We both knew that when I got big enough to work in the fields he'd give me over to Mr. Stewart when he got mad. And Mr. Stewart would use a bullwhip on my bare back. He might even stretch my bones until I was dead.
We both knew that I was safe from Mr. Stewart until I grew big enough to pick cotton, so Mama Flore didn't feed me meat or milk so that I'd stay small and not have to go to work in the cotton fields.
I wasn't allowed in the big house. The only times I was ever there was when Big Mama sneaked me in so I could see how grand the white peoples' lives were.
So I lived in the barn my whole life until just before Tall John came to the plantation. In that time Big Mama Flore made my acquaintance with Mud Albert and Champ Noland. Mud Albert was the oldest slave on the plantation and Champ was the strongest. Champ once carried a full-grown mule across the yard in front of the mansion. Albert and Champ loved Big Mama and so they told her that they would take me under their wings when I had to go out in the slave quarters and live with the rough element out there.
I spent most of my time working hard and avoiding Master's angry attention. But it wasn't all hard work and beatings. The barn was very large and it had a little window at the very top for ventilation. When nobody was looking I used to climb up to that window and pretend that I was in the crow's nest of some great ship coming from Europe or Africa. I had heard about these ships from some of the slaves that had been brought in chains from across the seas and from some of the house slaves who had seen pictures of the great three-mast sailboats in books from Master's library.
I'd sit up there at the end of the day, watching while the slaves picked cotton in the fields, pretending that I was the lookout put up there to tell the captain when there was some island paradise where we could drop our anchor.
And sometimes, if I was very lucky, I would catch a glimpse of Miss Eloise Tobias's daughter.
Eloise. She was dainty and white as a china plate. Her
pale red hair and green eyes were startling. In my mind she was the most beautiful creature in all of Georgia.
When Eloise would come out to play I'd squeeze down behind the sill of the open window and watch. Even when she was alone she laughed while she played, swinging on her swing chair or eating sweets on the veranda.
Every time I saw her in the yard behind the Master's mansion I got a funny feeling all over. I wanted to go down there and be happy with her but I knew that a nigger like me wasn't allowed even to look at someone like Miss Eloise.
One day, when Eloise was sitting in her swing chair alone, I stuck my head out to see what she was doing. But I didn't realize that the sun was at my back and that it cast the shadow of my head down into Miss Eloise's lap.
She looked up, squinting at the sun, and said, "Who's up there?"
I ducked down under the windowsill but that didn't stop her from calling.
"Who's up there spying on me?" she cried. "Come out right now or I'll call my daddy."
I knew that if Miss Eloise called her father I'd get more than a whipping from Big Mama's razor strap. He might whip me himself until I was knocked out and bleeding like the slaves I'd seen him bullwhip while they were tied to the big wagon wheel in the main yard.
I stood up and looked out.
That was back before I met Tall John and he taught me about the word "nigger" and how wrong it was for me to use such a term.
"Yes'm, Miss Eloise?" I said. "I been workin' up here. Is it me you want?"
"You were spying on me," she said.
"No, ma'am," I assured her. "I's jes' workin'."
"Doin' what?"
If ever you tell a lie you should know where its goin That's what Mud Albert would tell me. I should have heeded those words before telling Eloise that I was at work. Because there was no work for a groom like me up in the high part of the barn.
"Breshin' the horses," I said lamely.
"There ain't no horses in the top'a the barn," she said, pointing an accusing finger at me. "You're malingering up there, ain't you, boy?"
"I's sorry," I said, near tears from the fear in my heart.
"Come down here," Eloise said in a very serious tone.
I climbed down the ladder from the roof and ran through the barn and to the yard, where the young white girl stood. She wore a yellow bonnet held under her chin by a red ribbon, and a yellow dress with a flouncy slip underneath the skirt. She was eleven years old and pretty as a child can be.
I came up to her with my head hanging down and my eyes on the ground.
"Yes'm?" I said.
"Were you spyin' on me, boy?"
"I was jes lookin', Miss Eloise. I didn't know you was down here."
"Why you lookin' at your feet?" she asked. "You know it's rude not to look at someone when you're talkin' to 'em."
"I ain't s'posed to look at you, ma'am. You's a white lady an' niggers ain't s'posed to look at white ladies."
It was true. Even Fred Chocolate, Master Tobias's butler, was not supposed to look at a white woman straight on.
"You were lookin' at me from up in the barn," she said.
"No, ma'am," I lied. "I mean I looked out but I didn't know that you was there."
"That's not true," she said.
"I swear it is," I said, still looking at my feet.
"Look up at me this instant, you insolent boy," she said
then.
I raised my head slowly. I had to look up because Eloise was elevated above me, on the porch. When I saw her face there was a big smile on it.
"Don't be scared," she said. "I won't tell."
My heart skipped at her kind words. I felt as if she were saving me even though it was her threats that I was afraid of.
"Do you want a molasses cookie?" she said.
"Yes, ma'am," I replied.
From a tin can on the swinging chair she brought out a big brown cookie. She knelt down in her pretty dress and handed it to me.
"Now run along," she said. "And don't worry, I won't tell that you were lookin'."
I ran back into the barn and up to my crow's nest. Mama Flore had let me taste the crumbs from cookies before but I never had a whole one, or even a proper piece. I sat up next to the window and ate my cookie, thinking of young Eloise.
I was hoping that somehow she would remember me and make me her page. That way I could always be near her and eat sugary cookies every night of the week.
That was all before I met Tall John and learned that no man or woman should serve another because that made them a slave.
2.
Time went by and I stayed pretty small. But even still Master Tobias one day told Flore that he reckoned I was old enough to begin the lifelong chore of picking cotton.
"Maybe a few months out workin' will make him grow into a man," I heard him say to Flore.
He told her that the next day he would send Mr. Stewart up to the barn with orders to drag me out to the slave quarters. I knew that I had to go, and Big Mama Flore had spent the night before talking and singing to me so that I wouldn't be so scared. But when that mean-eyed, rat-faced, red-necked Mr. Stewart came to take me I went into a fit of kicking and screaming. The whole time I kicked and shouted I worried that Mr. Stewart was going to take me out to the killin' shack for being so unruly. But as much as I was afraid to be stretched I was even more scared of the slave quarters.
Nothing I had ever heard about the slave quarters sounded good. It smelled bad in there and it was too hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. And every night they chained your feet to an eyebolt in the floor. The men out there were mostly angry and so they were always fighting or crying or just plain sad. But the worst thing they said about the slave quarters was that once you were there you stayed there for the rest of your life. You either worked in the field or you stayed chained in your bunk. And so I knew that once I went out there I'd never spend any time with Mama Flore again.