Glory Over Everything (33 page)

They put me in with Hester, a woman who is head of the kitchen house. Three overseers run the place, and from what Hester tells me, I got to be careful of them because they don't stop at nothing. They live down by the quarters and don't bother with the big house or the kitchen house unless there is a problem they have to work out.

At this farm they grow cotton, but for the fieldworkers it's all the same. Cotton or tobacco, hard work is hard work, and nobody here gets finished without knowing there is plenty more behind it.

The master of this place I see only two times. The first time I'm working in the kitchen house, putting up peas with Hester, when he stops by with an overseer to look at me. He asks me if I have any questions and if I know the rules. “Yes, sir,” is all I say, and that seems enough for him. The second time I see him is after they take my boys.

T
HEY WAS GOOD
boys, but they was only five years old when they took us from the preacher's place. After a couple of months living at the new place, they start fussing at me to take them back home to find their daddy. I can't keep watch over them 'cause I'm working in the kitchen house, and during the day they are looked after down in the quarters. At night they come back to me, but then they keep pestering me, where is their daddy and why don't I take them home. They even cry for the old woman and the preacher man. They tell me they don't like staying down at the quarters. The other boys fight rough, they say, and if I don't take them to find their daddy, they're going to go without me. I get scared and tell them about the patrollers out there and what they do to small colored boys if they find them out on the road. I don't hold back and I scare them enough so they stay put, but soon after, they start getting into trouble. With another boy, they break in to the springhouse and help themselves to milk and a whole kettle of pudding. They's lucky that Hester is the one who finds them, even though she paddles them hard.

“You bes' get those two in line before they put them out in the fields!” Hester tells me. She only has one girl, a little one, Clora, who is easygoing, so Hester don't know what I'm up against. I tell her maybe she don't know how hard it is to raise up those two on my own.

“Don't you go gettin' on me!” she says. “I'm just tryin' to do right by you. Those boys a yours need shapin' up, and you don' want the overseers on this place doin' the job for you.”

I know she's right, but I don't know what to do. I talk to them again, but they cry and say that they want their daddy back and they want me to go find him. I get mad and say they can't talk about him no more. He gone, and that's the way it is! They get quiet and stay that way because they never do see me cry before.

I'm glad to go to work in the morning, because when I'm working hard, I have no time to think. I like to cook, but I miss working outside in the gardens like I did at the preacher's house. Here the vegetable gardens are the biggest and best I ever seen, but Hester warns me against going in. She tells me that Emma is in charge of the gardens, and nobody crosses Emma. She says on a good day Emma isn't friendly, but on a bad day even the overseers watch out for her.

“Truth is,” Hester says, “Emma don't have no scare left in her. She even takes on the mens that are beatin' on their woman. She goes right on up to them. ‘You wanna fight?' she says. Then she lands a good one. Everybody says she's crazy, takin' on the mens like that.”

The day Hester spilled a pot of stew on her foot, she screamed so loud that I didn't wait but took off running, pulling her with me, down to the slave sickhouse. There old Tony, who runs the place as good as any white doctor, came to help us right quick. After he got a good look, he called across the room to a big woman who was standing next to a shelf of glass jars. “Emma, bring the med'cine in the blue jar,” he calls. When the woman came over, old Tony points her toward Hester. “Put some a that on that burn,” he says, then goes to help out a woman a few beds down who's having a hard time with bringing in a baby.

Emma sits down, big and heavy as a stone, and I try not to stare. The woman was ugly-looking, there's no other way to put it, with her eyes bulging out and no eyelashes and no eyebrows. With hands as big as a man's and nail beds twice the size of normal, she spread the herb grease over Hester's burn, and when she's done, I help her wrap a clean rag around the foot. Hester feels a whole lot better with the grease and cloth taking the air off the burn.

A couple of weeks after Hester's burn is cleared up, Emma comes up to the kitchen house, looking to talk to me. “They tell me to take somebody from up here to help out ol' Tony in the sickhouse, and when he don't need you, you can help me out in the gardens. You was good with Hester, so I'm takin' you.”

