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An old age of comfort under freedom eases the declining years of Malinda Mitchell, ex-slave, but she would gladly exchange all her worldly possessions with her freedom thrown in to have the good old plantation days back again.
"Money, dere never was no times like de ole times," she states with a wistful inflection in her voice.
A small brown-skinned figure, Aunt Malinda stood on the porch of her simple framed cottage, her bright beady eyes gazing out upon her own vine and fig trees. The neat shingled roofed house is hers. Every rose bush, Verbena, spice pink and other old fashioned flowers that riot in the front yard have been planted by her "growing hand". At each end of the steps are flaming coxcombs rooted in worn-out enameled saucepans.
The house is tiny but the lot is large, flanking the railroad track on the east. The trains shoot by with a lot of noise, but she likes it. With the rememberance of plantation days Aunt Malinda has set out pecan, peach, apple, pear and fig trees. In the rear of the house is a scuppernong arbor and the chicken yard. Fenced off on one side is a well tended vegetable garden. It is neat as a pin, a place that reflects constant care, hard work and love.
Aunt Malinda lives in her cottage at 1023 Daniel Street with a small delicate featwred mulatto girl whom she has adopted and calls her grandchild. To this little twelve year old girl she delights in recounting the "good ole days" when she was a slave.
"I b'longed to a preacher in C'lina," she related, "a Baptist preacher on a plantashun out fum Edgefield. I was just a little girl 'bout size of you when de War broke out, and, chile, when we could'a had our freedom none of us took it."
A gleam of pride came in the bright beady eyes, the straight shoulders squared a trifle more.
"My fambly wasn' fiel'han's - we was all house servants. My father was de butler, and he weighed out rations fo' de slaves. My mammy was de house 'oman and her mother and sister was de cooks. Marster wouldn't sell none of his slaves, an' when he wanted to buy one he'd buy de whole fambly to keep fum having them separated."
The"Marster" of Aunt Malinda was the Rev. Allen Dozier, near Edgefield, South Carolina. At an early age Malinda and a little sister near her age were given to the two young lady daughters of the house as their personal maids. "I was give to Miss Nettie," Malinda said.
At length she related the easy life of the plantation, the company who came in flocks and stayed as long as they liked, no end of good things to eat, and plenty of slaves so that nobody had to hurry for anything.
"Our young mistress visited, too," Aunt Malinda said, "an' whar'ever dey went my sister and me went right erlong. My own mammy took long trips with ole Mistis, to de Blue Ridge Mountains and sometimes over de big water."
Plantation joys were many, and work in the fields not too hard. All the pickaninnies of the plantation were cared for by one woman in a nursery and the women came in from the fields at certain times to nurse them. After the day's work was done house servants and field hands forgot cares in merriment and dancing.
Asked how her master, a Baptist divine, condoned the latter, Aunt Malinda replied with the simple statement, "Me wasn't only a preacher - he was a religious man." The slaves danced, she said, at the house of "de man that tended de stock' set way off in a field away from "de big house." Dancing was to the tune of banjoes and some homemade instruments that she termed "quills", evidently some kind of reeds. It is fairly certain that the sounds must have carried to the house, but no interference was made.
"My mammy was de best dancer on de plantashun," Malinda proudly asserts. "She could dance so sturdy she could balance a glass of water on her head and never spill a drop." Late in the summer nights she recalls watching the dancers till her eyes grew tired with the exciting rhythm and she fell asleep.
The grandmother of Malinda was the plantation mid-wife, "birthing" the whites and blacks alike without need of a physician. The white overseer who had direct charge over the slaves was evidently held in contempt alike by slave and plantation owners, according to Aunt Malinda. "De overseer would whip de slaves when dey wouldn't work," she said, "but marster wouldn't stan' fer no overbearing. He'd turn de overseer off quick fo' dat."
Even if they danced all night the slaves had to go to church on Sunday, Malinda said, sitting in their own pews in the back of their church where their master preached. As a special favor he officiated at the marriages of some of the better slaves. "He married my father and mother," she said.
Aunt Malinda told of the parties and good times in the big house as well as in the quarters. The young ladies were always entertaining. One day a wandering fortune teller came upon the front piazza where a crowd of young people were gathered, asking to tell the young ladies' fortunes. Everythin was satisfactory until he told Miss Nettie that she would marry a one-armed man, whereupon that young belle was so indignant that the man was driven off and the dogs set upon him.
"But the fortune teller told true-true," Malinda said. A faint ominous note crept into her voice and her eyes seemed to be seeing events that had transpired three quarters of a century before. "De war come on."
Graphically she related the change which came over the plantation. The men were all gone, the women, worried and anxious, working and sacrificing for the Confederacy, and the master dying. No crops were raised on the plantation. She pictured slaves burying the family silver at the approach of the Yankees, and the once proud plantation suffering the usual lot of others under the ravages of war.
Finally the end came. Bewildered slaves, free, stayed on what was left of the old plantation. Miss Nettie, the form belle, married, as the fortune teller had predicted, a one-arm man - a Confederate officer (Captain Shelton) who wore his empty sleeve as proudly as a medal of the cause he served.
"Twant de same no more," Malinda tells, "So I drifted on ever to Augusta about fifty years ago an' been here ever since. But 'twasn't like de easy plantashun life. You had to work hard fo' everything you got, an' there wasn't nobody to care whether you got sick or look after you like ole Mistis always did.
"It's been hard pulling. I worked an' I taught my chillun to work. Dey's all dead now. My grand-daughter bought this little house and gave it to me. She's dead new too, and when she knowed she wouldn't live long she got this child, just a baby then, so I'd have some company wid me." Her eyes lingered lovingly on the little yellow girl. "She's been a heap o' comp'ny too."
Proudly erect Malinda stood there. Though she is old - she says she was born in 1853 - she is strong and unbowed and there is a timelessness in the beady black eyes that gaze out so brightly upon the world. A wisdom deeper than words, a wistfulness transcending her simple philosophy.
"Honey, I sho' does wish de ole days was back."
Bob Mobley ([by E. Watson])
