The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (30 page)

It was so confusing! I had never felt such things before. Now a thousand emotions were tumbling about inside me all at once!

Gradually my thoughts stilled and my heart quieted.

Maybe it was fearsome and confusing to grow up, I thought. But there was a part of it that was a little exciting too. Right then the grief and guilt and fear in my heart were so strong I couldn’t feel much of anything else. Yet I knew I didn’t want to go back either. I didn’t want to be the little slave girl again. If pain and grief were part of growing up, maybe I had to learn to face them, and learn from them … and be strong because of them.

I sat for a long time staring into the river, not so much thinking anymore how the river was like
death
but how it was like
life
—how it kept rolling along and how life kept bringing one new thing after another.

I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when I heard a sound behind me.

I turned. It was Jeremiah coming across the field. I stood up and smiled. He walked up the bank.

“How’d you know where to find me?” I said.

“I watched you go w’en you lef ’.”

Without any more words he took me in his arms. We stood for a minute or two, just stood there quietly. I felt at peace, almost like his embrace was an answer to the turmoil I had been feeling a short time earlier. I don’t know why, but I sensed he understood something of what was going on inside me without my needing to say it. It was more than just our both being black. It was deeper than that.

We sat down together. Jeremiah took my hand and we sat, just staring into the river, neither of us saying a word.

With death pressing upon us so close, it was a solemn time.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, gradually another sound intruded into my ears. I was so content, and starting to get drowsy again, that at first I didn’t recognize it as meant for me.

I kept staring at the water below us, but as the sound gradually got louder and louder, slowly Jeremiah turned his head and glanced back over the fields.

Someone was running toward us.

“Mayme … Mayme!”

Now I heard it too. I turned and looked back toward the house in the distance.

It was Katie!

“Mayme!” she cried, now taking a shortcut from the way I had come and running straight across the field of dirt.

My heart seized with dread. I feared it had finally happened.

Jeremiah and I stood and hurried down the embankment.

“Mayme!” Katie cried again as she got nearer. “Come … hurry. He’s awake!”

I left Jeremiah’s side and ran toward her. I slowed when Katie and I met, but only long enough to make sure that I had heard her right. The look of joy on her face was all the answer I needed!

I dashed off toward the house, leaving Katie out of breath and hurrying to catch up with me.

A N
EW
B
EGINNING

46

I
FLEW INTO THE HOUSE AND RAN STRAIGHT FOR
the parlor.

There he was with his eyes open. A little color had returned to his cheeks.

Emma and Aleta were standing on the other side of the room, a little timid to get too close. They still weren’t quite sure whether he was going to die or not.

“Where’ve you been, little girl?” he said as I knelt down beside him, a huge smile on my face. “I’ve been asking everyone where you were.”

His voice was soft and weak, but I detected the hint of a smile on his lips.

“Oh, Papa!”

“What’s all this—I thought the tears were all done!”

“Almost!” I laughed—laughing and crying at the same time. “I’m sorry. I was just so afraid. I thought—”

“That I was going to die? Naw … I’m not going to die! I told you that you and I were going to have a long talk, and that I was going to take you to Charlotte. And from now on, I intend to be a man who keeps his promises.

I told you, I’m not about to lose you now.”

I couldn’t help laughing again through my tears. I was so happy!

“But I am about as thirsty as I’ve ever been in my life,” he said. “How does a man get a drink around here?”

I jumped up and ran into the kitchen and pumped a glass of water. I ran back so fast I think I spilled half of it on the floor.

“And help me sit up,” he groaned. “I’m sick of lying here.”

I put one arm around his shoulders and tried to ease him up as he struggled forward. But he winced in pain from the effort.

“Aagh … ow—it hurts! What happened to me, anyway?”

“You got shot, Papa,” I said. “You got shot saving Katie’s life.”

“Did I, now? Well, that sounds mighty heroic! Seems I do remember something about chasing her out of the house when suddenly everything went black.”

“Can you sit up a little more and I’ll give you a drink of water.”

With my arm still around him, he managed to lean forward enough for me to get the glass to his lips.

“Ah, Mary Ann … that feels good,” he said as he sipped at it. I tipped the glass higher until he managed to drink down the whole thing. “I need more. I’m parched!”

Within minutes all of us were clustered around, all talking at once and trying to help him get comfortable and dashing upstairs for pillows and blankets and running into the kitchen for water and asking what he wanted to eat and scurrying and bustling about in a beehive of chatter and activity.

How suddenly life had returned to Rosewood!

“My, oh my,” he said, laughing lightly, “I don’t know if all this attention is good for me!”

“It be good fer us, Mr. Daniels!” said Emma. “We all thought you wuz gwine ter die, an’ it’s been so quiet roun’ here I jes’ about cudn’t stan’ dat silence no mo!”

Emma’s words filled the whole room with laughter!

That evening, after we had gotten him into a new clean shirt of Katie’s daddy’s, he tried to stand up. But he was too weak and lightheaded to last more than a few seconds. But when he started to eat he quickly began to gain his strength back.

