The Emancipation of Robert Sadler

by Robert Sadler

  “Well, I hope you can work better’n you can talk,” she said with a little giggle as she brushed past me and out the door.

  I watched her through my tears and saw her climb into a buggy drawn by a fine brown horse that a black man was driving. Where was my father? Why did he leave us here?

  After what seemed like hours, Margie and Pearl came through the porch following Sarah. They carried large bundles of laundry in their arms. I cried out in relief when I saw them, but when Margie saw that I hadn’t swept yet, she snapped, “Get busy, hear? Sweep this porch!” They followed Sarah out into the backyard, and I could see them as they pounded the clothes with the paddle on the three-legged battling bench.

  Margie’s sharp words had their effect on me, and I held onto the crooked handle of the big straw broom like it was a person. I began sweeping, pushing the broom back and forth like Mama taught me. I could hear her soft voice, “Ain’t nobody knows the corners of a house like a old broom,” and she’d laugh.

  “Do that mean the broom be smarter ’n people, Mama?”

  “Law, child. I spect so!” and she’d laugh again. I hurriedly swept the porch so I could join my sisters in the yard. The washing would take most of the morning and early afternoon to finish. The dirt had to be paddled out of the clothes and then they were boiled in soapy water in the big black iron pots. I’d get to stir the clothes with a big stick. Then they had to be wrenched three times and finally hung up on the clotheslines to dry. Back home Mama hung our clothes on the brush outside our cabin to dry so I got used to the smell of chokecherry and dogwood against my skin.

  Later I saw the blond-haired young lady again, and I stared at her with wonder. I had never seen a sight like her before. Sarah saw me and pulled me around facing the other direction.

  “What you starin at, boy?”

  “Nothunma’am.”

  “Keep it that-a-way, hear?”

  “Yezmam.”

  The day continued and so did my confusion. That night, huddled between my sisters on the floor of Sarah’s cabin, we all cried ourselves to sleep.

  The days wore on. I cried a lot and kept waiting for Father to come for us. It was cotton planting time, and almost all of the slaves were working in the fields. Margie and Pearl were taking care of the slaves’ young children as well as helping Sarah in the Big House. I was given jobs such as sweeping, carrying trash, feeding chickens, chasing cows, and kitchen work.

  I discovered who the lady in the pink and white dress was. She was Miss Billie, Tom Billings’s fifteen-year-old daughter. She took a liking to my sister Pearl, who was thirteen. She had Pearl comb her hair and tend to her wardrobe and personal needs. If it weren’t for her, Margie and Pearl would have been sent to the fields to work, and I’d have been all alone in the Big House.

  One day Pearl was heating irons on the stove to iron Miss Billie’s dresses, and I was standing nearby watching her.

  “How old is Robert?” Miss Billie asked Pearl. “He was five June last, Ma’am.”

  Miss Billie’s eyes grew wide. “He’s young to be separated from his mama, isn’t he?”

  “His mama be dead, Ma’am.”

  “But he has a daddy—?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Miss Billie stared at me and I shrank back. I had learned not to stare at white people.

  “Do you like it here, boy?” she asked me.

  I didn’t know what to answer. If I said no, I might get a whupping. I stared back at her, speechless. Then I began to cry.

  “Oh, he must miss his mama!” Miss Billie exclaimed. Pearl didn’t say a word.

  Miss Billie reached her hand out to me and said, “Come here, honey.” She took my hand and walked me into a long, narrow pantry where she opened a big jar and gave me a chocolate cookie with pink frosting.

  “Thenkyoumam,” I mumbled, and took a small bite. I had never tasted anything so delicious in my whole life.

  As the weeks passed, Miss Billie grew more and more distressed at my being there and often would complain to her father. “It ain’t right!” she would tell him. Finally she threatened to run away if he would not take me back to my home. He told her to hush up and mind herself. Margie and Pearl were horrified at the idea of our being separated, but they said nothing.

  The Billings family had few guests; but one day in early summer, some of their friends from Hartwell, Georgia, came to visit. The house slaves had been busy preparing for their arrival—scrubbing, polishing, waxing, and washing. The grounds were cleaned, mowed, and trimmed. When their horse pulled the buggy up in the driveway, a Negro man stood waiting to help them and tend to the horse. As I watched them enter the house in a flurry of chatter and excitement, I didn’t realize that these jolly people would bring another tragedy into my life.

