The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (24 page)

But mostly he was watching for the men.

One day Henry saw Mr. Sneed come into town. So he left his work for a few minutes and followed him into the bank and pretended to be busy about something. But mainly he was trying to find out what he and the men might do.

When Henry walked in Mr. Sneed was already standing in front of the bank manager’s desk in the middle of what sounded like a heated discussion.

“… rest of the gold …”

“Please … keep your voice down.”

“I want it.”

“I gave it back.”

“You what!”

“I had no choice. She was making a scene in the bank.

Besides, I had no legal right to keep it.”

As he listened, Henry ambled a little closer.

“I told you it was stolen.”

“She says otherwise.”

“You are a fool, Taylor, if you believe her. So where is it now?”

“I assume back at Rosewood. Where else would it be?”

“Well, that’s fine, then I’ll get it from them. I am still convinced that there is a great deal more … lady is lying …”

“I know nothing about that.”

“That may be, but I intend to find out.”

“—Patterson, what are you doing hanging about!” said Mr. Taylor to Henry as he suddenly noticed him.

“Uh, nuthin’, Mr. Taylor.”

“Well, then, if you have no business with the bank,” said the bank manager, “get out.”

Henry wandered out of the building but kept his eyes on the bank. He saw Mr. Sneed get in a buggy a few minutes later and ride off, but he saw none of the other men.

F
ORGIVENESS

34

F
IGURING OUT WHO
I
WAS—THAT WAS ONLY HALF
of what I had to contend with. Then I had to figure out who Templeton Daniels was. I knew who he was, of course. What I mean is that I had to figure out who he was—or maybe who he was supposed to be, who God intended him to be—in
my
life.

I reckon that’s something everybody’s gotta face sooner or later if they’re going to be a whole and complete person. They’ve got to come to know themselves and who
they
are. Then they’ve got to figure out who their mama and papa are to them.

Some folks grow up without mamas and papas at all. But a lot more folks who have them grow up either hating their mamas and daddies or else feeling other kinds of bad feelings toward them. But we’ve all got to grow up and face the fact that God gave us our mamas and papas, and I don’t reckon He did it by accident. I don’t figure God likely does
anything
by accident. How could He if He’s God? Even if they aren’t perfect and did things to us that we didn’t like, they’re still God’s children just like everyone else. So maybe they need our understanding more than our bitterness and anger.

I suppose that’s the grown-up Mayme talking, remembering back to things I was slowly coming to realize at that time in my life but that I hadn’t quite realized all the way yet. That’s the way life is—you learn things slowly, especially things about yourself. Sometimes it takes a lot of years before some of the best things in life sink in. If you’re trying to get rid of it, self-centeredness seems to gradually fall off you through the years. It’s probably not because it gets easier when you get older, but that it gets easier because you’ve been practicing so long at it. So I’m not saying I realized this all at once. It was coming to me slowly.

I reckon what I’m trying to say is that maybe we all need to forgive our mamas and papas for the things they did that hurt us or confused us. I’d never held anything against my mama because I thought she was about the finest lady in the world. But now I came to realize that I needed to forgive Mr. Daniels for the resentment I’d allowed myself to feel toward him.

If he was my father, then maybe God wanted that word to mean something in my life. And maybe the first thing it meant was forgiveness. I realized that I could never altogether be the person God wanted me to be without it. I realized that lots of times wholeness as a person starts with forgiving others, and usually somebody close to you like a mother or father. At least that’s what I found to be true for me.

I’d let myself be overjoyed to be Katie’s cousin, yet I began to see that I’d kept a few feelings of anger stewing down inside me toward her uncle. I don’t know why. I knew I needed to forgive him. It really wasn’t so hard to do either. People have such a hard time with forgiveness, just like they do with saying they’re sorry. But I never saw that either one was so fearsome or so hard. Once I got myself out of the way and started thinking about how God looked at my father, and how God saw him the same way as He saw me and everyone else—with
love
—then I found that my heart had
already
begun to forgive him.

I think what might make forgiveness so hard for some folks is that they expect other people to be perfect. They especially never want anyone to do or say anything that might hurt
them
. But when it comes to looking inside themselves, they
don’t
expect their own actions and words and attitudes to be perfect. And they make all kinds of excuses for themselves when they aren’t. At least that’s the conclusion I’ve come to from trying to figure myself out. I can be so cantankerously mean-tempered when I’m looking at somebody
else,
and so sweet and forgiving and understanding when looking at myself. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? It seems like we’d want to treat everyone else the same as we do ourselves.

Anyway, that sure helped me see some of the dark spots in my own heart a little more clearly. And when I saw that my father
wasn’t
perfect, and never had been perfect, and even that maybe God had never intended him to be perfect and understood a little better than me all the whys for everything he’d done wrong, it helped me to start seeing him differently. And then I discovered that maybe God I thought back to the day when I’d asked her about it, and remembered the wistful, longing expression that came to her face. looked at
my
imperfection in the same way, and that was a relief! God forgave me too!

