Angels Watching Over Me (Shenandoah Sisters Book #1) (21 page)

S
ERIOUS
T
ALK
30

T
HAT VISIT TO MY LITTLE OLD HOUSE AND the memories about my family got me thinking hard again about the future. There were those uncles of Katie’s that I’d think about every once in a while, and it would make me a little jittery. Katie still hadn’t done or said anything about what she planned to do, and I sure was uncertain about what was going to happen to me. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was discovered, and then I’d be in a nasty fix. It seemed to me Katie had to decide how she was going to get in touch with one or more of her kin.

Since we had only half a loaf left, one morning we were in the kitchen making bread, and I figured it was as good a time as any to talk to Katie about it again.

‘‘You know, Miss Katie,’’ I said, keeping my tone as matter-of-fact as I could, ‘‘sooner or later I gotta be moving on.’’

‘‘Why, Mayme?’’ she said in the little-girl voice from the way she used to talk when I first came. Hearing it reminded me how much she’d changed already.

‘‘Miss Katie,’’ I began again as Katie pounded on the dough, ‘‘this ain’t my place. You know that as well as I do. I’m a slave, you’re white. I’ve been saying that you gotta find out about your uncles, or maybe that aunt of yours up North, whether she liked your mama or not. You’re gonna have to get in touch with one of them by and by.’’

‘‘But I don’t want to,’’ she replied.

‘‘I don’t see how it can be helped. And when that time comes, I’m gonna have to be gone.’’

‘‘But why, Mayme? Why can’t they let you stay with me?’’

‘‘If they found me here living in a white man’s house, eating a white man’s food, sleeping in a white man’s bed, and wearing your mama’s clothes like you’re letting me do, they’d lynch me up or just kill me on the spot. Nobody’s going to feel like making any allowances for me.’’

‘‘But my mama and daddy are dead.’’

‘‘What’s that got to do with it?’’ I asked.

‘‘Doesn’t that make this my house?’’ she argued.

‘‘Why can’t I just stay here with you? I don’t want to go to my uncles. To my aunt. Not
anyplace
but here.’’

Every once in a while Katie would surprise me with some statement that showed down inside she was thinking about things too.

‘‘I don’t know, Miss Katie,’’ I said. ‘‘You’re just a girl. You just turned fifteen. They ain’t gonna just let you stay here by yourself. Even less with me. Likely as not this whole place belongs to one of them now anyway, probably that brother of your daddy’s you were telling me about who you said wanted it. I think there’s some way things are given to other people when folks die. Whose family’s was this plantation? Your mama’s or your daddy’s?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

‘‘Must be your daddy’s kin if your mama’s from up North. No matter. None of that answers the problem of my being here or what’s gonna happen to you. You gotta work on what you’re gonna do, Miss Katie.’’

‘‘Why can’t you just be
my
slave?’’ she asked, looking at me with those big innocent eyes. The question took me so off guard I didn’t know what to say.

‘‘You can be my own personal slave,’’ she repeated.

‘‘It ain’t as simple as that,’’ I said finally. ‘‘You’re just a girl. You can’t own a big place like this and have a slave of your own. Your kinfolk are gonna want to get their hands on it. I don’t mind staying and helping you for a spell. But someday somebody’s gonna come and find us here, and then I’ll get into bad trouble sure as I’m colored and you’re white.’’

‘‘Who’s going to get you in trouble?’’ asked Katie.

‘‘Anyone who finds me here. That Mr. Thurston fella, or that busybody lady from town. Or one or more of your kin. All white folks don’t take as kindly to coloreds as you, Miss Katie. You’ve been real kind to me. But don’t you know there’s white folks who’d want to hang me from a tree till I was dead just for coming into a white man’s house or touching his daughter?’’ I thought I might as well say it straight out.

Katie’s hands went still in the dough. She had no idea what things were really like.

‘‘Don’t you understand, Miss Katie, I’ll be in real bad danger if anybody sees me here. And you might be too, if the wrong people find you here, or if those men who killed our families came back. That thing I was telling you about before called rape that you don’t need to know about, it sometimes happens when bad people find pretty girls like you alone, and it’s real bad, Miss Katie.’’

‘‘But nice people like Mr. Thurston and Mrs. Hammond and Henry at the livery stable, they wouldn’t hurt me.’’

‘‘Then they’d still take you away—and send
me
away.’’

‘‘But I’ll tell them you’re my slave. I’ll tell them you’re my
friend
.’’

The word stunned me as much as my talking about being hung had stunned Katie. I just stood staring back, not sure I’d heard her right.

How could a white girl and a colored girl be
friends
?

I almost started to cry.

I tried to smile. ‘‘That’s right kind of you to say, Miss Katie,’’ I said after a minute. I couldn’t look her in the eye right away. I thought I’d either start crying or else throw my arms around her.

‘‘But I still don’t think folks’d listen,’’ I finally said, trying to keep her paying attention to the facts. ‘‘It might make ’em even more determined to see me swinging from a tree. And you could get in a heap of trouble yourself. White folks in the South have got a word for white people they hate near as much as coloreds—’’

I paused a minute, not quite sure I should say it. ‘‘Well, it’s nigger lover,’’ I finally said. ‘‘You don’t want folks calling you that, Miss Katie.’’

It was quiet for a while.

‘‘Don’t you see, Miss Katie,’’ I went on after a bit, ‘‘all I’m trying to do is find a way for us to protect you, and if that means you getting in touch with some grown-up to help you so that no harm comes to you, then maybe that’s what we gotta do. That Mrs. Hammond, though I ain’t sure I like her much, sounds like she could help you find your kin.’’

