Family (5 page)

Peach slept on the floor at the foot of the bed. Loretta let her, even with her kind heart. See … sometimes you can think you are bein too good and Loretta needed to know she was the Mistress. Needed Peach to remember it. Cause sometimes when they played games together, Peach forgot and commanded Loretta to do things. There wasn’t nothin better that could get Loretta to remember Peach was, after all, a nigger, than to hear a command from Peach’s too full lips. Then too, Virginia might be round some corner or behind some curtain, watchin and listenin.

I watched and I saw my Peach was learning things to help her in her future, I thought, I hoped. I could see, if freedom came in time, before they sold her out to one of them sick-minded white men who does cruel things to women … she could be alright.

See … I could see some things in the future, but I could not see everything. God is the only One Who sees everything. I knew Sun would be
alright in lookin out for hisself if he could just keep takin in knowledge without nobody findin out. I hoped that knowledge wouldn’t make him no fool to speak up out of turn and cause him to lose his life. And Peach’s life. And Plum’s life. And my Always.

Now, it may seem as tho these children was doin alright and that bein slaves wasn’t hard to them cause they was makin some kind of way. But it is so hard to explain to anybody how each minute, each hour, each day had to be lived. Yes, you was fed, and clothed of a sort, you had a place to sleep. But count your own life and see, even with these important things taken care of, how much more there is to life. Would you exchange freedom for these small things given to you? No … not given … well paid for. If each minute could be your last even in this little measly way, if the next hour you could blong to somebody you ain’t never seen nor heard of … somebody more cruel, fierce, tricky, unfeelin, who really did think you was a animal and showed it with every move and word they did and said.

Now … I will tell you what I have seen and
noticed in life from where I am. There ain’t no two people, or very few, that you can put together and they be happy, even if they think each other is equals. Mothers, fathers, children, and every human bein on God’s earth have to work hard at gettin along with each other. Now just spose they didn’t feel like workin at it? Ain’t no two people who work a job together can get along more’n two days without one of them thinkin bad thoughts bout the other. Don’t care what color they are. People is human. You hear what I’m tellin you! Now put you on your job with your boss and give them all license to treat you just any way they want to … You see what I mean? The courts is full and will always be full of people and the grievances they put on each other til the end of our time.

Well … a slave didn’t have no court to go to. The Masters of the Land made the law … so the law could not hurt them. I bet you couldn’t live like a slave one hour even in a game. Well, my children was strugglin for survival in the day of no-win. Only slave. It was no game, it was their lives.

The day did come when Sun ran away. I followed him. That Loretta girl had give him some money she had been savin the hard way, cause the farm was not so prosperous now, the Master runnin round, and drinkin, cause he thought HE was unhappy at home. His home. Sun was most fifteen years old then, Loretta was sixteen. He passed for white and, in the end, it got good to him and he never passed back to his own mother’s color again. But, I done gone too far ahead of my story.

As all these other things was goin on, there was Always. Always was what you might call mean with responsibility. My daughter had tried to take my place in lookin after her brother and sisters. She scolded and fought them bout things they did, for their own safety. She was always tryin to keep Plum in hand, close to her.

Miz Elliz had asked for her to help in the child-keepin, so that was the work she did half the time. So she could be round her own family, you see? They let her, but that Ole Mistress said she was too young and strong to be just doin that kind of work, so she still had to do ALL her other duties at the same time. Her hard work grew so sometimes
that chile only got two or three hours sleep a night.

I watched my children, always prayin, to keep them from the beatins, punishments, hunger, grief and misery that is soul and core of the life of a slave. To see my, or any child workin, slavin in that hot, heavy sun that falls on your life like a big ole weight.

Diggin in ground hard and full of weeds, snakes, and scorpions. To pull and drag things that strip the hands of flesh, make them to bleed. To never look up and say “Tomorrow … I can rest. This evenin, I can rest.” To bury hands to the shoulders in hot water boiling over a fire, filled with lye soap, to wash another person’s dirt, for no pay and no thanks. To cook and serve, sick or well, serve people that don’t care how you feel, never think of what is in your mind, in your heart. Them white people made hate. They made hate just like they had a formula for it and followed that formula down to the last exact gallon of misery put in. Well … that’s what they made and that’s what they got.

I’m tell you this. There was still some, a few,
of them real niggas that loved them white folks! Loved them. Was proud of any job they had that would make them close to the Master. That they looked down on another slave just like them, as if they, themselves, was better cause they was close to the Master of all this misery. It’s some folks out there, in your world, right now, today, are like that. All colors. Watch them … cause they are fools. To kiss the hand with the whip in it … and scorn the hand of friendship with somebody like yourself … is a sign of insanity … to me. Now, I ain’t sayin be no fool.… What I am sayin is … don’t be no fool.

Now other people ain’t no fool all the time either. Young Mistress noticed that Sun didn’t walk and work like he had no hope, like he was in some misery all the time now. She watched Loretta closer. Natural it come up, in time, that Sun was goin to be sold. Sides that, things wasn’t goin too well on that farm. Land dryin up, wearin out. Slaves gettin old. So many cost so much to keep up. The talk of war which was sittin right on the tail of the South made slaves hard to deal with at that time. And people, white people didn’t take
to slaves what was too light round there. Had to go down to New Orleans if you wanted to sell them.

Old Mistress was fussin and carryin on bout all the money the farm was losin with no good care, even while she ate her pecan fudgies, baked ham and chicken and rich stuffs. But it didn’t do no good with her son. She was so big and fat now, she didn’t hardly come out the house so she couldn’t see everything. But she knew there was sposed to be money out there in them fields and in them niggers.

