The Emancipation of Robert Sadler Read Free Page A

mood. Mama got out of bed and came into the kitchen where he stood. Without a word he raised his arm and struck her a blow across the head, and she was sent sprawling to the floor.
    I ran across the room with a scream and grabbed a stick. I leaped at my father and beat his legs with all my might. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed at him. “Don’t you hit Mama!”
    Before I knew it, he had me dangling from his hand in the air. Then with a howl he hurled me the length of the cabin into the wall, knocking me unconscious.
    Mama fussed over me for a couple of days, and I ached and hurt everywhere. She was afraid something had been broken inside my head because of the lump and bruises.
    Mama’s health continued to grow worse. By cotton-picking time she was unable to rise up out of the bed. She cried often for her children. I would hear her in the bed as I brought in the wood in the morning.
    â€œO Lord, have mercy. Have mercy. Take care of my chillren, Lord.”
    â€œWhere you goin, Mama?” I would ask her.
    â€œSon, you gonna have to be mighty strong, hear? Yor Mama’s goin home soon.”
    â€œGoin home? But you are home, Mama.”
    â€œNo, son. Mama means home in heaven. With the Lord—that’s real home.”
    â€œYou leavin us, Mama?”
    â€œI believe so, son.”
    She had that look in her eye again—that look as though she had something very important to say. Something that would explain everything. Like why Father was so cruel, and why things were the way they were—things like that.
    â€œLord, have mercy,” she said instead.
    I was sweeping out the cabin one afternoon and it began to rain. We dreaded rain because it poured in on everything, and the cabin was like a sieve. Work in the fields went on rain or shine. Mama lay on her bed with the rain dripping down on her pillow by her head. I stood near her bed watching her. She lay wheezing in the darkness of the afternoon, and I was afraid she might have been serious about leaving us and going to her real home. The cabin had been so gloomy since she took sick that there was little joy anywhere. Even Ella, who was always happy and laughing, became grave and sullen. There was no singing anymore without Mama to sing with us, and one day followed the other like a string of cold stones. The neighbor ladies prepared hot onion and potato soup and sarsaparilla and sage tea for Mama. They laid long strands of green and brown grasses on her chest, and they prayed.
    It rained for three days. Father took Janey, Pearl, and Margie to the field with him, and Ella and I stayed in the cabin with Mama until they came home at night. Ella got a fever and had to stay in bed, so I sat by myself on the step watching the rain and waiting for Mama to wake up.
    At the end of the third day of rain, I heard Mama calling for Father from her bed. “Jim . . . Jim . . .” Her voice was weak. I ran to her. “. . . Your father, honey. Git your father.” She was gasping like she had been running hard and couldn’t catch her breath.
    â€œYes, Ma’am,” I said and raced out of the cabin to get my father. When I found him in the barn bent over a broken wagon wheel I shouted almost hysterically, “Mama! Mama! It’s Mama! She wants you! She’s real sick, Father! She’s callin for you!” He didn’t even look up as he worked. Finally he muttered, “I can’t come, boy. Gotta finish this here busted axle.”
    By the time Father arrived at Mama’s bedside that evening, she had slipped into unconsciousness. She never spoke or opened her eyes again. In another day she was dead.
    The days which followed were a daze. The funeral was held in a little church on the hill about a mile away. I saw her lying in the box they had built, and I wanted to scream, “Mama, get up. Get up! Mama, why you lyin there like that?”
    The only one of the