A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [73]
“But I want my mama back!” wailed Aleta.
“I know, I know … me too,” said Katie. “But we’ll see them again in heaven someday. But until then we’ve got to be the kind of girls our mamas would want us to be. We’ve got to be strong, and you can be strong, because you know that there are four people who love you.”
“Four?” said Aleta, sniffing and wiping at her nose.
“Mayme and Emma and I, and someday this little baby will grow up to love you too. I know that your daddy loved you once, and we will pray that he will love you again.”
It was silent a minute as Aleta’s tears slowly subsided. Unconsciously her hand again began to stroke William’s arm beside her, and a moment later his tiny fingers were again clutching her finger as if his very life depended on it.
“I miss Mayme,” said Aleta after a few seconds. “I hope nothing bad happens to her.”
“Nothing bad will happen, Aleta,” Katie said. “God will take care of her.”
“But why did He let this happen to her and let that bad man take her?”
“I don’t know, Aleta,” answered Katie. “God doesn’t keep bad things from happening, or make bad things happen himself. But when they do, He takes care of us through them. And I know He is taking care of Mayme right now.”
“But why do they want to hurt her?”
“Some people hate other people just because their skin is a different color,” said Katie.
Aleta was quiet. She was still too young to realize how much she herself had changed.
“But someday,” Katie went on, “babies like William will be born, and they won’t know if they are black or white until somebody is unkind to them. Someday maybe babies will be born and it won’t matter what color their skin is.”
NIGHTMARE UPON NIGHTMARE
38
MEANWHILE, WHEN I WOKE UP IN THE MC-SIMMONSS’ icehouse, cold and cramped and hungry and thirsty, it was like waking up in the middle of a nightmare and discovering that the nightmare was still going on. My back was in such pain I could hardly move.
I thought about Katie and Emma and Aleta and whether they were safe, wondering what they were doing. It’s funny how you worry more about other people than yourself when you’re in danger. It seems you can be stronger for yourself, but you don’t want others to have to endure the same suffering.
I was suffering all right. My back hurt so bad I could hardly stand it. I couldn’t move a muscle in my whole body without wincing in pain. But I had been whipped before and I knew the pain would eventually go away. But I was so worried that somehow they’d know where to find Emma, that maybe they’d followed Katie home and were doing awful things to the rest of them too. My mind made up all kinds of terrible things I was afraid might be happening. And the worst of it was I couldn’t do anything to help. I had no idea they were all back at Rosewood waiting and worrying about me, and hoping every minute that I’d come riding in.
Sometime in the morning I heard voices above me, followed by the sound of someone fumbling with the lock. Then bright sunlight exploded around me as the icehouse door opened. A little white girl about ten or eleven climbed down the stairs and brought me a pitcher of water and a hunk of bread. She looked at me crumpled in a heap in the corner with that same expression I’d seen on white faces lately but had never noticed before—hatred.
Why would a little girl who had never seen me before hate me? I suppose I might have hated her back, but I couldn’t. The look she gave me hurt, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, ’cause I knew what that hatred was going to do to her inside—it was going to spoil all the good things that might have grown in her heart instead.
“Thank you,” I tried to say, but my throat was so dry my voice sounded like the croaking of a frog.
She just