Angels Watching Over Me (Shenandoah Sisters Book #1) (20 page)

‘‘When the overseer ties a man face down to the ground, then takes a great big tomcat by the tail and hauls it along the man’s back, while the clawing, screeching cat’s trying to get loose and digging into the skin.’’

‘‘Stop, Mayme! I can’t stand it!’’ she cried, clasping her hands to her ears.

‘‘All slaves’ve got flogging lines like this on their backs, Miss Katie, one way or another.’’

‘‘Not . . . not my . . . not
my
daddy’s slaves,’’ she said in a faltering voice.

‘‘Weren’t no different here, Miss Katie,’’ I said.

‘‘Slaves were slaves. Your daddy had whips and tomcats just like our master. I saw the whips in the barn. And I allow that he and his men knew how to use ’em too.’’

Katie crumpled to the floor and just sat there. She didn’t say anything for a spell. What was going on inside her I could hardly imagine. She was having to get used to a lot of new things these days.

‘‘Mathias had a girl,’’ she said after a bit in a real soft voice. ‘‘She was . . . she was about my age, just like you. I don’t know what happened to her. I guess she’s gone somewhere by now. I wonder if she had any . . . any whipping marks like you.’’ Her voice dropped at the end like she could hardly bring herself to say the words.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t figure there was anything more to say.

I sat there in the bath, and Katie sat there on the floor, and neither of us said a word. Maybe it was finally dawning on Katie just how different we were, and how different were the worlds we’d come from.

‘‘Oh, Mayme!’’ she said in a forlorn voice after a while, starting to cry. ‘‘What are we going to do?’’

I don’t know what put it in my head to say what I did, but this is what I answered her.

‘‘We both got a lot of growing up to do, Miss Katie,’’ I said. ‘‘And I don’t reckon we got a lot of time to do it.’’

Then I remembered why I’d wanted to take a bath in the first place, to
forget
the past.

If I didn’t get this bath started, the water was gonna get cold. So I started soaping.

‘‘I’m ready for you to start pouring, Miss Katie,’’ I said.

I didn’t hear anything for a few seconds. But what I felt next wasn’t the warm water falling over my head, but the warmth of Katie’s fingers on my back, gently touching my scars.

‘‘I’m so sorry, Mayme,’’ she said. ‘‘I . . . I just didn’t know.’’

M
ESSAGE IN THE
B
IBLE
29

F
OR THE SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW
I couldn’t sleep very well. My mind was too full of thoughts and feelings and memories from having gone back to my old home, from the bath and from what Katie and I had talked about. I didn’t know what to make of it all.

I had Mama’s Bible snuggled in bed beside me, along with Mister Krinkle. I felt like a little girl again. Sometimes a body doesn’t want to have to grow up, and right then I didn’t.

I was lonely. I don’t mind admitting it. Katie’s poem about being alone without her mama stuck with me. I knew I could never make up for her mama any more than she could make up for mine. I was mighty glad to have Katie around. But I was still lonely. The stuffed rabbit and the Bible reminded me of Mama and kept me awake and then helped me to sleep.

I woke up thinking I heard a noise outside. But when I listened real close, there wasn’t anything more.

Must have been the cows,
I thought.

After I lay there awhile, I got up and carried Mama’s Bible, which I reckon was my own now, down to the parlor. It was the only thing I could call my own in the whole world. Well, maybe except for Mister Krinkle. When I opened the book, there were the pages of my writing, which I had called my diary. It hardly looked like much now. I didn’t think I wanted to look at them yet. I wasn’t ready. I took the sheets back upstairs and put them in a drawer under some of the clothes Katie had given me to wear.

When I sat down again with the Bible, I looked for names like in the big Bible of Katie’s. There were only a few—my grandmama’s and grandpapa’s,
Elijah and
Faith Jukes,
then my mama’s and daddy’s,
Henry and
Lemuela Jukes,
then all us kids,
Mary Ann, Samuel,
Rachel, Robert,
and
Thelma
.

I turned to where the book was the most worn, toward the back, and tried to read some. But I couldn’t make nothing of it. I guess I needed more practice in the reader before I could understand the sentences.

Just holding the Bible put me in a mind to think about God, and I realized I hadn’t been thinking about Him at all. I hadn’t asked for His help even once since all this had happened.

I’d never really prayed before that I could remember, personally I mean, with just God and me around. We’d always sung about God a lot, but I didn’t remember praying except for praying the Lord’s Prayer like I’d done when burying our dead families. My mama didn’t talk much about God or praying, not like Grandmama and Grandpapa. Maybe religion was something mostly old folks did. I didn’t know.

But even if that was so, I figured it didn’t matter. Maybe I ought to get a start on it while I was still young. I reckon I needed all the help I could get, and I didn’t mind admitting that any more than I minded admitting I was lonely.

So as I sat there I tried praying a little. I guess it was praying, though I’d never really heard people praying like what I was doing. The only praying I’d ever heard was at mealtime or when all the slaves from McSimmons’s colored town would get together sometimes and sing. One of the men would stand up and talk or pray real loud, or when we went to the revival camps like I had told Katie about. But just a person all by themselves like I was, I didn’t know if that’s the way you were supposed to pray or not. But I figured it couldn’t do no harm.

So I just started talking to God. In my mind, I mean, not out loud.

God, if you can help me and Katie outta this fix
we’re in,
I said,
we’d sure appreciate it. I don’t know
what color you are, but I reckon you must be for black
folks as well as white folks ’cause I know everybody prays
to you. So I’m asking you to help this one black girl and
this one white girl. I don’t know what to do, and if you
got any suggestions, maybe you could show us, however it
is you do that
.

