Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(73)

“Like I said, she was only used for the big house,” Jake say. “Mr. Pyke spoils his house nigras. She never lived down in the quarters.”

“Can you sew?” the new man asks. I look up to see that he’s older than his voice sounds. His clothes are cut good, but he isn’t dressed like a man from a big house. Later I find out that he’s a buyer for the farm he works on. His eyes are waiting on me.

I nod. “I can sew,” I say.

“Jake pokes me on my shoulder. “Speak up!”

“Yes, I can sew real good,” I say.

The man grunts. “Talk like you might have a little book learnin’ in you, too.”

“No, she don’t,” Jake says. “Mr. Pyke don’t allow no nigras on his place no book learnin’.”

“You know how to read or write?” the man asked.

Yes, I can read and write, I want to say. I can read good! But I know what I got to do. I drop my head and shake it.

“I think they’re going to want this one,” he say. “I’ll give you seven hundred for her.”

Jake almost falls over his own feet as he goes for the door. “I’ll get the papers on her,” he say.

“Hold on,” the man calls. He points to the woman’s child, Jenny. “Let me have a look at her. They want another girl, one they can teach from small on.”

Jake goes over and pulls the child off the mother’s lap to stand in front of the buyer. The girl is maybe four or five and looks up at the man with her small round face like she’s trying to understand what’s going on. The mama comes quick and pulls her girl against herself. “She don’ get sold ’less I go with her,” she say.

“We don’t need nobody for the fields,” the man says. “I’m just here to buy two young ones for the big house. Your girl here will work out just fine for that.”

“I kin work the big house real good,” the woman says, doing her best to smile at the man.

The man grunts. “You know you never worked a big house. I saw the papers on you. Only place you worked was the fields.”

“Please, mister! I work like three peoples, you put me up in the big house.”

“They ain’t lookin’ for nobody like you.”

“My Jenny don’ go if I don’ go.” The mother says it like she means it. “Please, mister!” she say, but she can’t hold back her crying.

“Listen! You can make this easy or hard on your young one. She’s getting a chance to work in a big house with good people. They treat their people fair. You let her go, she got a chance to make a place for herself in a big house. Otherwise she’s going to end up a field worker, just like you. And you know once you’re on that block, they don’t care about keeping you with her. Chances are you get sold apart anyway.”

It looks like the mama’s going to start bawling, but when her girl looks up at her, the woman works her mouth against itself. She looks me over good, then quick, she puts her girl’s hand in mine. “Jenny, you go with this nice womans. She take good care a you. I come find you some day, and then you gon’ be runnin’ a big house jus’ like your mama always wanna do.”

The man sees this is a good time to get going, so he picks up the child and slings her over to me. “Find the owner and get the papers,” he says to Jake, and nods me toward the door. As we go, the girl figures out what’s happening and starts to call back for her mama. My heart turns over when I hear the mother doing her best to sound happy.

“It gon’ be all right, Jenny. You go along now. Yo mama gon’ come find you.”

As we make our way out of the auction yard and into the man’s wagon, the child puts her arms around me and holds on tight. It’s like she knows that crying won’t do her no good, but her lil heart is pounding so fast and hard that I can feel it against my own.


WHEN WE GET to our new place, they think that Jenny is my sister, so I don’t say nothing different. Fact is that’s the way I come to see her. She was a good girl, and when she ask when her mama’s coming I always say, “Any day now, Jenny girl. She coming any day now.” If I was ever looking to find the child, all I got to do was go out to the front of the house where she’d be looking down the road watching for her mama. It got so that I’d a done anything for the girl. Looking back, I wonder if caring for her took out some of the sting of my own worries.

At our new place the people was good enough to their slaves. There was plenty of food, and Jenny and me slept in the kitchen house with the cook. The mistress had four young girls, and we helped her out with them, but we was there no more than four months when the two youngest got the fever and died. Not two days later, the mistress goes down with the same thing, then Jenny. We try to save them, but even with the doctor coming, there’s nothing we can do to keep them going. They both go, first the wife, then Jenny, one right after the other. When Jenny goes, the cook tells me if I don’t stop cryin’ I get sick myself, but that chil’ was like my own. Some nights I still wake up wondering what I’m going to say if Jenny’s mama ever shows up.

After the wife is gone, the master walks around like he can’t remember his name, then sends his other two girls to live with his own mama up in Washington. I guess he don’t have no more need of me, ’cause he sells me off by the end of that month. All told, I was there about six months.