A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton (8 page)
I smiled. “I may do that,” I said. “I reckon you’ll see me again.”
She walked me back outside. I walked slowly down the steps from the porch, then away from the house. I glanced back one more time. Josepha was standing there sniffling and wiping her eyes with the back of one hand, her other hand half raised waving at me. I waved back, then turned and kept walking.
All of a sudden from around the side of the house, the master came walking straight toward me. He slowed as he saw me, then stopped.
I froze. My heart started beating with terror. I don’t reckon a black girl’s face can go pale when she gets scared like a white person’s. But I could feel my insides jumping all over themselves and my knees going weak. I didn’t know if I could run faster than him, but I was about to find out if he tried to grab me.
At first I don’t think he recognized me. I reckon if Katie had changed, maybe I had too. There used to be a saying among the slaves that all coloreds looked alike to a white man’s eyes. Not being white, I never knew if that was true. I’m sure nobody’d ever confuse me and Josepha, ’cause she was huge and I was thin as a rail. But I could tell from one look at the master’s face that he was confused seeing me walking away from the house. He knew I didn’t belong there. But at the same time, a little look as his eyes and forehead wrinkled slightly told me that he recognized me, even though he didn’t quite know why.
Then slowly a light came over his face. He said, “You’re old Henry and Lemuela Jukes’s kid, ain’t you?”
I nodded, my feet still nailed to the ground.
“You didn’t get killed?”
“No, sir.”
“Where you been all this time?”
“Over yonder.”
I don’t know what he thought I meant by that. I’m not sure what I meant myself. He didn’t seem to question it, or wonder how I’d kept myself alive for two months.
“Well, don’t matter now, I guess,” he said. “I reckon what you do’s your own business. You ain’t mine no more. Well … talk to Josepha—she’ll put you to work.”
Then he kept going the way he’d been walking and disappeared around the other side of the house.
Josepha looked at me from the porch, like maybe she thought now I’d change my mind. But I just waved again, then kept going the way I had been.
I didn’t look back again. I didn’t want to cry, and I knew that if I saw her big tear-streaked face again, I would.
I
WALKED BACK DOWN PAST THE SLAVE CABINS TO
where I’d tied the horse. I gave one last glance toward the little house, empty now, where I’d lived most of my life. This time I didn’t even want to go back and look inside.
That part of my life was over, especially after what Josepha had told me. That part of this world was gone. If I’d have known what I know now, I might have lingered a moment longer, just thinking how slavery was something that was now gonna fade into the history books. But I was still a girl, and I didn’t want to linger. History was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to go.
Good-bye, little girl,
I said again like I had a week before.
You ain’t a slave no more!
I got to the horse. Now that I was alone, for some reason, even though I wasn’t hungry, I decided to open the cloth Josepha’d given me. I sat down on the grass and put it in my lap and unfolded it.
My eyes shot open wider than Katie’s! There were six pennies and another coin that was a silvery color sitting on top of the piece of bread. I just stared at them a minute, then took them in my hand. I’d never even felt money before in my life, much less had any of my own.
Josepha … the dear old lady! I didn’t know how much this was, but however much it was, she’d had to work more than a whole day for it, ’cause it had to be more than five cents. My first thought was to run back and thank her. But I decided I’d better not, ’cause with as much love as I was feeling for her right then, and knowing I didn’t have to be afraid of the master, she might talk me into staying!
I wrapped the coins back up and put them in the big pocket of my dress, then got on the horse and rode slowly away the way I’d come. I was hardly thinking about where I was going or what I was doing. My mind was so full of new thoughts. It’s impossible to describe to anyone who’s never been a slave what it’s like to suddenly realize you’re free. I would never forget what I felt like that day as long as I lived.
Suddenly everything had changed.
Everything!
I didn’t have to wonder if someone was gonna grab me and make me a slave again. I wasn’t a runaway anymore!
But then … who was I? Who was I now that I was free?
I felt like the same Mary Ann Jukes … but at the same time I didn’t feel the same at all. I felt like yelling for joy and screaming at the top of my lungs,
I’m free! I’m not a slave!
and crying all at once.
So who was Mary Ann Jukes … now? What kind of worth did she have?
Always before that moment, any worth I’d had was just measured by being a slave, by how much work I could do, how many babies I would have, what kind of price I could fetch my master.
Now all of a sudden … did this mean that I might have worth … just as a
person,
not because I could fetch some white man ten dollars, or thirty, or fifty? Who owned me now?
For the first time in my life, I wondered who that person was. Did I own myself?
While I was still thinking about it, I came to a place on the road where there were two signs. I looked up at them kind of absently, and all of a sudden I realized that I could read them. I could read what they said!
One of the signs said,
Greens Crossing—3 miles
. That was the road I’d come on. The other that pointed in the opposite direction said,
Oakwood—2 miles
.
It was getting on in the afternoon by now. I don’t know what got into me, but suddenly I found myself leading the horse in the opposite direction from the way I’d come, toward the town of Oakwood. I’d heard of it but had never been there in my life.
I think my brain was swirling so fast around the idea of being free that inside I just wanted to
do
something to show it was really, really true. There had never been a time in my life when I’d just been free to do
anything
I wanted. Even when I was running away after the men had killed my family, I hadn’t been actually thinking of what I was doing, I was just trying to get as far away as I could. And for the last couple of months, I didn’t do anything without thinking how it affected Katie.
