The Emancipation of Robert Sadler (17 page)

Mother Shepherd tucked my arm under hers and told me with a broad smile,“Honey, I gone teach you God's mo excellent way.”

Mother Shepherd became my closest friend. After work in the lumberyard I would go home, get me a good little wash-off right quick, change clothes, and go to her place. Usually there would be others there, too. We would talk about the Lord most of the night.

Mother Shepherd had a friend about seventy years old named Sister Agnes, who was blind. She would often be at Mother Shepherd's, sitting straight as a stick in the wooden chair, and you could hear her strong, throaty voice a block away singing and praising the Lord.

On Saturday and Sunday afternoons Mother Shepherd and blind Sister Agnes would go out on the streets and preach to whoever would listen. When they asked me to come along with them I wondered,
Do they really go out and preach on the street where people are? What will I do? I don't speak right. I'm deaf in one ear.
And besides, I feared white folk.

We must have made an amusing picture as we inched our way down the street, Mother Shepherd and I walking on either side of Sister Agnes, holding her arms and carrying Bibles which we couldn't read. Sister Agnes would begin singing before we had even stopped anywhere. It didn't matter where we were, she would bust out in song with her deep, throaty voice whenever she felt so moved.

The teenagers in the neighborhood made fun of me with these two old ladies. They'd tease me: “Why, Robert, you lil ole granny, you!” When they followed us, laughing and making deriding remarks, Sister Agnes would stop in her tracks, turn in the direction of their voices, and sing “Ole Devil Gonna Take You Soul” loud enough to be heard in Asheville.

Then Mother Shepherd, never missing an opportunity, would follow with a hair-raising sermon on the “mo excellent way.” Sister Agnes would shout loud amens at nearly every sentence, and sometimes she'd lift her heels and commence to dance.

I actually learned to look forward to those meetings on the street with Sister Agnes and Mother Shepherd. I didn't care how ridiculous we must have looked, and I didn't mind the teenagers teasing me. We prayed for each of them beforehand, and I was quite confident that the Lord was going to help them and save them.

One afternoon as we stood on a street corner, four of those teenage boys approached us and mocked, “Show us how to know Jesus and that mo excellent way, like you talkin about.” Mother Shepherd, with a heart as big as all heaven itself, took those boys in her arms and led each of them to the Lord right there on the street while Sister Agnes hummed and danced a little jig without tripping once.

How Mother Shepherd loved to pray! When she laid hands on people, sick people got well, people who were bound by demons were set free, and sad people became released from the grip of depression. I watched it all with admiration swelling up in me. Mother Shepherd really
knew
the God she talked about. She knew Him like a true friend and trusted Him to do what she asked of Him. He always seemed to answer her, too. I prayed that I could know the Lord like Mother Shepherd knew Him.

It came time to head back to Greenville. Mother Shepherd wept when I told her I had to go, and the day I left they had a little party for me. Sister Agnes, though she was blind, was a great cook, and she made fried chicken and grits, string beans, and my favorite, poke salad. Mother Shepherd baked sweet potato pie. There was hot coffee and iced tea to drink. We kept our conversation happy and light.

Mother Shepherd embraced me as I left, and kissed me. We both knew it was probably the last time we'd see each other. Tears burned my eyes as I walked up the dirt road toward town and the bus station. I could hear Sister Agnes and Mother Shepherd singing, their voices low, mournful, and sad, mingled with the sunshine and dust in the air,

Bye and bye, when the morning comes,

When the saints of God are gathered home,

We will tell the story of how we've overcome,

For we'll understand it better bye and bye . . .

Back in Greenville I lived with my aunt Julie, who was cousin Gertrude's and Bessie's mother. She was a kind woman, short with coal black skin. She wore her hair cornrowed or tied in a rag, and I never saw her with a pair of shoes on her feet except for the coldest days of winter. She worked in white folks' homes around the town, washing and ironing. She walked to and from work every day, leaving her children to care for themselves until she returned late each night.

