A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton (12 page)
“I’ll go hitch up a buggy for you,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go along and help? I could go up the road now so she wouldn’t see me.”
Katie thought a minute.
“I think this is something I should do by myself,” she said. “You helped me when I didn’t know what to do. You buried my whole family, Mayme. Now it’s my turn to try to help her. But if you would hitch the small buggy, I would appreciate it. And, Mayme, could you please put two shovels in back, the small one I usually use and a regular one.”
I nodded and walked toward the barn while Katie continued on to the house. But by then Aleta had walked through the kitchen door, then turned and ran back outside toward Katie with a scowl on her face.
“There’s another nigger girl in your house!” she announced as though Katie would be as shocked as she was.
Katie stooped down, gently put her hands on Aleta’s shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
“Aleta,” she said, “that’s Emma. And we don’t call her that word. She’s a nice colored girl whose skin just happens to be brown like yours is white. She came here needing my help just like you did.”
“But she’s in the house.”
“Yes, she is, Aleta,” Katie replied calmly.
“Is she your slave?”
“No, she’s my friend and I let friends who need help stay here … like Emma, like Mayme, and now like you.”
Aleta didn’t change her mind about Emma and me because of what Katie said. But Katie’s kindness, along with the realization that seemed to deepen within her as the afternoon progressed that her mama was really gone, enabled her at least to tolerate our presence for the rest of the day.
She avoided us, and looked at us with disgust in her eyes, but she made no more outbursts.
T
HAT NIGHT, AFTER ALETA HAD HAD A BATH AND
was asleep in Katie’s bed, and Emma and William were settled in the other room, I helped Katie bathe and get cleaned up from the burying. While she was finishing up and getting ready for bed, I sat down at the writing desk and continued on with what I’d started to write earlier in the journal she had given me.
I’d never before tried to write down much of what I was thinking or feeling. I never had been able to write well enough to do that. And I still couldn’t. But I wanted to try. All I’d ever done is just say what I did. Now that I was feeling so many new things—growing up inside, I’d reckon you’d say—I wanted to find a way to express it. But that’s not easy. It’s hard to try to put something as big as what had happened to me into just a few words.
I tried. But when I read it over, it hardly felt as big as I was feeling it inside. So much was happening all of a sudden, but when I quieted my thoughts down all I could think of was my talk with Josepha and what I’d done afterward.
Yesterday I went bak to my ol hows agin, wifout Katie this time. I saw Josepha an the master. They wernt killd by the riders that shot the others. Josepha tol me that all slaves had been freed. I dint no what to think. It was hard to beleeve. Josepha gits pade now fer workin. She said I cud git pade to ef I wantid to stay an work wif her. But I said no. I was thinkin bout so meny things wen I lef there. She gav me leven cints. I felt lik a rich person. I rod to a town calld Oakwod en went into a store. I bot a hankechif an ribon wif ten cints an savd the las peny. I lookt at a hotel where they had a job for a colord girl like me. I wud a got ten cints a day. But then I thot bout Katie an new my home was wif her now. Wen I got back another little girl was wif Katie whos mother got throwd from her hors en killd. Shes—
Just then Katie came into her brother’s room, which she called my room now, and sat down on the bed. I turned around and smiled. I set the pen down, and after the ink was dry, closed the journal and got on the bed with her. She was exhausted from the day and had blisters on six of her fingers from two hours of shoveling.
“What are we going to do with her, Mayme?” she said.
“Have you found out where she lives or anything?” I asked.
Katie shook her head with a weary sigh.
“We oughta find out her last name,” I said. “Then I reckon we could ask. Somebody’s bound to know the name and where her daddy lives.”
“But she seems afraid of him. What if he is really as bad as she says?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
“And who would we ask,” said Katie, “without them asking about us too? We couldn’t go into town and ask Mrs. Hammond or anybody else.”
“I reckon we’ll have to take care of her awhile,” I said. “At least till we can find out more about her.”
Then I started chuckling. “I guess I should say,
you’ll
have to take care of her,” I added. “She doesn’t like me much.”
Katie smiled a sad, knowing smile and reached out and put a hand on my arm. I knew she felt bad for me.
“How much should we tell her, Mayme?” she said.
I thought about that a minute. I hadn’t considered it before.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Has she asked why nobody else is here? Why there aren’t any grown-ups, only one white girl and two black girls and a baby?”
Katie shook her head. “I don’t know if she’s noticing much of anything. She’s younger than us, Mayme, and she just lost her mother. I’m not even sure it’s hit her yet. Remember how I was when you found me?”
“Do you suppose her father might come for her?”
“How would he know she’s here?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe he knew where they were going, or maybe he followed them and will come here asking about them.”
“What would we do if he did?”
“She’d have to go with him, I reckon. She ain’t an orphan like us. So we don’t want to tell her too much, or she’d tell him, and we’d get found out.”
“You’re right,” said Katie. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell her anything. But I’m too tired to think about it anymore. We’ll worry about it tomorrow.”
Slowly she got off the bed.
“I think I should sleep with Aleta tonight,” she said, walking toward the door. “She might have a nightmare or wake up and not know where she is.—Good night, Mayme.”
“Good night, Miss Katie.”
Just as she left the room, I suddenly remembered. “Miss Katie, Miss Katie!” I said after her. “I almost forgot.”
Katie hurried back into the room, wondering what I was talking about. I jumped off the bed and stood up. I was still wearing my work dress and hadn’t gotten into my nightclothes yet. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the three gold coins.
