“But Daddy, don’t you think he forgot about you by now?”
“That old masta is sly, and I ’spect I see him any day. I’s ready to head out soon’s I catch sight a him.”
“You’d just go and leave me?” I ask.
“Son, the best chance you got is stayin’ with Mr. Burton. All we’d be doin’ is runnin’.”
“What was it like bein’ a slave?” I ask.
“It nothin’ I like to talk ’bout.”
“But was it bad?”
“It bad enough that I’d sooner die as go back to livin’ like that.”
“But what if they ever get you again?” I ask.
“They never gon’ get me again. They got to kill me before that happen,” he says.
After he tells me that, when I go to meet him, my head is always hurtin’ till I see him waitin’ in the trees. Then I run to him, and when I give him a hug, I always got to stop myself from crying. I count on seeing him every Sunday, ’cause that’s how it was all of my life. The rest of the time it was just me and Mama. The best times we had was when my mama’s friend Sheila came by. Then I’d sit back and listen to the two of them talk. I liked to hear them laugh, even though Sheila had troubles of her own. Her two boys, both of them bigger than me, were always getting in a mess, and then her girl, just fourteen, goes out and gets her own baby.
One day after Sheila leaves, I ask Mama, “Why that girl of hers go out and bring in another baby? Sheila say she can’t feed the ones she got.”
“Those folks don’ know no better ’cause they was slaves, comin’ here to Phil’delphia from the farm where they don’t have nobody tellin’ them how to live free,” Mama says. “It hard on them, tryin’ to figure out how to make a livin’ when they can’t read or write. Mos’ come from workin’ in the fields and don’ even know how to serve in a big house. Too, a lot a them still scared a the white folks.”
I was six or seven when Mama first got sick. I did my best to help her out, but I was always happy when Sheila came over at night, sometimes bringing us food when we got none. One day she comes when I’m fussing over Mama, who was real sick that day. Sheila takes over and settles Mama, then pulls me on her lap and says, “Anybody tell you that you a good boy?”
Don’t know why, but that gets me cryin’.
“That’s fine, chil’, you go head and cry,” she says. “I knows this got to be tough on you.”
I cry for a long time before she gives me a squeeze. “Come on, now,” she says, “you got to be a lil man here. Your mama countin’ on you.”
“But I ain’t no man,” I say, “I jus a chil’.”
“That’s right,” she say, “but sometimes we got to grow up fast. Why, when I was your age, I was takin’ care of a whole house a white people.”
“You was?” I ask, but I don’t see her face ’cause her chin was on my head.
“Uh-huh,” she say.
“When was you a chil’?”
“If I ever was, I forgot,” she said.
ONE SUNDAY SHEILA comes over when my daddy’s there and she gets to scoldin’ him. “What you gonna do?” she asks. “This woman’s not gonna make it through the winter. You can’t leave the boy alone to take care a her like this!”
“What I gon’ do here?” Daddy says. “I leaves the tavern, I don’ have no money to help out. She gon’ be all right, and the boy’s doin’ jus’ fine!”
“You bes’ get a job closer in,” says Sheila.
“And where’s that? You got somethin’ lined up for me?”
Sheila don’t have an answer, and she goes out slamming the door behind her.
UNTIL MY MAMA got sick, we went to church to get religion. The singin’ and the callin’ out to God lifts us up, but I always got my eye on the cake and milk they give you after.
After she can’t walk that far no more, at night we sit together and ask God to help us out, but I don’t like it when Mama starts tellin’ me that she gon’ have to leave me and go on to see the Maker. Every time I say, “Don’t go, I don’t want you to go,” she tells me, “Baby boy, when I get the call, I got to go. You always ’member that even when you don’ see me, I still right there, watchin’ out for you. Come now, you tell your mama that you never gon’ forget that.”
I promise her over and over, but I forget all of that the night she passes. I don’t care that I’m already eight years old, and I stay put on Sheila’s lap, cryin’. When Daddy gets there, he stands at the door like he don’t know if he’s in the right house. “What goin’ on here?” he says.
“She pass on,” Sheila says, but there’s no fight in her words.
Real slow, Daddy goes over to Mama, then starts shaking her and calling out to her like he can bring her back. I bust off a Sheila’s lap and run over to push him away. “Don’t fuss with her, can’t you see she restin’!”
Daddy looks at me, then back at Mama, and he says real quiet, “I never think this gonna happen.” Then he looks at me and grabs hold a my arms. “What we gonna do? What we gonna do?” he asks me, like I got the answer.
Sheila takes over then, and in the morning Daddy takes me back with him, but it don’t work out, and the next Sunday he takes me to see Mr. Burton.
THE THING I like best about Mr. Burton is that he don’t mind when I ask questions. That’s just the way I is, full of questions. Quiet just isn’t for me. I’m like my mama in that, where I like the sound of talk. I like the sound of singing, too, even if it’s Robert when he don’t think nobody’s around. Then he lets loose. One day the slick man is working in the dining room, singing to the Lord like he’s in church, when Mr. Burton and me come through to the study. Robert don’t know we’s there, and Mr. Burton just winks down at me, then heads on past like he don’t see nothing.
About a year ago, this Miss Caroline shows up at Mr. Burton’s art class that he gives on Saturdays. Mr. Burton was always a quiet man, but after a few weeks of Miss Caroline taking his classes, on the days she’s comin’ he goes around the house whistling, something Robert says I’m not allowed to do.
ROBERT TELLS ME that I got to learn to be discreet, a word that he says means not to talk so much. One Saturday afternoon I go runnin’ for him. “Somethin’s goin’ on in the library,” I say. “Mr. Burton is in there with Miss Caroline, and it seems to me like they need some help.”
“Why are you bothering Mr. Burton?” Robert asks.
“Molly sent me to ask him if he wants some tea, like always. I know he and Miss Caroline went to the library ’cause I saw them go.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“Well, the door is locked, and when I knock, they don’t answer. Could be both of ’em is sick,” I say.
Robert tells me to stay back and goes to listen at the door. It don’t take him long before he comes back and gets us both into the dining room to do some polishing.
“They gon’ be all right?” I ask.
“They are having a private meeting,” he said. “You must never interrupt them during a private meeting.”
“Never?” I ask.
“Never!”
“What if there is a house fire?” I ask.
“Then you come for me,” Robert says.
“And what if you is burned up?” I ask.
He gives me a sigh. “I suppose at that point, you may knock on the door and shout, ‘Fire!’?”
“I don’t think that’s what I’d say. I think that I’d say, ‘Mr Burton! Mr. Burton, you best stop your private meeting, because Robert is burnt up and the house is on fire.’?”
“You could talk like this all day, couldn’t you?” he asks.
“You mean about a fire?” I ask, but he don’t answer me no more.
THEN COMES A DAY I walk into Malcolm’s room and Mr. Burton and Miss Caroline is caught up in kissing. I’m so surprised that I just stand there until Mr. Burton sees me.
“Pan!” Mr. Burton says, like I do something wrong.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Burton, I come in here to clean Malcolm’s cage,” I say, but it’s something to watch Miss Caroline’s white face turnin’ red.
“Will he tell Robert and your housekeeper?” she asks Mr. Burton, like I don’t hear her.
“You know this is a private matter, Pan, that you must not speak to anyone of this?” Mr. Burton says.