47

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.

Mr. Stewart would get hold of my wrist and drag me half the way across the yard and then I'd twist one way or t'other until I slipped from his grasp. Then I made a bee-line back for the big house, screaming bloody murder and for Big Mama Flore to come and save me.

Three times the evil overseer dragged me into the yard and three times I broke away and tried to make it back to Big Mama Flore's skirts. The white men who worked for the plantation were all around the pigsty laughing at Mr. Stewart, which made him start to curse me.

He grabbed me by the shoulder and shouted, "You little nigger, you better com'on like I say or I'll whip you until you're so bloody red that they'll call you injun!"

I knew he was trying to scare me into being tame but between the pain in my shoulder and his reputation as a slave-killer I couldn't help but bolt again. That time I was so scared that I outpaced the overseer and made it all the way to the side door of the big house. The door was open and I could see Mama Flore standing there. I ran as fast as

a wild pig but just as I got to the door Mama Flore slammed it in my face. I could still see her through the little window, but then she pulled curtains closed.

All I could do was to look up at the fancy cloth and cry out her name.

"Big Mama, help!"

I pulled at the door handle but it was latched. As I grabbed onto that knob I could feel Mr. Stewart's grip on my shoulder again. He dragged me off while I was yelling for Big Mama Flore to come save me. I didn't fight any more. I just let him drag me. I was still yelling but the pain in my heart was no longer fear of the slave quarters; I was hurting because Mama Flore had abandoned me like Judas in the story Mud Albert once told me about the man who became like the plantation master of the whole world.

My first moments in the slave quarters might have been frightening if it wasn't for my broken heart over Big Mama slamming that door on me. I had run to her my whole life. When I'd fall and skin my knee or when the thunderstorms would rage in our valley. If I woke up from a nightmare in the barn I could always run to Mama Flore's bed in the small alcove next to the kitchen.

I was an inconsolable soul as Tall John once told me that all of mankind was.

"Human beings," John said, "are lost in the needs of their bodies. Most of the time they're hungry or hurting or sleepy or looking for something to satisfy those needs. They're so busy taking care of bodily things that they don't see the world all around them."

But John, and all of his big words, came into my life a little later on after my early experiences in the slave quarters.

It was afternoon when Mr. Stewart tossed me into the man-slaves' cabin.

"Not one more peep outta you, Nigger Forty-seven," he said, "or I will take you back to my cabin and drive knives into your spine."

This threat cut off my crying for the few seconds that the brutal overseer stared at me. I held back until he stamped out of the room.