A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [48]
“The new windows are in, Kathleen,” he said. “Tell your mama they’re fifty cents apiece. I’ll write it down and leave it with Mrs. Hammond.”
“Yes, sir,” said Katie. “Thank you, Mr. Krebs.”
He went back to his wagon and a few minutes later was clattering back down the road toward town. As we watched him leave, Katie turned to me.
“That wasn’t so hard,” she said with a kind of pleased expression on her face.
“He didn’t seem to mind that it was just us,” I said. “But we still gotta be careful.”
Suddenly we heard a splash. We turned, and there was Aleta sitting in the middle of the rinse tub with her clothes all still on.
We ran over to her laughing.
“What are you doing?” laughed Katie.
“Taking a cold bath,” she said. “It’s so hot, it’s like going swimming.”
As we watched I had to admit it looked like a pretty good idea at that! Katie was obviously thinking the same thing.
“I’ll go get the soap from the house,” said Katie. “I want to take a bath too! I’ll wash your hair under the pump, Aleta.—Would you wash mine, Mayme?”
“If you’ll wash mine!”
While Aleta was playing and splashing in the water, Katie and I went back inside and got some clean towels and soap and a scrubbing sponge.
We came back outside, then took off our dresses and took turns getting each other all clean.
Even with my underclothes still on, that was about the best bath I’d ever had! We got Emma back out, and she and William cleaned up real nice too, though she howled a little at the cold water from the pump on her head and back.
When we were done, we pulled the stopper from the bottom of the tub and let the water drain, where it ran in a little trough that had been dug from under it out to the field. Since most of our clothes we’d been wearing were hanging on the lines, we put on robes of Katie’s mama’s till the things on the line had started to dry, which didn’t take too long in the heat.
After that, for most of the rest of the summer, we took cold baths outside almost every day.
As we were walking back to the house, I realized that Aleta had been listening carefully before when Katie had been talking to the glass man.
“Where is your mama?” she asked.
The question took Katie by surprise as much as it did me. She glanced over at me, but all I could do was shrug. I didn’t know what to say.
“She’s not here,” answered Katie after a bit. “She’s gone for a while.”
“Where’s she gone?” said Aleta. “Why haven’t I seen her?”
“She’s gone for a long time, Aleta,” said Katie. “That’s why Mayme and I are here together, and why we have to work so hard.”
A REQUEST
26
IWAS OUT AT THE WOODPILE THE NEXT DAY GETTING ready to chop some firewood when I heard a soft step behind me. I turned, surprised to see Aleta standing there. For an instant I stiffened inside, getting ready for whatever hurtful thing I was about to hear. But then I realized that there was a different, almost timid expression on her face.
“Mayme,” she said, and her voice was as different as the look on her face. “Would you please tell me another story about Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox, like that one you told us a few days ago?”
“Did you like it?” I asked.
She nodded. “But I couldn’t understand it very well,” she said. “And I fell asleep before it was done. Why did you talk in such a funny voice when you were telling it?”
I smiled and put down the ax, then sat down on the chopping block.
“You want to sit down?” I said.
Aleta sat down on another piece of wood opposite me.
“That voice is the way my uncle tells the old stories,” I said. “Miss Katie likes to hear them that way so she’ll know how the stories sounded to me when I was a little girl.”
“You heard it from your uncle?”
“Not my real uncle. When I was a slave, we called all old black