Free Caleb's Wars by David L. Dudley

to pay for more help," Stewart said after his father was gone. "Aunt Sondra likes to stretch a dollar."
    He started to pinch off some of the crusty top from a pan of macaroni and cheese, but Aunt Lou swatted his hand away. "Quit that! Folks don't want to eat nothin' after you got your grubby fingers in it. We ain't back at the house."
    "Oh, all right. I'll go keep Daddy company. Have one of the girls bring out the pork chops when they're ready."
    "Anything to get you outta here! I got more to do than I can manage.
    I kept my eyes on the dirty plates in the sink. Betty Jean brought another load and dumped them on the counter.
    "Looks like you got more than you can manage, too!" Stewart joked. "Look sharp, now!"
    He went into the dining room. I had some ideas what to do with his pork chops before Aunt Lou sent them out to him, but it wasn't my place to say anything. No, my place was to scrub pans clean from macaroni and cheese, where the cheese had baked on to the metal and had to be worked free with a wire brush.
    While I washed and rinsed, Aunt Lou's ways with the white folks kept coming into my mind. She was respectful to Mr. Davis, but she talked to Stewart like he was one of her own grandchildren. And Stewart obeyed her, too. Not many Negroes I knew could talk to whites the way Aunt Lou did. I figured she'd earned it by all the years of what Lee Davis would call "faithful service" to his family. I knew that meant getting up in the dark to be at the Davis kitchen in time to put a hot breakfast on the table every morning, even Sundays. It meant staying late in the evenings to clear the table and wash the dishes while the white folks socialized and called for more coffee and dessert. It meant a lifetime of scraping dirty plates, scrubbing dirty pots, and drying and putting everything away at night so the whole mess could start over again next morning.
    "Behold my servant." I saw Aunt Lou wipe the sweat off her face while she tended to Stewart's frying pork chops. She and Uncle Hiram had spent their whole lives serving white folks. And for what? I wanted something different for myself. Something better. If God was calling me to be his servant, surely that didn't mean spending my life waiting on white people.
    Toward the end of the dinner shift, Miss Sondra came in and started wrangling with Aunt Lou about getting a second cook. Miss Sondra argued that things would get easier and that money was tight, but Aunt Lou held on. Either they found another helper, or she and Uncle Hiram were leaving. If nothing changed within a week, they'd be gone, and Miss Sondra could stand by a hot stove herself and see how she liked it.
    Four o'clock came and went before my work was done. The dining room was swept, everything in the kitchen washed, the garbage hauled to the alley, and the kitchen mopped. Aunt Lou told me again what a help I'd been. That made me feel good.
    On my way home, I thought some more about how Aunt Lou broke the rules I'd heard all my life. "Never let a white person see you angry or upset." "Never threaten a white person." "Do what a white person says without asking why." She had earned the right to disobey those rules. And she had paid a lot for that right, as far as I could tell.
    ***
    At home, Ma was working on supper. "How was your day?" she asked. "Was it hard? You look tuckered out."
    She sounded so sympathetic that I told her the truth. "Awful. It's hot, the sink is too low, and my back is killing me. Miss Sondra is rude, and so is one of the waitresses."
    "I'm sorry. You could quit and go back with your father."
    "Not a chance. You saw how he was this morning."
    Ma sighed, then brightened up. "A letter from Randall arrived today. Guess what? He's coming home on leave soon."
    "Does Pop know?"
    "Not yet. Take care of your chores, and then you can wash up and rest."
    I started to go, but Ma called after me, "Remember that your father is a stubborn man. He can hold out a long time."
    "I'll remember, Ma."
    Like I could