by W.C. Bell

Created on: February 23, 2011

"Is it a lucky penny, Mama?" Eileen gushed with the innocence only a child her age could muster.

Maybelle Lee shuddered. She had known this day would come. She had dreaded it since the moment she suspected she was pregnant. It was the day no slave parent could avoid, not unless early death released them from the burden.

Maybelle held her daughter's penny up to the light. It was a shiny new commemorative coin celebrating the president's 200th birthday. It featured Jefferson Davis on the front. It displayed a wreath of cotton and tobacco on the reverse.

"I'll put it under my pillow tonight, Mama," Eileen chirped with enthusiasm, "so the Freedom Fairy will carry us across the rift."

Bitterness and despair consumed Maybelle. "Why do we tell our children these lies?" she wondered. "There's no rift in time. There's no parallel universe where all people are free. There's no magical fairy to carry fortunate slaves across the Clouds of Promise, and what nut," she asked herself, "came up with the lucky penny fantasy?"

Like it or not, the South won the War Between the States. There's no use in speculating what would have happened if Britain and France had not joined the Confederation for the cotton and tobacco depicted on the coin. The profit from the one and the addiction to the other assured European intervention.

Maybelle did what all slave parents do, she lied. She gave her child her one final night of happy delusion. "Be good like you promised. Say your prayers as you've been taught. Put the penny under your pillow, and tomorrow we'll wake up in Freeland."

Maybelle ached inside. Tomorrow was Eileen's auction, the day she would be sold to one of the national conglomerates. She would most likely be assigned to the Heart of Dixie garment factory where she would be expected to sew 100 buttons a shift, 100 buttons or no supper, no supper and probably a whipping too. Maybelle cried herself to sleep.

"Wake up, sleepyhead, you don't want to be tardy on your first day of kindergarden." Maybelle Washington shouted from the kitchen. She hummed a tune as she scrambled the eggs. She felt lighthearted and carefree as her daughter came through the door rubbing her eyes.

"May I take my lucky penny to school, Mama?" Eileen asked. "I slept with it under my pillow last night."

Maybelle held the penny up to the light. It was a shiny Lincoln cent, a commemorative coin with a log cabin on the back in celebration of the president's 200th birthday.

Maybelle stared intently at the coin as her daughter ate breakfast. Something vague swirled in the back of her mind, a shadow of a memory that wouldn't focus. It was a sense of being in a different place, a sense of being in a different time. "Oh, that's silly," Maybelle thought, "I just have the first-day-of-school jitters."

Maybelle beamed with pride when Eileen insisted on sitting in the front row of seats. The perky little girl, lucky penny in hand, was determined to be the best student in class. The kindergarden teacher assured them both that everything would be fine as she shooed the nervous mother out the door.

Maybelle stopped for coffee on her drive back home. She splurged on a French vanilla cupcake in honor of the occasion. She savored the treat, blissfully forgetful of the rhyme told across the rift in time:

"Enjoy what you've got
As long as you may,

For that which giveth
Also taketh away.

A penny's worth of luck
Lasts but a single day."

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