Read Online My Name's Not Friday by Jon Walter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jon Walter
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Lizzie? Won’t I be sleeping in the big house with everyone else?’
Winnie comes to a stop and she’s got puzzled eyes. ‘You’re one strange child. Don’t you know anything? And where’d you learn to speak that way? That ain’t Tennessee drawl, least as far as I can tell.’
I nearly tell her I ain’t from Tennessee, but I don’t. I’ve been thinking I’ll trust in Hubbard, tell him Mrs Allen has got it all wrong; tell him I’m a free black and I shouldn’t everhave been sold at auction. Hubbard strikes me as someone I can trust. I reckon he’ll be the one to advise me how best to leave.
Winnie walks on. ‘Well, wherever you come from, don’t go getting ideas you’re something special, cos you’re not. You be starting at the bottom, same as the rest of us, and there ain’t no way up from there, so you better get used to it if you ain’t already.’
Each side of the path where we walk there are rolling lawns of green turf. A line of tall trees shelters the back of the house from the weather, and as we pass them, a view opens out onto the cotton fields that lie out the back of the estate. But before the fields, only a couple of hundred yards from us, I see a large fenced-off area where the green turf is all scuffed out to mud. Two rows of wooden cabins stand opposite each other with a fire pit between ’em in the middle of that mud. They’re the only thing in the whole place that ain’t nice to look at and Winnie nods in their direction. ‘Lizzie’s place is the second one along, over on the left there. You go on and wait for her. She won’t be so long.’
I must be stupid to have thought I was ever going to live up in the pretty house.
I go on towards the huts. There’s no one about that I can see, save for a couple of children skipping with a rope, but they catch my eye – I don’t know why. There’s something ’bout the way one of ’em moves, a little boy who has his back to me. When he jumps over the rope he leaves a foot dangling, lifts it just high enough to clear the rope by an inch or two. Joshua used to do that. I squint into the sun, suddenly excited, and put a hand over my eyes. Could it actually be Joshua? Could he already be here, playing over by the tree?
I race towards the tree shouting, ‘Joshua, Joshua!’ and those boys stop playing and they turn to watch me come, but even before I reach ’em I know I have made a mistake and it ain’t Joshua at all.
I arrive all out of breath and panting. ‘Is this one Lizzie’s place?’ I point over at a cabin.
‘Next one along,’ says the boy I mistook for Joshua, and he looks at me strange, a mix of wariness and wanting to please. ‘She ain’t there though. She’s still in the field.’ He sizes me up just like my brother would.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask him.
‘Gil.’
‘You skip pretty good, Gil. You ever get caught by the rope?’
He shakes his head. ‘Never.’
‘No, I didn’t reckon you did.’
I wander across to the cabins, which are lifted up on brick blocks to keep ’em from the mud. Two wooden steps lead up to each door, and every cabin has a mud-brick chimney that leans away from the outer wall and is propped at the top by two tall poles. They look all old and broken, those chimneys, like they could collapse from only a little gust of wind. These cabins ain’t much to look at and they’re probably worse to live in than they look, all draughty and cold, I’ll bet.
Lizzie’s cabin is different to the others, with a little vegetable garden out the back that she’s made look nice. I can tell she cares for it from the way she’s pushed all those sticks into the earth to make the fence. I practise my smile before I knock on her door. No one answers, but I suppose they warned me.
A dirt track leads down towards the woods on the eastern side of the plantation, so I decide to take a look around andsee how far I can go. I carry right on into the wood and out the other side, where the land is just
Winnie comes to a stop and she’s got puzzled eyes. ‘You’re one strange child. Don’t you know anything? And where’d you learn to speak that way? That ain’t Tennessee drawl, least as far as I can tell.’
I nearly tell her I ain’t from Tennessee, but I don’t. I’ve been thinking I’ll trust in Hubbard, tell him Mrs Allen has got it all wrong; tell him I’m a free black and I shouldn’t everhave been sold at auction. Hubbard strikes me as someone I can trust. I reckon he’ll be the one to advise me how best to leave.
Winnie walks on. ‘Well, wherever you come from, don’t go getting ideas you’re something special, cos you’re not. You be starting at the bottom, same as the rest of us, and there ain’t no way up from there, so you better get used to it if you ain’t already.’
Each side of the path where we walk there are rolling lawns of green turf. A line of tall trees shelters the back of the house from the weather, and as we pass them, a view opens out onto the cotton fields that lie out the back of the estate. But before the fields, only a couple of hundred yards from us, I see a large fenced-off area where the green turf is all scuffed out to mud. Two rows of wooden cabins stand opposite each other with a fire pit between ’em in the middle of that mud. They’re the only thing in the whole place that ain’t nice to look at and Winnie nods in their direction. ‘Lizzie’s place is the second one along, over on the left there. You go on and wait for her. She won’t be so long.’
I must be stupid to have thought I was ever going to live up in the pretty house.
I go on towards the huts. There’s no one about that I can see, save for a couple of children skipping with a rope, but they catch my eye – I don’t know why. There’s something ’bout the way one of ’em moves, a little boy who has his back to me. When he jumps over the rope he leaves a foot dangling, lifts it just high enough to clear the rope by an inch or two. Joshua used to do that. I squint into the sun, suddenly excited, and put a hand over my eyes. Could it actually be Joshua? Could he already be here, playing over by the tree?
I race towards the tree shouting, ‘Joshua, Joshua!’ and those boys stop playing and they turn to watch me come, but even before I reach ’em I know I have made a mistake and it ain’t Joshua at all.
I arrive all out of breath and panting. ‘Is this one Lizzie’s place?’ I point over at a cabin.
‘Next one along,’ says the boy I mistook for Joshua, and he looks at me strange, a mix of wariness and wanting to please. ‘She ain’t there though. She’s still in the field.’ He sizes me up just like my brother would.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask him.
‘Gil.’
‘You skip pretty good, Gil. You ever get caught by the rope?’
He shakes his head. ‘Never.’
‘No, I didn’t reckon you did.’
I wander across to the cabins, which are lifted up on brick blocks to keep ’em from the mud. Two wooden steps lead up to each door, and every cabin has a mud-brick chimney that leans away from the outer wall and is propped at the top by two tall poles. They look all old and broken, those chimneys, like they could collapse from only a little gust of wind. These cabins ain’t much to look at and they’re probably worse to live in than they look, all draughty and cold, I’ll bet.
Lizzie’s cabin is different to the others, with a little vegetable garden out the back that she’s made look nice. I can tell she cares for it from the way she’s pushed all those sticks into the earth to make the fence. I practise my smile before I knock on her door. No one answers, but I suppose they warned me.
A dirt track leads down towards the woods on the eastern side of the plantation, so I decide to take a look around andsee how far I can go. I carry right on into the wood and out the other side, where the land is just
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