Chapter 5 No.5

Did you ever think what a dear old thing anybody's black mammy is, my diary, especially when she's done all the cooking (and raised you) for twenty-five years? Mammy Lou has belonged to us just like father and mother ever since we've been at housekeeping, and my heart almost breaks to-night when I think of the fire in our stove that won't burn and the dasher in our churn that is still.

Ever since I've been keeping a diary I've been awfully glad to hear about anybody being in love, and took great pleasure in watching them and writing it all out, for I could always imagine it was me that was the lady. But I would rather never keep a diary another day than to have such a thing happen to Mammy Lou.

When mother heard about it she said not to be an old fool, but Mammy Lou said, "either Marse Shakespeare or Marse Solomon said a old fool was the biggest fool and she wasn't going to make him out no lie. So marry that Yankee nigger she was!"

Bill Williams first came here to teach school, being very proud and educated. Then he got to be Dilsey's beau and they expected to marry. When he first commenced going to see Dilsey Mammy Lou would cook the nicest kind of things for her to take to picnics, hoping to help her catch him in a motherly way. But when he started to promising to give Dilsey a rocking-chair and take her to "George Washington" if she would marry him, Mammy Lou changed about. She had always wanted to see a large city herself, and she thought it wasn't any use of letting Dilsey get all the best things in life, even if she was her child.

Pretty soon she commenced wearing red ribbon around her neck and having her hair wrapped fresh once a week. Then she told him she was the good cook that cooked all the picnic things, and ironed all of Dilsey's clean dresses; also that she had seventy-five dollars saved up that she would be willing to spend on a grand bridal trip the next time she got married. Mammy Lou is a smart old thing, and so she talked to him until he said, well, he would just as soon marry her as Dilsey, if she would stop cooking for us, and cook for him and iron his shirts all the time. She promised him she would do this, like people always do when they're trying to marry a person, although it looks very different afterward. None of mammy's other husbands had been so proud. They would not only let her cook, but would come around every meal time, in the friendliest kind of way, and help her draw a bucket of water. This is why the whole family's heart is breaking and we feel so hungry to-night. She's quit, and the wedding is to-morrow.

This morning early she came up to the house to ask mother if it would be excusable to take off her widow's bonnet, not being divorced from Uncle Mose but four months; also how she had better carry her money to keep Bill from getting "a holt" of it. She said she wouldn't trust any white Yankee with a half a dollar that she ever saw, much less a coffee-colored one. Mother was so mad at her, and so troubled about the sad biscuits and the watery gravy at breakfast that she said she hoped he would steal every cent of the seventy-five dollars before the ceremony was over, and maybe that would bring her to her senses.

"And me not to get to go to George Washington!" mammy said in a hurt-like voice. "Why, Mis' Mary!"

"Where is this George Washington?" mother took time to ask, thinking mammy would know she was just poking fun at her, but she didn't.

"Law! Ain't it surprising how little my white folks do know! Why, it's the place where the president and his wife lives. Mr. Williams is mighty well acquainted with the president and says he's shore I could git a job cooking for the fambly if I was 'round lookin' for jobs. But I ain't to cook for nobody but him from now on."

Mother didn't encourage her to talk about her love and matrimony any, so she took me by the hand and we went out and sat down on the kitchen doorstep and had a long conversation. She seemed mighty sad at the notion of leaving us, but was so delighted at the idea of marrying a young man (as anybody naturally would be) that she couldn't think of giving that up. Pretty soon in our conversation she commenced telling me about the things that happened many years ago, when I was a little child, like they say folks do when they're going on a long journey or die.

She began from the time I was born, and said I was such a brown little thing that I looked like I had tobacco-juice running through me instead of blood. And I made use of a bottle until I was four years old. Because I was the only one of mother's and father's children that lived and was born to them like Isaac (I don't know of any special way that Isaac was born, but two of mammy's husbands have been preachers, so she knows what she's talking about) they let me keep the bottle to humor me. It had a long rubber thing to it so I would find it more convenient. Mammy said the old muley cow was just laid aside for my benefit, they thought so much of me, and when I got big enough to walk I'd go with her into the cow-lot every hour in the day and drag my bottle behind me to be milked into. I enjoyed being milked into my mouth, too, if my bottle was too dirty to hold it just then.

Mammy said I always admired the sunshine so much that I would sit out in it on hot days till my milk bottle would clabber, which was one cause of my brownness. When I found out I couldn't draw anything up through the rubber, being all clabbered, I'd begin to cry and run with my bottle to mammy. And she would quiet me by digging out all the clabber with a little twig and feed it to the chickens. They got to knowing the sound of me and my bottle rattling over the gravels so well that they'd all come a running like they do when they hear you scrape the plates.

This, of course, was very touching to us both and we nearly cried when she talked about going off to Washington where the people are too stylish to keep a muley cow. They won't even keep a baby in the families there, but the ladies keep little dogs and get divorces.

Mother wouldn't go to the wedding, for dinner and supper were worse than breakfast. The rest of the family all went except Dilsey, who didn't much like the way her mother had treated her about Bill. Professor and Mrs. Young went, being still down there and a great pleasure to us all. They were delighted, being raised up North, and wanted to take pictures of everything. Whenever we would pass a cabin door with a nigger and his guitar sitting in it and picking on it they would stop and say that it was so "picturesque." And the real old uncles with white hair and the mammies with their heads tied up they said reminded them of "Aunty Bellum days."