‘‘I don’t want to find my kin.’’

‘‘You got to.’’

‘‘But what will happen to
you,
Mayme?’’

‘‘I don’t know, Miss Katie. But I’m a little older than you, so I reckon I can take care of myself. I’ll probably find some other coloreds and ask them to help me. I’ll be all right. No black folks would turn out one of their kind who’s in trouble. It’s what will happen to
you
that we gotta think about first.’’

‘‘Why, Mayme? Why do we have to think just about me?’’

‘‘ ’Cause this is your home and you’re white. I don’t belong here anyway.’’

‘‘You belong here now, Mayme.’’

‘‘That’s nice of you, Miss Katie,’’ I said. ‘‘But we still gotta figure out what to do so you don’t get into a fix worse than you’re in now.’’

Katie was quiet. I didn’t know yet if she really understood what I had been trying to get across to her.

She turned and went upstairs to her room. I could hear her crying. I didn’t go up myself, though. What else could I say? I had been trying to get her to face what her situation really was like.

And mine too. I felt bad for her, but I didn’t know what else to do. I was pretty sure I was doing the right thing by making her think about the future, even if she didn’t want to. The next person to come along might not be as harmless as Mrs. Hammond or Mr. Thurston had been.

When they were ready, I put the loaves of bread in the oven to bake.

K
ATIE’S
S
PECIAL
P
LACE
31

T
HE BREAD WAS COOLING ON THE TABLE when Katie came back down a little while later.

She wandered outside. From the window I watched her walk down the road in the opposite direction from town, then turn and go across a field. I didn’t know where she was going but thought I ought to keep track of her. So I followed, keeping a ways behind, though I didn’t try to keep out of sight.

She walked through two or three fields, then disappeared into the woods beyond. One of the dogs had come along too, and once he went barking into the woods like he was chasing something or someone. But I couldn’t see anything myself. Must have been a rabbit.

I ran to try to catch up and barely saw Katie through the trees ahead. Then she disappeared again. I hurried on, squeezing through trees and brush. I’m sure I sounded like a herd of cows crashing around. Then suddenly I came into a pretty little green clearing.

There was Katie in the middle of it, sitting across the grass on a rock next to a little pond with a creek running in and out of it.

She turned her head toward me. I could tell she had been crying.

‘‘This is beautiful, Miss Katie,’’ I said softly.

‘‘It’s my special place in the woods,’’ she said with a sad smile. ‘‘It’s always been a secret up till now, but I don’t mind you being here. I come here to talk to the animals and write poems. I haven’t been here since . . . since before . . .’’

I walked over and sat down on the grass beside the rock. The dog seemed to know he shouldn’t keep racing around in this peaceful place and settled down beside me.

‘‘I’m sorry, Miss Katie,’’ I said. ‘‘I didn’t mean to upset you back there with what I said. I’m just worried about you.’’

‘‘I know,’’ she said, her voice so low I could barely hear the words. ‘‘You’re just trying to help me, Mayme. But I just don’t know what to do. It’s all so awful . . . I wish I could have my mama back!’’ She began to cry again.

I reached out and took her hand. She gripped it tight. Pretty soon I was crying too. I don’t know if it was for Katie or for me—most likely both of us.

We sat awhile like that, just crying and sniffling.

‘‘You know, Miss Katie,’’ I finally said, ‘‘a few days ago I did something I’d never done before.’’

‘‘What’s that?’’

‘‘I talked to God a little. I asked Him if he could help us.’’

‘‘You mean you prayed.’’

‘‘I reckon that’s what I did.’’

‘‘I pray every night like my mama taught me. But I’m still sad. It doesn’t seem to help.’’

‘‘I found some verses in my mama’s Bible that were about opening the door of your heart so Jesus could come in. I did that. I can’t say for sure that He walked in, but I think so.’’

‘‘What happened after you asked Him?’’ asked Katie, sounding now more curious than anything.

‘‘Nothing,’’ I said. ‘‘At least I didn’t
feel
different. But I guess I got the impression that God’s gonna take care of us somehow.’’

‘‘Would you tell me what to do, Mayme? I want to ask Him that too.’’

‘‘I don’t know, Miss Katie . . . one of the verses said that Jesus is the door, and the other one said that God is knocking on the door and that if you open it, He’ll come in. It’s the door to our hearts, I reckon.’’

‘‘How do you open the door?’’

‘‘I don’t know . . . maybe ask Him to turn the handle and come in, I guess. That’s all I did. In the front of the Bible it said you should open the door of your heart and let Him live there. So I just told God that I wanted Him to come into my heart.’’

‘‘Then I will too,’’ said Katie firmly. She let go of my hand and folded hers in her lap, then bowed her head and closed her eyes. ‘‘God,’’ she said out loud. ‘‘I’m all alone and don’t know what to do, like Mayme has been telling me. So I want to open the door of my heart to you too, and ask you to help me. Please come in and show me what you want us to do. And thank you, God, for bringing Mayme here. She’s about the best friend I could ever imagine. Amen.’’

I started crying again. Nobody’d ever said something so nice about me before, and certainly not to God.

‘‘Thank you, Miss Katie,’’ I said through my tears.

‘‘Did you really mean that?’’

‘‘Of course I meant it, Mayme. I don’t know what I would do without you. I’d probably be dead by now.’’

‘‘No you wouldn’t!’’ I laughed as I sniffed again. ‘‘You’d have managed to take care of yourself.’’

‘‘I don’t know how. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I believe God sent you to help me, and I’m glad.’’

We sat for a long spell just looking at the water and listening to the creek.

‘‘Are you going to write a poem about today?’’ I asked after a bit.