The Land by Mildred D. Taylor Page A

they live with it. All I figure we need to concern ourselves with is that they’ve been good to us and they’ve taken care of us, both of them. They love us.” She waited, as if expecting me to say something to that. When I didn’t, she spoke again, her voice sounding a bit harsh. “Don’t you think your mama loves you, Paul? Boy, look at me! Don’t you think your mama loves you?”
    â€œCourse.”
    â€œWhat about your daddy? Don’t you think your daddy loves you?”
    â€œI suppose . . .”
    â€œYou suppose? Why else you think he did what he did for us? You expect he would have brought us up like he did, taking us into his house, bringing us up with Hammond and George and Robert, if he didn’t care about us? You think he would’ve seen to it we wore clothes as good as our brothers’ and that we never went raggedy or hungry? What they ate, we ate too. You forgetting that? You think our daddy would have seen to our book learning, even teaching us himself how to read and write and figure, when it was against the law and he could have been jailed for it, if he didn’t care about us? I suppose his taking you all around with him, same as he does Hammond, George, and Robert, so you can learn how to handle business, same as them, that’s because he doesn’t care about you either!”
    â€œI never said he didn’t care,” I mumbled.
    â€œWell, you’ve said just about that.”
    â€œWell, maybe it would have been better if our daddy hadn’t treated us so well. Maybe it would have been better if we’d grown up hating him and Hammond and George and Robert rather than caring about them. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like I do, like our daddy put a big shiny box all wrapped out there in front of us, making us feel we were the same as his white boys, then just when we reached to open it up, he snatched it away.”
    â€œYou know what?” said Cassie. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe our daddy has made us feel too special, too accepted. I grew up on this place feeling pretty good about who I was and figuring I’d do all right if I ever left here. Then I went off to Atlanta and found I couldn’t hardly find a place to fit there until I met Howard. That must have been our daddy’s fault. You know our daddy had me staying with that colored preacher and his family, but they weren’t accepting of me because I was too white. They treated me nice enough, but they never really warmed to me. I was always a stranger, as far as they were concerned, and they treated me that way. They never treated me like family. In fact, as soon as I’d walk into a room, they’d stop their talking and have little to say to me. Other colored folks weren’t that polite. They’d talk about me behind my back and in front of my face too. Things were really awkward and it didn’t help matters that our daddy would show up whenever he was in Atlanta.
    â€œThen there were those times the white folks mistook me for white and would act really friendly until they found out who I was. Then they treated me like a leper, worse than they’d have treated a person obviously of color. It was like they had contaminated themselves by treating me the same as one of them. I was trapped there, Paul, between two worlds, a white one and a black one, and neither one accepting me. I even passed a few times—”
    â€œYou what?”
    â€œYes, that’s right, I did it!” she declared defiantly. “And you know why? Just so I could feel good about myself again! Just so somebody would be accepting of me. I’d walk into stores or in the white part of the city and folks would treat me with respect, white folks and colored folks too, because they thought they knew who I was. That respect they showed, it made me feel good for the moment, but it was all false because it was for who they thought I was, not for who I really