A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [11]
And when Katie and me were alone at night, after Emma was asleep, we still read and told stories to each other after getting ready for bed. I found myself wondering if we could teach Emma to read too. Black folks had to get started learning how to improve themselves sometime, and maybe if Emma learned to read, then William could grow up reading himself, and by the time he had children of his own, they would take things like reading and writing for granted, just the same way white folks did.
One day I remembered my old diary papers that I’d found under my mattress back at the McSimmons place. I thought that now I was ready to look at them again.
I went and got them out of the drawer where I’d put them and sat down on the edge of the bed and started to read them. I hadn’t looked at them once since that day. Now as my eyes fell on the old, smeared, tattered pages, so many feelings swept through me. It was like reading words that somebody else had written. They looked so awkward and crude, like a little child had written them, which I reckon was the truth. I had been a child.
Maybe I hadn’t realized how much I’d changed till that moment. All of a sudden, I saw how different my life was now. I guess that was pretty obvious. I was living like a white person! But sometimes you realize something in a whole new way. And even if it’s a little thing, the realization seems big and changes you inside. I guess it makes you grow up a little more just in realizing it. And this was one of those times for me.
I had grown up in other ways too. I was thinking about things for myself, thinking about things maybe a little like a grown-up would think about them. It had only been a couple of months. But in another way it seemed like years since I’d run away from the McSimmons colored village, where I’d lived the first fifteen years of my life.
I looked down at the gray writing from a dull pencil in my hand and started to read.
Wee pikt kotin today. Roes a kotin iz soo long. I got whipt cuz I fell down. I tol Rufus a storee bout to foxs chasin chikins. Master kame an lukt at me en stuk his han in my mouf. I lukt at him an hated him, but dint say nuthin. Mamas sik an babys cryn all nite. Had to git up in dark agin to pik at da weeds all day. Im soo tird. Sumtimes I wunder whats gonna happn to me an ef masters gonna mak me have a baby to an ef itl hurt, but I git skeered an don think bout it. Why is white men soo meen. Granpapa got whipt for just wakin to sloo. I hated da man dat dun it, but I lukt da other way so I wudnt see granpapas teers cuz I nowd deyd mak me cry to see em an den Id git whipt fer cryn.
A sad smile crept over my lips and tears filled my eyes and I sniffed a few times. That life seemed so long ago.
Who was the girl that had written these words? Had it really been me? Those years had been so long. I thought they’d never end. One day out in the fields seemed like a year sometimes, every minute going by seemed like an hour.
But then all of a sudden … it was gone.
Now here I was pretending to be helping to run a great big plantation with a white girl I hadn’t even known three months ago and a slave girl who likely wouldn’t even be able to keep alive without Katie and me helping her.
How quick things could change!
I couldn’t keep from crying as I sat there, even though I was still half smiling too as I looked at my words. Finally I took a deep breath and put the pages away.
Good-bye, little girl of my past, I said quietly. I don’t think I’ll ever be you