His Day of Jubilee. A black family at the end of the American Civil War. (standard:Inspirational stories, 2841 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jul 21 2020	Views/Reads: 1491/992	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Day of Jubilee = 50 year anniversary of the end of The American Civil War.

I look out the window of my home outside Dallas. We built this house
ourselves. It's a one-story home built of trees and rocks what formerly 
dotted our fields. There are, tacked above the open window, two rolls 
of paper. One is of cracked tar-paper, another made from hog-fat 
impregnated newspaper. The first is to cover the window on cold nights, 
the other will let sunlight through in case it rains. We're too poor to 
afford glass. 

Right now the year is 1919 and it's time to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of our freedom. It was a long, long road from Alabama in 
mid 1869. 

Every year we celebrate the Lord's holidays: Christmas, the Beginning of
a New Year for all, and Our Freedom. We're settled down now, even 
landowners ourselves. 

At first it was just the four of us: Ma, Pa, Jennie and me. Since then,
Ma and Pa had six more whelps -- Jackie, and Jezzie, and four more. 
Then they, in turn, dropped a bunch'a suckers who dropped even more. 
Course, cause'a moving around, not all of them will be here to 
celebrate. 

The women and girls have taken over the kitchen and half the backyard to
fix food, driving everyone else out front for games and talk. For 
myself, I chased them damned women out of my corner of the living room. 
That corner is mine, mine alone. Nobody invades the space of my rocking 
chair, homemade bureau, pipe stand ... and memories. 

My gaze leaves the window, where I see children playing that new
Batsball or something game, and falls on my beloved Mary's 
daguerreotype picture. It's all I have left of her. 

Although my family's mildly successful, we're not so to the point of not
reusing a dead woman's goods. All I have left is the picture a 
traveling picture-maker made for us a good many years ago. As an old 
man's mind is wont to do, it travels back in time, to 1865.... 

*** 

“We's free. We's free!” Pa came running into our room at Master Lester's
home. 

Ma looked over from where she was ironing Miss Lester's wool dancin'
skirt. Despite the spring heat, Ma had the littlest stove going full 
force. She needed it hot to heat the trio of cast-iron clothes irons. 

Using one at a time, the hottest, she'd pick it up by a cracked wooden
handle, using a rag to keep from burning her hand. Then she'd take the 
five-pound piece of iron to smooth out wrinkles, turn the skirt, 
replace the iron on top of the wood-burning stove, pick up another and 
repeat the process. It was a heavy task, and one that would only get 
worse come really hot weather in Georgia. Still, it beat the hell out 
of fieldwork. 

Me, I was sitting in a corner with a bucket'a water, cleaning and
shining Master's boots. 

“Free for what? What you mean, Tom?” Ma answered, calmly continuing with
her task, a fresh iron sending steam off dampened cloth. 

“Free to leave here. We's slaves no more. What you think I mean, woman?”


I'll always remember the twinkle in his eye, more expressive than the
smile on his face. He seemed to bounce at his own joyful revelation. 
“You put down that thing. Come on, woman, let's get to a plannin', a 
packin', an a movin'.” 

“Planning what? Planning how to starve us and the kids?” Ma didn't miss
a beat in her iron switching, just kept on a going. “We ain't got 
nowhere to go, not no money neither. What we do got is something to eat 
and a place to sleep ... right here and now.” 

I was about ten years old at the time, and Jennie seven. Ma being the
sewer and ironer of the household, we had it pretty good at Master 


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