We left our small town of D'Lo and went to the Delta lands of Mississippi to be sharecroppers on a large plantation where, according to the ad, "The More Children the Better."

There were four of us half-breeds. At least that's what Grandpa says we are. He pure hates the fact that his daughter up and married the son of a Mississippi Choctaw squaw. Zeke, my twin brother, said he didn't care how Grandpa felt; he liked being part Indian.

When we pulled up at Grandpa and Grandma's, Grandpa was standing on the porch. I knew he was itching to plow into Daddy's ears with his opinions. He strolled to the wagon and propped his arm on the side. He glared at Daddy, "I see ya got cha' teepee and papooses all loaded up and raring to go again. Injun-gypsy, that's what. Dragging my daughter and grandchildren around from pillar to post. Never staying in one place long enough for the dust to settle behind you. Hopping from here to there, always looking for that pot of gold at some rainbow's end. When you gonna stay put? You need to stay put. Get a real job and take care of your responsibility."

"Hey now. Wait a minute, Mr. Claude, sir. That's exactly what I'm doing. Going to provide for my family. There's nothing around these parts and we both know it. I'm not satisfied with hoecakes and sorghum molasses. I have to go where I can get work to provide for us all."

"You have never provided Madge and the young'uns with anything but rambling and poverty. Darn well plenty of that. Just go ahead and admit it. Wandering is in your blood. You just gotta hitch up ever so often and go chasing after the wind. Always looking for what ain't there. Just itching to satisfy your wanderlust."

Grandma came out of the barn, where she'd been milking the cow. She stood beside Grandpa with her hands resting in her stained apron pockets. She reached out and put her gentle fingers against his arm.

"It's their young'uns. Their lives. Their choice, Claude. Let our good-byes be pleasant. The young'uns are listening to you carrying on like this. It's no telling when we'll see them again. You knew his mind was made up before he got here. Nothing we say will stop this move no matter how much huffing and puffing is done."

"Well now, Mrs. Jennie. Young'uns need stability. They depend on something staying the same. Where is any stability in such a gallivanting lifestyle?"

Daddy bowed his head and checked the reigns. He yelled for Old Dolly, our mule, to "gad-up." We waved goodbye as we watched our grandparents fade into the distance.

We jostled away, all poked down in the wagon bed of belongings. Mother's cast-iron cook stove was hard against my back. I had no extra room. My spot was better than poor Zeke's. His space was so tight that he had to wriggle in and out like a worm from an apple. Shelly was seated directly behind the wagon bench where a tiny bit of shade blocked the early morning sun. It was beginning to rise from the trees and climb into the cloudless blue sky. Bay sat between Mother and Daddy with his head resting on Mother's lap. He'd occasionally pop up and happily inform us of things that were ahead. We were anxious to see what the next curve in the road would bring.

A slight breeze stirred across the slow moving wagon. Mother and Daddy's talking. The rocking rhythm of the wagon, along with the wheels crunching over the gravel, created a lull. It soon put us to sleep. We had been rousted before daybreak and were easily put into napping. The next thing we knew, Daddy was standing beside the wagon with cold coca-colas in his hands.

"Y'all gonna sleep all day?" He shook me. "Don't y'all want to get up and have a cool drink and see this part of the country?" I tried to stretch. "Okay, y'all get out awhile and stretch your legs."

We all four leapt out of the wagon. We took our drinks and walked around. There were lots of stores and houses here. Tall shade trees swept the skyline. A long sidewalk spanned the storefronts.

"That's right Zeke. Nobody knows for sure. Our families were scattered to the wind. That makes family history pretty hard to come by. They were killed and imprisoned on reservations."

Talking about this usually got Daddy's dander up. Zeke liked to prod him along. He liked hearing about it. He liked anything that had to do with him being part Indian, but it made me sad. Daddy went on telling about the massacres. The forced moves. The broken treaties.

Mother noticed tears beginning to fill my eyes. "Well, I think that's about enough history for one day, Daddy." She glared at him. "Now lets get some road behind us so we can rest at lunch time."

We wedged ourselves back into our places. The wagon pressed onward toward our new life in the Delta. We began talking about the riches and fine foods that awaited us.

We kept sharing our hopes and dreams, each a little bigger and better than the last. It became a competition to see which one of us could tell the best dream.

The sun grew hot. Its scorching rays beat down on us. It heated any air we may have gotten. Passing cars sent billowing clouds of thick, choking dust swirling around us. We'd duck and try to hide our faces from the suffocating powder. We called it "tire wind" or "car clog." We were starving for a bit of moisture on our parched throats and grumbled. We wondered exactly what a darn sharecropper was anyway. Around noon we came to a small row of stores.

"We need to stop here and get something to eat," Mother said. "The kids are tired and hungry. We could find a cool restful place and have a picnic."