And once I was able to forgive Mr. Daniels, then a new love for him began to open in my heart. When that happened, I felt that I’d finally begun to take some big steps toward growing up and becoming an adult. A lot of folks want to think they’re grown-up before they really are. But growing up’s got more to do with attitude than age. I believe I started to truly grow up when I knew I’d forgiven my father.

But no sooner had I done that than I began to feel guilty all over for what I’d done, for the things I’d said, for driving him away when he’d been trying to love me in the only way he knew how.

I got out the cuff link of my mama’s again. I stared at the teardrop, as she always called it. As I remembered back, I realized that it had been when Mr. Daniels had seen me holding it that that peculiar look had come over his face, and that he’d looked at me that way ever since. That’s the moment he’d known who I was, or thought he knew.

Suddenly I knew why. I stared down at the monogrammed TD and now realized that it didn’t mean
teardrop
at all, but
Templeton Daniels
.

He had given it to her during that autumn they had been together.

She’d kept it all those years, even after being married to Mr. Jukes, as a reminder of the dapper white man she had loved so briefly and who had fathered her first child—me.

“What’s that, Mama?” I’d asked.

“Just a reminder of a long ago time, Mayme, chil’,” she said, smiling in that funny way.

“What does that word on it mean?” I said, pointing to the TD.

“That stands for
teardrop
,” she said. “It’s a reminder of the tears of life that sometimes a body can’t help, to help us remember that some memories are best left unremembered.” The words carried more meaning to me now than they had when I’d first heard them. I reckon I was just about woman enough by now to understand.

Mama’d loved him too, just like he’d said he loved her.

How sad it was that they never saw each other again, even though they kept loving each other. It made me cry. And my tears were all the more bitter because now I knew that I loved Templeton Daniels too, but might never see him again. It seemed like the forgiveness in my heart had come too late. What if his leaving this time turned out just like when he left Rosewood all those years ago? Was I going to suffer the same fate as my mama? Was this cuff link in my hand going to be my only reminder of my father?

I asked Katie for a chain, and after that I started wearing the cuff link around my neck. It would be a reminder of my teardrops too, the ones I’d shed for my dead family, and now the ones I shed for the father I had found and lost at the same time.

The day it finally dawned on me that I
loved
him, but that he was
gone,
I was sadder than I think I’d ever been in my life. When my family was killed, I was in shock and disbelief. Now I was consumed with an overpowering sadness that I didn’t think would ever go away.

There was nothing else to do but cry. I had to be alone to cry the kind of tears I could feel about to erupt out of me.

I went to Katie’s place in the woods. I stayed there two hours.

N
O
A
IN'T
N
O
A
NSWER

35

A
FEW DAYS LATER WE WERE OUT PLANTING A
field that Jeremiah had recently finished ploughing with new cotton seed when the men came. We knew instantly that they weren’t in a friendly mood.

Aleta was in the yard taking care of William. The men rode up before she could get back into the house. Immediately they surrounded her with their horses.

“Where’s your pa, little girl!” said one of the men gruffly.

Terrified, she just stood there, unable to say a word.

“I asked you a question, girl!” the man yelled. “Am I going to need to get down and horsewhip it outta—” ‘

“Hold on, Jeb,” said one of the others who had ridden over by the barn. “I see ’em. They’re out yonder in the field.”

Without another word, they spun their horses around and galloped off, leaving Aleta trembling and still standing where she was.

We heard them coming. But they were riding so fast there was nothing we could do but wait. The second I saw them, terror seized me. Even though there were only three of them, the reckless way they were riding reminded me of the marauders that had killed Katie’s and my families. They came galloping straight across the vegetable garden we’d been planting, kicking up the fresh dirt and destroying the seedbeds and young shoots that had started to grow, then tore toward us across the nice furrows Jeremiah’d worked so hard at with his ploughing. It seemed like they were trying to do as much damage as they could. Even their horses looked angry.

“It’s just a bunch of kids and darkies!” said one as they reined in close to us like they were trying to scare us.

“Where’s Clairborne!” yelled the one who seemed to be the leader.

Nobody spoke.

“You all deaf!” he shouted with a menacing tone.

“I’m Kathleen Clairborne,” said Katie, stepping forward.

“Yeah, well, I asked for Clairborne, not some kid. Who are you?”

“I’m his daughter. He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s away. He’s up north.”

“She’s the one Sneed said the banker told him about, Jeb,” said one of the other men, riding his horse over next to Katie and brushing alongside her. Even as he said it, he eyed Katie with a look I didn’t like.

“Say, young lady,” he said, “you look uncommonly like your ma.”

“That’s what people say,” said Katie, staring straight ahead and trying to ignore him, which wasn’t easy to do.

“Except that you’re a lot prettier.—Can’t you look at me when I’m talking to you, girl! I said you was pretty. Don’t you like that?”

Still Katie kept staring forward.

Now the man reached down from his horse and felt Katie’s hair, then started running his hand slowly across her cheek.

Beside me I felt Jeremiah take a step toward him.