A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [32]
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.
TREASURE HUNT
18
THAT 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