CHAPTER V
Did you ever think what a dear old thing anybody's black mammy is, my diary, especially when she's done all the cooking (and raised you) for twenty-five years? Mammy Lou has belonged to us just like father and mother ever since we've been at housekeeping, and my heart almost breaks to-night when I think of the fire in our stove that won't burn and the dasher in our churn that is still. Ever since I've been keeping a diary I've been awfully glad to hear about anybody being in love, and took great pleasure in watching them and writing it all out, for I could always imagine it was me that was the lady. But I would rather never keep a diary another day than to have such a thing happen to Mammy Lou.
When mother heard about it she said not to be an old fool, but Mammy Lou said, "either Marse Shakespeare or Marse Solomon said a old fool was the biggest fool and she wasn't going to make him out no lie. So marry that Yankee nigger she was!"
Bill Williams first came here to teach school, being very proud and educated. Then he got to be Dilsey's beau and they expected to marry. When he first commenced going to see Dilsey Mammy Lou would cook the nicest kind of things for her to take to picnics, hoping to help her catch him in a motherly way. But when he started to promising to give Dilsey a rocking-chair and take her to "George Washington" if she would marry him, Mammy Lou changed about. She had always wanted to see a large city herself, and she thought it wasn't any use of letting Dilsey get all the best things in life, even if she was her child.
Pretty soon she commenced wearing red ribbon around her neck and having her hair wrapped fresh once a week. Then she told him she was the good cook that cooked all the picnic things, and ironed all of Dilsey's clean dresses; also that she had seventy-five dollars saved up that she would be willing to spend on a grand bridal trip the next time she got married. Mammy Lou is a smart old thing, and so she talked to him until he said, well, he would just as soon marry her as Dilsey, if she would stop cooking for us, and cook for him and iron his shirts all the time. She promised him she would do this, like people always do when they're trying to marry a person, although it looks very different afterward. None of mammy's other husbands had been so proud. They would not only let her cook, but would come around every meal time, in the friendliest kind of way, and help her draw a bucket of water. This is why the whole family's heart is breaking and we feel so hungry to-night. She's quit, and the wedding is to-morrow.
This morning early she came up to the house to ask mother if it would be excusable to take off her widow's bonnet, not being divorced from Uncle Mose but four months; also how she had better carry her money to keep Bill from getting "a holt" of it. She said she wouldn't trust any white Yankee with a half a dollar that she ever saw, much less a coffee-colored one. Mother was so mad at her, and so troubled about the sad biscuits and the watery gravy at breakfast that she said she hoped he would steal every cent of the seventy-five dollars before the ceremony was over, and maybe that would bring her to her senses.
"And me not to get to go to George Washington!" mammy said in a hurt-like voice. "Why, Mis' Mary!"
"Where is this George Washington?" mother took time to ask, thinking mammy would know she was just poking fun at her, but she didn't.
"Law! Ain't it surprising how little my white folks do know! Why, it's the place where the president and his wife lives. Mr. Williams is mighty well acquainted with the president and says he's shore I could git a job cooking for the fambly if I was 'round lookin' for jobs. But I ain't to cook for nobody but him from now on."