The Emancipation of Robert Sadler (2 page)

A streak of sunlight shone on Ella's face and on her dusty corn-rowed hair as she laughed and wriggled in Mama's lap. She was two years old that day. Mama had saved up and bought some fresh fruit from the white folks' fruit stand about a mile down the road, a pear and a peach for everybody. We had eaten the fruit happily and eagerly for breakfast with the whole family. There were eleven of us children, though all were not living at home then, and I was the tenth.

We laughed as Mama tickled Ella's toes and kissed us both. Her white teeth shone as she laughed and sang to us. She was the warmth and brightness of our lives.

Our birthday fun together soon ended when Father's large figure appeared in the doorway. He was over six feet tall and his eyes always had a little bit of rage in them. Whenever he appeared, we children had a way of disappearing. We were never sure what kind of mood he'd be in. This day he was in a bad mood and Ella and I scurried outside. We could hear him in the cabin cursing and yelling at Mama. We knew there'd be no more singing that night and Ella's birthday would not be mentioned again.

Our small three-room shanty was on a large plantation south of Anderson, South Carolina, about a quarter of a mile off the road. Our cabin was built of pine board and leaned slightly to one side. Its wooden window frames had no screens or glass, and inside there were no ceiling or floor coverings. During the day we could see the chickens running underneath the house and at night we could see the stars through the boards of the roof. We had a barn of unpainted wood for our mule and buggy, a chicken coop, and a pigpen for the pig, when we had one.

Mama cooked over the fireplace at one end of the kitchen. There was a long wooden table with a bench on either side in the center of the room. The straight-backed chair Father sat in was in one corner, Mama's rocking chair was by the fireplace, and along the wall was the cupboard with wooden doors that swung open. An old wooden box and the butter churn made up the rest of our furniture. Pots and pans hung from nails on the wall. Even with two windows in the room, it was never very bright. The sun seemed to shine in for a few feet and then stop, like it had better things to do.

“I'm hongry!” my father snapped. We could hear Mama's quick movements getting his supper on a plate. There was hot corn bread baking in the ashes near the fire and fatback frying in the skillet. She rarely answered Father back, even if he was in a good mood.

Ella and I were sitting close together burying our toes in the dirt alongside the house when we heard a loud smack from inside. Then there was a tumbling, and we held our breath. Father had hit Mama and knocked her down. We crawled under the house to be outside his reach when he came out of the house. As I sat in the darkness underneath the house, I fought tears of fright and anger. Even though I was just a small child, I wanted to jump up and defend Mama.

It was not long before Father had finished eating and was fixing to leave again.

We could hear Mama pleading with him, “Please stay home, honey. Don't go out again tonight. . . .” When he went out his pay went with him. His curses rang through the air, and soon he stomped out of the cabin and was walking up the road. That night in our bed on the floor we could hear Mama's soft crying coming from the room next to ours where she slept. By morning Father still wasn't home and there was no food for the table.

The days and nights continued like that—Father ranting and Mama crying. On the rare nights he stayed home, he'd be drunk.

Two of my brothers had moved into town to find jobs, my sisters Ada and Janey were hired out, my brothers Leroy and Johnny were day workers on the plantation where we lived, and Pearl and Margie helped Mama work the land we rented and with the work at home. With everybody working, that left Ella and me to ourselves most of the time.

We usually played together in the dirt outside our cabin, or we'd play near wherever Mama was working. In the autumn when most of the family was picking cotton for the white farmer in his fields, Ella and I played at the edge of the field Mama was in. It was a happy sight to see Mama coming for us at noontime. We'd go home and she'd cook the noon meal and then return to the field until quitting time. Sometimes we'd eat lunch in the field, and always, no matter where it was, Mama bowed her head and thanked the Lord for the food. One day as we sat at the edge of a small grove of trees eating our lunch, Mama looked at me soberly and said, “Robert, some day you learn to read, hear? Then you set down and read to me from the Bible.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

It was nearly hopeless for me to learn to read. Not many of the blacks in our area ever got a chance to go to school. But the way Mama was looking at me, I knew it was important and that I should take her words seriously.

