The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Read Free Page A

We didn’t ask what he wanted us for, we had no idea, we just went up there. The master was standing on the gallery with a sheet of paper.
    “This all y’all?” he asked. “All them children in the quarters, too? I want everybody here who can stand up.”
    The people said this was all us.
    “All right, I got news for y’all,” the master said. “Y’all free. Proclamation papers just come to me and they say y’all free as I am. Y’all can stay and work on shares—because I can’t pay you nothing, because Iain’t got nothing myself since them Yankees went by here last time. Y’all can stay or y’all can go. If y’all stay I promise I’ll be fair as I always been with y’all.”
    Old Mistress and Young Mistress was standing in the door crying, and right behind them the house niggers crying, too. For a while after the master got through reading the Proclamation the people didn’t make a sound. Just standing there looking up at him like they was still listening to his words.
    “Well, that’s that,” he said.
    Then all a sudden somebody hollered, and everybody started singing. Just singing and dancing and clapping. Old people you didn’t think could even walk started hopping round there like game roosters. This what the people was singing:
    “We free, we free, we free
    We free, we free, we free
    We free, we free, we free
    Oh, Lordy, we free.”       
    Just singing and clapping, just singing and clapping. Just talking to each other, just patting each other on the back.
    The driver he never got in the celebration him. Everybody else singing and clapping, he just standing there looking up at the master. Then he moved closer to the gallery and said: “Master, if we free to go, where is we to go?”
    Before the master could open his mouth, I said: “Where North at? Point to it. I’ll show y’all where to go.”
    The driver said: “Shut up. You ain’t nothing but trouble. I ain’t had nothing but trouble out you since you come in that field.”
    “If I ain’t nothing but trouble, you ain’t nothing but Nothing,” I said.
    And the next thing I knowed, my mouth was numb and I was laying down there on the ground. The master looked at me down there and said: “I can’t doa thing about it. You free and don’t belong to me no more. Got to fight your own battle best you can.”
    I jumped up from there and sunk my teeth in that nigger’s hand. His hand was rough as ’cuda legs. He wrenched his hand out my mouth and numbed the side of my face. This time when I got up I grabbed that hoe I had brought out the field. An old man we all called Unc Isom stepped in front of me.
    “Hold,” he said.
    “Hold nothing,” I said. “Nigger, say your prayers. Maker, here you come.”
    “Didn’t I say hold,” Unc Isom said. “When I say hold, I mean just that: hold.”
    I eased the hoe to the ground, but I kept my eyes on the driver all the time. I touched my lips with my hand, but I couldn’t feel a thing. Not bleeding, but numb as it could be.
    When Unc Isom seen I wasn’t go’n hit that nigger with that hoe, he turned to the master.
    “The papers say we can go or we can stay, Master?” he asked him.
    “No, they just say y’all free, Isom,” the master said. “They don’t care what y’all do, where y’all go. I’m the one who saying y’all can stay on if y’all want. If you stay, I got to work you on shares, and you work when you want. You don’t have to work on Sundays less you want. Can go to church and stay there and sing all day if you want. You free as I am, Isom.”
    Unc Isom said, “Master, we can gather down the quarters and talk just between us?”
    The master said, “What you go’n be talking ’bout down there, Isom?”
    “Just if we ought to go or stay, Master,” Unc Isom said.
    “Sure, y’all free as I am,” the master said. “Y’all can take all the time y’all want to decide. Long as you ain’t deciding on burning down the place.”
    Unc Isom had to grin to