  Margie, who was just fourteen, had been a hard worker both inside and outside the house. She was strong and they worked her like a mule. She worked from sunup until sundown without a complaint. She was working in the Big House while the visitors from Hartwell were staying there. Mrs. Billings, a large, stern-faced woman, boasted about her new servants to the visitors. She called for Margie and showed them what a fine buy her husband had made when he purchased her.

  “Can’t read or write,” she boasted. “That’s how to keep em. She’s a mighty strong one, too.”

  “And who is the little niggerboy?” the plump, jowly friend asked.

  “Tell her your name, boy,” Mrs. Billings ordered.

  “. . . Wobber.”

  Mrs. Billings jolted upright, enraged. “Robert what, boy?”

  “Wobber Sadder,” I mumbled.

  Mrs. Billings’s face went red. I had humiliated her in front of the people she was trying to impress. She called us out of the room, excusing herself to her guests. On the other side of the door, she bent down and hissed, “You say Ma’am when you talk to me, boy!” She grabbed me by the ear. “I ought to have you whupped to teach yoll a lesson! Now how do you talk to me?”

  “. . . Ma’am, Ma’am,” I stammered.

  “Didn’t yor mama teach you yor manners?”

  “No, Ma’am, yezmam.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Is this here chile ignornt, Margie?”

  “Yezmam, but I’ll teach him, Ma’am.”

  “I don’t think so, girl. Now git out, both of you!”

  “Yes, Miz Billings, Ma’am,” Margie said, taking me by the hand.

  After we had left the room, Mrs. Billings sold Margie to her lady friend. The next morning after our breakfast of molasses drizzled over corn bread in Miss Sarah’s shanty, Margie was called to the Big House. Pearl and I went with her. We played a little game as we walked in the early morning light up the damp path. Walk two steps, hop one step, jump two steps, hop one step.

  When we got to the clearing, we saw the buggy hitched up and the visitors climbing into it. Then Mr. Billings called Margie. “You belong to these people now, girl. Git in,” he ordered, and he pointed to the back of the buggy. Margie cried out in alarm. “Lord, have mercy!”

  “Git in, I said!”

  We followed Margie to the edge of the buggy. Her eyes were wide with fright. She reached down to hug me.

  “Take care of Pearl, Robert honey; she ain’t as strong as me.” Her voice was all broken up.

  Pearl and I began to cry. “No! No!” Pearl screamed. “Don’t take my sister! Don’t take her!”

  I felt a hard blow across my head and shoulders, and I fell tumbling to the ground. I looked up in time to see Mr. Billings push Pearl back as she, too, rolled to the ground.

  The buggy jerked forward, and soon it was moving down the driveway. Margie’s face was pale with pain. “Please, Robert . . .” I heard her call, “Please be a good boy. . . .” When she saw our sister sobbing and running after her, she cried, “Pearl! Pearl! No!” The lady in the front of the buggy turned and ordered, “Hush up now! Hush up, hear?”

  “Git back to the kitchen, girl,” Mr. Billings told Pearl. “Understand I cain’t be feed
ing three more mouths, got enough to take care of as tis. And you, boy, git over here and sweep up this here yard!”

  In the weeks that followed I received many slaps for crying. Master Billings often whupped me with a peach tree switch. It stung terrible. I could hardly do the tasks I was given. Something else happened to me which added to my misery. I had trouble talking and pronouncing words. I couldn’t speak right, but up until the day I arrived at the Billings Plantation I was hardly aware of it. Nobody had ever made anything of it before and so it didn’t bother me. Now, however, I completely lost my speech. I could not form any words at all, and when I did try to talk, it came out all garbled and nobody could understand me. I became the “backward nigger boy,” and it made Mr. Billings angry just to look at me. He lost good money when he took me on with my sisters.

  Billie Billings continued to beg her father for my release. It seemed to cause her particular distress to see a five-year-old boy cowering in corners and crying all the time, even though I was a slave boy and hardly worth her attention.

