The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart (4 page)

In all the commotion we’d completely forgotten about her. All this time I’d figured she was upstairs trying to keep William quiet.

“Aleta,” said Katie, “run upstairs and see if Emma’s in her room.”

Aleta dashed off and was back in less than a minute. “She’s nowhere up there, Katie,” she said.

Katie and I looked at each other as we realized where Emma had gone to hide.

“Oh … poor Emma!” cried Katie.

She jumped up and we hurried into the parlor. The rug was thrown back and one look would have told us where she was, but neither of us had been all the way into the house since coming back from the field, and Aleta hadn’t noticed.

I grabbed the door latch and pulled it open.

“Emma … Emma, are you down there!” called Katie into the cellar.

“Dat I is, Miz Katie,” came a voice from below. “Me an’ William’s safe an’ soun’.”

“You can come up now.—We have got to fill one of those old lanterns down there with oil,” she added to herself, “and put some matches down there too.”

A second or two later, Emma’s head appeared as she started up the ladder. She handed William up to Katie and then finished the climb and stepped out into the parlor. What Katie’s uncle, who had followed from the kitchen, thought when he saw his niece holding a little half-colored baby, and the once-proud plantation house of his sister’s family filled with two white girls and two black girls, it would be hard to say. And whatever those thoughts might have been, they could not have prepared him to see Katie give Emma a hug as her way of saying she was sorry she had had to stay down there so long.

Mr. Daniels just stood there for a few seconds taking in the sight, then slowly began to chuckle.

“Well, Kathleen,” he said, “you may have told me, but I must say this is quite a family you’ve got here! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It’s just a whole family of kids! I can’t believe you kept anyone from finding out all this time.”

Emma, who had been busy taking William back from Katie, hadn’t seen him standing in the kitchen doorway. At the sound of his voice, terror seized her and she started to bolt again, this time for the stairs.

“It’s all right, Emma!” called Katie. “This is my uncle. I’ve told him all about you.”

Emma paused and slowly came back toward the rest of us.

“This is Mr. Daniels, Emma,” Katie added. “He won’t do anything to hurt you.”

“Right pleased ter make yer acquaintence, Mister Daniels,” said Emma, trying to put on her politest tone for Katie’s sake. “Is you gwine take care ob us now?”

Her words hung in the air for several long seconds. I saw Katie glance toward the floor. It was the unspoken question she and I had been wondering all this time. Suddenly Emma had just blurted it out. Katie’s uncle seemed just as taken aback by the question as we were.

“I don’t know, uh … Emma,” he said after a moment. “Kathleen and I have a good many things to talk about.”

“Well, she’s ’bout the finest mistress in da whole worl’, dat’s all I got ter say,” Emma went on. And once Emma’s tongue got loosed, it was hard to stop it. “Miz Katie’s been takin’ care ob me, an’ she an’ Miz Mayme’s been so good ter me an’ my little William dat I don’ know how I’d eben stayed alive wiffout dem. An’ Aleta too, dey been takin’ real good care ob her too, ain’t dey, Aleta?” Aleta nodded, still not sure what to make of all this.

Mr. Daniels laughed lightly, his countenance starting to get back its color and the humor that Katie said always went along with it.

“Well, Emma,” he said, “I can see that Kathleen and, uh … Mayme here,” he added, glancing toward me, “must have been working mighty hard and doing a lot of things right to keep the four of you alive—” ‘

‘Da five ob us, Mister Daniels. Don’ forgit my William.” ‘

‘Yes, of course, the five of you … to keep you alive and well all this time. I’m sure everything you say is true. She tells me that all the rest of you were a big help too. But as I say, Kathleen and I will have to talk it all over to see what’s to be done now.”

His words finally silenced Emma, and none of the rest of us had anything to say. What he’d said seemed to carry exactly the kind of overtones Katie and I had been worrying about.

At last Katie broke the silence by jumping straight into the middle of it.

