MAMMY JUNE
From the very beginning, although they said nothing about it even to
each other, the six little Bunkers found the three little Armatages
"funny." "Funny" is a word that may mean much or little, and often the
very opposite of humorous. In this case the visitors from the North did
not understand Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior. They were not like
any boys and girls whom the Bunkers had ever known before.
Phillis was twelve--quite a "grown up young lady" she seemed to consider
herself. Yet she broke out now and then in wild, tomboyish activities,
racing with Russ and Frane, Junior, climbing fences and trees, and
riding horses bareback in the home lot. It seemed as though Phil, as
they called her, "held in" just as long as she could, trying to put on
the airs of grown-ups, and then just had to break out.
"If you tell mother I did this I'll wish a ha'nt after you!" she would
say to her brother, who was the age of Vi and Laddie, and her sister
Alice, who was two years younger than herself, but no bigger than Rose.
Alice had a very low, sweet, contralto voice, like Mrs. Armatage, and a
very demure manner. Rose became friendly with Alice almost at once.
And the way they treated the colored children of their own age and older
was just as strange as anything else about the three Armatages. They
petted and quarreled with them; they expected all kinds of service from
them; and they were on their part, constantly doing things for the
children of "the quarters" and giving them presents. Wherever the white
children went about the plantation there was sure to be a crowd of
colored boys and girls tagging them.
After the first day Mother Bunker was reassured that nothing could
happen to her brood, because there were so many of the colored men about
the grounds to look after them. As in the house, a black or brown face,
broadly a-smile, was likely to appear almost anywhere.
The quarters, as the cabins occupied by the colored people were called,
were not far from the house, but not in sight of it. Even the kitchen
was in a separate house, back of the big house. After bedtime there was
not a servant left in the big house unless somebody was sick.
"Mammy used to live here," Mrs. Armatage explained, in her languid
voice, "while the children were small. I couldn't have got along without
mammy. She was my mammy too. But she's too old to be of much use now,
and Frane has pensioned her. She has her own little house and plot of
ground and if her boy--her youngest boy--had stayed with her, mammy
would get along all right. She worries about that boy."
The Bunker children did not understand much about this until, on the
second day after their arrival, Phillis said:
"I'm going down to see mammy. Want to come?"
"Is--isn't your mammy here at home?" asked Vi. "Dora Blunt calls her
mother 'mammy'; but we don't."
"I've got a mother and a mammy too," explained the oldest Armatage girl.
"You-all come on and see her. She'll be glad to see you folks from the
North. She will ask you if you've seen her Ebenezer, for he went up
North. We used to all call him 'Sneezer,' and it made him awfully mad."
"Didn't he have any better name?" asked Russ.
"His full name is Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. Of course, their
name isn't really Meiggs, like the plantation; but the darkies often
take the names of the places where they were born. Sneezer was a real
nice boy."
"He isn't dead, is he?" asked Russ.
"Reckon not," said Phillis. "But Mammy June is awful' worried about him.
She hasn't heard from him now for more than a year. So she doesn't know
what to think."
"But she has got other folks, hasn't she?" Rose asked.
"You'd think so! Grandchildren by the score," replied the older
Armatage girl, laughing. "Sneezer had lots of older brothers and
sisters, and they most all have married and live about here and have big
families. The grandchildren are running in and out of mammy's cabin all
the time. I have to chase 'em out with a broom sometimes when I go down
there. And they eat her pretty near up alive!"
Even the smaller Bunkers knew that this was a figure of speech. The
grandchildren did not actually eat Mammy June, although they might clean
her cupboard as bare as that of Old Mother Hubbard.
They followed a winding, grass-grown cart path for nearly half a mile
before coming to Mammy June's house. The way was sloping to the border
of a "branch" or small stream--a very pretty brook indeed that burbled
over stones in some places and then had long stretches of quiet pools
where Frane, Junior, told Russ and Laddie that there were many
fish--"big fellows."
"I'll get a string and a bent pin and fish for them," said Laddie
confidently. "I fished that way in the brook at Pineville."
