The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart by Michael Phillips

The raw power and terror of nature seemed so overwhelming, and we suddenly seemed so small and insignificant and powerless. And still the rain kept falling like it was never going to stop. I know we were all thinking the same thing—how much higher would the massive lake get … and how much closer to the house would it come?
    It was Aleta who finally broke the silence.
    “Is it going to come and swallow the house?” she said in a trembly voice. “What will we do, Katie?”
    Her obvious fear brought Katie back to herself. Like she always did, she put her own fear aside to reassure Emma and Aleta.
    “I don’t know, Aleta,” she answered, placing a gentle arm around Aleta’s shoulders. “But if it comes to the house, we’ll just stay upstairs. It could never get this high. It would have to cover all of Greens Crossing to do that!”
    We didn’t know it, but that’s just what people in town were worrying about. We weren’t the only ones with problems from the flood. Everyone for miles was looking at the rising water just like we were, and some houses and plantations were in far more peril than Rosewood. The bottom floors of a few were already under water.
    Later that day, when Emma and Aleta were taking naps, Katie and I were alone in the kitchen. We stood for a few minutes just looking out. It seemed like that’s mostly what we did these days, stand staring out windows into the dreary mist and slanting rain, wondering when it was going to stop. We both had serious expressions on our faces and were thinking the same thing—that maybe we ought to take a closer look at what was going on to see just how serious the danger really might be. Without a word, we went to the workroom next to the kitchen, put on big raincoats and galoshes and hats, then walked outside. We stood a moment more on the porch, then Katie led the way down the steps and into the rain.
    “I think we should look at the river,” she said.
    I nodded in agreement, and we trudged off across the muddy yard, past the barn and stables, and in the direction of the old slave cabins, which had been vacant since the war.
    We didn’t get much farther than that. Halfway across the field adjacent to the last little shack, a field that sloped down from the high ground of the house and most of Rosewood’s buildings, we saw the edge of the river lapping gently against the mud and stalks of cotton we’d picked. In just the few days since I’d checked the road, the river had come over its banks. Once it was that high, all the flat surrounding fields began to fill with its overflow. Out in the water beyond us the stalks poked up like the stubble of a white man’s beard. The actual banks of the river were more than two hundred yards away from us. This was the closest place where the river came to Rosewood. But those banks had disappeared along with the two hundred yards. The river on this side of the house was so wide toward town we couldn’t see the other side of it. Just like on the other side, the water looked like it went forever. Now for the first time we really realized that we were completely surrounded and cut off from Henry, from the town, from the whole rest of the world.
    Rosewood was an island surrounded with water everywhere. We were alone.
    Slowly we continued across the field through the mud until we came to the water’s edge, where we stopped.
    Again we just stood and watched, mesmerized by the awesome sight. Right in front of our feet, the water was shallow and calm and muddy. But as it stretched out into the distance, it was easy to see the flow of the huge expanse out where the actual river used to be. And it was moving fast, swirling and frothing like a torrent.
    It was brown and muddy. Logs and bushes and sticks and small trees floated down past us out in the water as we watched.
    “What if the river and stream both keep getting higher?” said Katie. “Rosewood’s right in the middle of it.”
    “I know,” I said. “The stream must