Then let us raise a monument to the mammies of the days that were. Quickly, too, before the last one of us who were crowned with such a blessing shall have passed away “’mid the shadows that flee in the night.”
XXIX
MARY ANN AND MARTHA ANN
The story of Mary Ann and Martha Ann and the red bonnet has been so often retold to my children and grandchildren that every detail has been retained, and in its completeness as I give it here, it is a bit of authentic family history “dressed up” as its hearers love it.
“What kin we do, Ma’y Ann? I dun hear Miss Liza talkin’ ’bout it agin, and ’lowin’ it got to be found.” The two little negroes sat under a wide-spreading pecan tree that scattered its shade and its late autumn nuts over the grassy lawn of a spacious Southern mansion. They crouched closely together, heads touching, voices whispering and faces turned to the river road, their scanty linsey skirts drawn tightly over little black legs, so that no searching eye from the broad veranda could spy them. Mary Ann looked anxiously around, and, drawing her knotty, kinky head closer still to Martha’s softer locks, whispered: “Marm Charlotte gwine to clean out de L, and you know she’ll go in dat room fust thing.”
Marthy sprang back with dilated eyes.
“Ma’y Ann, it carnt stay dar; it’s gotten to cum outen dar, oh Lordy! What did you put it dar in the fust place fur?”
“I didn’t put it dar.” Ma’y Ann’s eyes flashed. “You fotch it dar your own self, unner your apern; you sed it was yourn and Miss Ellen giv it to you.”
Marthy sprang to her feet. “Miss Ellen never giv me nothin’ in her whole life.” She shook her clenched fist in Ma’y Ann’s face, then burst into tears. The stolen conference, like many another that had preceded it, was opened in a spirit of mutual conciliation, but as the interview progressed and interest waxed, the poor little negroes became fierce in their alarm, fast losing sight of the turpitude of the deed committed in common in the over-mastering anxiety of each one to shift the entire blame on the other.