The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
When Joe Pittman asked me to be his wife I told him I wanted to think about it awhile. Because I didn’t want to tell him I was barren. I liked him now and I was scared if I told him I was barren he would leave me for somebody else. He asked me again and I told him I wanted to think some more. He kept on asking me, and that’s when I told him. We was sitting down in the house that day eating when I told him that. I told him if he didn’t want me no more that was all right, I would understand. But all he said was. “Ain’t we all been hurt by slavery? If you just say you’ll help me raise my two girls, I’ll be satisfied.” He was a real man, Joe Pittman was.
We didn’t get married. I didn’t believe in the church then, and Joe never did. We just agreed to live together, like people did in the slavery time. Slaves didn’t get married in churches, they jumped over the broom handle. Old Mistress and Young Mistress held the broom handle up off the floor, and Old Master told the slaves to hold hands and jump over. If they was old people, Old Mistress and Young Mistress would hold the broom down low and the old couple would step over sprightly. Old Master would say, “Step sprightly there, Jubal; step sprightly there, Minnie.” They would step sprightly, and they was pronounced husband and wife. Me and Joe Pittman didn’t think we needed the broom, we wasn’t slaves no more. We would just live together long as we wanted each other. That was all.
Not long after we started living together Joe told me he wanted to leave Colonel Dye’s plantation. Joe was sharp with horses and he was sure he could find a place where he could get more money and get better treatment than what he was getting here. I told him if he wanted to leave I would go with him, but I didn’t want to leave till I had heard from Ned. It was almost a year and I still hadn’t gotten a word from Ned. I didn’t want him to come back and I wasn’t there or him to write me a letter and I didn’t get it. Joe said he would wait till I heard but at the same time he would look around for a new place. Every chance he got he went out looking. If he heard of a place, no matter how far it was, if he could get there and get back before he had to go in the field he went and checked it out.
Ned wrote me a month after he left home, but I didn’t get the letter for a year. He wrote the letter to somebody he met in New Orleans just before he got on the boat for Kansas. He didn’t want send the letter directly to me because the people here would ’a’ been suspicious. Anything that had Kansas or the North on it might ’a’ been torn up and throwed away. He sent the letter to his friend and his friend was supposed to send it to the preacher on the plantation, and the preacher was supposed to read it to me. Instead of his friend sending the letter on to the preacher like he was suppose to do he put the letter somewhere and forgot it. When he found it again he could hardly read the address and he sent it to the wrong place. When it came back he had to get in touch with Ned in Kansas again. Ned was in Leavenworth when he first wrote the letter, but now he had gone to a place called Atchison. It was a year before everything got straightened out.
The letter told how people was coming into Kansas by the boat-load. At first how the white people in Kansas was helping them. How they collected money to give them. How they organized committees to go to Washington and places like that for money and clothes, money and food. Even from cross the sea they got money and clothes. The people at first was almost too nice. But that was the first letter. When I got the second letter things had changed already. The white people couldn’t help all of them, and there wasn’t any work for them to do. Now the white people didn’t want them in town. Ned was on a committee that found new places for people to live. He traveled by boat up and down the river, but no matter where he went there was already too many people. His committee sent letters back to the South: not all the people to come to one place. There was other States where they could go and find comfort. But the people had heard of Kansas first. Like sheeps they had to go where everybody else had gone. Now the riots. When the letters and papers didn’t keep them out, the white people drove them out with sticks and guns. When Ned went out in the country to see how they was living, he said some of them had died from the cold. Others was starving. Some was talking about coming back South. But most of them was going farther West or head North.
The only good news I got from Ned at this time—he was working for some white people who liked him. They saw how much he cared for his race, and they thought he could help them much more if he finished school. He told them he wanted to go on to school, but he thought he ought to help me. From the first letter on he always sent me three or four dollars every time he wrote. When I got the first money I wrote back and told him I didn’t need it, I was making out just fine. He told me if I didn’t need it, put it up, but keep it. He never told me he wanted to go back to school, he didn’t tell me that till I wrote and told him me and Joe Pittman was married. We wasn’t married, we was just living together, but Ned wouldn’t ’a’ like that. But it wasn’t till after I told him about me and Joe he told me he wanted to go back to school.
Ned was working on a farm in Kansas. He worked in the day, he rode a horse to school at night. This went on five, six years. When he finished, they gived him a job teaching there. He stayed till that war started in Cuba, then he joined the army. After the war he came back here. He wanted to teach at home now.
