Her children had been sold off right after they were born and so Eighty-four had turned sour.
Her hands were rougher than my burlap shirt and I hardly understood a word she said.
Eighty-four had lived almost her whole life out among the slaves in the women's cabin and had nothing to do with white folks except for Mr. Stewart and his cruel work-hands. Me and Champ and especially Mama Flore spent time learning how the white people talked and acted.
To tell you what Eighty-four looked like poses a peculiar problem for me. This is because I remember her in two very different ways. The first was the way I saw Eighty-four as a scared slave boy looking upon a big, angry, black girl. She never smiled or uttered a kind word. She never once asked how I felt or if I needed help. She was, as I said, black like I am black very dark. And back then, in the days of Negro degradation, white people either laughed at our color or, even worse, felt sorry for us because of our obvious ugliness and inferiority. In my childhood being black meant poverty, slavery, and all things bad. I was, before Tall John came, ashamed of my color and of everyone who looked like me. And so when I first looked upon Eighty-four I was afraid and disgusted.
But when I remember her now there's a wholly different image in my mind's eye. Eighty-four was tall and slender with high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes. Her skin was a dark black that had depth to it like the night sky. In later years I had the pleasure of seeing her laugh many times and so I know her teeth were ivory of color and powerful. Eighty-four was beyond good-looking, beyond beautiful she was regal.
I know her beauty now, but when I first laid eyes on her she was a fright to me.
"Bes' scurry n' hump," were Eighty-four's first words to me.
"What?" I asked.
She replied by pinching my arm till it hurt terribly and repeated the words, pulling a cotton boll and pushing it into her big burlap bag.
I learned right away to watch her gestures as she spoke. That way I could keep from getting pinched. As it was the place where she tweaked me hurt for over a week.
It was dark when we started but it was hot too. I pulled cotton for a long time, cutting my hands more than once on the tough husks of the pods. I wasn't bothered by the cuts at first because my shoulder still hurt pretty bad.
The moment they started working the slaves began to sing. They sang songs that were not in English and they sang songs that were hymns learned from the monthly service that the traveling Negro minister, Brother Bob,
delivered. Bob was one of the few free Negroes in the county who was at liberty to move about. There were a few other freed slaves around that had little cabins. These were favored slaves who got too old to work or were granted their freedom because of some brave act they committed. Usually they saved their Master or one of the Master's children from death.
Most slaves prayed that the Master would have some accident so that they could run in and save him.
"Or at least he could die," many a man-slave would say, "so then I wouldn't have no master to do me so."
Eighty-four thumped me on the ear while I was having these thoughts.
"Dey callin'," she said angrily. And then I heard it. "Forty-seven!" It was Mud Albert. I cut out at a run.
It was full morning by then. The sun was up and five kinds of birds were chattering in the trees. I took the high road because it had fewer sharp rocks. I was in pain from the brand on my shoulder, cut feet, and lacerated hands. It hurt where Eighty-four had pinched me and I was bone tired from the hard work of picking cotton. But even with all that I was still happy to be running in the late morning sun. When I came upon Mud Albert he was sitting on a barrel in a clearing surrounded by dozens of empty burlap bags. All around the clearing were cotton plants and slaves with cotton-filled bags on their backs that were three and four
times the size of a man. The sun was blazing but there was a breeze and I wasn't pulling cotton so it all seemed beautiful to me. I ran up to Albert all breathless and hopeful.
"How's that shoulder?" Mud Albert asked me.
"Hurts some," I said, "but that lard you put on it makes
it bettah."
"Good. Now tell me, how'd you like cotton pickin'?" The question stymied me for a moment. The first thing any Negro slave in the south ever learned was not to complain about his lot to the boss. How you doin'f the boss asks you. Good, mastuh, you're supposed to shout.
But I hated picking cotton. My hands were bleeding, my back hurt, and there was something in the cotton plant that made my eyes all red and itching. If I told the cabin boss that I liked pulling cotton he might believe me and give me that job until the end of time.
What I didn't know, or what I didn't want to know, was that almost all slaves picked cotton or some other onerous job for their entire lives. There was no escape from that, no chance at some better life. Hoping that Albert would give me something better to do was a child's dream.
As I've said, I was fourteen at that time but I was still a child in many ways. Living in the barn under Mama Flore's protection I hadn't lived much among the men and therefore had never faced many of the hard lessons of life. Because I was so spoiled I still had the dreams of a child.
Children resist slavery better than grown men and women because children believe in dreams. I dreamed of lazy days in the barn and stolen spoonfuls of honey from the table where Mama Flore prepared meals in the big house. I dreamed of riding in Master's horse-drawn carriage and of going to the town where they had stores filled with candies and soft shirts with bone buttons. I dreamed of roasted chickens stuffed with sweet parsnips and onions. And, being a child, I thought that my dreams just might one day come true.
The mature slave knows that dreams never come true. They know that they'll eat sour grain and sawdust every day except Christmas and that they'll always work from before sunrise until after dusk every day for all the days of their lives.
If I were a full-grown slave I would have known that picking cotton was the only job for me on the Corinthian plantation. But being a child I was hoping for a loophole, like a job picking peaches that I could take a bite out of now and then.
Mud Albert smiled because I couldn't answer his question.
"So you don't love Miss Eighty-four and all those long rows'a cotton balls?"
"It's pretty hard, Mud Albert. My hands," I said holding out my bloody ringers and palms.
The sight of my cuts took the grin from Albert's lips.
"I sorry, boy," he said. "I know that it hurts pickin' that cotton. It hurts the back and the hands, the eyes and the
heart too. Work can break your heart just as bad as a woman can. Every nigger out here works harder than any two white peoples. That's why I let you have the mornin' pickin' cotton with Miss Eighty-four.
"You really too little to be workin' in the fields yet. I don't know what Master Tobias was thinkin' to put you out here like that. But as long as you here I need you to know what it is to chop cotton. And now that you know I'ma put you out chere as a runnah for the slaves. That means you gonna run heah and theah doin' things for me and the other peoples needs it. So if I have a message you gonna run deliver it. If somebody need watah you gonna fill up the pail and run it ovah to 'em. You understand me, boy?" "Yes suh, Mud Albert, suh," I said being as polite as I knew how to be.
"An' don't you forget them bleedin' hands an' watery eyes, don't forget the hurt in your back and your chest. Because I cain't save you from pullin' cotton if'n you don't do the job I give ya."
"I run so fast that my feet won't even touch the ground, Mud Albert," I swore.
He laughed and nodded and handed me his water bottle. That was the first drink of water I had since we got to the cotton fields many hours before.
I know how bad a thing it is to be a slave and I know how terrible it was but I don't believe that there's a free person in the whole world that knows how good a cup full of water can taste. Because you have to be a deprived slave, to be kept waiting for your water like we were to really appreciate how good just one swallow can be. When we finally got a drop on our tongues it was like something straight from the hands of the Almighty.