Everything went off as nice as could be expected under the circumstances until the preacher said, "Salute your bride." Then, when Bill started to kiss her, Mammy Lou laid her hand against the side of his head so hard you could have heard the pop up to the big house and said she would show him how to be impudent to a woman of sixty, even if he was a Yankee and educated. Everybody passed it off as a joke, but the slap didn't seem to set very well with Bill, being nineteen years old and not used to such. We left right after the ceremony and Mammy Lou and the others walked on down to her house to wait for the twelve o'clock train that they were going to leave on.

Although I always enjoy going to places with the Youngs on account of the curious words and the camera they use, and although it was the sixth marriage of my old nurse, which you don't get a chance to see every day, still when I think of breakfast, I must say it was the saddest wedding I ever witnessed.

This morning when I first woke up and heard that regular old tune, Play on Your Harp, Little David, coming so natural and lifelike from the kitchen I thought surely it must be a dream, mammy being hundreds of miles away in Washington. The song kept on, though, just like it has done every morning for twenty-five years, mother says:

"Shad-rach, Me-shach, Abed-ne-go,

The Lord has washed me white as snow,"

so I got up. It never does take me a minute to wash my face of a morning, and this morning it took even less time. I hopped into my clothes and flew down-stairs. It wasn't any dream! There was mammy, not looking like she was married nor anything, and a good, cheerful fire in the stove, and the bacon smelling like you were nearly starved. I didn't ask any questions, but just said, "Mammy," and she said, "Baby," and there I was hugging her fit to turn over the churn. I asked her if mother knew that she come back and she said no, she had been easy and not made any noise, so as to surprise us all. I reckon mother and father are so used to having Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego wake them up of a morning that they thought it was a dream, too. Pretty soon they heard us talking though and came in. Mother came first, for it is the gentleman's place to let the lady go first into the kitchen, especially when they think that breakfast is to be got.

Mother said, "What are you doing here?" and Mammy Lou said, "Getting breakfast, Mis' Mary," which was about as straightforward as they could have been with each other. Mother asked her if she wasn't still married, and she said no, for she had "had occasion to give that uppish Yankee nigger a good whippin' las' night." And then she went on to say that she told Dilsey she could have him if she still wanted him, and said she hoped Dilsey would take him for she would just admire to be mother-in-law to that nigger.

Just then father came in, hearing the last remark about "that nigger," and asked Mammy Lou what the trouble was between her and her new husband. Mammy was breaking eggs into the big yellow bowl which she was going to scramble for breakfast, and as she commenced telling us about her marrying troubles she began to beat them very hard, which seemed to ease her. It is a great help to people to think of their enemies when they are beating things, for it makes them beat all the harder and don't really hurt the enemies.

Mammy said when they got home from the wedding she started to change her white dress and veil and put on her good cashmere dress to ride on the train in. Just about that time Mr. Williams spoke up and said he was sleepy and wanted to get a good night's rest so he was going to bed, but he wanted mammy to have him a nice rare steak for his breakfast. Mammy then asked him if he had been born a fool or just turned that way since he had married so far above his station. He said he would mighty soon find out who the fool was in that family-and she better have good beaten biscuits to go with the steak. When he said this mammy gave him another sample of her strength like she did in the church and told him to get out of there and change his clothes to go to George Washington. Then he gave a big ha! ha! laugh in her face, right before Dilsey and the neighbors and said why, didn't she know that George Washington had been dead and buried behind the church door for a hundred years? He kept on laughing and said the "ignorance of country niggers is really amusable."

Mammy said she hated to do it with her veil on, being a new veil and she hadn't used it but twice, but she couldn't wait to take it off, him grinning like a picture-taking man at his funny joke. All his teeth were showing, and, as mammy had always admired them for being so big and white, she decided she would keep a handful to remember him by; so she gave him one good lick in the mouth with her wedding slipper, which was large and easy to come off. This broke a good half of his front tooth, she said, besides drawing a lot of blood to relieve her feelings. While he was busy wiping away the blood and trying to open his eyes enough to see candle-light again, mammy sat down by him, and, before he knew it, she had dragged him across her lap and was paddling him like he was her own dear son instead of her husband. Then she called Dilsey and told her she might feel safe about marrying him now, if she still wanted him, for he had better sense than to try to fool with any member of that family again. Mammy Lou said of course she couldn't stay married to a man she could paddle. She was too much of a lady. But Dilsey turned up her nose and said she wouldn't have any second-hand nigger, much less a whipped one.

Father spoke up then and said she couldn't give Bill to Dilsey without getting a divorce from him first. Mammy Lou said, well, Marse Sheriff might arrest her and Marse Judge might fine her, but she would see them all in the place that was prepared for them before she would waste twenty-five dollars for just that little speck of marrying!

Father went on out to feed the chickens and mother went to wake up Bertha (but not the baby) for breakfast, and Mammy Lou scraped the eggs into the dish I had brought her.

"Divorce nothin'," I heard her remark as she soused the hot skillet into water that sizzled, "I done bought a hundred dollars' worth o' divorces already, and if the lawyers wasn't all scribes and Pharisees they'd let that run me the rest o' my days."