“Does Rosewood belong to you now, Uncle Templeton?” she asked.

If Emma’s question had hung heavy in the air, Katie’s words sobered her uncle all the more. I reckon the poor man was having a lot thrown at him at once. He’d just found out that his sister was dead and that his niece had been running the plantation with an assortment of kids and blacks. And now suddenly his own potential future had changed as much as ours.

He glanced around the room and saw eight eyes staring straight at him waiting for an answer. The prospect of Katie’s question and all it entailed made him squirm a bit. Funny as it is to say it about a grown-up, I suddenly saw that he was maybe just as uncertain about what to do and what would happen as we were. When you’re young you always figure that every grown-up is confident and never has doubts about things. But then when you start getting older yourself, you begin to realize that growing up doesn’t take all the doubts about life away.

Mr. Daniels looked at us all staring at him, then chuckled a little nervously.

“I don’t see how that could be, Kathleen,” he said. “I’m no kin to your pa.”

“Does it belong to Uncle Burchard, then?” Katie asked. “You won’t tell him, will you, Uncle Templeton?”

“I’ve never met your father’s brother. I only heard Rosalind mention him a time or two.”

“I don’t want to go live with him.”

“We’re not going to do anything until we have a chance to think this thing over a bit.”

“If anything’s going to happen, please stay yourself, Uncle Templeton,” said Katie. “We’d all work real hard, wouldn’t we?” she added, looking at the rest of us.

Nods and a flurry of
Yes’m, Miz Katie
s from Emma answered her question quickly enough.

Mr. Daniels laughed again at our obvious enthusiasm, though I could tell he was still squirming at the idea of it. Then he got serious.

“How old are you, Kathleen?” he asked.

“Fifteen, sir.”

“Hmm … I see. Well, that’s not going to help matters. If you were eighteen it might be different. But fifteen …” His voice trailed off and I couldn’t tell what he might be thinking.

“But Mayme’s sixteen,” said Katie hopefully.

Her uncle smiled. “I don’t think that will do much good,” he said, still reflecting on the matter. “No, that won’t change things. It’s blood relation that counts. And I’m afraid neither Mayme nor myself …”

Again his voice died away in a sigh. He turned and walked back into the kitchen.

The rest of us looked at each other with expressions of question and uncertainty. Slowly Katie followed him, then I followed her. We found her uncle sitting at the table in the kitchen just sitting there staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. He didn’t even glance up as we walked in.

“Uncle Templeton,” said Katie, “what should we do … now, I mean? What do you want us to do?”

Her words brought him out of his reverie.

He looked toward her, almost as if not understanding the question, or at least wondering why Katie would ask him what to do. It was clear enough that the notion of being responsible for other folks wasn’t a feeling he was altogether acquainted with and was something that made him feel uncomfortable.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “What you always do, I suppose—what you would do if I weren’t here.”

“It’s getting kind of late,” said Katie, glancing outside. “It will be dark soon. I guess we should fix some supper.”

She looked at me. I nodded, thinking that sounded like a sensible idea.

“And we need to bring the cows in and milk them,” I added. “Aleta and I will do that if you and Emma can fix supper. I think I hear the cows bellowing already.”

“After supper, Mayme and I will fix up Mama and Daddy’s room for you, Uncle Templeton,” added Katie, turning again toward her uncle.

But he hardly seemed to hear. He nodded and mumbled something about his horse, then got up and went outside. Gradually we all set about our chores. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I reckon it was a mite strange that he didn’t offer to help. In fact, he didn’t come back inside till late. By then the rest of us had already finished eating.

Katie fed him and took him to the room, and I saw nothing more of him that evening.

U
NSOUGHT
M
EMORIES

5

B
Y THE FOLLOWING MORNING A FEW BLACK
storm clouds were wandering in. They seemed almost fitting in light of the cloud of uncertainty that now hung over Rosewood and our future.

