The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (11 page)

“You can do it, Jeremiah,” I said. “I know you will. But I’m not ambitious like that. Besides, I’m just a girl. Girls can’t do things like that.”

“Why not? Maybe dey can … someday.”

“Not colored girls.”

“Why not? You’s free, ain’t you?”

“I reckon.”

“Ain’t nobody can tell you what you can an’ can’t do. So don’t dat mean you can do whatever you want?”

“Maybe you’re right. I just never thought about things like that before. Although Katie gave me twenty dollars an’ that almost makes me feel like I could do anything.”

“Twenty dollars!” exclaimed Jeremiah. “Ob yer very own … real money!”

“Yep. It’s in the bank in town with my own name on it.”

“Why, yer rich, Mayme!”

I laughed. I guess it shows how used to Katie’s kindness I’d already become.

We walked on and finally turned around. It was pretty well dark by now. It was such a nice contented feeling walking along, with the moon shining down on us, hand in hand, knowing we were really
free
people. Was this how it had always been for white girls when they got to this age, meeting a boy and feeling things inside and then having him take your hand and treat you like you were special?

I found myself thinking about my mama and wondering how it had been when she’d first met my papa and wondering if she’d fallen in love slowly like I thought I might be doing right now, or if she and he’d been brought together by Master McSimmons without any choice in the matter. I hoped my mama and daddy had been in love. I hoped I was a child of love. But since they were both dead, I reckoned I’d never know.

But then Jeremiah’s voice interrupted my thoughts, and his words were the last ones I’d expected to hear.

“You ever think … about gittin’ married?” he asked after it had been quiet three or four minutes.

I felt the heat immediately rising in my neck. I was glad it was dark.

“I reckon,” I said softly. “Doesn’t everybody?” I suppose I had been thinking about it just then, since I’d been thinking about my mama and daddy.

“But hit’s different now, you know,” Jeremiah went on. “Wiff no masters tellin’ us what we gotta do. Now we can make up our own minds who to marry an’ what we wants ter do.”

We were coming out of the woods now and into the clearing of fields and open space. The moon made everything glow a pale silver. I don’t know what I’d have said, but I didn’t have the chance.

Suddenly we heard voices yelling.

“There he is!” shouted a voice. You could tell it was white.

“Look—he’s got a nigger girl with him!” yelled another one. “Let’s get them!”

I felt Jeremiah’s arm tense as he turned toward the shouts. It filled me with terror to know he was afraid.

“Who is it!” I said.

“Jes’ some no goods dat follered me from town. I thought I’d got dem off my trail.—You run, Mayme. You git back to da house an’ you an’ Miz Kathleen, you lock dem doors!”

“But, Jeremiah, what about—” ‘

‘You go, Mayme.—Go now!”

Too afraid not to do what he said, I turned and ran for the house.

“There she goes—after her!” shouted one of the white boys.

I looked back. I saw them now, coming at us from the middle of the pasture next to the road. One of them tore off from the others toward me. I kept running as fast as I could, but he was a lot faster and in just a few seconds had nearly caught me. I screamed.

Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark figure rush at him and knock him over, and they both thudded to the ground with grunts and sounds of fighting.

“Why, you cussed nigger!” the white boy yelled in a fury. “I’ll kill you for that if I—”

But Jeremiah silenced him with a whack of his fist. I tried to keep running but couldn’t help looking back. The others quickly caught up and knocked Jeremiah off their friend and started pounding and beating him something fierce.

I felt my eyes getting hot and wet, but I knew I could do nothing to help him. I had to keep going. A few seconds later I ran into the kitchen.

“They’ve got Jeremiah!” I cried. “Oh, Katie, there’s some white boys out there and they’re beating him up and I’m afraid they’re going to kill him!”

Katie was getting more and more gumption all the time, that was for sure. Sometimes she amazed me. This time she didn’t even think twice about it. I had hardly got the words out when she ran into the parlor and came back holding one of her papa’s shotguns. Now it was my frightened eyes that got wide.

“Katie, he told me to lock the doors,” I said. But she was walking straight to the door.

“We’re not going to let them kill him,” she said.

“But what if they—” ‘

‘As long as I’m holding this, they’re not going to hurt me,” she said. “Mayme, go get me one of my daddy’s hats out of the pantry while I’m loading this. Maybe they’ll think I’m a man, or if nothing else my mama. I’m not going to let what happened to you happen to Jeremiah.”

Five seconds later she walked outside with as determined a look in her eyes as I’d ever seen, with one of her papa’s big wide-brimmed hats flopping down over her face so you couldn’t quite tell how old she was. She was wearing a long work dress, so I don’t think anyone was going to mistake her for her daddy. But a woman could pull a trigger just as well as a man. I guess she’d fought hard enough by now to save Rosewood that she was starting to think like she was its master and mistress all in one. And I reckon she was!

She walked out and along the road. It wasn’t hard to tell where they were. She could hear the sounds of scuffling and swearing and fighting. She walked about halfway toward the commotion, then let the first barrel go. The sudden explosion brought the fight to an abrupt halt. There were only three of them. They stopped and looked up from where they were kicking and pounding on Jeremiah where he lay on the ground. Katie kept marching straight toward them.

“All right, you’ve had your fun!” she yelled in her Mrs. Clairborne voice. “Now get out of here before I use this again. If I have to go get my husband to see to you thugs, he won’t be none too happy.”

“He’s just a nigger, lady,” said one of them, slowly climbing off Jeremiah’s chest. “We was just having some fun.”

“Well, have your fun someplace else. Now get out of here!”

Muttering and swearing, the three started wandering away.

“You can move faster than that!” yelled Katie.

They started running slowly in the direction of town.

