She was just a nigger. Their baby was just a high-yellow gal in a blue velvet riding habit. It's like she's died again. I ask him what it all means to him, and he makes a joke of it and says, "I guess they're right. Once you go black, you don't go back." He said that to me and I laughed, but he didn't think it was funny and I didn't either.
Lady. Lady love. Lady my love. Mamalady. What does it mean, river deep and summer green to me, that you are black and he was black, and you still wanted to marry him, and have his little may-be-brown babies? Could you have loved me just that much and I didn't know it? Was it always there for me to suck in on the tip of your pap and I didn't taste it, in your eye when you watched Other? In your eye when you watched Planter? The trick you played on him. And what about the trick you played on me? That I was one flavor and she was—other—and better than me? Other and better than my mother?
There was a day you almost told me. I must have been about six years old. Too old to be carried or lifted anymore. Old enough for more little jobs. You pronounced me "herb finder." When the overseer complained to Planter, "You wife is making a pet out of that pickaninny" and Planter tried to embarrass you by quoting the overseer's charges, you lied without hesitation, "Every fine family in Savannah has one, and what precisely does our overseer know about the care and feeding of a tribe of Southern aristocrats?" You held your chin up in the air when you said that; you let your voice shake with pride of birth. The husband could see for himself the blue blood pulsing in the vein of his wife's temple.
Planter was petrified and chastened. He didn't move a finger, blink an eye; it was as if he had turned to stone. The unspoken word "pineswamppeckawood" hung in the air, an invisible syllabic sword of Damocles, and he'd be damned if it fell on his head. He would not stand too close to the overseer. For all his Planter swagger, for all his luxurious clothes, for all his acres, his only genuine link to the aristocracy was his lady, whose lily-white "quality" hand seemed raised to draw a line that placed him on the trash side of the social divide.
All white skins are not created equal; he knew that; and I learned it as I watched them engage in the only argument of their marriage. That he had offended the dignity of magnolia maidenhood and made his lady fainting mad was obvious. He had sinned against the only creed he had sworn to, the credo of milady's fragility, the creed that balanced the vow to protect the particular delicate needs of particular delicate ladies against all the ugly peculiar Southland customs. He let her win—then resumed his place at the victor's side. When the word "peckawood" fell, it was on the overseer's head—right out of Planter's mouth.
After that I was the official herb finder. When guests came to call, I would busy myself with this occupation and thus be away from the house, away from prying eyes, insolent mouths. When the visitors were gone, Lady and I would have dignified reunions in which she would inspect my bounty. Lady would draw pictures of what she wanted me to find. Sometimes when guests would stay a length of days, she would send me out with a long list and I would make a kind of camp down near the cabins and stay away until I had assembled all the specimens. With my bounty she would make little sachets and cures. There was a sachet she made for her own pillow that helped her fall asleep.
I seldom wore shoes and never on these rambles. I was proud of the calluses on my feet that allowed me to move nimbly and quickly over the farm; the calluses on my feet were the only part of my body I found superior to Other's. When my color deepened in the summer, I envied her more.
One day, at the end of an unusually long midsummer expedition, I was passing near the cabins when some of the "chil'rin" started teasing me, saying, "You done ripened right up," "'Bout time to pick her," "Think she'll fall from the tree herself," "Juicy—fruit, juicy-fruit." I ran back home, crying all the way.
But I didn't drop my herbs.
Later that night Lady took me down to where some poor white folks lived. A baby was due at their house and they had no money for a doctor, and even if they had, there weren't none about. She took me on the pretense of needing someone to tote her things into the house.
When we were alone I told her I wished I was white like her. I told her that I hated the color of my skin. She made a list of everything that was brown and beautiful in the world. She named walnut shells and fall leaves. She named tree bark and caramel. She named molasses, she named syrup, she named golden honey and sweet butter, the top of a cornbread, and finally she named the heel of a loaf of white bread. She was still naming and I was still crying, only harder. She opened her mouth to speak. She said, "I'm ... I'm ... I'm tired, and we need to go back home."
Then she took Feleepe's ring, the ring I wear as I write this, from the bodice of her dress, where it lay knotted into a handkerchief. I had seen it on her finger a time or two when we were alone. She took the ring and pressed it into the palm of my hand. The day I left Cotton Farm I pressed it back into her palm.
Garlic told R. that Mammy gave him the ring. She say Lady gave her the ring. Mammy say she want Garlic to give the ring to R. and she wanted R. to give the ring to me.
My mother, her Mammy. I never had a name to call her that I was fond of. Can you give somebody a name after she's in the ground? Can you hear me, Mama? Do you know which one of you I am calling? Black mama, white mama. Narrow mama, wide mama. None of that is anything. Mama I knew and Mama I didn't. I wonder if Mammy didn't see me as something like a Benedict Arnold, looking and telling all she see. Never learning the rule of silence. The rule of talk talk talk and don't tell nothing. Just the opposite of Lady, who spoke so little and said so much. Let me be greedy. I hope when I die I go to heaven. I know both my Mamas are praying for me. I expect, if I get to heaven, the first sound I'll hear is the sound of Mammy's crimson petticoat, the rustle of her heavenly garment moving toward me. We're going to a ball tonight. I'm going to wear rustling taffeta of my own.