Read Online A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton by Michael Phillips - Free Book Online

I wanted to go to Oakwood, I just wanted to see what it was like to do something I had decided just for myself.
    I came to the town about twenty minutes later.
    As I rode through the streets, I started to get afraid again. For a minute I thought about turning around and galloping away. But something inside me wanted to see if I could go into town, as a free person, and see what would happen. I’d never been in a town by myself in my life.
    So I kept riding through the main street. A few people looked at me, but I pretended not to notice. I just kept going.
    I was doing it! I was alone and free and nobody was trying to stop me!
    Up ahead I saw a great big sign painted on a building. I recognized it from being in Greens Crossing with Katie. But again it made me feel good to realize that I could read the two words painted there … General Store … and knew what they meant.
    I went toward the building, got off the horse, and tied it onto the rail outside, then went up onto the boardwalk and into the store.
    I was trembling from head to foot. For a colored girl to just go into a store like that, all alone, that was a pretty bold thing to do. But if I was free now, why shouldn’t I?
    I tried to pretend I wasn’t nervous as I looked around at all the pretty things. The man at the counter stared at me and didn’t look none too pleased about having me in his store.
    I wandered slowly around, nervous but trying to pretend I wasn’t. The whole time the man was watching me like a hawk, as if he thought I was gonna steal something.
    Some pretty lace handkerchiefs caught my eye, a little like the ones I’d seen that were Katie’s and Katie’s mother’s. But now that same feeling I’d had looking at the signs filled me, the feeling that maybe I could do anything I wanted because I was free now.
    And besides that, I realized I had money in my pocket!
    People bought things with money, I thought. And what if … what if I could actually really buy something pretty like this for myself !
    I reached out and touched one of the lacey handkerchiefs.
    “Hey you!” the man called out to me. “Don’t touch the merchandise if you aren’t going to buy.”
    I jerked my hand back. But then I thought about the money again.
    “Maybe I am going to buy,” I said. My voice came out like a little squeak.
    I was trembling inside as I said it. I wasn’t trying to be a white person. I just wanted to know that I could do the same thing a white person could do. I was scared to hear my own timid voice talking back to a white man. But what business did he have to talk that way to me if I was free? I wasn’t his slave. I wasn’t anybody’s slave.
    So I got my courage up, then reached out and touched the hanky again.
    “How much does this one cost?” I asked.
    Gruffly he came over to where I was standing.
    “Nine cents,” he said after looking at it and then scowling at me like he was mad I’d asked.
    “Please, sir, could you tell me how much I have?”
    I opened my hand and held the coins toward him.
    “What kind of a question is that?” he said in the same voice. “You have eleven cents—a nickel and six pennies.”
    “I want to buy it, then.”
    He looked at me as if to say, what could someone like me want with a pretty handkerchief? Then he took it and walked back to his counter. I followed him.
    “How much is that pretty red ribbon hanging up there behind you?” I asked.
    “Half a cent a foot,” he answered, “or two feet for a penny.”
    “Then I would have enough for two feet of that too, right?” I asked.
    “Of course you would. You must be a simpleton, which is exactly what you look like! You would have one penny left over.”
    “Then please give me that too,” I said.
    He sighed, then cut off a piece of ribbon and put it with the handkerchief, wrapped them up in brown paper, and handed the little packet across the counter to me. I handed him all the coins except one of the pennies. I reckoned all storekeepers must be