Another Home
Joe Pittman found a place near the Luzana-Texas borderline where he could break horses. He knowed all about breaking horses and branding catties—he had learned that on Colonel Dye’s place—but now he wanted to go where he could make a better living. After we had talked it over, just me and him, he went up to the house to tell Colonel Dye he wanted to leave. Colonel Dye was old and wrinkled now, but onery still. Not just onery, he was losing his mind now. Once every year he used to put on his Secesh uniform and ride to Alexandria. Two or three days later he would come back. Looked like every time he went and came back he was more and more crazy. Sometimes he used to gather us all at his house just to look at us. After he had looked at us about a minute he would tell us to go back. One time he called us up there, and by the time we got there he had forgot he had sent for us. “What y’all doing here?” he asked. “You sent for them, Pa,” one of his boys said. “Well, I’m sending them right on back,” he said. “Get out of here. Go back to work.” When Joe went up there that day and told him he wanted to leave, he said: “What’s the matter, I ain’t been treating you right?” Joe told him it wasn’t that, he had been treated very good there, but he wanted to go out and do little sharecropping of his own. (He wouldn’t dare tell the old colonel he wanted to go break horses for more money, he told him sharecropping.) Colonel Dye told Joe he would pay the family five dollars more a month if he stayed. Joe shook his head—no, he wanted to go out and do little sharecropping. The colonel said, “Listen, Joe, I’ll turn over piece of that good bottom land to you, and you work it like you want.” This was the first time Colonel Dye had offered anybody a piece of land on his place. He had said before that this was the last thing he would ever do. Joe knowed this before he went up there, that’s why he went up there saying sharecropping. He said the old colonel looked at him like he was losing his best friend. “You a good man, Joe, and I need you here to mind my stock. My children round here too lazy to do a thing, and there ain’t another nigger on this place that can tell you a cow from a hog.” Joe shook his head. “I like to go sharecrop.” Now, the old colonel got mad. Acting like he was losing his best friend one second, next second he was blazing mad. “All right, if you want go sharecrop, go sharecrop,” he said. Joe thanked him and turned to go. “Just a minute,” the colonel said. Joe stopped and looked at him. “Ain’t you forgetting something?” “Sir?” Joe said. “My hundred and fifty dollars,” the colonel said. “What hundred and what fifty dollars?” Joe said. “That hundred and that fifty to get you out of trouble when the Klux had you,” the colonel said. “You forget that?”
It was true Joe Pittman had been mixed up in little politics just after the war, and everybody round there knowed about it.
“I didn’t know you paid,” Joe said.
“Kluxes don’t stop killing a nigger just because you say hold it,” the colonel said. “Now you pay me my hundred and fifty dollars or get away from my door.”
Joe came back and told me what had happened. We sat up all night trying to think what we ought to do next. Joe was set on leaving, no holding him back, but he couldn’t leave and not pay Colonel Dye his money. He knowed he didn’t owe Colonel Dye any money, but how could he prove it? The Freedom Beero once, but they wasn’t there no more.
We stayed up all night. Then we both said that Joe ought to go see if he couldn’t borrow the money from the new man he was go’n work for. ’Fore day the next morning Joe packed a lunch and started out. Started out on foot with a hundred miles to go. Somebody told Colonel Dye he was missing and Colonel Dye came out in the field and asked me where was. “Gone look for your money,” I said. The old colonel got mad at first, saying what he was go’n do to Joe when Joe got back. But then he started laughing. Where could a nigger get a hundred and fifty dollars from? He rode away laughing.
Couple weeks later Joe came back. Walked almost to Texas—rode a horse all the way back. He left the horse tied in the swamps, scared Colonel Dye might accuse him of stealing it then he went up to the house and knocked. Colonel Dye came to the back door chewing. Had been sitting at the table eating.
“Where you been?” he said. “Don’t you know them mules out there hungry? Want me come in that yard with my stick?”
Joe handed him the money. Colonel Dye wouldn’t take it at first. Like it was confederate money. Then he took it—looked at it. Then he looked at Joe. Then at the money. Then he wiped his mouth and counted the money. “Look like it’s all here—but the interest,” he said. “Time lap’ between loaner and loanee come to about thirty more dollars. Well?”
Joe came back and told me he owed Colonel Dye even more money. I have been getting money from Ned, and what I had saved from my wages came out to about twenty-five dollars. But we needed five more dollars. So here we go, up and down the quarters, selling the little furniture we had. I think we got about a dollar and half for everything. Joe had a’ old shotgun, he sold that: another dollar. We tried to sell our clothes, but nobody wanted them. We had a pig we was go’n take with us—but we needed the two dollars now. Joe stuck the pig in a sack and started up and down the quarters again. After he had sold the pig, he took the money to Colonel Dye. The colonel stood in the back door counting the money. When he saw it was all there, he started to shut the back door and go back inside, but he saw Joe still out there in the yard.
“Well?” he said.
“Mr. Clyde said be sure to bring a receipt,” Joe said. “He said he don’t want have to come this far South for a piece of paper.”
Colonel Dye went back inside and wrote that he had received one hundred and fifty dollars. He didn’t say a thing about the extra thirty dollars. He came to the back door and throwed the piece of paper on the ground.
“Don’t let the sun set on you anywhere near my place,” he said.