In another few days he was on his feet on and off throughout the day, though still weak and had to stay in bed a good part of the time. By then he was eating like a horse and drinking gallons of water and coffee and was joking and laughing just like his old self. Dr. Jenkins came back out, changed the dressing and bandage again, and pronounced himself amazed at the rapid recovery, though every time he came we had to go into our pretending again about Katie’s mama still being around.

Katie, now the practical one and acting more and more like the mistress of a plantation every day, was the first to bring up the loan again.

“Uncle Templeton,” she said one day, “Mama’s loan is due next week. What are we going to do?”

“I’ll go and see that banker of yours,” he said. “I’ll tell him everything.”

Katie looked away and he saw the look of hesitation on her face.

“What is it?”

“I … I’m just not sure I want everyone in town to know yet,” she said. “I’m still a little nervous about what might happen.”

Her uncle thought a minute.

“I understand,” he said. “By the way, whatever happened to the gold?”

“It was still just lying out on the ground,” answered Katie. “I picked up most of it, though there’s some dirt mixed in with it.”

“Three hundred dollars’ worth?”

“I don’t know—I think so. Do you want to see?”

“Let’s have a look.”

Katie brought the bag from where she had been keeping it in one of the drawers of the parlor sideboard. Her uncle took it, felt it in his hand, and looked inside.

“Three hundred dollars easy,” he said. “Probably five or six. Tell you what … I’ve got a few connections in Charlotte. Let’s hitch up your best wagon. I propose that we all go into Charlotte—all five of us—”

“Dere be six ob us, Mr. Daniels,” said Emma. “Don’t fergit my William!”

“Six of us indeed!” he laughed. “I propose, then, that the
six
of us go into Charlotte. We shall sell the gold there for cash to take care of your mama’s obligation with the bank. And if I might be permitted to borrow twenty or thirty dollars from the proceeds, Kathleen, which I will pay back along with what I owe your mama’s cigar box,” he added with a wink, “I would like to buy my four young ladies all brand-new dresses!”

The room erupted in celebrations and shouts of anticipation.

“But can you, Papa,” I said, “can you ride that far?”

“You keep pouring food into me for another few days and I’ll be fit for anything!”

“And
you
need a new ruffled shirt, Uncle Templeton,” said Katie. “The one you were wearing got too much blood on it. I threw it away.”

“A new shirt it is!”

He paused and a strange look came over his face.

“But …” he added after a moment, “no more ruffled shirts for Templeton Daniels.”

“Why not, Uncle Templeton? I would hardly recognize you in anything else.”

He laughed with delight.

“The fact is, Kathleen,” he said, growing serious again, “I want to put the past behind me, poker and ruffled shirts and running from my responsibilities. I want to make a new beginning … it will be a new beginning for all of us.”

“Then what kind of shirt will you wear?” I laughed. I couldn’t imagine him in anything but fancy clothes either.

“A good sturdy work shirt, Mary Ann,” he said. “If I’m going to become a Shenandoah County farmer and cotton grower, I have to look like one. And just maybe we’ll get a pair of work trousers and boots to go with the work shirt.—What do you think, Kathleen?” he added, glancing toward Katie. “May I borrow enough for that too?”

“There wouldn’t be anything if it weren’t for you, Uncle Templeton. You saved Rosewood. It’s yours just as much as it is mine. It’s all of ours
together
.”

“Thank you, Kathleen. And our being together … that’s all we need, if you ask me.”

We were all so excited about the trip to Charlotte we began making plans immediately. None of us could talk about anything else. Papa even said he knew of a hotel where he had stayed a few times that allowed colored folks inside that he would take us to, and where we would eat dinner in a fancy restaurant and even spend the night. I couldn’t imagine that anything could sound more exciting!

And it was too. We had the time of our lives!

The morning after we returned from Charlotte six days later, Katie was up early preparing to go to town. She’d convinced Papa that his going would only raise more unwanted questions than if she went herself. But we did ask Jeremiah to come out and ride in with her. She didn’t want to go all that way to the bank alone carrying over three hundred dollars in cash money.

As soon as the buggy was out of sight, Papa left the yard where we had been standing watching them go. He walked out past the barn, then toward the field where we had planted the cotton. He walked slowly, like he was looking at everything for the first time. He looked so different in his new work clothes.

I watched him as he stooped down in the middle of the dirt to examine the tiny little shoots of green that were just starting to pop through the soil.

It was wonderful to see. It was indeed like watching a new beginning, just like he’d said—a new beginning inside a person.

After about a minute I walked after him. He heard me coming, stopped and waited, then stretched out his arm and pulled me to his side as we continued on.

“Well, Mary Ann,” he said, “I think it’s time you show me around this place so that as soon as Kathleen gets back we can decide what’s to be done.”

Katie did get back several hours later, laughing and happy and with stories to tell about Mr. Taylor’s surprise when she’d plopped that three hundred and fifty dollars down on his desk—in cash this time!—and all the questions he’d asked. By then Papa and I had walked around Rosewood, as much as he could, and I’d had the chance to say a lot of the things I wanted to say to him. I was happy too, though in a different way than Katie.

We both had been given back something we’d thought we’d lost.

She had her plantation. But I had been given back something even better.

I had my father.

E
PILOGUE