I looked at George. “Would you have just hit Robert?”
“Course not,” he answered. “I would’ve beaten all the little rascals black and blue, but there’s the rub of it. It wouldn’t have mattered about me. I’m so-called white.”
“Spite of everything, Paul,” said Hammond, “Robert’s real sorry, you know.”
“Makes no difference,” I said.
“S’pose not. But would it make a difference to you if you knew our daddy wore Robert out right after the Waverlys left?”
“He did?”
“Now, he said the whipping was for letting those fools ride that horse,” said George.
“But we know it was for more than that,” interjected Hammond. “That’s got to mean something to you.”
George laughed. “Got to mean even more to know our daddy wore Robert’s behind out.”
Hammond spoke soberly. “You know, Paul, our daddy always said George, Robert, and I were supposed to look out for you and Cassie because you’re our blood. Robert didn’t do that, so we figure he not only let you down, but all of us.”
After they told me that, I realized it didn’t mean a thing to me that Robert had gotten whipped. I still loved my daddy and George and Hammond, even Robert, I supposed, but I no longer felt a part of them. Robert hadn’t been whipped as I had been whipped, just for my being a colored boy. He hadn’t been whipped naked in front of strangers. He hadn’t suffered the humiliation I had. No, that whipping of his didn’t mean a thing.
Before I left, going back to Macon, Robert himself came to see me. “I’m sorry about what happened,” he said. “I didn’t know our daddy would do that. Whip you like he done, I mean.” I just looked at Robert, and he said once more, “I’m sorry.” He said that, turned, and walked away.
Robert had made his apology. But things were never the same between us. Robert was sorry and so was I, sorry I had lost my brother and, until the betrayal, my best friend. Robert hadn’t said anything about being sorry for turning his back on me. He had turned his back on me, his own brother, because of two white boys, and I couldn’t forgive him for that. I was thirteen years old by then, and I figured as long as I lived, I could never forgive him for that.
East Texas
When I got to be fourteen, nearing fifteen, my mama died and my brother George came to get me. There hadn’t been any kind of lingering illness with my mama. She’d been feeling just fine the last time I’d seen her, and her death came on sudden. Neither Cassie nor I got to see her in the days before she passed. It was the springtime and the warm weather was coming, and folks, once they passed, had to be buried quick, so my mama was washed in scents and laid out in her own house even before I got back home with George. The wake was held that night, the funeral the next morning.
Now, I remember things real clear about that day we buried my mama. First of all, it was a drizzly, foggy kind of day, kind of day right for a funeral. Cassie was there, of course, with her baby and Howard. Robert was there too, as well as George and Hammond and my daddy, and Robert tried hard after we put my mama in the ground to talk to me, but I wasn’t listening. I was feeling alone then, like the only real family I had left was my sister, Cassie. Another thing I remember real clear was a group of colored boys coming over and one of them saying to me, “Well, you not so special now, are ya? Yo’ mama’s dead and yo’ daddy’ll be takin’ himself up with another colored woman soon enough.” Then the boys laughed. Mitchell was there when that boy said that to me and the other boys laughed, and Mitchell hauled off and knocked the boy to the ground. “Watch your mouth” was all he said, and the boy got up rubbing his chin. There was no more laughing from those boys or remarks about my mama after that.
Afterward, when the mourners had left us to ourselves, Cassie, Howard, their baby, Emmaline, and I sat at the table laden with food in my mama’s little house. We hadn’t eaten much. I hadn’t wanted any food, but it was warming to know folks had cared enough to bring it. “You know, Paul,” said Howard as he finished his coffee, “you’re welcome to come back to Atlanta with us. You don’t need to stay here alone.”
I nodded and kept my eyes on Emmaline, who was more than a year old now and was jumping as I held her.
Cassie leaned over and put her hand on my arm. “He means that.”
“I know.” I glanced at Howard. “Thank you,” I said, then looked again at Emmaline.
“You see Mama in her?” Cassie asked.