The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (17 page)

“Good-bye, Mayme,” he said.

“Good … good-bye,” I said, though my voice was barely a whisper.

This time he didn’t look into my eyes. Instead he glanced away, then eased his horse around and toward the road.

I watched him go, my heart exploding in agony inside me, but unable to utter a sound.

Clomp … clomp … clomp …
went the hooves of his horse as he slowly disappeared up the road toward the Thurston ranch in the opposite direction from Greens Crossing.

When he was almost to the bend into the woods I heard the kitchen door close. I looked toward the house. Katie had gone inside. I turned back and peered down the road.

Katie’s uncle had disappeared from sight.

I stood and stared after him another minute or two more and then went back into the barn. I found a dark corner where I could lie down on some straw. I burst into tears and wept more bitterly than I had even after my family was killed, and finally cried myself to sleep.

L
OOKING
I
NSIDE

24

T
HINGS WERE DIFFERENT AFTER THAT
.

Emma was mad at me and hardly spoke a word for days. And she had every right to be mad. I’d said terrible things about her and William, but right then the words
I’m
sorry
were too hard for me to say. They ought to be such easy words for people to say to each other, but for some reason they’re not. People seem to choke on the two words that would make the world such a kindlier and happier place. And with Emma hardly talking and keeping to herself, Rosewood was quieter than I ever remembered it since the first day I’d come.

Whether Katie was mad at me or not, I couldn’t tell. But things were different, that was for sure. She was polite, but we didn’t talk anymore. It grew silent and distant between us. My heart ached because of it. Every once in a while I heard Katie and Emma talking in another room and they were talking like Katie and I used to. I found myself thinking that Emma was now going to become Katie’s best friend. I wasn’t jealous. I was just sad for what I’d lost. Everything about Rosewood had changed, and somehow I knew it was my fault.

The days passed like a sad dream. Now it was my turn to go on long, thoughtful walks by myself. I visited Katie’s secret place in the woods a few times, sometimes just to be alone and cry, other times to think and try to figure out who I was. Just when I’d begun to think I had it figured out and when I’d gotten used to the idea of being free and being all alone in the world, I had a lot that was new to get used to.

It felt like love and anger and confusion were all at war inside me. Maybe it was my white side and my black side fighting against each other. If blacks and whites fought between themselves, then imagine what it was like for that fight to be going on inside one person!

As hard as my life had been, as hard as being a slave was, I’d been at peace with it in a way, even proud in a way for the heritage that the color of my skin gave me, proud of my people, proud of their culture even if they had been slaves. I don’t exactly know what words to put to the feeling. I reckon it’s something only a black person could understand. It’s a hard thing being colored. But there was never a moment in my life when I’d have traded it for anything else. I never wanted to be white. It’s hard, but still there’s a pride a black person feels in who they are.

Suddenly that feeling was turned upside down. Half of me carried the blood of the white masters, the blood of those who had whipped me and hung black men to die and raped their women.

Things gradually came back into my memory too— unpleasant things I’d forced myself to forget. I was just a child, but I remembered the talk, the looks, the stares, being made fun of by other kids because of my lighter skin… .
Look at her, she’s half white
. I recalled things that had happened through my childhood and talk around the slave village, and things I’d heard Josepha say. The talk had hurt at the time, but I’d blocked it out of my mind so thoroughly that only now it began to come back to me. It was no different than the way I’d been toward William at first.

I remembered too that other slaves always treated Mama different and seemed to resent that she could do more than them, that she was more polished, more refined, that she could read. Everything Mr. Daniels had told me fit with what I remembered. I knew he was telling the truth. It made it all make sense. Yet it made me hate him for what he’d put me and my mama through.

I couldn’t resolve it. It was almost like now I had someone to blame for my hard life, for my being a slave, and for the massacre that had killed my family, for the wrong he had done to my mother both by getting her pregnant and abandoning her. It felt good to hate him. Yet it didn’t really feel good because it was eating me up inside. How could I hate him without hating myself at the same time?

One day I was standing in front of a mirror. I began noticing things about my face and nose and hair and cheeks and eyes that I hadn’t paid much attention to before. I
wasn’t
as dark as Emma. My skin was a lighter brown, and when I smiled, there was just a hint of Templeton Daniels’ smile staring back at me. There was no denying it.

It’s hard to put into words what it’s like for a black person to find out they’re half white. There’s just about no shock like it. I suppose it might be the same for anybody learning something about themselves they never knew before, except that black blood isn’t so easy to hide as white. Everyone knows if you’ve got black blood in you. But I’d never known that I had white blood in me.

Suddenly I didn’t know who I was anymore. Was I white or was I black … or half and half? If so, what did that mean? To realize that I was just like William made me realize that there’d been more ill feelings of prejudice in my heart than I realized.

Maybe none of us knows ourselves as well as we think we do. I guess I’d grown pretty satisfied with who I was, and I reckon that’s a mighty dangerous thing to be. Once you’re satisfied with who you are, that’s when you stop growing inside. Now that I looked down inside I saw some ugly things. I reckon it’s our own hearts whose foul colors we’re most blind to. I sure wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see my heart right then!

The fact that God saw it, and knew what was in it well enough, was none too comforting a thought!

One day I came upon Emma alone in the kitchen fixing William some warm milk.