“You sure you got to have her?” Hester asked. “She's working out here with the cookin' real good.”

“They told me to get somebody from up here, and I'm pickin' her,” Emma says, then leaves the kitchen house with me standing there.

“You best go,” Hester says. “Emma gets what she wants. Jus' stay out of her way and do what she says.”

So that's how I start working with Emma. Some days we work the garden, some days I work with old Tony, it just depends on who needs what the most. I move my things down to a room off of Emma's hut, and the boys come there to sleep at night, but they don't like it 'cause they was just getting used to sleeping at the kitchen house.

The man that lives with Emma comes in and out, but I don't ever hear them saying two words to each other. I'm guessing he's the daddy of the baby she has. Right from the start, I don't like Emma for the way she don't take care of it. The only thing I see her do is give it her milk. Seems like that baby cries all day. I'm not there two days when I can't take it no more. I don't care what Emma's goin' to say, I go pick up that baby and clean him up good, and after that I take it on myself to see that he stays clean. I get some grease from old Tony and put it on that baby boy's sore bottom, and after that he don't cry as much.

“Why you do that?” she asks when she sees me cleaning his bottom. “He jus' dirty hisself again.” But I remember what it feels like to have that dried on you and to have it stinging sore. It ain't right to let babies feel that, and I tell her so.

The first time I sing to that child of hers, Emma look at me like she gonna grab that baby away. Instead she goes stomping off, but she don't stop me. I never know a mama like this who don't have no feelings for her own baby.

One day when Emma and me is sitting beside the house and shelling beans, real careful, I ask her why she don't care nothing about her baby. She turns her head at me, her eyes half closed, and shoots me a mean look. I don't look back at her, I just keep shelling.

“They gonna get them anyway,” she say. “ 'Sides, I don't like babies. The only baby I ever care for was my first one. She was four years when they took her. She was nothin' like me. She was little and never did nothin' but laugh. Four years old and she talked like she was a growed woman. When they took her, I was working the fields. When I come back, she was gone. Nothin' I could do about it 'cept have the one I was carrying. Now don't ask me no more.”

I don't ask her no more, but I still take care of her baby. In time I start to notice that she stops leaving him by himself and brings him along in his basket to wherever I'm working, so when he fusses, I'll go to him.

Then one day, after she's talking to some others down in the quarters, she comes stomping over to me. “I's hearin' that your boys is trouble. You best watch out. They send them off if you don't get hold a them.”

First I think to tell her that my boys is none of her business, but I think better of it and keep quiet. That night I sit them down and try to talk to them; when they start sassin' back, I know that I got to paddle them. When the moon comes up, all three of us are crying ourselves to sleep.

In the morning both of those boys is curled up next to me. I kiss their baby hands that still got some fat on them. I know about the God in the old preacher's Bible, but I'm thinking maybe He only looks out for white folks. I talk to Him anyway and ask for His help.

The boys are seven years old the summer they are put to work bringing water to those in the fields. A couple of weeks in, I don't know what went wrong, maybe one got to sassin' and the other one stood up for him, but that night they both come back with a beating. Monday afternoon of the next week, Emma comes running up from the quarters to tell me they are sold and the cart is heading out.

I run, but when I get there, they are gone and dust is all I see. I run down the road, and when I think I hear them calling for me, I start screaming for them. One of the overseers gets ahold of me—“Stop your screamin'!” he say, but I can't. Two overseers got ahold of me, pulling me back, but that don't stop me. Some of the workers from the fields stop their work and are walking over, carrying their hoes. Then a couple of the women start calling out for them to let go of me.

One of the overseers shoots his gun up in the air and tells them to get back to the field. I's still yelling for my boys, and they pull me back behind the quarters, where one of the men knocks me down, stands over me, and tells me to shut up, shut up! When the other one starts kicking me, it's like he's lighting a fire, and something lets loose in me. I jump up. I go after the first one, catch hold of his hand, and bite down, his blood tasting good in my mouth. He gets loose and I grab hold of a stick. Then I go after the other one. I run at his face, and before he can stop me, I get it into his eye. All the while I'm calling out for Nate! Nate! Nate!

