I went straight to the bedroom. I grabbed an old burlap sack and started stuffing my clothes in it. Then I went to the girls’ drawers and packed the rest of their things.
“What are you doing?” Otis asked from the doorway.
“I’m leaving,” I said without looking at him. “I’m going to get the girls, and I’m going to Atlanta. I’m going to stay with my sister until I find a way to support myself.”
“No, Hattie, don’t do that!” he begged, stepping into the room.
I spun around. “Do you think I’m going to stay here living with you after what you did?”
“I’m going to find a way to pay the debt!” he cried. “I swear! I’ll work double! I’ll sell the mules!”
“I don’t want to know about the debt,” I said, shoving a dress into the sack. “I want to know about protecting my daughters. And with you near, they ain’t protected.”
I finished packing the sack. I lifted the mattress and grabbed the money I had hidden there—about twenty dollars in bills and coins I had squirreled away over the years without him knowing. It was little, a pittance really, but it was what I had.
“You can’t leave,” he said, blocking the door. “You are my wife.”
I looked at him, and for the first time, I saw a stranger.
“Not anymore,” I said.
I pushed past him, grabbed the sack, and went toward the front door. He followed me, desperate now, grabbing at my arm.
“Hattie, please! Forgive me! Give me a chance!”
I turned to him on the porch, the evening crickets starting their song.
“You had seven months of chances, Otis,” I said quietly. “Seven months to tell me the truth. Seven months to do the right thing. And you didn’t do it.”
I opened the door to the night.
“I’m going to get my daughters, and I am never coming back.”
And I left.
I walked away from that house on the night of Monday, August 12, 1968, with a sack of clothes on my back and twenty dollars in my pocket. It was all I had in the world—that, and my three daughters waiting for me.
I walked down the dark road to Mr. Banks’ house again. I knocked on his door, exhausted.
He answered in his pajamas, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Mr. Banks,” I said, my voice trembling with fatigue. “I need to go get my daughters. I need to get to the bus station.”
He looked at me, really looked at me. He saw the sack on my back, he saw the set of my jaw, and he saw the ruins of my life in my eyes. He didn’t ask a single question.
“I’ll start the truck,” he said.
We drove through the night, the road dark and winding, stretching out like a black ribbon before us. The only light came from the truck’s headlights, cutting through the thick Georgia darkness, illuminating the trees that stood like silent sentinels on the roadside.
I sat in the passenger seat, clutching my burlap sack to my chest like it held the crown jewels. I stared straight ahead through the windshield, watching the white lines on the road flash by.
I didn’t look back. Not once. I didn’t look at the farmhouse disappearing in the rearview mirror, or the fields where I had sweated, or the life I was leaving behind in the dust.
We got to the station in Cordell, and I bought a ticket for the next bus to Atlanta. Mr. Banks waited with me until the Greyhound pulled up, hissing air brakes. I thanked him, boarded the bus, and found a seat near the back.
I arrived in Atlanta when the sun was just coming up, painting the city skyline in shades of bruised purple and gold. It was Tuesday, August 13, 1968.
I walked from the station to my sister’s house. My legs felt heavy, but my spirit felt strangely light. When I knocked on her door, the city was just waking up.
My sister, Etta, opened the door in her housecoat. She blinked, surprised to see me standing on her doorstep at that hour, looking like a refugee from a war.
“Hattie?” she gasped, her eyes going wide. “What happened?”
“I need to stay here a few days, Etta,” I said, my voice raspy from the long night. “Me and the girls.”
She looked at the sack on my back, then at my face, and she saw the exhaustion etched into my skin. She understood immediately that this wasn’t a social call.
“I have to go pick them up from the bus depot,” I added, my voice trembling. “They’re waiting.”
“Come in,” she said, pulling me inside. “Come in, sister.”
I left my sack and went straight back out to the depot to get the girls. They were there, sitting on a wooden bench, huddled together like three little frightened birds. When they saw me, their faces lit up, and the relief that washed over them broke my heart all over again.
When we got back to Etta’s house, it was small but tidy—two bedrooms, a cozy living room, and a kitchen that smelled of bacon and warmth. She lived there with her husband, Robert, and their two children, John and Mary, who were about the age of my girls.
I sat in the kitchen, my hands wrapped around a mug of hot coffee Etta had placed in front of me. She gave me a biscuit, but I couldn’t eat.
“Tell me,” she said, sitting across from me.
And I told her.
I told her everything from the beginning. I told her about the 2:47 AM wake-up calls. I told her about the seven months of psychological torture.
I told her about the night I pretended to sleep, about Otis’s confession in the dark, about the gambling debt, about Silas Thorne, and the promise to sell my nine-year-old daughter into marriage.
My sister turned white as a sheet, and then, as the reality sank in, her face flushed red with a terrible anger.
“That scoundrel,” she hissed, slamming her hand on the table. “That son of a…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she meant.
I finished telling the story, drank the last of the bitter coffee, and took a deep breath.
“I’m not going back, Etta,” I said firmly. “I ain’t going back to him. Not ever. I’m going to stay here until I find a way to support myself and the girls.”
She reached across the table and grabbed my hand, squeezing it hard.
“You stay as long as you need, Hattie,” she said. “This is your home now.”
The girls were standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching us. When they saw me crying—tears of relief this time—Ruby ran across the room and buried her face in my lap.
She hugged me so tight she almost knocked me over.
“Mama,” she sobbed.
Just that one word. Mama.
But by the way she said it, I knew. I knew she understood exactly what I had done. She knew I had walked into the lion’s den to save her. She knew I had burned my life down to keep her safe.
Ruth and Pearl ran over and joined her, and soon all three of them were clinging to me, a tangle of arms and tears.
I hugged my girls, burying my face in their necks, and I cried. I cried from relief, from exhaustion, from fear of the future, but mostly from the overwhelming gratitude that they were safe.
We stayed at Etta’s house. Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.
I slept in the living room on a mattress on the floor, huddled under a quilt with my daughters nearby.
It wasn’t comfortable, and we didn’t have much money, but for the first time in seven months, when the clock struck 2:47 AM, I was fast asleep.
