if I can get her to take a nap. I’ll tell her to wait in the house until I get back.”