A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [45]
I walked around a little bit, thinking about how things were. Just when Katie and me had been starting to get used to having Emma around, now we had Aleta to think about. Were things ever going to be normal again? I wondered. Of course, in our lives what was normal anyway? Not that I didn’t want Aleta here, but it changed things, that was for sure. And yesterday I’d noticed a funny little change in Katie too. I think it might have been because of what I told her about the slaves being freed. I never would have expected it, but she almost seemed to be treating me different, occasionally looking at me and not saying anything, and hesitating before she spoke, almost more respectful or something. You wouldn’t think that’d be something I’d mind. But it made it a little awkward a couple of times to have her look at me that way. I’d been comfortable knowing how to act before. And now it was a little confusing. I reckon it was a change we would both have to get used to. I didn’t feel any different inside. I was still the same person I’d always been. But being free rather than a runaway slave was a big change, whether I felt any different or not.
I went back inside the kitchen and scooped out some coals from the stove and carried them outside in a bucket. I emptied them carefully beneath the fire pile, keeping the coals together so they’d stay hot. I put a few bits of straw on top of them, then kindling, and blew on it. The straw jumped up into flame right away and pretty soon the whole fire was going.
I went back in and stoked up the fire in the kitchen stove with some fresh wood. By the time it was going, the other girls were getting up. When we’d milked the cows and fed the pigs and chickens and horses and dogs, we took the cows out to pasture. Aleta went with Katie and me for the first time while Emma saw to William, and though she walked back next to Katie, it seemed like she might be gradually getting used to me. As we got back to the house, I could see steam starting to rise from the washtub.
“Let’s check the water,” I said. “I think it’s ready.”
Aleta scampered ahead and stuck her hand in it.
“Ouch!” she cried. “It’s too hot!”
Katie and I laughed, and by now Emma was trudging out with a basketload of her things and she laughed too.
“Get a bucket of water from the pump,” I said to Aleta, “and douse the fire.”
While she was doing that, Katie and I went inside to help Emma lug out the piles of laundry. Our first load was the sheets and aprons and our underclothes. We took them out and dumped them into the tub, then added soap and bluing.
“Grab your pile, Emma,” I said, “and dump it in.”
She did, and then we swished it all around with two laundry sticks, working from the wood platform on the opposite side of the tub from where the fire in the pit underneath was still smoking and smoldering and sizzling from Aleta’s dousing. We’d wash the white things first, and when they were done, do the work dresses and quilts and heavier things, and at the very last, do our dirty work dresses that had manure on them from milking and cleaning the stalls.
“Shall we get the rinse tub ready, Miss Katie,” I suggested, “and leave these to soak a spell?”
“Aleta,” called Katie, “why don’t you keep stirring the clothes with Emma while Mayme and I fill the other pot.”
Aleta came round and took hold of the stick from Katie and started stirring energetically.
“Stir and bounce and swish the clothes all around,” said Katie. “Watch what Emma’s doing—that’s right … good, Aleta.”
We walked over to the rinse tub and first cleaned it out, which we hadn’t done since our last wash. We wanted to