"Huh!" said Frane Armatage, Junior, in scorn. "One of these fish here
would swallow your pin and line and haul you in."
"Oh!" gasped Vi, with big eyes. "What for?"
"No, the fish wouldn't!" declared Laddie promptly.
"Yes, it would. And swallow you, too."
"No, the fish wouldn't," repeated Laddie, "for I'd let go just as soon
as it began to tug."
"Smartie!" said Phillis to her brother. "You can't fool these Bunker
boys. Let Laddie alone."
Of course the troop of white children, walking down the cart path to
Mammy June's, was followed by a troop of colored children. The latter
sang and romped and chased about the bordering woods like puppies out
for a rample. Sometimes they danced.
"Can you cut a pigeon wing?" Russ asked one of the older lads. "I want
to learn to do that."
"No, I can't do that. Not good. We've got some dancers over at the
quarters that does it right well," was the reply.
"You ought to've seen Sneezer do it!" cried another of the colored
children. "Sneezer could do it fine. Couldn't he, Miss Phil?"
"Sneezer was a great dancer," admitted the oldest Armatage girl. "Come
on, now, Bunkers, and see Mammy June. Keep away from this cabin," she
added to the colored children, "or I'll call a ha'nt out of the swamp to
chase you."
"I wonder what those 'ha'nts' are, Russ," whispered Rose to her brother.
"Do they have feathers? Or don't they fly? They must run pretty fast,
for Phil is always saying she will make one chase folks."
"I asked Daddy. There isn't any such thing. It's like we say 'ghosts.'"
"Oh! At Hallowe'en? When we dress up in sheets and things?"
"Yes. Maybe these colored children believe in ghosts. But of course we
don't!"
"No-o," said Rose thoughtfully. "Just the same I wouldn't like to think
of ha'nts if I was alone in the woods at night. Would you, Russ?"
Russ dodged that question. He said:
"I don't mean to be alone in the woods around here at night. And neither
do you, Rose Bunker."
Of course neither of them had the least idea what was going to happen to
them before they started North from the Meiggs Plantation.
Mammy June's cabin was of white-washed logs, with vines climbing about
the door that were leafless now but very thrifty looking. There were fig
trees that made a background and a windbreak for the little house, and a
huge magnolia tree stood not far from the cabin. The front door opened
upon a roofed porch, and an old colored woman of ample size, in a
starched and flowered gingham dress and with a white turban on her head,
was rocking in a big arm chair on this porch when the children appeared.
"Lawsy me!" she exclaimed, smiling broadly to show firm white teeth in
spite of her age. "Is this yere a celebration or is it a parade? Miss
Philly, you got a smooch on dat waist, and your skirt is hiked up
behind. I declar' I believe you've lost a button."
"Why, so I have, Mammy June," answered Phillis. "And more than one.
Nobody has time to keep buttons sewed on up at the house, now that
you're not there."
"Shiftless, no-count critters, dem gals up dere. Sho, honey! who is all
dese lil' white children?"
"Bunkers," explained Frane, Junior.
"What's dem?" asked Mammy June, apparently puzzled. "Is dey to play
with, or is dey to eat? Bunkers! Lawsy!"
Rose giggled delightedly.
"They are to play with," laughed Alice suddenly. "That is what they are
for, Mammy June."
"You see you play pretty with them, then," said the old woman, shaking
her head and speaking admonishingly.
Rose and Russ Bunker at least began to understand that this pleasant old
colored woman had had the chief care of the three young Armatages while
they were little. Perhaps she had trained them quite as much as their
mother and father. And they seemed to love Mammy June accordingly.
That the old woman loved little folks and knew how to make friends with
them was soon apparent. She had Mun Bun and Margy both together in her
ample lap while Laddie and Vi leaned against her and listened to the
tale she was telling the little folks.
Phillis and Alice meanwhile showed Rose the interior of the cabin and
all its comforts and wonders. Meanwhile Frane, Junior, took Russ down to
the stream with some of the colored children to show him some of the big
fish he had threatened Laddie with. Here it was that Russ Bunker engaged
in his first adventure at the Meiggs Plantation.