“Look what Emma found in the cellar when you were gone!”
Katie looked at them lying in my hand, so exhausted from the day and bewildered at what I’d said that the bigness of it didn’t sink in at first. Then slowly her eyes got real big.
“Mayme,” she said, “but … but that’s—”
“Yes, Miss Katie—it’s
gold
. And it’s yours! She found it in the cellar.”
“But how … why was it there? Where did she find it?”
“I don’t know. But maybe it’s from that uncle of yours.”
“Do you think … Mayme, what if there’s
more
!”
We were both out of the room like a flash, trying to tiptoe so as not to wake Aleta or disturb Emma. One thing we didn’t need right then was Emma yammering away and following us and asking questions!
We hurried downstairs and a minute later, hearts pounding with anticipation, we were climbing down the steep ladder. I went first holding a lantern, Katie followed with a candle. We went down the rickety steps. It was colder than upstairs, and as the lantern lit up the place it was spooky. Katie looked around with a shudder.
“Except for getting Emma settled this morning,” she said, “I haven’t been here since … you know, since the night before you came. I’ve been afraid to even look down here again. I didn’t want to look around this morning, but I guess I can’t really help it now.”
I set down the lantern and waited a bit while Katie collected herself.
The floor was hard-packed dirt, but it was dry and had a few things on it. I don’t know why it should have been spookier now, in the middle of the night. The cellar looked the same in the middle of the day as in the middle of the night. But something about it was different and gave me the creeps. I know Katie felt it too. The silence was deeper, the shadows longer. I kept expecting something to jump out at us from one of the darkened corners. Just knowing that the sun was gone above us made the darkness more fearsome down here too.
There wasn’t much in the place except for a few small pieces of furniture that must have been put down here to store them out of the way. How Katie’s father had got them down here I couldn’t imagine, unless they’d been down here since the house was built. There was a dresser, a small wardrobe, and one other big chest of some kind sitting on the ground.
“Do you know what’s in those?” I asked Katie.
“No,” she said. “I was only down here a time or two, for tornados and then … you know.”
I nodded. “Were the drawers of that one open like that,” I asked, pointing to the dresser, “when you were down here before?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
“Emma must have been looking through them. Do you suppose that’s where she found the gold pieces?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to blame her—she must have been down here an hour or more.”
“She was probably scared silly.”
We went to look closer. Katie opened all the drawers. There were a few old clothes that smelled of mildew, some papers, but no more gold coins in the drawers. We looked in the wardrobe too, but it was empty. Then Katie walked over to the chest on the floor.
“It’s locked,” she said.
“Do you have any idea where the key might be?” I asked.
Katie thought a minute, then both of us seemed to remember at the same time.
“The keys in my mother’s secretary!” said Katie. Again we bolted for the stairs.
I don’t know how we kept from waking up the other two girls, but even in our excitement, somehow we didn’t. Five minutes later we were again descending into the cellar. This time a ring of keys was jingling from Katie’s hand. We hurried back to the chest, and one by one Katie fumbled with the keys to find one that would go into the padlock of the chest. When she found the one that opened it and then lifted the lid back, our hearts really started pounding. I think both of us were hoping it would be full of gold and jewels like a pirate’s treasure.
But it wasn’t. There were just a bunch of men’s shirts and trousers, a pair of boots, and one dress-up coat that had probably been real nice once. Everything in the chest was worn and old and didn’t smell so good.
Disappointed, we stared at it a minute, then Katie started rummaging through it.
“I wonder if what you said earlier’s true,” she said, “about those coins being my uncle’s. I wonder if these are his clothes.”
“ Didn’t you say he was here once?”
“I think so. I think that’s how I got the idea into my head that he had gold. I once had a dream about it, though I imagined gold nuggets or something, not coins. But my memory of it is vague now.”
She held up a second pair of trousers that was stuffed in the bottom. As she threw it back in with the rest, we heard a faint metallic sound. Katie grabbed them up again and shook them in her hand.
“There it is again!” she exclaimed.
She stuffed her hand into one of the pockets and pulled it out, holding another four coins.
“Look,” she said, “they are even bigger than the others!”
“How much are they worth, do you think?” I asked.
“These all say ten dollars on them…. Show me one of the others.”
I pulled one out of the pocket of my dress and handed it to Katie.
“This says five dollars. So that’s five, ten, fifteen … plus these four … that’s fifty-five dollars.”
Katie now dove into what remained in the chest and threw everything out till it was completely empty. Then she searched and shook every piece of clothing. But there were no more coins.
“Fifty-five dollars is a fortune, Miss Katie,” I said when she was through. “You’re practically rich!”
“But it’s not mine. These must belong to my uncle Ward.”
“Didn’t you say he was dead?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“But even if he isn’t, he wouldn’t mind you using it. And he ain’t coming back anyway. Didn’t you say he hadn’t been here in years?”
Katie nodded. “It would be nice to pay off the bill at Mrs. Hammond’s,” she said. “I don’t like her scowling at us.”
“I think she’d scowl just the same,” I said. “But then you could buy other things you need too.”
“I wonder if it’s enough to pay off my mama’s loan at the bank.”
“How much is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to look at my mama’s papers tomorrow. But right now, let’s get some sleep.”
“Where are you going to keep the gold coins, Miss Katie?”
“I don’t know. Someplace safe.”
“Well, you take the three little ones now too,” I said. “I had them all day, but now they’re making me nervous. They’re yours now.”
Katie took them from me and held the seven coins in her hand a minute, just looking down at them.