Daddy always warned me of the black man. I would ask him to tell me which black man I was supposed to watch for and he would always tell me the same thing. “They are all no good. Sub-human. Only useful for pickin’ cotton and waitin’ on us.” He said. I couldn’t understand why he told me these things.
When I sat on the porch with my feet hanging over the edge, Daddy would sit with me, squinting into the sun. He watched the black men in our field as they worked, picking our cotton. He watched them wipe the sweat from their forehead like he expected one of them to run to the house and steal our things. I never understood why.
One night, Daddy was drinking from a brown glass bottle as he rocked in his rocking chair and when Momma saw him, she yelled at him to stop. He looked at her with his commanding look and continued to drink while I tapped my feet against the back of the porch. A breeze made the trees sway and played with my long brown hair as the sun sunk below the mountains. “Girl. Remember what I told ya.” Daddy said, taking another sip of his drink. “Tell me what I tell ya.” I glanced at him and recited, “They are all no good. Sub-human. Only useful for pickin’ cotton and waitin’ on us.”
That night at dinner, Daddy acted differently. We all sat around our family table and Daddy was still drinking his drink. Momma looked only at her food and my older brother and sister did the same. I watched Daddy chew with his mouth open, using my fork to push at the food on my plate. “Now, Mary. Eat your food, girl.” Daddy shot me a stern look, another of his commanding looks and I shoved a piece of broccoli in my mouth. I didn’t even like broccoli.
After dinner, when one of our maids took our plates, I noticed her hands were shaking like a tree in a rain storm. I was going to open my mouth and say something but as I did, the plate slipped from her fingers and broke into a million pieces. It was very quiet after that, I could feel a sort of pressure weighing down the room. She stood frozen in place as my Daddy’s face turned bright red. He stood from the table, his chair legs leaving marks on the floor and looked straight at our maid. Everyone was quite as we watched Daddy grab the girl by her hair and drag her out of the house. I could hear a faint voice and I could hear Daddy yelling and yelling and yelling. He stopped yelling long enough for me to hear a sound like a gun shot.
We got a new maid after that, but Daddy kept drinking from his glass bottle. I would sit with him as he drank and he watched the black men pick our cotton. Momma cried more and she no longer came out on the porch to tell Daddy to stop drinking. Sometimes I would catch him watching me and ask why he watched the black men so much. He would always tell me the same thing, “They are all no good. Sub-human. Only useful for pickin’ cotton and waitin’ on us.”
