The Fourth Sister

Sister number four warn't no real sister a'tall. She started out as a maid. Her momma were the housekeeper for the local sheriff and the sheriff's wife talked Mrs. Chandler into taking in the young girl, Mattie Mae. I reckon so Mrs. Sheriff could keep from paying the girl's momma any more money. Any ways Mattie Mae come to live in the house with the Chandler girls. From the first they say Agnes taken on to her. They was real close in age, doncha know? When Agnes and Walter was married the two girls stayed close and when Walter didn't make it home from WWI and Agnes moved back home, they was even closer. All through school Agnes shared her learning with Mattie Mae and what she give her more than anything was a yearning for learning. Mattie Mae got real smart, mostly on books and writing. In fact she got so smart there just warn't no man what she could talk to; at least about things she wanted to talk about. So she never married. Today peoples ask how a black woman could live with a white family and become almost a member of that family. I reckon it were a gradual thing, but one thing I know from what I heard about them Chandlers, it didn't matter what nobody thought. They always done just what they wanted to.