Free The Land by Mildred D. Taylor Page A

wipe your nose, clean you both up when you threw up, clean you up when you messed up, so I’ve gotten used to you. You’re my brother, same as George and Robert, and Cassie’s my sister. We might not be able to sit at the same table always, but that shouldn’t make a difference with us.”
    â€œHammond, how I’m feeling, it’s not just about sitting at the table. It’s that I’m my daddy’s colored son, and that’s how everybody sees me. White folks don’t think I’m as good as you are, and there’re some colored folks think I think I’m better than they are. When I go places with our daddy, he doesn’t say, ‘This is my son Paul.’ He doesn’t own up to me outside of this place, even though everybody knows I’m his. He makes different rules for his white children and his colored children. He talks about treating us the same, but we’re different and he’s the same as anyone else in treating us that way.”
    â€œWhat you expect him to do? Go against the law, break all the rules to claim you as his son? That wouldn’t do anybody any good. He break all the social taboos, he might as well pack up and leave this state.”
    â€œWell, he didn’t mind breaking any taboos when he started sleeping with my mama.”
    â€œYou’ve got to understand, Paul, that wasn’t really a taboo, just something that wasn’t discussed in polite society.”
    â€œTaboo or not, it makes me different. Cassie and me both.”
    â€œSo what?” Hammond questioned. “George, Robert, Cassie, you, me, we’re all different in our way, but we’re still family.”
    â€œAnd what about when I get full grown?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWill we still be family then? Can I sit at your table then?”
    My brother shook his head. “I don’t know, Paul. The world’s not made that way, and it’s hard for me to imagine it ever will be much different than now, so I’m not going to lie to you and promise you what I can’t. All I can say is I truly don’t know if you’ll sit at my table openly or if I’ll sit at yours, but I can promise you’ll always be my family. You and Cassie too. I won’t deny you or myself that.”
    I thought on his words. “Know what the preacher was speaking on at church this past Sunday?”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œHow Peter said he’d never deny Jesus either.”
    â€œYou comparing yourself to Christ?”
    I shook my head. “No. Just saying that when it suits a body, anybody can deny anybody, blood or not.”
    Â 
    After Hammond and I parted, I walked the woods alone for some time and finally made my way home as dusk began to fall. Home was my mama’s house. There was a vegetable garden in the back and a flower garden in front. The house was small and there were only two rooms to it. One was a bedroom that my mama and Cassie had shared. The larger room contained the kitchen, my bed, and the living area. Robert was often at the house as we went about our play and adventures. George and Hammond never came to the house, and my daddy only stopped by occasionally. He never stayed long and I don’t recall his ever spending the night. I stopped in the yard and didn’t go in right away. The kerosene lamp in the front window was already lit. I knew my mama was waiting for me.
    I wasn’t ready to face her yet.
    I leaned against the old pecan tree that dominated the yard and gazed at my mama’s house, thinking on what was between my mama and my daddy. Everybody knew that my mama was my daddy’s housekeeper and cook, and he paid her for it. But she was more than his housekeeper and cook, and everybody knew that too. Yet my mama and daddy never flaunted what was between them. I never saw them hold each other. I never saw them show open affection. But there were tender moments between them