Aunt Julie's husband had died two years earlier of pneumonia, leaving her with a broken-down house and the care of five of their thirteen children. The oldest children, including Caldojah, Bessie, and Gertrude, were married and had families of their own. Four were dead, and that left five at home, the youngest not yet three years old. “Before now, I don't hardly ever recollect being without a baby in my arms or on the way,” she told me in her low, soft voice.

I got a job at a cotton mill for eight dollars a week. They said they were looking for men to run machines, but they gave me a job cleaning toilets.

At night Aunt Julie would sit in a big chair in the middle of the big room, or on the sloping porch with the children all around, and we would talk. Aunt Julie was a wonderful talker. She had a captivating way of telling stories.

“You know, Robert, I fought with yor daddy about selling you. I woulda takin yoll in myself, but he wouldn't hear of it,” Aunt Julie told me tearfully. “He wanted thet money.”

With a stinging sensation in my throat I wondered what it might have been like to grow up in a home with my own people.

“You been under slavery, chile, but we been under it, too,” she said. “They didn't sell us, but they had us. If we fought, they killed the fight; if we didn't fight, they killed the fight in us.”

I thought about Mother Shepherd's more excellent way. She said that anger and hostility only produced more anger and hostility, and black folk had had enough of that. There was a lot to think about.

When Aunt Julie discovered that I couldn't read or write, she set aside a learning time for me at night after supper at the kitchen table.

With the plates cleared and the table washed, we would sit down with the other children and she would write big letters on a brown paper bag with a pencil, and I would try to copy them. I remembered how to print ROBERT SADLER and how to count to twenty. Now I was learning the alphabet and how to count to a hundred. I don't know where Aunt Julie got her education, but she could even read the newspaper.

I spent many nights at that table learning to write THIS THAT THERE. THIS IS A DOG. THAT IS A DOG. THERE IS A DOG. I worked hard scrawling out the letters on the brown paper.

Aunt Julie taught us from the Bible, too. She taught me how to find Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And how to find verses. She taught me words like GOD and JESUS and LOVE. As I ran my hands over the smooth pages of her worn Bible, I thought of the Bible at the Big House on the plantation. It sat on the shelf in the parlor and I heard Mistress read out loud from it several times. I remembered hearing the words “And it came to pass . . .” I thought they were thrilling words.

“Aunt Julie?”

“Yes, Robert?”

“Where do it say ‘And it came to pass' in the Bible?”

After some searching, she found those words, and in another couple of days I could write ROBERT SADLER and THERE IS A DOG and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 and IT CAME TO PASS.

I continued to work at the cotton mill, giving most of my salary to Aunt Julie. I joined Aunt Julie's church and faithfully attended, and yet something inside of me still kept troubling me.

The restlessness in me is hard to explain. I was a free man but I had no gathering place for my mind. Eating occupied most of my time. I searched out candies in wrappers, layered ice cream cakes, fancy pastries, real meat like smoked pork ribs, and anything with gravy or frosting. I could still hardly believe I could eat anything I wanted. But as the days wore on I realized I couldn't live on the kindness of cousins and aunts forever. I didn't know what to do. Where to go. I didn't know how to be a free man.

I had studied plenty on freedom. Negroes rode in the back of the buses and drank from separate drinking fountains than the whites. They walked with their heads down on the streets, and they got jobs cleaning toilets or doing hard labor for less money than it took to feed their families and pay their rent. I had watched plenty of free colored people who had come up from slavery like me. Many became drunks and alcoholics; they lived lives of confusion and powerlessness; some men joined the army, and some got hard labor jobs in the cities. The most powerless of all were the women. I saw good, strong women who considered themselves lucky to be underpaid domestics and bathroom attendants. Some turned to prostitution to keep their children from starving.

I was living with an ache, like the kind you get if you've broken a leg. It's always there, you just can't get around the same. I finally decided that if Sam Beal would take me back, I would return and work for him—why, I'd work hard as a mule for him, and then I'd sit down with my feet in the dirt and my head in the grass and I'd watch the sun go down. This thing called freedom was exasperating. You didn't know what was coming next. As a slave, I knew what to expect.

