A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton (5 page)
Every once in a while the old Katie would suddenly erupt from out of nowhere.
“I hate all this work and this dirt and sweat!” she burst out once in the middle of the afternoon.
Usually I didn’t say anything and she’d calm down and remember that everything was different now, and then slowly start in working again. Or she’d take a look at Emma and then she’d realize that we had a new mama and her little baby to take care of and that was even bigger and more important than just keeping Rosewood functioning.
It had to be a lot harder for the other two than it was for me. I’d had to work hard all my life. But tragic circumstances had thrown us together, even though we were from two different worlds—maybe even three different worlds—and now we had to learn to survive together. As Katie seemed to recognize the fix we were in, knowing that we had to depend on each other and help each other, she’d seemed to grow up again all of a sudden, like she had when Emma had come and William had been born. She was turning into a grown-up girl who was ready to take charge.
We were tired by the end of the day. But as we worked and talked, more ideas kept coming to us. Pretty soon I found myself thinking that maybe we could make Katie’s plan work after all.
I
WAS STILL PRACTICING MY READING AND WAS GETTING
better. I was reading more in the McGuffey Readers. Sometimes Katie would read to Emma just to settle her down, especially in the evenings, almost like she was reading to a child. I reckon she was doing just that after all. I don’t think Emma had ever had anyone treat her so kindly as Katie treated her, and before long when she was nursing little William at her breast, she’d ask Katie to read to her, which she always did. I’d never seen anyone as devoted to another human being as Emma was to Katie. And Katie was
so
loving and patient to her that it just couldn’t help making me respect Katie in a new way. Whatever Katie might have said about herself when I’d first come, about not being as smart as me, I’d never seen anyone with a heart that was able to love as much as her. I think I’d heard somewhere about tragedy making a body more capable of love. I don’t know if that was true, but it sure was with Katie.
And when Katie and me were alone at night, after Emma was asleep, we still read and told stories to each other after getting ready for bed. I found myself wondering if we could teach Emma to read too. Black folks had to get started learning how to improve themselves sometime, and maybe if Emma learned to read, then William could grow up reading himself, and by the time he had children of his own, they would take things like reading and writing for granted, just the same way white folks did.
One day I remembered my old diary papers that I’d found under my mattress back at the McSimmons place. I thought that now I was ready to look at them again.
I went and got them out of the drawer where I’d put them and sat down on the edge of the bed and started to read them. I hadn’t looked at them once since that day. Now as my eyes fell on the old, smeared, tattered pages, so many feelings swept through me. It was like reading words that somebody else had written. They looked so awkward and crude, like a little child had written them, which I reckon was the truth. I had been a child.
Maybe I hadn’t realized how much I’d changed till that moment. All of a sudden, I saw how different my life was now. I guess that was pretty obvious. I was living like a white person! But sometimes you realize something in a whole new way. And even if it’s a little thing, the realization seems big and changes you inside. I guess it makes you grow up a little more just in realizing it. And this was one of those times for me.
I had grown up in other ways too. I was thinking about things for myself, thinking about things maybe a little like a grown-up would think about them. It had only been a couple of months. But in another way it seemed like years since I’d run away from the McSimmons colored village, where I’d lived the first fifteen years of my life.
I looked down at the gray writing from a dull pencil in my hand and started to read.
Wee pikt kotin today. Roes a kotin iz soo long. I got whipt cuz I fell down. I tol Rufus a storee bout to foxs chasin chikins. Master kame an lukt at me en stuk his han in my mouf. I lukt at him an hated him, but dint say nuthin. Mamas sik an babys cryn all nite. Had to git up in dark agin to pik at da weeds all day. Im soo tird. Sumtimes I wunder whats gonna happn to me an ef masters gonna mak me have a baby to an ef itl hurt, but I git skeered an don think bout it. Why is white men soo meen. Granpapa got whipt for just wakin to sloo. I hated da man dat dun it, but I lukt da other way so I wudnt see granpapas teers cuz I nowd deyd mak me cry to see em an den Id git whipt fer cryn
.
A sad smile crept over my lips and tears filled my eyes and I sniffed a few times. That life seemed so long ago.
Who was the girl that had written these words? Had it really been me? Those years had been so long. I thought they’d never end. One day out in the fields seemed like a year sometimes, every minute going by seemed like an hour.
But then all of a sudden … it was gone.
Now here I was pretending to be helping to run a great big plantation with a white girl I hadn’t even known three months ago and a slave girl who likely wouldn’t even be able to keep alive without Katie and me helping her.
How quick things could change!
I couldn’t keep from crying as I sat there, even though I was still half smiling too as I looked at my words. Finally I took a deep breath and put the pages away.
Good-bye, little girl of my past,
I said quietly.
I don’t think I’ll ever be you again. Whatever my future holds, I gotta look ahead, not behind. Whoever I’m going to be, whoever I’m growing into, it’s somebody I don’t know much about yet. But it’s not that little girl anymore. I’ll try to make you proud of me … and Mama, I’ll try to make you proud too, and to grow up to be a woman that’s worth something mighty fine
.