What Old Mistress didn’t know was her son had picked up a dis-ease on one of them trips to somewhere tryin to sell some of the slaves. He had passed it round to some of his own women slaves at home. Them slaves didn’t know when they had nothin … so wasn’t nobody tryin to cure nobody. So sides all the money bein lost, other things—meanin money—was bein lost too! Oh, things was really goin down.

That’s when the special trip was planned for to go to New Orleans to sell more slaves, more human hearts. Loretta knew Sun was goin to go if
he stayed there til the coffle left. As time had passed she felt of him more like a brother. I don’t know why, or what was really in her heart, cause she didn’t pay no mind to my other children too much, sides Peach, and that’s cause Peach worked good for her.

Loretta gathered money, much as she could squeeze and “borrow” out of her mama and grandmother. That chile took some of her father’s best clothes and a satchel. She got, someway lyin, Sun to carry her to the town in that carriage her mama had begged for and got. She bought Sun his ticket, helped him dress, and put him on a boat. She waved her hankerchief good-by to her “brother.” He promised he would write and let her know everything, using the name “Mr. Freer.” Wasn’t they just children?

But her daddy, his daddy, had him taken off at the very next stop. Somebody had seen and told. Probably somebody was a slave. Maybe not.

Anyway, Loretta got excused with a scoldin cause “that nigga had fooled her with his lyin tongue.” Sun got a hundred lashes with a whip what had metal tips on it. Got rubbed down with
salty brine and cayenne pepper. Got chained to the plow, night and day, to pull right on long with the mule. Ate only bread and water for thirty days. Hadn’t been for Always sneakin him out some fruit Loretta had given her, now and then, that boy woulda died. Oh, and the care and medicine she put on him at night when she should have been restin from her work. She would fuss with him, then cry with him and hug him and call my name, “Mama … mama.”

When he came off that, almost dead, Ole Mistress said he needed cleanin out from all them runnin ideas. She gave him a dose of castor oil and more cayenne pepper to clean his insides out. They almost tore my boy’s insides out! Oh God, oh, God. How he made it, I do not know. I really do not know.

Three months after that, they tried again, Sun and Loretta. Only this time they darken his skin with somethin and he “passed” for Black. They wrapped his better clothes and things up in a large neat package and she told the train conductor he was takin a package to her brother in a city, was headin up North, and that her brother would meet
him and send ole Joe back, “to be sure and see that ole Joe got there alright.”

Ole Joe was bent over, couldn’t hardly talk and just set all the way with his hat pull down mos over his face, sleepin. Sun’s last words to Loretta was that he would write soon as he saw “Mr. Freer,” and to take care of Peach. He didn’t say “all” his sisters cause I guess he didn’t want to weigh too heavy on the little lady who was helpin him to freedom. He knew Loretta didn’t like Peach so much cause he did love her. Well, sometime jealousy gets in even a kind heart.

I don’t need to tell you what all went on when they found that Sun was gone, this time for good. They advertised, they sent patrollers, they did all what they could with as little money as they could. They almos rather spend money tho, then have a slave out-do em. They watched Loretta, but she was so mean, slappin and carryin on with Peach, they stopped suspectin her havin anything to do with it this second time. Peach caught hell.

Bout six months later Sun’s first letter came. Said it was from “Reverend” and they knew Sun
couldn’t write, so nobody paid no mind to it, don’t ask me why. He spoke so much bout how Peach could join him and he could take care of her til she found work and all like that, didn’t say nothin bout Loretta, cept thanks.

It’s the strangest things come outta life sometime. Loretta got her mama to get her daddy to sell Peach. My baby Peach! Peach was sold. Wasn’t hard cause she was pretty and with the good food from the big house, she had a well-formed body, even bein so young.

A man from somewhere cross the waters bought her, was rich. Now I can make this short. Peach was not no fool. She had fooled round in that big house and read them few books they had, much as she could. She had read somethin bout them Rabian Nights what had told her somethin bout men and women. Peach was scared, didn’t know nothin bout life but from that farm and them few books Loretta lowed her to read. But Peach worked on that man. He bought her nice things to wear and she looked good in em, so he bought her nicer things, beautiful things. She could cook,
set a table, speak sweet and soft, and be quiet when she didn’t know what she and anybody else was talkin bout.

Now, the man had had a wife was a little older than him when he bought Peach. Don’t know why, maybe it was natural, but that wife didn’t live much more than seven or eight months from the time he brought Peach home. That man took Peach and moved back to Scotland or somewhere over there and … married her! Married my Peach.

I was tryin to watch my children, my blood, but it was gettin all spread out. Now some of my black blood was in Scotland somewhere. I understand tho, I understand. Peach used the only things she had to work with to escape the life of a slave. She changed her name to Peachel and pronounced it Pe-SHEL.

Now. I had wanted to stay round and watch my family blood, see my family grow, if it could survive slavery. And it was growin. But it was growin in so many different lands and colors. I wouldn’ta recognized my own children’s children,
my own blood, if I hadda met them comin down the street right in front of my face.

Years later, when Peach’s, well, Peachel’s grandchildren was all round her and some were darker than the others, they ask her “Why?” That ole Peach just laughed and told em, “Cause I’m from America! We are all colors in America! And you are American because I am!” She never told the whole truth, but she never really tried to hide it or was fraid of it either. “Your grandmother, my mother, would have loved you.” That’s all she ever told them bout me.

Being rich, their children, Peach’s and her husband, went to college. Became things like doctors, lawyers, judges, and married doctors, lawyers, judges. Even into royalty. My blood ran like it was let loose from a stream into the river, into the ocean. It ran. It ran from the French wife Sun married, through his four children to theirs. Ran into the world, hidden, but THERE. But, I am ahead of my story again.