But when I sat there looking at those two signs, I was really free to go either way I wanted. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to go to Oakwood, I just wanted to see what it was like to do something I had decided just for myself.
I came to the town about twenty minutes later.
As I rode through the streets, I started to get afraid again. For a minute I thought about turning around and galloping away. But something inside me wanted to see if I could go into town, as a free person, and see what would happen. I’d never been in a town by myself in my life.
So I kept riding through the main street. A few people looked at me, but I pretended not to notice. I just kept going.
I was doing it! I was alone and free and nobody was trying to stop me!
Up ahead I saw a great big sign painted on a building. I recognized it from being in Greens Crossing with Katie. But again it made me feel good to realize that I could read the two words painted there …
General Store
… and knew what they meant.
I went toward the building, got off the horse, and tied it onto the rail outside, then went up onto the boardwalk and into the store.
I was trembling from head to foot. For a colored girl to just go into a store like that, all alone, that was a pretty bold thing to do. But if I was free now, why shouldn’t I?
I tried to pretend I wasn’t nervous as I looked around at all the pretty things. The man at the counter stared at me and didn’t look none too pleased about having me in his store.
I wandered slowly around, nervous but trying to pretend I wasn’t. The whole time the man was watching me like a hawk, as if he thought I was gonna steal something.
Some pretty lace handkerchiefs caught my eye, a little like the ones I’d seen that were Katie’s and Katie’s mother’s. But now that same feeling I’d had looking at the signs filled me, the feeling that maybe I could do anything I wanted because I was free now.
And besides that, I realized I had money in my pocket!
People bought things with money, I thought. And what if … what if I could actually really buy something pretty like this
for myself
!
I reached out and touched one of the lacey handkerchiefs.
“Hey you!” the man called out to me. “Don’t touch the merchandise if you aren’t going to buy.”
I jerked my hand back. But then I thought about the money again.
“Maybe I
am
going to buy,” I said. My voice came out like a little squeak.
I was trembling inside as I said it. I wasn’t trying to be a white person. I just wanted to know that I could do the same thing a white person could do. I was scared to hear my own timid voice talking back to a white man. But what business did he have to talk that way to me if I was free? I wasn’t his slave. I wasn’t anybody’s slave.
So I got my courage up, then reached out and touched the hanky again.
“How much does this one cost?” I asked.
Gruffly he came over to where I was standing.
“Nine cents,” he said after looking at it and then scowling at me like he was mad I’d asked.
“Please, sir, could you tell me how much I have?”
I opened my hand and held the coins toward him.
“What kind of a question is that?” he said in the same voice. “You have eleven cents—a nickel and six pennies.”
“I want to buy it, then.”
He looked at me as if to say, what could someone like me want with a pretty handkerchief? Then he took it and walked back to his counter. I followed him.
“How much is that pretty red ribbon hanging up there behind you?” I asked.
“Half a cent a foot,” he answered, “or two feet for a penny.”
“Then I would have enough for two feet of that too, right?” I asked.
“Of course you would. You must be a simpleton, which is exactly what you look like! You would have one penny left over.”
“Then please give me that too,” I said.
He sighed, then cut off a piece of ribbon and put it with the handkerchief, wrapped them up in brown paper, and handed the little packet across the counter to me. I handed him all the coins except one of the pennies. I reckoned all storekeepers must be like him and Mrs. Hammond. Maybe people who didn’t know how to smile ran general stores. He didn’t say anything else to me, and he didn’t seem none too pleased about making a sale.
But I didn’t care. I turned and walked out of the store, beaming with pride.
I’d actually bought something … just for myself!
I sat down on the ledge of the boardwalk with my feet in the street next to the horse. There was a bench next to the store, but it didn’t even occur to me to sit down there. Slaves might have been set free by some man named Lincoln, but coloreds were still coloreds, and I knew my place. It was a white man’s world, whatever the man called Mr. Lincoln had done. I’d just gone into a white man’s store ’cause I had money to spend. But I knew he’d more’n likely chase me off if I sat down on his bench.
I opened the packet and unfolded the handkerchief on my lap, then took the last penny Josepha had given me and set it in the middle of it. I folded the lace handkerchief around the penny and tied it together with the red ribbon, and tried to make a little bow out of the ends that were left over. I had to do it several times till the end of the ribbon came out even. Then I held the pretty little package for a long time just looking at it.
A pretty little white lace handkerchief tied with red ribbon.
I reckon it was kind of a silly thing to buy. But it was
mine
. Only mine. I had bought it with my own money all by myself.
I just sat and held my little bundle with the penny in it for a long time, looking at it and thinking more about being free.
I can’t even remember exactly what I was thinking. At first I felt like yelling and jumping and screaming. Now I was quiet inside. I don’t know if I was exactly thankful. I don’t even know if I’d say I was happy. It was more like a place was opening up inside me that had never been there before. I don’t know how to say it other than that.
There ain’t no way to describe the feeling of having that word
slave
lifted from your shoulders, like a great big chain that had been around your neck all your life. And as I sat there staring at it, I knew that this little white handkerchief with the penny inside would always be my reminder of this day. A reminder of something special that had happened to me, a reminder that I was a new person from this day on … a reminder of freedom, and the freedom to do something just for myself.
I would never forget this moment for all the rest of my life. I would always remember this as the day I found out I was free, the day I walked into a white man’s store all by myself and bought a white woman’s pretty lace handkerchief.