  Pearl was working in the kitchen all the time now, where she remained all during the summer months. She worked from sunup until late at night, and I was able to be with her most of the time. I was glad she wasn’t sent to the fields. Nearly every night I’d fall asleep on the floor waiting for her. She’d carry my sleeping body home to Miss Sarah’s shanty and then she’d go back to work.

  Pearl was a frail girl in the first place, and now she seemed to be more thin and more worn looking. One morning when she was cleaning the kitchen after the white people’s breakfast, Miss Billie came in, looked at her, and said, “Pearl, you set down a spell; you look plumb tuckered!”

  “Thank you, Miss Billie, Ma’am,” Pearl answered, “but ah’s fine, jes fine.”

  Master Billings happened to overhear Miss Billie’s words, and he burst into the kitchen and yelled at Pearl. “You get busy, you hear? Don’t you pay no mind to settin!” He ordered Miss Billie to her room, and we could hear their voices in hot argument as Pearl trembled and worked and I helped her in the kitchen. We were scared, because when Miss Billie fought with her father about us it made him so angry we feared he’d whup us in revenge.

  I hated him so much I was afraid my heart might stop beating. I wanted desperately to tell Pearl how much I hated him, but I couldn’t form the words in my mouth. It was as though I had a clump of weeds growing on my tongue and there was no room for words to get out. Hate. Hate. I hate! I hate! I hate! If only I could say it.

  Pearl rarely sang to me or held me anymore. It seemed I was more often in her way than anything else. “Robert, bring this inside,” “Robert, sweep the porch,” or “Robert, wash this”—never “Robert, honey, come here and let me love you,” like she used to.

  One hot afternoon when she was preparing the food for the white folks’ dinner, she told me to bring a bowl of fresh fruit to the dining room table. I picked it up and it was heavy. “Don’t drop it, hear?” she snapped at me. The minute she said the words, my hands slipped and the bowl of fruit fell to the floor. Glass shattered and the fruit rolled in all directions. Pearl flew at me and hit me hard upside the head. I was so stunned and hurt, I wailed helplessly. Then I ran out of the kitchen and across the yard and hid behind the smokehouse. I heard Miss Sarah calling me. “Robert, Robert! Where are you, boy?” I held my breath. I heard her mutter, “Poor chile is dumb, can’t talk. They done beat the sense out of him.”

  Pearl didn’t get back to the shanty until almost dawn. I had been waiting all night for her. She lay down on the floor beside me, and without a word turned to face the wall. Her body shook badly and I reached out for her. “Peh, Peh—” I called, pulling her arm. She did not turn around to me, and I could hear her softly crying until she finally fell asleep.

  I could not understand Pearl’s coldness toward me. It hurt and confused me. A few days later Miss Sarah took me to her knee and said, “Honey, don’t you fret yourself over Sister, hear? She be wanting you to grow up now so’s you can learn how to take care of yorself. She be afraid you gonna stay a baby, an if she be sent away, what’d happen to you?”

  Pearl’s rejection of me just made me cling to her all the more. I held her skirts while she worked; I cried and whined beside her all day long. Miss Billie would often find us together in this way. Pearl would be trying to do her work, and I would be clinging to her skirts and whimpering. If Pearl would wash Miss Billie’s hair or help her with her bath, I’d be nearby, sniffling.

  Then one morning early in September, after we had been living at the Billings Plantation for about five months, Pearl and I were summoned to get into the buggy which was hitched up in the driveway. This time Pearl swooped me up in her arms and held on to me for dear life.

  “I won’t let them take you away from me, chile, I won’t!” she cried. “They have to kill me fust!” She held me with all her strength. Her thin young face was fierce.

  Master Billings strode out of the house and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Git in!” he ordered. “Both of ye!” We did as he commanded, and Pearl never let her grip loosen on me. It was as though she were hanging on to life itself.

  We bumped along the driveway, then turned on Abbeville Road toward Anderson. I looked back at the Billings Plantation and saw my last glimpse of Miss Sarah as she came running to the driveway to watch us leave.