There were other workers' children playing with us while we waited in the fields for our mamas. Many of the families who sharecropped worked their own land as well as the white man's they rented from. That was one of the reasons we couldn't go to school.

In the mornings everyone in our cabin was up before daybreak. The older children got up and fed the mule. Mama fed the pig and the chickens. Then on certain days there'd be the washing done outside in the big pots in the yard. Everybody would come in for breakfast by sunup, and then they'd be leaving for the field, where they worked all day.

My sisters Pearl and Margie especially wanted to go to school. They begged and begged Mama to find a way to let them to go school. One day after they had done their morning work, Mama announced she had made arrangements for them to go to the little Negro school about two and a half miles away. My sisters were so excited they danced and jumped around the cabin until I thought we might fall through the cracks in the floor. There was much singing and laughter in the cabin that morning as they got ready.

Each sister had one dress, and after they finished their work, they'd stick their heads in the rain barrel outside and then rush inside and put on their dresses. I watched them hurry out of the house and begin the two-and-a-half-mile walk down the road to school. Mama would holler after them, “Be sure'n be home about 10:30 so's to knock down cotton stalk!”

In a few hours they'd be home, and the first thing they would do would be to wash their dresses in the basin and hang them over the chair to dry before the fire until they'd take the smoothing iron the next morning and iron them for wearing. They came home with stories of danger and adventure nearly every day.

“The big white school bus fly by so fast we almost got runned over.” They'd be grey with dust, their hair and clean dresses ruined with dirt. “Mama, why they do us like that?”

“Girls, listen to me. There ain't no dirt can grieve us til they buries us. And when that day come, we rise up on the glory side—so there ain't no use to grumblin. Go wash up now.”

One morning they came home crying so terribly I thought maybe the white children had beat on them. It was worse than that. They had been walking up the dusty road the two and a half miles to school when the white farmer we rented from approached Father.

“Whar those chillren of yors goin, Jim?”

“They's goin to school, jes like yors.”

“Oh no they ain't, Jim.
My
chillren is goin to school, yor chillren is goin to the field!”

From the look on his face, Father knew that he'd better send his children to the man's field. Though they worked for nothing, he knew if they didn't some mighty bad things could happen to him.

“Git out the field, chillren,” he said.

The crying lasted about a week. They never went back to school again because soon they were doing Mama's work too. She didn't have much energy, and she seemed to be having trouble catching her breath. Some days she could hardly get out of bed. But she went to work in the field nearly every day.

Ella and I played in the clearing during the day with the other children too young to work the fields, waiting for our mamas to come for us. One day when we saw her coming for us, her forehead and fine high cheekbones shone with sweat. Her small but strong body stooped low and her walk was slow. As she drew near to us a broad smile spread across her face. We ran to her arms and kissed her wet face. Mama's health was getting worse. Her breathing was more labored and she looked like she was in pain. I began to feel protective of her, and I worked hard at cleaning, sweeping, and feeding the chickens. My older sisters were working with Mama in the field so it was just Ella and me in the house.

One night Leroy and Johnny moved out of the cabin to join the other brothers and get jobs. Mama said good-bye to them tearfully. As she embraced them, she looked as though she wanted to tell them something—something special, something that would make sense of everything and give it all a purpose and meaning. But instead she kissed them each quickly and said, “The Lord watch over you.”

When they were gone, and the house was still, Mama sang to us. It was as though she was praying. She was part Indian and usually wore her long black hair in braids tied around her head. This night her hair hung loose and fuzzy around her shoulders, and I thought she looked like an angel. The other children must have thought so too, for we all sat real quiet, watching and listening as Mama sang to us. We joined in, too, and sang until it was time to go to bed.

Jesus, shine your light, shine shine shine . . .