"Oh good, a picnic." We all began talking at once. "We could get out of these papoose holes!" Zeke yelled. "My papoose legs want to run and leap and stretch."

Everyone laughed at him calling our places "papoose holes" because of what Grandpa had said. Daddy bought bologna, bread, and coca-colas. We found a place for our picnic…a cool area with a running stream. Mother spread a quilt under the shade of a tall water oak. Its limbs danced against the pale blue sky like green feathers. After eating, we ran to the trickling stream and waded in its cool, whispering waters. When the time came for us to go we begged to stay longer.

"I know y'all are tired and hot. What if y'all get sopping wet from the stream. That way, riding on the wagon would be nice and cool."

"Yeah!" We all yelled as we plopped down into the cooling waters all at once. We laughed and rolled and splashed until Daddy said we had to go. It felt exciting to travel wet and cool.

That evening, Daddy reigned up Old Dolly in front of a rough wood shanty. Saw grooves swirled through its splintery grey boards. It was not beautiful, but sturdy. Daddy said these cabins had been built for slaves. The first Mr. Roberts had kept quite a few.

Now, this place belonged to his grandson. He used these cabins to house sharecroppers. Our small bleak cabin was one among rows of others just like it. They all seemed to fade into the dust. It was as if they and the ground were one. Cabins and cotton loomed before me as far as my eyes could see. The landscape was periodically dotted with a tree. There had hardly been any trees along the winding roadway. It looked as if no drop of rain or moisture had ever touched this drab, vast, naked land of dust…a forever land of cotton fields.

I was shocked to see so much. It seemed to go on and on without an end. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought so much cotton existed anywhere. There certainly would be enough for everyone.

As we pushed the heavy wooden door it screamed from its rusty hinges. It stood open to expose a large boarded room full of spider webs trembling in the corners. The late afternoon sunlight shocked the drab inside. Its brightness came blasting through the wall cracks and dusty windowpanes. A dirt dauber swept through a beam of light turning its shadowed wings a glistening blue violet. Zeke picked it off the wall.

Mother stood beside the well fanning her face with her apron. She waited for a cool drink as Daddy drew up the well bucket and started pouring the water into a pail. She quickly scooped up a dipperful and began swigging down the cool refreshment. "Oh, I thought I'd die of thirst," she said.

As Daddy finished emptying the water, a dead rat slid down the well bucket. It plopped into the water pail. Mother screamed. She threw the dipper far and wide then went into a fit of gagging and vomiting. Daddy immediately sloshed out the contents of the pail and began drawing more water.

"I don't want to drink from a dirty well. Go to a neighbor's and draw up some fresh, clean water." She walked into the cabin with her apron over her mouth, groaning. "And please, do hurry."

He took another water bucket and walked across the way. Before long we saw a big, black woman coming. She pulled herself along with a sweet gum cane. She swayed from side to side, loudly huffing with every step. A little dog bounded along beside her like a fluffy ball of hair.

"Oh, that's bad ain't it? My name is Boo. Your Pappy was over yonder getting water and telling me about that nasty critter. He'll be along directly with some good water." Boo walked over and tapped on the misfitten door. Mother opened it. " Miss Brown, I come over to make myself useful. My name is Boo Stokes. Your man says y'all are moving in this here sharecropper's cabin."

"Yes, I'm Madge Brown and that's my tribe of young'uns out there." She pointed at us. "I've just been sitting here praying for the strength to get started unloading the wagon…to begin doing something to this place. I just don't know where to start. It's so drab in here."

"It looks mighty drab at first, but you'll get used to the bare walls. You can make it homey. Sometimes you just gotta look at small things of beauty, but I can promise you it won't be these unfilled chinks." She laughed and poked her cane into a space between the boards to jab out a dauber's nest wedged there. "But you can make a home anywhere. These cabins beat a tarpaper shack or a bridge girder tent."

She handed the dipper to Shelly. "Well, I guess what I need first is the broom. The sooner I move these blasted spiders out the better."

She seemed to liven up after the cool drink, like a wilted flower after the spring rains. We all tore into working and getting the cabin fixed up.

That night we sat around the table enjoying good company, a pot of boiled cabbage, and a skillet of cornbread. Levi, Boo's husband, had brought it over. The coolness of the evening washed away the heat of the long day. Because of Boo and her family we felt at home.

We lay in bed feeling warm and safe. I watched the fireflies dancing about. They poked holes of light in the Delta darkness outside our naked windowpanes. I wasn't altogether sure about this new life, yet welcomed it as I drifted to sleep.

In the morning, right after breakfast, we started our first day of work. Out on the porch six rolled up sacks lay waiting for us. We were excited to start making money. Each of us grabbed a roll and skipped ahead of Mother and Daddy towards the fields. Bay, who was only four years old, yelled for a sack too, but the six-foot roll was too much for him to carry. He unrolled it and dragged it behind him. It got caught on every limb, stick and briar along the way. Every few minutes he'd cry for one of us to untangle his sack.