I closed the drawer.
Good-bye, little slave girl,
I whispered again.
I turned around back into the room, wiped at my eyes, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
That was my past. But now was now. I would keep those pages as a reminder of that life. Not a good life, but a life that had made me who I was, and even a life I could be a little proud of in a different kind of way. I guess it wasn’t only happiness that went into making you who you were. Maybe sadness made better things inside you than being happy all the time. I didn’t know. I felt good about who I was anyhow. But I didn’t know if I’d read the pages again.
Just looking at my old writing made me realize how much I’d already learned just in this short time. I could read a lot better. I wondered if that meant I could write better too.
I would try. I would get some new paper and start writing again about
now,
about what me and Katie were doing, and about who this
new
me was who was changing from the little girl I used to be.
In fact, I thought, I would try it right now!
I got up and went to find Katie and told her what I wanted to do and asked if she had some paper and a pencil I could use.
“I have something better than that,” she said. “I have a journal you can have.”
“I don’t want to take your journal, Miss Katie,” I said.
“It’s an extra one my mama gave me.”
“But don’t you need it?”
“Not yet. I have two others already. I use one for my poems.”
“What’s the other one for?”
“Thoughts and things I want to write down and remember. But there’s not much in it. Here, I want to give you this one,” she said. She took a brown book down from a shelf and handed it to me. It looked just like a regular book, but when I opened it I saw that all the pages were blank.
I held it a minute, thinking how beautiful it was.
“I want you to have it, Mayme,” Katie repeated. “It will make me happy for you to write in it.”
“Thank you, Miss Katie,” I said, smiling and trying to keep from crying. “You’re too nice to me.”
“You’ll need a pen too,” said Katie, turning and looking over the desk. “Here’s one … and a bottle of ink.”
“I’ve never used a pen like that before,” I said.
“I’ll show you,” she said. “It’s a little hard to get used to. Practice on another piece of paper first before you write anything in your journal.”
She made me sit down, then showed me how to hold the pen and how to dip it in the ink. I made a mess at first, spilling a big splotch of black over the paper.
Katie and I laughed. But she kept showing me and I moved it around on the paper, pretending to make some words. And slowly I got the hang of it.
That night I sat down at the desk in the room I was using and opened to the first page of my new journal. I sat there a long time thinking what I should say. Finally I dipped the pen into the jar of ink and started writing.
This is what I wrote.
My name is Mary Ann Jukes. People call me Mayme. Im fiften yeers old an I grew up as a slave on a plantashun. But to munths ago all my fambly was killd by some bad men ridn on horses wif guns. I hid an then ran away an came to anoder plantashun calld roswood. I been here about to munths. I met a white girl calld Katie Klarborn. She let me stay an were friens now. I been tryin to read the Bible cuz wen we went back to where I lived before we foun my mamas an grandmamas Bible an Katies been helpin me lern to read. I also ben tryin to pray an Gods ben answerin some to an that makes me know hes takin care of us. Anoder black girl came here to whos in trouble. We helpt her have her baby an theyr stayin wif us. Katie an mes tryin to preten to run the plantashun so nobodyll know were jus three girls an a baby all alone here
.
I set down the pen and looked at what I’d written. It wasn’t a whole lot better than what I’d written when I was younger. But it was a good start. And right then and there I said to myself that I’d keep writing, and would make this book Katie’d given me the story of my life, whatever came of it.
A
FTER A WEEK OF KEEPING FIRES GOING ALL THE
time in the main house and in one of the slave cabins, Katie said to me, “This is too much work. We’re going to run out of wood and kindling and matches. Why do we have to keep doing this and putting clothes out on the line if nobody’s watching?”
“ ’Cause we don’t know when somebody might be,” I said.
“Why don’t we just get it ready, then, and do it when we need to?”
“Because by the time they come, it’d be too late. We couldn’t do it after they were already here.”
Then suddenly it dawned on me that we had a big problem—what if anyone caught sight of Emma and William in the main house? Then we’d be in a fix for sure! The crazy way Emma carried on, no one would ever believe her for a house slave.
“Miss Katie,” I said, “what are we gonna do about Emma if someone comes?”
“Why can’t she just hide in the house?” said Katie.
“What if William starts fussing or crying? Or what if Emma gets scared and starts yelling and babbling like she sometimes does and we can’t shut her up?”
Katie thought a minute.
“I don’t know, Mayme,” she said finally. “But you’re right—we’ll have to do something with her if anyone comes.”
Our talk put an idea into my head a little while later. We could set a fire all ready to go in one of the slave cabins and maybe in the blacksmith’s shop. Then if anyone came, I’d run down and light it and then come back pretending to be coming from the colored village. If and when Emma got her strength back, she’d be a big help too.
“And we can do the same with a basket of laundry,” said Katie. “And let’s hitch up a horse and buggy outside so it’ll look like my mama’s fixing to go someplace.”
For the next several days we thought of more things like that, making plans and practicing what we would do the next time we had a visitor. We planned and practiced other stuff too, thinking of what we would do when somebody came, how we’d explain ourselves.