I was almost timid to go downstairs, wondering what I might find. But I found nothing so out of the ordinary. Katie had gotten up before me and she and her uncle were seated in the kitchen. He was drinking a cup of coffee and laughing. They both seemed in good spirits.

“Good morning, Mayme,” said Katie cheerfully.

“Kathleen has just been telling me,” her uncle said, “about your suspicious store owner in town—what’s her name?”

“Mrs. Hammond,” said Katie.

“Ah yes … Mrs. Hammond. It sounds like she has been one of the chief obstacles in your scheme.”

Whatever Mr. Daniels thought about me and Emma sleeping in two of Rosewood’s bedrooms, he didn’t say anything about it or give any indication that he minded sharing a house with us. In fact, I would have to say that he didn’t treat me any different at all. I couldn’t remember a white person ’sides Katie using the same tone of voice to me as they did when talking to whites. But he sounded just the same when speaking to me as when he spoke to Katie. It was almost as if he didn’t even notice that I was black.

“Uh … yes, sir,” I said. “She’s been a mite troublesome, that’s sure enough.”

“Well, she sounds like a woman I shall have to meet one day.—And I hear you and Kathleen chased away some men with guns who were snooping around here! You two have had some adventures, all right.”

“He says the gold was Uncle Ward’s, Mayme,” Katie added to me as I sat down.

“And do you know if he’s coming back for it, sir?” I asked.

“Naw … Ward’s dead, as far as I know,” he replied. “At least that’s what I heard. I haven’t seen him in years, and the last time I did there were men after him. I tried to pick up his trail several times, but it always went cold. Take the gold and use it, I say. He’s never coming back.”

“We already did,” said Katie. “But it was only about fifty dollars. That wasn’t enough to pay off Mama’s loan.”

“Hmm … I thought there was more. Those men sure think there is more,” he added.

“Why, do you know them, Uncle Templeton?”

“I’ve run into them a time or two—that is, if it’s the same bunch. They’re convinced I was in on it with Ward.”

“If there’d been more, we wouldn’t have had to pick the cotton,” said Katie. “But we earned over three hundred dollars, didn’t we, Mayme?”

Mr. Daniels whistled in astonishment. “That is a lot of money! It must have been hard work.”

“It was. But it was worth it because we had a hundred and fifty left over.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Most of it’s in the bank, except for small money we kept to buy things.”

They kept talking and I went outside for my necessaries and to get a fresh jug of milk from last night’s milking. When I got back, Katie was still in the kitchen, but her uncle had gone back upstairs. Katie and I looked at each other with expressions of
Well … what happens next?
but didn’t talk about anything much. We were a little quiet as we ate some bread and each drank a glass of milk, and as the day progressed just began to go about our regular chores and activities. Katie’s uncle kept mostly to himself, tended to his horse, washed a couple of his shirts, and shaved and did man-things like that.

Later in the day I heard him and Katie talking in the parlor. I’d just come into the kitchen from outside and was getting myself a glass of water. I heard their voices in the other room. The mood between them was serious, not at all like it had been around the breakfast table.

I didn’t want to intrude but couldn’t help overhearing. Whether it was right or wrong of me I don’t know, but I stood there and listened for a minute.

“… just needed a place to get away for a while,” her uncle had been saying as I came in, “… let the heat cool, so to speak.”

Then I heard Katie’s voice but couldn’t make out what she’d said. A light laugh, but without any humor in it, followed. “To tell you the truth, Katie,” her uncle said, “things have been a little rough for me lately.”

“Rough … what do you mean, Uncle Templeton?”

“Just that a man like me doesn’t always make friends, especially in my line of work.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

Mr. Daniels sighed. “Let’s just say that sometimes a man can try one too many schemes and it can come back to haunt him.”

“I don’t understand,” said Katie.

“Well, maybe it’s good you don’t. But there is more than one place where I have worn out my welcome, shall we say. I told you, those men have been hounding me too and …”