A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton by Michael Phillips

Author:Michael Phillips [Phillips, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction, Fiction, General, Christian, Religious, Historical, Female friendship, ebook, North Carolina, Teenage Girls, Christian fiction, Orphans, Race relations, Plantation Life, Reconstruction, Clairborne; Kathleen (Fictitious Character), Jukes; Mary Ann (Fictitious Character), Reconstruction (U.S. History; 1865-1877)
ISBN: 9780764227011
Publisher: Bethany House
Published: 2003-04-30T22:00:00+00:00

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 men uncles. They’re the ones who told the old stories that they’d heard when they were young from the uncles before them.”

“Were you really a slave, Mayme?”

“Yes I was, Aleta.”

“Was it hard?”

“Real hard.”

“Why aren’t you a slave now?”

“ ’Cause some bad men killed my family, and I ran away and came here. Miss Katie … Miss Katie’s family,” I added, feeling a twinge of guilt as I said it, “they took me in and let me stay here and work for them. After that, I found out all the slaves had been set free.”

“What kind of men were the bad men?” she asked. “Were they white or colored?”

“They were white men.”

“My daddy says whites are better than coloreds.”

“He’ll find out someday that’s not true, Aleta,” I said. “All white folks have to find that out sometime. Where does your daddy live?”

She shrugged and didn’t answer.

“Is it far away from here?”

“Pretty far.”

“How long had you and your mama ridden before you fell?”

“I don’t know—maybe an hour.”

“Was your daddy chasing you?”

“I think so. Mama kept looking back.”

“Well, Aleta,” I said, “whites can be just as bad as coloreds. And coloreds can be just as bad as whites—if there’s not love in their heart. That’s what makes folks different, not the color of their skin. Some folks have love in their hearts, others don’t.”

She was still young, but I think she understood what I’d said. She seemed to be thinking about it anyhow.

“My daddy doesn’t have love in his heart,” she said.

I didn’t think I’d ever heard anything so sad for a girl to say about her father. It almost made me cry. I waited a minute, then spoke again.

“Do you want to hear about Mr.

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