Baby Heart

John El Murphy owns the land we farm as well as the rundown three- room shack we live in. He owns most everything and everybody in White Chalk. He don’t cut nobody no slack even though he’s colored like the rest of us. John El says ‘it’s all about bitniz.’

      Once people get in John El’s debt, they never get out. Only a few have been brave enough to run off owing him. His wife ran away many years ago and John El never remarried. Some folks whisper that she may not have run away at all. They think he may have killed her and planted her body on some of the hundreds of acres surrounding his house. He’s so mean; I believe he coulda killed her.

      But worse of all, I hear some folks whisper that he’s waiting for me to grow up, so he can marry me.

      Papa Joe and I head to John El’s general store, where he’s got a cotton gin out back. The wagon wheels clonk along on the dry, rutty red clay road that like everything else in White Chalk is covered with a film of white dust from John El’s chalk mine.

      When he sees us coming, he jumps up from a bench on the unpainted porch - gray from age and the weather - and walks over to meet us. He squints his eyes real tight. I can hardly see the pale green of his eyeballs. John El is a runt, only about five-five. The big gun that he wears in plain view on his hip makes him seem much taller to most folks. His skin is yellow. I notice creases around his neck. He looks like a cracker to me - a mean one at that. Mama Lilly says his daddy was a white man who left all his property, including the chalk mine to John El when he died some years back. 

      “Howdy, Big Joe. Got some cotton for me today?” John El asks.

      “Sho nuff. I got over a bale here. Me and Baby Heart made sho ain’t no hulls in it.”

      I burrow down, trying to hide under the soft fluffy white cotton. John El walks around to the side of the  wagon and pushes the cotton off my face. “Who you hiding from, Baby Heart? Get on outta that wagon unless you wanta get ginned with the cotton.”

      I crawl out from underneath the cotton and jump down from the wagon, brushing the lint from my dress. His eyes open wide and I can feel them all over me. He walks over to Papa Joe who is still sitting in the driver’s seat, holding on to the reins to keep the mule still.

      “When’s her fifteenth birthday, Joe?”

       Papa Joe looks at me with a sad expression, hangs his head and says “October twenty-third.”

       “Bring the cotton on ’round back, Joe. Baby Heart, you go inside and get yo’self a cold drink - my treat.” John El winks and walks away.

       I’m hot and thirsty but I don’t want no treats from John El Murphy - No Siree.