The Wilful Daughter Read Free Page A

world, he told them, not the Indian world and he had to get as much land as he could get. “A man is the land he owns. Land is what a man is,” he had learned in his youth from a mother who never owned any.
    When he and his wife had left Alabama those years ago the first thing he did after getting settled in a little shack at the edge of the colored community was to scout out a piece of land. A piece of land big enough for a house and a shop. He had saved his money and wanted to move as quickly as he could on building a house for his precious Bira.
    But the price of land overwhelmed the Blacksmith. He couldn’t afford more than a half acre, and that half acre was something no one else wanted. Couldn’t farm it, wasn’t big enough to have a big family spread.
    The Blacksmith, being practical, decided to slow down. He went to his wife and asked her if she would mind putting off having children for a year, maybe two at the most. She agreed to it. He asked her, nervously because he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate and frankly because he knew that beating around the bush made no sense, if she knew of ways to not have babies for a while. She smiled sweetly and told him yes.
    For two and a half years the Blacksmith worked on that half acre where nothing could grow. He built a one bedroom house on it. Six days a week he worked coming home each night to good cooking and meals from his wife’s loving hands. With his consent Bira took in washing from the line men and porters and other colored people that didn’t have time to do their own. It made them feel important.
    This was the only money that was used for food and clothes. The rest of the money, the money he earned went into saving for land. William and Bira Brown worked like slaves to accomplish their dream - having their own land and a home one day.
    Two and a half years later he found the perfect piece of land. All sorts of fruit trees grew on it. Had only one house and it was as dilapidated as it was old. The colored man who owned it sold to Brown quickly, afraid since he was up there in years and didn’t have a family to look after him, that “they” would take it away from him. Brown understood. The man was alone. And alone and colored in the south on any piece of land was dangerous. Might wake up dead one of these mornings and “they” would say, to anyone who asked, that “they” owned it.
    He brought Bira to see it. To see the bushes and trees and fields of wild berries.
    “ Children should play here,” she said happily. “Lots of children.”
    “ Yes, Bira,” he smiled. “We have our land and it is time.”
    But what she said next surprised him. “Other people’s children, William. This place needs families, lots of families.”
    And that’s what gave the Blacksmith the idea.
    He asked the old man to stay on the land and allow the Blacksmith to look after him. It was his right. He built his shop there, then his house. He put a dirt road right down the middle of the property, a road coming in from the main one. After all this was done he subdivided the land.
    William Brown had people come and look at what he had done. In the heart of Atlanta, he designed a little colored town.
    At one end of the property were the church and the reverends house. At the other end was the mortician. In between were the living- houses, a shop and a general store. It was the late 1800’s and nobody could believe that he, a colored man, was doing this.
    He rented the land and saved the money he got from the rents to buy more land.
    At the end of three years his first child was born and he decided that she would always have land. He set aside fifty acres for her husband to receive on the day she would be wed. Then he decided he would set it aside for all his children. Fifty acres, a hundred if he could, but at least 50. And money, a nice fat dowry. Money for the children’s families to have a nice house built and some nice furniture. Money for the children’s education,