  Pearl held me tight and kept her gaze fixed on the back of Master Billings’s head. Hatred filled her eyes like I had never seen before. As we bumped along the dirt road, I wondered where we were going. The hope that things could get better had long ago left me.

  The hours went by and we found ourselves pulling up in front of Father and Stepmother’s shanty north of Anderson. I could hardly believe my eyes. Even Pearl seemed a little excited. Her eyes were big and her mouth parted, but her grip on me tightened.

  “Git out,” Master Billings ordered. We climbed out of the buggy over the wheel caked with dried mud and ran toward the house. Father came to the door and looked with stunned surprise at his two children returning home. He grabbed us by the arms and took us back to the buggy. Before he could ask why we were being returned, Master Billings shouted, “Keep em, hear?”

  It was then we learned that Miss Billie had threatened to commit suicide unless he returned us to our home. Master Billings, although furious about it, returned us to our father.

  Hungry and exhausted, our bodies aching from the long, bumpy ride on the floor of the buggy, we entered the familiar cabin. Rosie actually seemed glad to see us. She held out her arms to us and hugged us. When we told her how Margie had been sold and taken off to Georgia she cried real tears. We ate ravenously of corn bread, molasses, greens, and salt pork. Then Rosie put us to bed on the straw pallet on the floor.

  I heard her say in a trembling voice to Father, “They look half dead, Jim, half dead shor ’nuff.”

  4

  Our happiness at being free and home again didn’t last. Rosie did not let us rest for a minute. She was glad to have Pearl back so she had someone to do her work for her, and Pearl set to work immediately cleaning, cooking, washing, and tending the garden. I was so happy to be home that I did my chores eagerly and without complaining. Father seldom spoke to us. Then, not even a week after we had been home, Rosie started telling him lies about us again.

  “They’s stealin food!”

  “They be underfoot!”

  “Them chillrens is lazy, no-good, that’s the God hepp me truth!”

  “They’s just plain devilment!”

  Pearl and I were hurt and angry that Rosie would lie about us that way, especially when we worked so hard for her.

  Mealtime was once again cornmeal mush, which we ate with our fingers while Rosie and her boys ate at the table. Pearl and I would take our bowls and sit on the steps outside and eat. Pearl would talk about Mama, Ella, and Margie, so’s I wouldn’t forget. She comforted me, telling me we would see Margie again, and we would talk about our other brothers and sisters who were no
w gone and far away. Then she would talk about heaven, where Mama and Ella were right now dancing with Jesus. Tears would roll down my face as Pearl would tell me stories about how Mama was singing to Ella and how happy they were with Jesus.

  “They is no slaves in heaven, chile,” she would explain, “and they is always plenty to eat.”

  When she saw my questioning face, she answered as though she knew what I wanted to ask.

  “Oh, Robert, it be in the Bible, that’s what I heard!”

  The Bible. The Bible. I remembered Mama telling me in the field that day long ago that I must learn how to read so I could read to her from the Bible. Pearl couldn’t read or write, and I had never even seen a book. I had no idea what the Bible was, but I nodded to Pearl so she wouldn’t worry about me being ignorant.

  Father stayed away most of the nights and when he came home, he was always drunk and he fought with Rosie.

  We were home about two weeks when Father called me to run an errand.

  “Take this here sack and buy some cornmeal from Zeke, boy.”

  Zeke Miller’s cabin was about a mile away across the creek and over the field.

  I took the small cloth bag and headed through the garden down a footpath in the direction of the creek. Pearl was gathering sticks in the wooded area behind our shanty. When I went past her, she jumped at me playfully, whirling me around to tickle me. We tumbled together, laughing and getting dirty in the red dust of the earth. Lying together under the blue sky all out of breath, I looked at her face and kissed her dusty cheek and said my first words in almost six months. “Pearl, yoll shure be pretty.”

  Pearl sat upright in the dirt.

  “You talked! You talked! Jesus, mah Robert done talked!” A joy filled her face that I had not seen since before Mama died.

  I was so happy as I ran down to the creek’s edge, I felt like flying. I could talk! I didn’t dare try it again for fear of sounding like mush, but I couldn’t forget the look on Pearl’s face. I had made her happy, genuinely happy, and I believed in my heart that everything was going to be all right after all.