Maybe going back to the plantation was the answer to my discontent, and maybe it wasn't. I wasn't looking for an answer. I was just hungry for something familiar. I chose to return to the only place in my life that I'd known as home, the place I belonged. I announced to the cousins that I was going back to Anderson.

“You gone do
what
?”

“You heard right. I'm going back to Sam Beal's place.”

Aunt Julie let loose with a high-pitched wail.
“Have you gone and lost yo mind?”

“I'm goin back to the plantation,” I said. “I wants to see Sam Beal agin.”

“Robert, they'll keep you and you'll never get off that place! Lord knows what they'll do to you. Git it in yor haid—
you free now
!
”

I studied on it and told her my head was full-up with so much free. I was through with all this free. I wanted to tell her free was just a word, but I kept still. I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

In the budding spring of 1928, three years after my escape, I boarded a bus and headed back to my old master.

I took a taxi from the bus station in Anderson to the Beal Plantation. The colored driver kept peering at me in his rearview mirror. “You shure yoll know whey you goin?”

“I be goin home,” I told him. He didn't say anything after that.

The spring air was hot and sweet with the smell of honeysuckle. Flowering dogwood bloomed along the roadside, and spotted irises and violets grew wild in the woods and ditches. The air was filled with the music of the starlings, the jays, and the finches. My heart beat wildly with excitement and fear underneath my new red knit shirt. My grip sat on the seat beside me.

As we neared the plantation, I could actually sense the oppression in the air. It was something unexplainable. Even the taxi driver grew agitated as we neared the place, and when we arrived at the Big House, he refused to pull up in front of it.

“Git out here, Uncle,” he told me flatly. “I ain't drivin up there.”

The sounds of the taxi driving off, the barking of the dogs, and the clucking of chickens filled the air as I stared unbelievingly at the grand old plantation home I had left just three years ago.

It was a junkyard, a shambles. It sat bent and wounded against the sky like a defeated and broken soldier. My mouth dropped open. “Lord, have mercy.”

I walked around the side of the house through weeds, broken wheels, cans, and pieces of lumber to the kitchen door. There was no answer when I knocked, so I left my grip under the porch and began walking across the yard. I walked through the weeds to Buck and Corrie's shanty. It was empty and dark, and mice ran squeaking through the hay scattered across the floor. The partition that Buck had built was still there.

I continued walking. The path to the quarter was nearly grown over with weeds. As I walked along, I heard workers in the field. Looking up and shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw several figures bent and plowing in the field.

“Lord a'mighty!”

It was John Beal doing the plowing! And Thomas! And behind them spreading seed were Juanita and Virginia! I ran to the edge of the field. Could it be true? Was I dreaming?

It was true all right. The Beal children were plowing and planting. I ran on to the quarter to look for my friends. There was no sign of anybody. From shack to shack I ran—all empty. I couldn't get to Miss Ceily's shanty fast enough. There wasn't a shred of evidence that she had ever been there. Some wooden boards slapped together over a piece of dirt—that was all there had ever been, but now the life was gone, and it was ugly and terrible. I felt sick and sat down on her step to catch my breath.

On my way back to the Big House, Thomas saw me from the field. He dropped the handles of the plow. “Ho there!” he shouted. I stopped and looked at him, unmoving. He shouted again, and it was obvious he didn't recognize me.

I stepped over the furrows and mounds of dirt to him. John and the girls stopped to watch. Thomas's mouth dropped when he recognized me.

“Rob-Robert?
Robert!
” I thought for a second he was going to run to me and embrace me, but he caught himself. “Robert!” he repeated.

“Hello, Thomas,” I said. “What's happened here? Why you out in the field plowing?”

“Robert, we've lost everything. All the land we have left is what you see right here. Everybody and everything is gone.”

“Your father?”

“He's in the house, sick . . . very sick.”

“Where are the slaves?”

“All gone. All set free.”

