A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [39]
“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”
Katie turned to go, but then paused and turned back toward him.
“How much is the loan, Mr. Taylor?” she asked.
“Both loans together originally totaled five hundred twenty-five dollars,” he answered. “After today’s payment there is a little over a hundred fifty dollars left on the first, which is the more immediately pressing. But your mother knows that.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”
Katie walked out of the bank, her pocket jangling full of ten dollars’ worth of smaller coins. I could tell from her face that she felt like the richest lady in the world.
Again she climbed up, and it was all we could do to keep from talking or smiling at each other before we got far enough away where no one could see us.
When we were about a half mile out of town, Katie reined the horse to a stop.
“You can come out now, Aleta,” she said. “We’re out of sight of town now. You did well.”
“That was fun!” said Aleta, and she jumped up beside Katie. It was the first time either of us had seen her smile.
THE TEARDROP
21
AS MUCH WORK AS WE’D BEEN DOING AROUND the place, and from all the other things we had to think about, I hadn’t been in the barn much in the last couple weeks, except the far end where the cows came for milking. One day I went inside and looked over and noticed the pillow and blanket and a few other things still there from when Katie’d found Emma and when she’d given birth to her baby here in the barn. None of us had ever thought to clean them up.
So I went over and picked up the blanket to take it outside to wash. Then I was going to take out the straw and dump a new bale down from the loft above, and was fixing to clean up the area a little.
All of a sudden as I swept back the straw, a little blue-and-white bit of color sparkled up at me on the hard dirt floor from the sunlight coming in through the door I’d left open. I stooped down and picked up the tiny gold piece of jewelry with its flat blue top and white gold letters in the middle of the blue.
I couldn’t believe my eyes!
I recognized it. It had been my mama’s! Now that I saw it again, I wondered why I hadn’t found it with her things.
I held the little object for a minute, filled with reminders of my family. Mama’d had it as long as I could recollect, though I still hadn’t a notion what it was. It didn’t look like any kind of white woman’s jewelry I’d ever seen, and was such an odd shape.
The first time I’d seen her holding it years ago and had asked her about it, she’d just smiled a sad smile and said the letters stood for a teardrop. What did that mean? I asked her. She just said, “Some memories are best left unremembered,” and then she would answer no more of my questions about the thing.
Then all of a sudden I came to myself standing there in the barn, realizing that the thing hadn’t got there with me.
So how had it gotten here?
I wandered outside and back to the house where I heard Katie and Emma and William in the kitchen and was going to ask Katie about it. It was a good thing Aleta was upstairs in Katie’s room right then. The instant I opened my hand to show it to her, Emma burst out.
“Where’d you git dat?” she said, trying to grab it from me. “Dat’s mine!”
I pulled back and closed my palm.
“What are you talking about, girl?” I said, confused at first.
“It’s mine,” she repeated. “I lost it. Where’d you fin’ it?”
“Out in the barn. It was under the straw where you were lying that day we found you.”
“Dat’s it—jes’ like I tol’ you. I was holdin’ it an’ I lost it. Gib it to me.”
I saw Emma’s eyes flash and took another step back, still clutching it tight. And now I was starting to get angry myself.
“What is it, Mayme?” asked Katie, confused over what we were arguing about.
I opened my hand and showed it to her.
“It’s a cuff link,” she said.
“What’s a cuff link?” I asked.
“It’s a thing a man wears to hold the cuffs of his shirt together. Where’s