I looked at the Bible again, still in my lap. Just from its limp black cover, I could tell it was old. I knew my mama could read ’cause she taught me the letters. I wondered if she had written in the names.

Holding the Bible filled me with memories of riding out in the back of a wagon to a camp meeting in the fields next to the white folks’ tent, and then all the preaching and singing. As a little girl I hadn’t understood anything of what was going on. For me it was just a chance not to work so hard for a spell and have fun. I hardly even knew what they meant when they talked and sang about God and salvation and Satan and redemption and Beulah land and all the rest. But now that I was alone in the world, I wanted to know for myself. God was about all I had left, along with Katie and my memories.

Again I found myself thinking back, and like it often did, music came into my mind.

Oh, de worril is roun’ en de worril is wide—
Lord! ’member deze chillun in de mornin’—
Hit’s a mighty long ways up de mountainside,
En dey ain’t no place fer dem sinners fer ter hide,
En dey ain’t no place whar sin kin abide.
W’en de Lord shill come in de mornin’,
Look up en look aroun’,
Fling yo’ burden on de groun’.
Hit’s a gittin’ mighty close on ter mornin’!
Smoove away sin’s frown—
Retch up en git de crown,
W’at de Lord will fetch in de mornin’!

I sat there with the Bible in my lap, slowly rocking back and forth. Then I started singing the rest of the camp-meeting song in my mind.

De han’ er ridem’shun, hit’s hilt out ter you,
Lord! ’member dem sinners in de mornin’!
De sperrit may be puny en de flesh may be proud,
But you better cut loose fum de scoffin’ crowd,
En jine dese Christuns w’at’s a cryin’ loud
Fer de Lord fer ter comin’ in de mornin’!
Shout loud en shout long,
Let de ekkoes ans’er strong.
W’en de sun rises up in de mornin’!
Oh, you allers will be wrong
Twel you choose ter belong
Ter de Marster w’ats a comin’ in de morning!

I opened the Bible again. Inside the front was some real nice writing that wasn’t made by any colored hand, that much I knew for sure.

To Lemuela Hawley, with love, Patience,
whispered the words out of the past.

That must explain how my mama had come by this Bible, though I couldn’t altogether make sense of the words. How much of it she’d read, I didn’t know. But somebody’d read it, that much was for certain because there were markings and verses underlined.

I couldn’t figure why my mama would have kept the Bible hidden. Maybe she was afraid the master would take it away.

Whatever the Bible’s history, it had come to me now. So I intended to make the best use of it I could. I really didn’t know very much about what a Bible was. I just knew it was something ‘‘holy’’ and was a book about God and Jesus.

But I decided right then and there that I would put my mind to learning to read, if for no other reason than so I could read this Bible and find out what it had to teach me. Maybe that was the kind of help God could give me, like I’d prayed for. Maybe there was something in the pages of this book to help me. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought I could figure it out. It seemed likely that God would want people to figure out about Him, so why shouldn’t I?

Absently I turned through the first pages, before the actual book got started. On one of the blank pages, in the same nice handwriting that must have belonged to whoever had given Mama the Bible, was written:
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear
my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and
will sup with him, and he with me
.

It took me about a minute to read it. I couldn’t exactly tell what it meant, what the door was, and why it was so important that the lady had written it in the front of this Bible. Below it was written
Revelation
3:20
. I knew that’s how Bible verses looked, so I looked through the Bible and after a while, at the very end, found the word
Revelation
up at the top of the pages. Before too much longer I found the place marked 3:20, and there were the same words exactly like the ones written in the front of the Bible.

It was the first time I’d ever found anything in a Bible, and I couldn’t help being a little proud of myself.

I read the words over again. I figured it was God talking to somebody.

I thought maybe I should read the rest of what the lady had written in front. I turned back, and beneath the first verse I had read I now saw,
Jesus is the door to
eternal life (John 10:9). Open the door of your heart and
let Him live there
.

I looked through the Bible again and pretty soon found the book called ‘‘John,’’ just like I had the other book. Then I found the place marked 10:9.

This isn’t so hard!
I thought.

‘‘I am the door,’’
I read, and I was glad the next words were all easy and pretty short, although I did have a little trouble with the last word of the verse.
‘‘By
me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go
in and out, and find pasture.’’

I didn’t know all of what this meant either, but I was starting to get an idea that there was some kind of message here.

I read over the handwritten words again another time or two, then sat thinking for a spell. I didn’t know what
sup with him
meant, but probably something about eating. I figured if there was such a thing as a door to my heart, and if it was a place that God could come to live, then it was sure a door that you oughta open so He could.

I still wasn’t sure what the difference between God and Jesus was. People talked about them like they were the same. I kind of figured
Jesus
must be God’s actual name or something like that. But maybe it didn’t matter so much even if they were different. Maybe if I opened my heart, both of them would come in at the same time.

So when I started praying again, I tried to do what had been written to my mama, as best as I knew how.

God,
I prayed,
or Jesus, if you’re the same, I want to
be a good girl. I’m all alone in the world now, so I figure
I need your help just to get by. I’d like to open the door
of my heart to you and have you live with me if you
would. I don’t know if I’ll know it when you do. Maybe
I’ll still feel alone. But it’ll be a big help and a comfort
to me just knowing that you’re with me and that you’re
taking care of me. Help me to be good, like my mama
said. And like I asked before, if you got any suggestions
about what we’re supposed to do now that our kin are all
gone, Katie and me would sure appreciate knowing it
.