Free The Land by Mildred D. Taylor Page B

that I did see, tenderness in the way they looked at each other, tenderness in the way their voices softened in their concern for each other and in their concern for Cassie and me. When there was only family present, my mama spoke frankly to my daddy and sometimes she spoke sharply to him too, as a wife might. But she never sat at his dining table. She said she was there to serve his table, not to sit at it, though I think she was more concerned about how it would look to others if she sat at his table. People hearing that Edward Logan’s children of color sat at his table was one thing. A colored woman with her children sitting at his table would have been another; that would have been too bold.
    Still, there were times when my mama and daddy did sit together, though not at meals. Sometimes when my daddy came into the kitchen, he would sit at the table and talk to my mama as she worked, and sometimes she would stop her work and join him. She would pour my daddy a cup of coffee or a glass of lemonade or such, and one for herself too, and they would talk of the farm or of my daddy’s business or of us children. Though my mama sat with my daddy, I never saw her set a meal for the two of them. Whatever meals they shared together, they shared alone.
    I thought on the life my mama and my daddy had made together and the life they had made for Cassie and me. I thought on Hammond and what he had said. I thought on his mother too. I considered how my life would have been if I had had a colored daddy. Boys like Mitchell and R.T. would have been more accepting of me, and I wouldn’t have felt so much hurt about not sitting at Edward Logan’s table when company came, for I would never have been invited to sit there in the first place. But then I thought about the fact that if my daddy had been a man of color, I wouldn’t have had George and Hammond and Robert as my brothers. I thought on a lot of things about my life and in the end decided I had a right to be angry. I had a right to be angry at both my mama and my daddy. I took that anger into the house with me.
    I found my mama sitting in her rocker, a splendid rocker made by a man up in Macon, the same man with whom my daddy said he was sending me to study. My daddy had given my mama the rocker. As I entered, my mama glared at me. “You think you grown now?” she asked.
    â€œMa’am?” I answered.
    â€œYou think you grown? I told you not to leave that porch.”
    â€œI know you did . . . but I couldn’t stay there—”
    â€œAnd why not?”
    I turned on her. “I expect you know.”
    My mama’s voice grew tight. “I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you.”
    â€œWell, then,” I said, feeling my near to twelve-year-old manhood, “maybe you ought to be asking that white man you lying with—”
    Now, I was feeling bad about all my angry thoughts against my mama, blaming her for being with my daddy. There was a part of me too that resented the fact that I was not like my brothers, born to their white mother. If I had been, then I could have always sat at my daddy’s table and socialized with my daddy’s friends. I would have been accepted. Even as I had those thoughts, I felt a mighty guilt, for I loved my mama. Though we clashed because of all my resentment, I wouldn’t have given her up for anything. I was all conflicted, and I suppose that’s what made me speak the way I did to her, and I was mad at myself for doing so.
    But I was no match for my mama about being mad. She jumped up from that rocker quicker than lightning and grabbed the leather strap hanging by the fireplace. “Let me tell you something, boy,” she said in a voice I’d never heard from her. “I was your mama when I bore you, I was your mama to you all your eleven years, and I’ll be your mama to you ’til I die, and, what’s more, I’ll be your mama to you ’til you die!” Then