The visit had taken place on the first Monday after Christmas break, last school year. Sophia’s toes had still been cold from her walk to school when Mrs. Brown invited her to sit in her office. Every person at W. S. Brooks High School was Negro, and Sophia remembered being taken aback to see a white woman with gold rings on most every finger smiling up at her.
Mrs. Brown had introduced the woman as Mrs. Winston from the Prosser Foundation, explaining that she had come to Brooks High School searching for the brightest Negro student in the county to offer the privilege of attending an elite boarding school to continue high school education. Sophia had been selected along with Kathy Baker and Alonzo Morton to sit in the library and take the three-hour placement test.
“Today? Without studying?” Sophia sputtered, but Mrs. Brown assured her that she would be fine.
“There is nothing to prep. It’s a standard test.”
They were each ushered to a different table in the library, given two pencils, a question booklet, and a bubble sheet. Once the exam had concluded, the three students were lined up outside of Mrs. Brown’s office and called in one at a time for an interview with Mrs. Winston.
During Sophia’s interview, Mrs. Winston offered her a cup of peppermint tea and shortbread cookies on a paper doily while asking questions about her family life, education, hobbies, and future aspirations.
Sophia got stuck on the notion of hobbies and told the womanfrankly, “There isn’t much free time on the farm. ’Cept maybe a quick game of catch in between milking the cows and composting the dung.”
Mrs. Winston’s stricken look made Sophia wish she had made something up. She left school that day with a small bag of goodies that had included a keychain with “West Oak Forest Academy” on it and a brochure slathered with pictures of smiling students in brightly decorated classrooms holding brand-new books. The glossy pamphlet provided a portal into a new world that Sophia had never imagined existed. On the farm, she had told only Walter. To which he’d smiled and said he’d pray on it for her. She didn’t have the heart to share the idea of West Oak Forest Academy with Ma Deary: She would be the weed to Sophia’s seedling, choking out the life of her dream and depriving it the light to grow.
What had gotten Sophia through her gruesome summer days cleaning the horse stalls, watering and feeding the chickens, cows, cats, and goat, collecting eggs on top of eggs, and harvesting and grinding corn for feed, was knowing that at the end of each night, she had the shiny pages of the school’s brochure waiting for her. Against Sophia’s will, hope had seeped in, and a deep yearning had taken root. Her whole body had begun to crave a life away from the farm.
But as the metal handle of the pail dug into the crevices of her dry palm, the reality of her life brought her back into the barn, and Sophia chided herself for being so foolish. Attending West Oak Forest Academy had been nothing more than a pipe dream.
Finished with pulling the eggs, she lifted the garden hoe hanging from the wall and scraped the roosting bars from left to right until all the waste had fallen to the ground. While she swabbed the bars with a sponge she kept soaked in vinegar, Karl and Lu entered the barn with the chicken feed and fresh buckets of water.
The boys were fraternal twins but looked nothing alike. Karl was tall and big-boned, with skin the color of toast, and had inky eyes. Luwas short and willowy, with eyes so see-through he reminded her of a kitten.
Sophia wanted to give them the job of carrying the eggs down to the mudroom, but she didn’t trust them not to break them.
“Lu, while Karl fills the feeders, you grab the pitchfork and turn the bedding in each nest. If it looks soggy, just replace it with clean straw from the pallet.”
“Why can’t I feed the hens?” Lu whined.
“You did it yesterday,” said Karl.
“Boys, we don’t have time for arguing.”
“He started it,” said Lu.
“It was you,” said Karl.
“You have twenty minutes, so make haste. We still gotta milk the cows.” Sophia headed for the barn door and then remembered, “And don’t forget to close up all the nests so the chickens can’t get back inside.”
Sophia lugged two pails of eggs at a time to the small mudroom at the back of the farmhouse. It was more like a shed with a refrigerator and a long aluminum prep table. It took her several trips to get all the pails inside. Sophia then examined each egg, checking for cracks, and then wiped them all down with a clean rag before placing them into the cartons.
Satisfied with her work, she stacked the cartons in the refrigerator. The Old Man would carry some to their local customers in town later, but the bulk of the egg production was delivered to three restaurants in Washington, D.C., on Thursdays, just in time for the weekend rush.
Next she had to milk the cows, the chore that she abhorred most. As she rounded the corner to the milking parlor, she hoped the cows were in a good mood.
Inside the parlor, she found Walter already perched on the milking stool, cleaning the cow’s udders.
“Don’t you have to water the fields?” she asked.
“I’ll do it after this. You go get ready for the first day of school.”
“You have school too, Walter.” Sophia put her hands on her hips. “Just ’cause you’re a senior don’t mean you can skip.”
He swatted at a fly in the air. “I don’t need to go on the first day. It’s more or less the same. ’Sides, I promised Unc that I’d have the milk ready for the morning pickup. He said he should have two or three hands by tomorrow, and then I’ll go.”
Not having to fool with the cows would give her time to freshen up before the three-mile walk to school. “You sure?”
“Go on, now.” He turned his face back and started lubricating the teats.