Joe came back and told me and the girls to get ready. The two girls was called Ella and Clara. Ella the oldest one, and Clara the youngest one and looked just like Joe. After we had got everything we was go’n take with us, Joe led us back in the swamps. Ella and Clara got on the horse with the bundle, and me and Joe walked in front. I asked Joe how come he got the money so easy. He said it wasn’t easy; some colored men he had met had to speak up for him. Then he had to prove to Mr. Clyde how good he was. Clyde picked one of the wildest horses he had. He broke the horse, true, but he was so stoved up he had to lay up awhile before he could start back home.
It took us about ten days to reach Clyde’s place. We traveled the swamps all the time for fear the secret groups might see us and attack us for leaving Colonel Dye’s place. We ran out of food four days out, and from then on we ate what we could find. Corn, potatoes. If Joe was lucky he might kill a possum, or if we came up to a bayou we might catch a fish or two. We ate anything we could get. We met people, black and white, but they saw us on the move and wouldn’t have nothing to do with us.
We came up to Clyde’s place about five one evening. Clyde and his men had been killings hogs, and when we came up, the men was standing in the yard talking. Clyde told Joe to take us to the back and tell the women in the kitchen to give us a good feeding. I could smell that good hog meat from way cross the yard. The women was making hoghead cheese and blood pudding. They handed us a big pan of food and we found a clean spot on the ground to sit down. When we got through, almost too full to move, we went back round the house. Mr. Clyde told Joe he wouldn’t need him till Monday, so Joe could take us on home. The cabin wasn’t much bigger than the one we had left, but we had made a new start and everything looked right smart better. After the children went to bed me and Joe sat at the firehalf talking. We was so proud we had moved, so happy for the good meal we got soon as we got here, every time we looked at each other we had to grin. Feet sore, back still hurting, but grinning there like two children courting for the first time. We tried to keep from looking at each other. I looked at the firehalf, Joe looked at the door; then I looked at the door, Joe looked at the firehalf. When we couldn’t find nowhere else to look we looked at each other and grinned. No touching, no patting each other on the knee, just grinning.
Molly
We got there on a Friday. Next day, Saturday, I heard that I was supposed to work in the big house. I hadn’t worked in a house since I was a slave, but I work where they put me. What I couldn’t figure out, why I got the job soon as I got there? How come some other woman didn’t have it? Some people like house work. Make them feel more important. House niggers always thought they was better than field niggers. I asked Joe if he knowed why they had gived me the job. He said he didn’t know, either.
’Fore day Monday morning when they called Joe for work I got up, too. After he ate and left, I went over to the house. It was pitch black, but I didn’t know what they wanted me for, so I went on anyhow. At that time some of the kitchens used to set away from the house. I didn’t know where I was go’n be working, so I went back to the kitchen and sat down on a barrel I saw in front of the door.
I sat there and sat there. I sat there over an hour. Just as the sun was coming up I saw a woman, a great big, brown-shin woman walking across the yard toward me. It had been a heavy dew the night before, and her legs and feet was shining wet. She came up to the kitchen and looked at me sitting there.
“Well?” she said.
“My name’s Jane Pittman,” I said.
“I didn’t ask you that,” she said. “What you want?”
“I’m working here,” I said.
“No, you ain’t,” she said. “I don’t need nobody spying on me.”
“Spying?” I said.
“Get out my way ’fore I lam’ you up side the head,” she said.
She didn’t give me time to move. She pushed me side the head and I fell on the ground. I brushed off my clothes and went in the kitchen where she was. She was lighting a fire in the firehalf. When she got through she looked at me standing there.
“You don’t hear good, do you?” she said.
I was go’n tell her I didn’t want be there in the first place. I rather be out in the field, but she grabbed me and pitched me back outside. I fell flat on my face, my hands covered with chicken and guinea stuff. I wiped my hands in the grass and went back in the kitchen. Molly was singing. She didn’t even stop. She just grabbed me, still singing, and slammed me back out there. While I was sailing in the air I was hoping I hit a clean spot. That was like hoping I didn’t hit the ground.
I wiped off my hands and clothes and went back in. Molly just stood there looking at me now. When she went back to the firehalf I got the broom and started sweeping. She jecked the broom out my hand and throwed it back in the corner
“You must be Jane,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“You’ll take care the children, Jane.”
“I don’t need nobody taking care them children,” Molly said. “I can cook and take care them children.”
Miss Clare didn’t answer Molly. She looked at the side of my face and my forrid.
“You hurt anywhere else?” she asked me.
I touched my forrid, and I had a knot up there the size of a marble.
Miss Clare looked at the side of my face again. She was too much of a lady to tell me I had some guinea stuff there. I could see her mouth working like she wanted to say something, then she pressed her lips tight. Then her nose worked a little bit like she was smelling something. All this time she was looking straight in my eye. She wanted me to guess what she didn’t want tell me.
One of the children at the table looked at me and pointed his finger. “Caw-caw,” he said. Then everybody else at the table looked at me, and all of them bust out laughing. I touched the spot they was looking at, and it was there, all right.