made a mistake in choosing my family. It did not appreciate me, and it failed
to make my young life glad. I knew my young life ought to be glad. And it
was not. It was drab, as drab as Toot's old rain-coat.
Toot was "our coloured boy." That is the way we described him. Father had
brought him home from the war, and had sent him to school, and then
apprenticed him to a miller. Toot did "chores" for his board and clothes, but
was soon to be his own man, and to be paid money by the miller, and to
marry Tulula Darthula Jones, a nice coloured girl who lived with the
Cutlers.
The time had been when Toot had been my self-appointed slave. Almost my
first recollections were of his carrying me out to see the train pass, and
saying, "Toot, toot!" in imitation of the locomotive; so, although he had
rather a splendid name, I called him "Toot," and the whole town followed my
example. Yes, the time had been when Toot saw me safe to school, and
slipped little red apples into my pocket, and took me out while he milked the
cow, and told me stories and sang me plantation songs. Now, when he
passed, he only nodded. When I spoke to him about his not giving me any
more apples, he said:
"Ah reckon they're your pa's apples, missy. Why, fo' goodness' sake, don' yo'
he'p yo'se'f?"
But I did not want to help myself. I wanted to be helped—not because I was
lazy, but because I wanted to be adored. I was really a sort of fairy
princess,—misplaced, of course, in a stupid republic,—and I wanted life
conducted on a fairy-princess basis. It was a game I wished to play, but it
was one I could not play alone, and not a soul could I find who seemed
inclined to play it with me.
Well, things went from bad to worse. I decided that if mother no longer loved
me, I would no longer tell her things. So I did not. I got a hundred in spelling
for twelve days running, and did not tell her! I broke Edna Grantham's
mother's water-pitcher, and kept the fact a secret. The secret was, indeed,
as sharp-edged as the pieces of the broken pitcher had been; I cried under
the bedclothes, thinking how sorry Mrs. Grantham had been, and that
mother really ought to know. Only what was the use? I no longer looked to
her to help me out of my troubles.
I had no need now to have father and mother tell me to hurry up and finish
my chatter, for I kept all that happened to myself. I had a new "intimate
friend," and did not so much as mention her. I wrote a poem and showed it to my teacher, but not to my uninterested parents. And when I climbed the
stairs at night to my room, I swelled with loneliness and anguish and
resentment, and the hot tears came to my eyes as I heard father and mother
laughing and talking together and paying no attention to my misery. I could
hear Toot, who used to be making all sorts of little presents for me, whistling
as he brought in the wood and water, and then "cleaned up" to go to see his
Tulula, with never a thought of me. And I said to myself that the best thing I
could do was to grow up and get away from a place where I was no longer
wanted.
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