When we actually entered the fields it was as if we had joined a beehive of workers. There was row upon row of ripe, fluffy cotton, with hundreds of pickers bent and weaving through the stalks. They filled their sacks and hummed. Some happy, some sad. But they each had a song. Children of all ages ran through the rows playing. Some picked cotton. Some were in the cotton houses bouncing and sliding down the freshly picked cotton stacks. Infants and small children rode on their parents' cotton sacks through the field rows.

I threw my sack out, put the strap over my head, and acted like I had done this all my life. I reached out to pick a clump of ripe cotton. A needle-sharp, dry boll stem pierced my hand. I knelt crying as I held my bleeding and stinging hand. Maxine Stokes, Boo's daughter, came over, knelt beside me and rubbed my hand.

"Shush, it'll be alright. I get stuck lots." She put her hands out. I saw several prick marks. There were many cuts and scabs from old cuts. "You got to learn how to go around the stuff and pull up like this," she said as she reached around a boll and pulled the cotton out. "Don't try to pick the cotton from the top or the things will stick you bad."

I wiped my eyes and started picking and shoving the stuff into my sack. Bay still played with straightening his. Shelly looked tired and red-faced even before the heat of the day. Zeke reached for the cotton, jerking his hand back and saying "ouch" with every reach.

"You can't help getting stuck at times," Maxine said. "But the more you pick, the tougher your hands get. You'll learn to reach inside the stalks instead of going at it head on."

"I don't rightly remember. I was born here. I been in the fields all my life. I began like Mr. Bay there, just play picking, ya know. But now I pick and gets pay for my weigh-ins."

Every time I thought I had enough, she'd say, "Shake it down." Then she would take her long sack, give it a quick, hard flap several times. The fluffy sack would flatten and leave a clump at the end. So I flopped mine a few good times.

"It won't weigh-in as much if you don't. Everybody shakes their sacks down. It saves walking all the way to the scale wagon and having the tallyman shake it down. Only that will show you how little bit you got."

"Okay, okay." I continued picking. I hoped for a nice, big weigh-in as I flew into it. I started shaking my sack down after almost every handful.

"How can you pick and pick and pick and not be tired? It feels like I've been out here a hundred years with this little clump at the end of my sack hardly growing an inch a year."

"Lawd girl, you exaggerating now! My Pappy tells us 'every bush is holding money and every boll is like white gold in your sack'. At least we know where the gold is. You gotta think of all the folks who pan and pan and never earn one cent for their labor. There's always somebody who got it worst than you. Be thankful for what you got."

I still thought only of my plight. I didn't see white gold. I saw hot fluffy wads of cotton, held in finger-gouging bolls of nasty, dry, needle-sharp brown pods. It irked me when Maxine would sing her little rhyme in perfect happiness. She sang as if she were sitting on the shore of a cool flowing stream without a care in the world.

Her little ditty was in sharp contrast to the mournful, wailing songs of the field folks. Some sang about their heartaches. Some sang about their weary bones, while others sang about Gloryland when this life would be over.

My song was more in tune with theirs than with Maxine's. Her little spry mess did nothing for me! Over time I learned the painful art of cotton-picking and the positive art of relationships with every ethnic group in America. We were drawn together in the struggle to survive and become self-sufficient.

Sometimes all the sharecroppers would get together at the big plantation barn for a night of playing and dancing. On these nights, everyone would come with their children for the happy time. Reels from instruments like fiddles, guitars, washtubs, rub boards, saws, harmonicas, jugs, jewsharps or anything else that would make a note, filled the barn and washed over the land.

Sharecroppers worked hard and played hard. Life in the bottoms was a mournful crying of needs. Mothers rocked babies to the buzzing of mosquitoes in summer and the groaning of wind through the unfilled chinks in winter. The cabins were bleak and unadorned, where dreams, like sweat, were washed away with the passing of time.

Smaller children ran naked through the fields and played in the cotton houses where they'd climb, leap, jump and slide down the fluffy stacks. It was easier letting them run naked than trying to keep them changed and their clothes scrubbed out. This would take time away from picking, so only infants and older children wore clothes. These children were only dressed in winter, at church, or at one of the barn dances.

The summers were blistering on this shadeless dusty land. Even the breeze would burn your face, if there ever was one. A lonesome dead feeling hung over the Delta. Winters weren't much better because of the freezing cold weather that no fires seemed to chase away. The best times were spring and autumn, yet there was planting in spring and harvesting in autumn.

Sometimes, if we could get away in the afternoon, we'd walk to the old creek bridge on a quiet country lane. We'd stand in the cooling shade. We'd watch the water swirling from underneath its rickety old planks to go whispering forever onward toward that big river. This place was a contrast to its surroundings. It was special to us all. It provided a place to get away, to swim, to fish, or just to sit, listen and think in perfect cool peacefulness.