Read The Emancipation of Robert Sadler for Free Online Page B

mouth, Sister.”
    At that moment a short, stocky man with a pocked, swarthy face came toward us. He wore overalls and a dirty flannel shirt and thick, heavy boots. Father talked to him in a low voice. The man looked at me and then continued talking with Father. The white man gave him some money. Then my father drove the buggy out of the driveway without a glance back to his children. Useless as I was, I’d been sold once again.

5
    I was so happy to see Pearl that I didn’t care about anything else. Mr. Beal hurled some orders at Pearl to take me to the slave quarter, and with a “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh,” she took my hand and began running around a wooden walk alongside the house, past a kitchen door, then across the yard past a smokehouse, chicken coop, and barn, and down a dirt path to two rows of shacks like there was at the Billings Plantation.
    â€œPeh—Peh,” I pleaded. I had so many questions to ask her. Where were we? Would we stay together now? Was it really a wicked place? Would Father come back for us?
    Pearl knew exactly what was in my confused mind. She sat me down in some dirt next to one of the shacks. “This be the Sam Beal Plantation,” she told me. “Father done sold us again. This be home now.”
    I nodded.
    â€œWe be together so you don’t be down in the mouth.” Again I nodded.
    â€œIt be evil here, but you do what be told you, an yoll be jes fine. Come on, let me love you now. You got any love for me, chile?”
    With that I leaped into her lap hugging and wrestling, and we tumbled in the dirt together laughing just like always. Being sold as a slave boy didn’t bother me because Pearl and I were together again. I forgot Rosie and Father’s cruelty. I forgot Father’s drunkenness. I forgot the loneliness and the despair—Pearl was here.
    Later, Pearl stood me up and looked at me; then under her breath she said, “Pappy never done shoulda carried yoll here. Yoll jes a dumb lil old baby chile.”
    Pearl was staying in one of the shanties with a married couple named Buck and Corrie Moore. They were both field hands and they worked from sunup to sundown every day. Buck and Corrie had shown Pearl kindness in sharing their cabin and food with her, and now I was added to the family. They took to me right away and I felt at home with them. We had corn bread, molasses, greens, and corn tea for supper that night, and I ate like I hadn’t ate in an age.
    Corrie said quietly, “He plumb starvationed.”
    Pearl explained to me what life at the Big House was like. She told me that Mr. Beal was a hard and tough boss man and that we should stay away from him, especially when he was drinking. He was particularly evil then.
    Mrs. Beal, Pearl told me, was a kind enough lady, as far as white ladies come, but she didn’t trust her nohow.
    There were six children in the Beal family: John was eight years old and very mean; Thomas, six years old, just sort of mean; Juanita was five years old; Virginia, four; Ethel, three; and lastly, baby Anna, who was a year and a half.
    There were about five house slaves. There was Big Mac, who was the house man and hired hands’ cook; then there was Mary Webb, who was the family cook. Harriet was the housekeeper and she had two helpers, a girl named Daisy and my sister Pearl, who also were to tend the children.
    I was overjoyed when I was told that I would be working in the Big House, too. That meant I could be with Pearl all day.
    Pearl and I slept together on the floor of Buck and Corrie’s shanty on a pile of rags, and there was no blanket to pull over us. We were better off than we had been at the Billings Plantation and at Rosie’s.
    In the Big House it was Big Mac who gave me my duties. I liked him right off. He was a tall, lean man with very dark skin. He had a scar that ran from his forehead to his chin, just missing his eye and spreading out like a row of tulips on his