As tender and loving as Mama was, Father was mean. His disposition was growing worse and worse. He came home that night drunk as usual. I heard him call for Mama. I crawled off the bed and watched from the shadows. He was teetering on his feet and in an ugly mood. Mama got out of bed and came into the kitchen where he stood. Without a word he raised his arm and struck her a blow across the head, and she was sent sprawling to the floor.

I ran across the room with a scream and grabbed a stick. I leaped at my father and beat his legs with all my might. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed at him. “Don't you hit Mama!”

Before I knew it, he had me dangling from his hand in the air. Then with a howl he hurled me the length of the cabin into the wall, knocking me unconscious.

Mama fussed over me for a couple of days, and I ached and hurt everywhere. She was afraid something had been broken inside my head because of the lump and bruises.

Mama's health continued to grow worse. By cotton-picking time she was unable to rise up out of the bed. She cried often for her children. I would hear her in the bed as I brought in the wood in the morning.

“O Lord, have mercy. Have mercy. Take care of my chillren, Lord.”

“Where you goin, Mama?” I would ask her.

“Son, you gonna have to be mighty strong, hear? Yor Mama's goin home soon.”

“Goin home? But you
are
home, Mama.”

“No, son. Mama means home in heaven. With the Lord—that's real home.”

“You leavin us, Mama?”

“I believe so, son.”

She had that look in her eye again—that look as though she had something very important to say. Something that would explain everything. Like why Father was so cruel, and why things were the way they were—things like that.

“Lord, have mercy,” she said instead.

I was sweeping out the cabin one afternoon and it began to rain. We dreaded rain because it poured in on everything, and the cabin was like a sieve. Work in the fields went on rain or shine. Mama lay on her bed with the rain dripping down on her pillow by her head. I stood near her bed watching her. She lay wheezing in the darkness of the afternoon, and I was afraid she might have been serious about leaving us and going to her real home. The cabin had been so gloomy since she took sick that there was little joy anywhere. Even Ella, who was always happy and laughing, became grave and sullen. There was no singing anymore without Mama to sing with us, and one day followed the other like a string of cold stones. The neighbor ladies prepared hot onion and potato soup and sarsaparilla and sage tea for Mama. They laid long strands of green and brown grasses on her chest, and they prayed.

It rained for three days. Father took Janey, Pearl, and Margie to the field with him, and Ella and I stayed in the cabin with Mama until they came home at night. Ella got a fever and had to stay in bed, so I sat by myself on the step watching the rain and waiting for Mama to wake up.

At the end of the third day of rain, I heard Mama calling for Father from her bed. “Jim . . . Jim . . .” Her voice was weak. I ran to her. “. . . Your father, honey. Git your father.” She was gasping like she had been running hard and couldn't catch her breath.

“Yes, Ma'am,” I said and raced out of the cabin to get my father. When I found him in the barn bent over a broken wagon wheel I shouted almost hysterically, “Mama! Mama! It's Mama! She wants you! She's real sick, Father! She's callin for you!” He didn't even look up as he worked. Finally he muttered, “I can't come, boy. Gotta finish this here busted axle.”

By the time Father arrived at Mama's bedside that evening, she had slipped into unconsciousness. She never spoke or opened her eyes again. In another day she was dead.

The days which followed were a daze. The funeral was held in a little church on the hill about a mile away. I saw her lying in the box they had built, and I wanted to scream, “Mama, get up. Get up! Mama, why you lyin there like that?”

The only one of the family who wasn't at the funeral was Ella. She was still sick. A friend of Mama's sat with her during the service giving her catnip tea on a spoon. The little church was crowded with Mama's friends and some of our relatives. My older brothers were there, brothers I had hardly even seen. I stared at them, wondering what life off the farm could be like. Did they know how to read and write? There were many things I wanted to ask them, but as it was I didn't get a chance to speak with them at all because they left right after the service. I don't think they were even aware that I was their little brother. They didn't even wait for the lemonade and sugar cookies that came later.