“Do you mind if I hold him?” I asked.

Emma shot a few daggers at me with her eyes, then said, “No, I reckon not.”

I stooped down and picked William off the floor where he was crawling about. “You want to come outside with me for a minute, William?” I said. He just babbled some unintelligible sounds at me and tried to grab my nose with his fat little fingers.

I left the kitchen and walked outside holding him close to me. He was such a pleasant, happy baby. His black hair was as kinky as Emma’s, but his skin was obviously lighter, there was no doubt about that. Yes, he was half white and his father was a scoundrel besides. But William was still William and we all loved him, Emma most of all. He was still a little child of God, whoever else’s child he might be too.

Then Henry’s words came back to me, and they stung me right to my heart for the bad things I’d thought and said.

No, William,
I whispered into his ear as I held his little head close to mine,
the color of your skin, or your daddy’s,
ain’t the color of your heart, is it? And I reckon if that’s true
for you, it oughta be true for me too. You and me may be half
white, but we’re both God’s children, ain’t we? So maybe we
gotta learn to be who God wants us to be, even if we’re a little
different from everybody else
.

I guess you’d say from that moment on, the dark cloud began to lift off my soul. Sometimes it takes realizing something with your brain to snap your heart back where it oughta be. My heart hadn’t been where it should have been for a while, but I hoped now maybe it could start getting some of its right color back.

I went back inside. Emma was still in the kitchen. I set William down on the floor and walked over to her. It was hard to get her to face me because she was still looking away with an angry look on her face.

“Emma …” I said, “Emma … please look at me.”

Slowly she turned.

“Emma, I am so sorry,” I said. “I was wrong to say what I said. I love you. Can you ever forgive me?”

Emma’s eyes filled with tears and the scowl melted from her face. She threw her arms around me, crying like a baby.

“Oh, dat I can, Mayme … dat I can. You been so good ter me, I couldn’t stay mad at you. I jes’ thought you din’t like me or William no mo.”

“That wasn’t it, Emma,” I said. “I was just mixed up about myself, that’s all. I’m so sorry I took it out on you.”

“Dat all right, Mayme. It be all ober now, an’ I ain’t gwine think no mo ’bout it.”

“Thank you, Emma,” I said, stepping back and smiling. “I reckon there’s somebody else I need to say I’m sorry to, too.”

“If you be meanin’ Miz Katie,” said Emma, “her heart’s full er forgiveness, I kin say dat, ’cuz I know. She been hurtin’ fer you, but she ain’t been mad like me.”

“I know, Emma. But I’ve still got to say it.”

I left the kitchen and found Katie upstairs. She looked up as I walked in. She knew immediately there had been a change. She stood up and walked straight to me and we fell into each other’s arms.

We stood there for the longest time, holding each other and crying.

“I’m sorry, Katie,” I said finally. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“It’s over now, Mayme,” she whispered. “That’s all that matters.”

Somehow all that had happened and all the turmoil and grief that had gotten mixed up between us that had turned Rosewood into such a quiet, somber place for a few days had kept us from seeing the thing that would change our lives. Probably most of you saw it a long time ago, but I was so mixed up I didn’t see it, and Katie was so sad she didn’t see it either.

But once we’d hugged each other and I’d said I was sorry, the sun came back out. Suddenly the light dawned on us of what it meant that Templeton Daniels was my father. Actually, it dawned on Katie first.

It was only about an hour after I’d gone up to her room when suddenly I heard Katie shrieking and yelling.

I thought something was horribly wrong or that she’d been hurt. I dashed back toward the house from the barn where I’d just gone to begin the evening milking.

Katie came running out of the house, her face aglow and her eyes wide, running toward me and waving her arms.

“Mayme … Mayme!” she cried, laughing like she could hardly contain herself, then hugging me and dancing around. I’d never seen her with such a huge smile on her face.

“What is it?” I asked, realizing there was no danger and unable to keep from laughing too, though I didn’t know what we were laughing about.

“Don’t you see!” exclaimed Katie. “Mayme … we’re cousins!”

The word hit me harder than the word
father
had earlier.

“We’ve got the same grandmother. Your papa is my uncle. My mama is your aunt. Mayme … we’re kin … we’re actually cousins! We are family. Our families
aren’t
all dead. We have each other. You have a papa and I have an uncle. We have a family!”

If being half white meant I got to be Katie’s cousin, then all of a sudden it seemed about the greatest thing in the world that could have happened to me!

E
MMA
AND
A
LETA

25

F
ROM THAT DAY ON THINGS BEGAN TO BRIGHTEN
and gradually we started to get back to normal. But what was normal now, with me knowing I was Templeton Daniels’ daughter and Katie’s cousin!

And the question that loomed in the midst of it all was whether I would ever see him again.

Neither Katie nor me realized how much Mr. Daniels’ disclosure worked on Emma and Aleta too. I suppose the two of us tended to think about what we were thinking and what to do about ourselves, and just figured it would be best for all of us. But that’s not always so. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook other people’s thoughts and feelings. We didn’t realize how much Aleta and Emma were thinking about things too. Even Emma wasn’t altogether the lamebrain folks took her for, or that I had taken her for at first either. She’d been paying attention. She knew she was free now just as well as I did. And down inside she was thinking about what it meant, and what the future might hold for her.