When they were about fifty yards away, I heard another shot. This time I think she was aiming at them because they started yelling like they were mad and scared all at once and tore off and were soon out of sight.

I ran out to join Katie and we hurried to Jeremiah.

He was lying on the ground moaning and groaning. He sounded bad.

“Jeremiah … Jeremiah,” I said, kneeling down to him.

“How bad is it?”

“I’s be all right,” he moaned. “I think one ob my ribs is broken, but dat ain’t too bad.”

“Can you stand up?”

“I don’t know … I reckon.”

We helped him to his feet. Then holding on to both of us, with his arms around our shoulders and with Katie still lugging the shotgun, we got him to the house. Once we were inside, with the light from the lantern, I had to turn away. Jeremiah’s face was bloody and swollen and I could tell he was hurting real bad. But Katie wasn’t queasy and was already tending to him with a wet cloth. Of course Emma immediately went into a babbling fit. We washed him up as best we could and then got him to the couch in the parlor.

“You’re spending the night here, Jeremiah,” said Katie. “You could never get back to town tonight. And I’m worried about those white boys. I’ll ride into town and get your daddy in the morning as soon as it’s light.”

He didn’t argue. We tried to get him to eat and drink something, but he was hurting too bad to eat and fell asleep soon after that.

We did lock the doors, like he’d told us to, and Katie kept the gun loaded all night. But there was no more trouble.

T
HE
W
INTER
P
ASSES

14

J
EREMIAH WAS IN BAD SHAPE THE NEXT MORNING
. He tried to be brave like men always do, but you could tell he was in a lot of pain. One eye was swollen shut and there were great bloody welts all over his face. And he could hardly move or turn over from the broken ribs.

Katie was back with Henry by midmorning. There wasn’t much Henry could do for Jeremiah either. After he hadn’t come home the night before, Henry was relieved that he was all right but pained to see him in such a state. We decided Jeremiah should stay at Rosewood another day or two, at least until some of the soreness had subsided enough that he could walk and get on a horse.

Katie wanted to take him to Doc Carter.

“I don’t care what it costs,” she said. “I’ll take the money out of the bank.”

But Henry wouldn’t hear of it.

“I don’ want ter arouse no talk,” he said. “Doc’s a good man, but he’s da white folks’ doc an’ I don’ want no talk ’bout dis. Dere’s too much goin’ on dese days, too many beatin’s an’ hangin’s. I don’ want ter rile nobody. Da bes’ we can do is ter let dis drop an’ jes’ keep quiet ’bout it.”

Katie finally saw that he was right, and gradually Jeremiah got back to normal without the doc’s help.

The new year of 1866 came, and Katie was more anxious than ever to get to planting. But Henry kept saying it wasn’t time yet and that we had to be patient.

By late February the weather was slowly starting to turn warmer and Henry came out and ploughed one field. He told us what to ask for when we went to Mr. Watson’s to buy seed, which we did, coming home with several big bags on the back of the wagon.

We got one field planted, and Henry and Jeremiah got to work on ploughing another. Now all we could do was wait till the cotton grew up and then we’d pick it again. Unfortunately, events weren’t so patient and didn’t wait for the cotton.

When we were alone, Katie and I still sometimes talked about what we were going to do with Aleta.

Once Katie said to her, “Aleta, we’ve got to find your father. Don’t you want to go back and live with him?”

“No.”

“But why?”

“I’m afraid of him. He’s the reason my mother got killed.”

Katie and I looked at each other but didn’t correct her. Perhaps, indirectly, Aleta’s father
was
responsible, but it still seemed like someday we had to find out who he was. And so we kept going and didn’t know what to do except keep her with us for a while longer. We had the feeling Henry knew more than he’d let on about Aleta and her father, and I couldn’t help remembering what Reverend Hall had said to Katie. But we weren’t sure what was the right thing to do.

In the middle of April, Katie’s world suddenly crashed when another letter arrived from the bank.

To Rosalind Clairborne,
it said,

As you know, your second loan is due and payable
next month. While foreclosure proceedings were halted last
September with your payment of the first loan, I am afraid
the bank will not be able to grant an extension on this
present balance. There is pressure from New York to make
sure all accounts are kept current. As a reminder, as I am
certain your records will confirm, the balance due is $350.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours very truly,

M. Taylor, Greens Crossing Bank

Katie put down the letter with a look of disbelief on her face.

“I think we’d better take the cotton in the barn to sell,” she said. “We can’t wait any longer, whatever the price is.”

The next day we hitched up two teams of two horses to the two wagons that had been sitting in the barn all winter. By now Emma and Aleta were enough used to things that Katie’s and my leaving for a few hours wasn’t so fearsome for them, though we still took our usual precautions in case anyone came.

Mr. Watson seemed a little surprised to see us as we pulled up in front of his mill, though I thought either Katie or Henry had told him we had more cotton to sell. He looked it over as if he didn’t like the looks of it too much, then had his men unload it and take it inside to weigh it while we waited. Katie was really nervous. She had her heart set on this cotton getting her the money she needed. I guess I was nervous too, but not like Katie. Actually, since I knew he made deliveries for Mr. Watson, I was thinking more about Jeremiah than the price of cotton and was looking around to see if he was there.

“Well, Kathleen,” said Mr. Watson when he walked out of the mill, “I don’t have real good news for your mama.

Some of the load must have gotten wet because there was some mildew around the edges. And the price is down right now. I’m afraid all I can give her is eleven cents a pound.”

Katie nodded as she listened. “And, uh … how much does it come to, Mr. Watson?” she asked.

“It came out to six hundred sixty-five pounds, which came to seventy-three dollars. I wish it was more, but I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.”

I saw Katie’s face go pale at the words “seventy-three dollars.” I knew she had been hoping for three times that much.