“Praise the Lord,” I said. “I'm sorry for you, Thomas, but I'm glad they're free.”

“You come back here after bein out there in the great big world, huh! Why you come back, Robert?”

“I want to see your father again,” I answered. “In a funny way, he's my father, too.”

Thomas's eyes were riveted to mine. “Uh-huh,” he said.

I left him in the field and made my way back to the Big House. I went to the porch door and knocked. There was no answer, and so I pushed it open. The kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and pans, opened boxes and jars of food left on the tables, greasy walls, mud-streaked floors, and flies everywhere. Mary Webb would never let her kitchen get like this. Never!

After standing at the door and surveying the room for a few stunned moments, I turned and walked out. The well off the porch was still there, and I drew the bucket up for a drink of water. I wondered if I had been the last one to sweep the porch—it was littered with straw, rags, and layers of hardened mud and the acrid smell of dogs.

I heard someone coming into the kitchen just then, and I put the bucket down and hurried to the doorway. “Hello!” I called.

A woman with uncombed hair in a worn housecoat and bedroom slippers shuffled toward me. “What do you want?” she demanded.

I stared in disbelief. “Miz Beal . . .” I breathed. She eyed me suspiciously.

“Ma'am, it's me, Robert.”

Her eyes narrowed. “—Robert!”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

She pulled herself upright. “What do you want, Robert?”

“Please, Ma'am, I come back.”

“You
come back
?”

“Yes, Ma'am.” I fidgeted with my hands and tried to think of something more to say.

“Thomas tole me Master Beal be ailin,” I said at last.

“That's right. He's up in the bed ailin.”

“I'm hopin I kin see him.”

She looked confused and shuffled to the sink. “You wants to see him?”

“Yes, Ma'am. I needs to talk to Master Beal.”

She turned her back and said to the wall, “No, you may not!”

“Oh please, Ma'am, I won't be no bother. I needs to tell him I come ba—”

“Yoll up to no good, Robert? You don't fool me none. Yoll fixin to do evil, Robert. No, you ain't seein Master Beal! Now you can just git off the place.”

“Ma'am, please?”

She paused for a moment, as though she were considering my request. Surveying me, she said, “Gawd, boy, you gained some weight. You is positively
fat
!”

“Yes, Ma'am,” I said. “I been eatin' good.”

She gave a snicker. “I can see that, boy. I can see that. Yoll growed up since you run off.”

“Yes, Ma'am. I'll soon be seventeen.”

“Uh-huh. Same as Thomas. . . .”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

She had seemed friendly for a flashing moment, but then a mix of anger and fear flew across her face. “Well, you can't see Master Beal. He's ailing, and I got a shotgun, so git off the place.”

I lowered my head. “Yes, Ma'am,” but before turning to leave, I made one more request. “Ma'am, how is Miss Anna?”

“Miss Anna be jes fine!” she said, squinting her eyes at me.

“Ma'am, could I see her?”

Outraged now, Mrs. Beal shouted, “Who you think you is? Comin in here givin orders like you some big shot! You may not see Miss Anna, and you may not see Master Beal! You want me to call the po-lice? Now get off this place before I get the shotgun!”

I walked back to Anderson with my grip, taking the same route I had taken almost four years ago. I was like hundreds of other blacks who had grown up under slavery. I was set free in a world I didn't understand, and I didn't know who I was or where to belong. I knew in my head that I belonged to the Lord and the Bible said He loved me, but when I thought of love I got a picture of hanging onto the coattails of Master Beal in the wagon on the way to the dentist in town, and a beautiful ebony face with a long silver scar from his forehead to chin, and pretty Pearl rocking me in her bruised arms. I remembered the smell of chitlins boiling in the quarter and the sweet taste of sucking the bones of chicken necks. If I studied on it hard enough I could hear my mama's voice singing about heaven, and I could hear Miz Ceily praying for me. At seventeen years old I couldn't read or write, I had no money and nowhere to go. I was no longer a slave—but I wasn't free either. Everything I knew of the great big world I learned on the plantation.