HOW JUNE FOUND MASSA LINKUM
By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
June laid down her knives upon the scrubbing-board, and stole softly out into the yard. Madame Joilet was taking a nap upstairs, and, for a few minutes at least, the coast seemed to be quite clear.
Who was June? and who was Madame Joilet?
June was a little girl who had lived in Richmond ever since she could remember, who had never been outside of the city's boundaries, and who had a vague idea that the North lay just above the Chick-ahominy River and the Gulf of Mexico about a mile below the James. She could not tell A from Z, nor the figure 1 from 40; and whenever Madame Joilet made those funny little curves and dots and blots with pen and ink, in drawing up her bills to send to the lodgers upstairs, June considered that she was moved thereto by witches. Her authority for this theory lay in a charmig old woman across the way, who had one tooth, and wore a yellow cap, and used to tell her ghost stories sometimes in the evening.
Somebody asked June once how old she was.
"'Spect I's a hundred,—dunno," she said gravely. Exactly how old she was nobody knew. She was not tall enough to be more than seven, but her face was like the face of a little old woman. It was a queer little face, with thick lips and low forehead, and great mournful eyes. There was something strange about those eyes. Whenever they looked at one, they seemed to cry right out, as if they had a voice. But no one in Richmond cared about that. Nobody cared about June at all. When she was unhappy, no one asked what was the matter; when she was hungry, or cold, or frightened, Madame Joilet laughed at her, and when she was sick she beat her. If she broke a teacup or spilled a mug of coffee, she had her ears boxed, or was shut up in a terrible dark cellar, where the rats were as large as kittens. If she tried to sing a little, in her sorrowful, smothered way, over her work, Madame Joilet shook her for making so much noise. When she stopped, she scolded her for being sulky. Nothing that she could do ever happened to be right; everything was sure to be wrong. She had not half enough to eat, nor half enough to wear. What was worse than that, she had nobody to kiss, and nobody to kiss her; nobody to love her and pet her; nobody in all the wide world to care whether she lived or died, except a half-starved kitten that lived in the wood-shed. For June was black, and a slave; and this Frenchwoman, Madame Joilet, was her mistress.
Exactly what was the use of living under such circumstances June never could clearly see. She cherished a secret notion that, if she could find a little grave all dug out somewhere in a clover-field, she would creep in and hide there. Madame Joilet could not find her then. People who lived in graves were not supposed to be hungry; and, if it were ever so cold, they never shivered. That they could not be beaten was a natural consequence, because there was so much earth between, that you wouldn't feel the stick. The only objection would be leaving Hungry. Hungry was the kitten. June had named it so because it was black. She had an idea that everything black was hungry.
That there had been a war, June gathered from old Creline, who told her the ghost stories. What it was all about, she did not know. Madame Joilet said some terrible giants, called Yankees, were coming down to eat up all the little black girls in Richmond. Creline said that the Yankees were the Messiah's people, and were coming to set the negroes free. Who the Messiah was, June did not know; but she had heard vague stories from Creline, of old-time African princes, who lived in great free forests, and sailed on sparkling rivers in boats of painted bark, and she thought that he must be one of them.
Now, this morning, Creline had whispered mysteriously to June, as she went up the street to sell some eggs for Madame Joilet, that Massa Linkum was coming that very day. June knew nothing about Massa Linkum, and nothing about those grand, immortal words of his which had made every slave in Richmond free; it had never entered Madame Joilet's plan that she should know. No one can tell, reasoned Madame, what notions the little nigger will get if she finds it out. She might even ask for wages, or take a notion to learn to read, or run away, or something. June saw no one; she kept her prudently in the house. Tell her? No, no, impossible!