Why I start yelling for him after all this time, I don't know. Maybe something in me knows that I never get to say his name again, 'cause after they tie me up, they take my tongue.

First I get lost in the pain, then I get lost in the fever. The master comes, takes a look, and Emma say he's not happy about what's been done, but it's too late to fix it. For a couple of weeks my mind don't know where it's at. After the fever passes, Hester and Emma get me up walking, and slow but sure, those two bring me 'round. Emma gets me to drink a mix that softens the burn, but I choke on it because I don't know how to drink with no tongue. After I start keeping the drinks down, in the next days Emma comes at me with mashed sweet potato. She steps back when I bring it up. That night she comes with more. This time the sweet potato got molasses.

It takes a long time to work it down 'cause every swallow makes me feel like it's going to get stuck. One night I figure out that I can die if I don't let no food stay down, but Emma works so hard to get it in me that I wait for her to go before I bring it up again.

And that's what I do every time Emma leaves, until one night she catches on. I lay down and make like I's going to sleep so Emma will leave, but instead she comes over to my pallet. “Scoot over,” she says, then lays down beside me. “I gon' stay the night.”

What's she doing? I wonder. We lay there looking at each other. “You got to cry, girl,” she says. I look at her real long. I don't feel like crying. I don't feel nothing but that my babies are gone and there's a fire in my mouth. Besides, what's Emma doing telling me to cry? If there's one woman on this place who don't cry, it's Emma. Everybody knows that.

So Emma and me just lay there looking at each other. She takes a rag to wipe my mouth. I'm still so sore that I don't know there's spit and maybe some blood dripping out the side. I close my eyes, hoping she will go so I can throw up the potato.

“Suk,” she say real soft, but I keep my eyes closed like I'm sleeping. “Sukey,” she say again, “you got to live, girl. They never should a done this to you. What my baby boy gonna do if you gone?” When I hear a noise like she's choking, I open my eyes. I never hear that sound coming out of her. Then I see her whole face is wet, and I know she's crying the best she remembers how. My arms feel like logs, but I reach over and take the rag she got and I wipe down her face. More choking sounds come from Emma until her whole body is wet and shaking like she got a bad fever, so I put my arms 'round her like she one of my babies.

I hold her like that till we both fall asleep. In the morning I get up when she's sleeping, her eyes swollen bad as one of the times she's been drinking and fighting. I get myself up and go to old Tony and let him know that I need two cups of his healing tea. I take them back and give one to Emma. She don't say nothing when we drink it together, but since that day we watch out for each other. And when she needs to, Emma does the talking for me.

I work in the garden, but more and more old Tony needs me to help out in his hospital. He starts teaching me about the herbs that help in the healing, which ones do what, and when I start to write down the mixes, he sees that I can read and write, and it's not long before I find out that he can do the same.

On the day I find out where my boys is at, someplace down in Georgia, I set it in my mind to go find them. A few nights later I try running, but I don't get far before they catch me. They give me a lashing that puts me down for a couple of weeks, and they tell me I go again, they kill me.

Maybe a year goes by before one of the field men, drunk, gets ahold of me and takes me back of the barns. First I fight, but when he gets rough, I just let him finish up. He catches me two more times before I write a note to old Tony. He goes to Emma, and that night the man who's bothering me gets to know what Emma's like when she's not happy. When I start showing a baby, Emma shakes her head, then puts her arm around my shoulders and says not to worry, she'll help me when the time comes.

“Don't give him a name,” Emma says when the baby shows up, but in my head I call him Nate. After that I take care of him right along with Emma's boy, before they move the boys down to the quarters and then sell them off. The day they go, Emma does the fighting for me. She goes too far, and the beating that she gets shoulda done her in, but Hester and me bring her through.