A Perilous Proposal (21 page)

R
EMEMBERING

29

K
atie and I met by accident a couple of months before that, right about the time the War Between the States had ended. In those days right after the war, things were a mite different than they became later. But in another way of looking at it, I don't reckon things really are ever all that different. People are still people and they still have to live together and get along. People of different skin still have trouble sharing this old world together. Kinda funny, it's always seemed to me. You'd figure folks would enjoy their differences and wouldn't all want to be the same. But strange to say, that's not how it is. All through history, I suppose, people haven't liked those who were different from them. You might say that's just about been at the root of all the world's problems. I don't understand it myself, but then that's the way it seems to be
.

When it comes to the differences between people of white skin and people of what you'd call colored skin, that's where the differences and disputes and conflicts seem to be worst of all
.

After the war, slaves like Jake and me had been freed from slavery, but we hadn't been freed from the
white man's feelings against black people. In a way I reckon you might say those feelings had even gotten worse since freedom had come to us. Before that, colored folks were more or less just taken for granted in lots of ways. As a race, I don't think whites figured colored folks were worth hating. We were just stupid in their eyes, so why bother hating us?

But after the War Between the States and the Emancipation Proclamation, hatred started to grow between whites and coloreds. And while nothing is as bad as slavery, we weren't really “free,” because hatred and prejudice creates an invisible bondage of its own, just as sure as had the chains of the white masters
.

I know what both kinds of bondage are like, 'cause like Jeremiah I used to be a slave too—I'm only half colored, but in the eyes of whites that makes you what people now call “black,” though my skin isn't anywhere close to that. My skin's brown. That's about the best way to put it
.

Now in one way I don't reckon Katie and me were so unusual. We were just two girls that circumstances happened to throw together. But the fact that we became such good friends—one of us white, the other black—was one of the reasons we always considered our friendship so precious—because we were different, not because we were the same. In fact I think our differences made us closer than we would have been otherwise
.

Katie and me were different in more ways than just the color of our skin and her blond hair and my black hair. We were different people inside, with different personalities and different ways of looking at things. Those differences were what made our friendship stronger
.

Katie and I grew up to be women together during
those years when white people were looking at colored people in different ways. Some white folks were looking at them and realizing that they were people too, just like them in many ways, and learning to care about them and even love them. Other white folks were looking at colored people and beginning to hate them
.

During our years as young girls, Katie and I never knew each other. In fact, we'd never so much as laid eyes on one another, even though the plantations where we grew up were only a few miles apart
.

The war between the North and the South came in 1861, but it didn't change things in my life as it did Katie's. Slaves kept right on working like before. For a colored girl like me, who was only eleven when the war broke out, I hardly even knew what the fighting was all about. None of us knew at first when Northern president Mr. Lincoln freed all the slaves, 'cause most Southern slave owners ignored his proclamation anyway. The South had declared itself a separate country, so why did they need to pay any attention to what Mr. Lincoln said? For us slaves, life just went on day after day as it always had. But as I turned twelve and then thirteen and then fourteen, I began to wonder what would happen to me. It's God's mercy I was skinny as a rail and nothing much to look at, and that kept anything too bad from happening to me—except for an occasional whipping by Master McSimmons or one of his sons
.

But for Katie, it was different. The war changed everything about her life. Until then, her life had been pretty calm and pleasant. She had been able to grow up in the kind of luxury that daughters of plantation owners enjoyed all over the South. Then suddenly the war came and her daddy and brothers left to fight, and Katie's mama had to run the plantation all by herself.
As Katie got older, her mama depended on Katie for help and the hard work was new for her
.

Then came a terrible day just after the war ended when Katie's and my lives would change forever. A band of bad men called Bilsby's marauders rampaged through the region and killed all the rest of Katie's family, and everyone at the slave village on the plantation where I lived except for me. We were both left all alone in the world—at least we thought so at the time—on the same day. I set out from home mainly just to get away from anyone who might want to hurt me. I didn't have any idea where I was going. Eventually I wound up at Katie's house
.

Those were awful days, getting used to being alone, remembering the killing, burying Katie's family. We were a fifteen-year-old black girl and a fourteen-year-old white girl who didn't know each other. But we survived and became friends
.

A little while later another slave from the Mc-Simmons plantation wound up living at Rosewood too. Her name was Emma and she was a tall, scatterbrained colored girl. She was real good-looking—so good-looking, in fact, that she'd got herself pregnant by Mr. McSimmons, who was now looking for her and trying to kill her and her little baby called William
.

So besides keeping ourselves alive after our families were killed, Katie and me were trying to protect Emma and William from anything bad happening to them
.

During our time together, Katie showed me books and helped me learn to read better. And I taught her how to do things like milk cows and chop wood and sing slave songs. She read me stories from books and I told her stories I'd heard and made up. And it didn't take long before Katie was doing all kinds of things for herself. Even though I was older, and Katie was always
telling me that she wouldn't have Rosewood anymore if it weren't for me, if anybody could have been said to be in charge around the place, it was Katie
.

Just before Jeremiah arrived in Greens Crossing, Katie had come up with an idea that would keep people from finding out we were alone at Rosewood. We didn't want people to know we were alone together because of how young we were and what might happen if anyone found out. I called it “Katie's scheme.” What it meant was that we were trying to pretend that everything was normal at Rosewood, and that it was still functioning like a regular plantation ought to. To do that meant pretending that Katie's mama was still alive. Rosewood was far enough away from Greens Crossing that nobody in town knew about the massacre that had killed Katie's family
.

What we figured was that if no one knew we were alone, they wouldn't come and take us away or hurt us, and that none of Katie's relatives—she had three uncles we were worried about—would come and take the plantation for themselves and put Katie in a home for people without parents and do something even more awful with me
.

So that was our scheme—to keep secret that we were alone
.

We had just begun Katie's plan about a week before. In fact, that day when I first met Jeremiah was our first trip to town after Katie'd thought of it. So we were a mite nervous, especially because of a certain nosey shopkeeper named Mrs. Hammond, who also kept the mail and who we were afraid might figure out what we were doing
.

We were nervous about Henry too, because we didn't know what he might do if he found out either. I thought he'd looked at Katie a little suspicious a time
or two. So we were anxious to get out of there after he'd introduced us to Jeremiah. We didn't want Henry asking too many questions. But as we bounded off on the wagon on our way back to Rosewood, I was thinking about the boy I'd just seen for the first time!

But now I reckon I should tell you a little more about what Jeremiah was thinking and feeling at the same time, right after he met me and Katie
.

C
HANGES

30

H
ENRY AND
J
EREMIAH WATCHED THE WAGON AS IT
bounced down the road, the two girls sitting close together on the seat, heads close, talking.

“Sumfin mighty strange goin' on,” Henry muttered.

Jake wasn't sure what he meant, but something strange was going on inside him when he looked at that girl called Mayme. As the wagon disappeared from sight, Jake stared after it. But gradually his thoughts returned to the present.

He had located his father. But it wasn't at all what he had expected.

Now he found himself having to do some serious soulsearching. He had thought one thing was true for so long that it was part of him. Could he really believe what his father had told him? Could everything he had always believed about him
not
have been right at all? After everything his pa told him, Jake was more confused than he'd ever been in his life.

His father's voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Now dat I tol' you sum ob what happened ter me,” Henry said, “I'd be right pleased ter hear 'bout you, Jeremiah, an' what happened . . . an' 'bout yo mama.”

The words brought Jake back to the present and reminded him of the conflict he was feeling inside. He was not quite
ready to tell his father everything. But as they resumed walking along the street, he told Henry a sketchy version of events.