Roots (57 page)

T
he death of the gardener continued to weigh so heavily on Kunta’s mind that Bell finally said something about it one evening after Kizzy went to bed.

“Looka here, Kunta, I knows how you felt ’bout dat gardener, but ain’t it ’bout time you snap out of it an’ jine de livin’?” He just glared at her. “Suit yo’se’f. But ain’t gwine be much of a secon’ birfday fo’ Kizzy nex’ Sunday wid you mopin’ roun’ like dis.”

“I be fine,” said Kunta stiffly, hoping Bell couldn’t tell that he’d forgotten all about it.

He had five days to make Kizzy a present. By Thursday afternoon he had carved a beautiful Mandinka doll out of pine wood, rubbed it with linseed oil and lampblack, then polished it until it shone like the ebony carvings of his homeland. And Bell, who had long since finished making her a dress, was in the kitchen—dipping two tiny pink candles to put on the chocolate cake Aunt Sukey and Sister Mandy were going to help them eat on Sunday evening—when Massa John’s driver Roosby arrived in the buggy.

Bell had to bite her tongue when the massa, beaming, called her in to announce that Missy Anne had persuaded her parents to let her spend an entire weekend with her uncle; she’d be arriving tomorrow evening. “Make sure you have a guest room ready,” said the massa. “And why don’t you bake a cake or something for Sunday?
My niece tells me your little girl is celebrating a birthday, and she’d like to have a party—just the two of them—up in her room. Anne also asked if she could spend the night with her up here in the house, and I said that would be all right, so be sure to prepare a pallet for the floor at the foot of the bed.”

When Bell broke the news to Kunta—adding that the cake she was going to make would have to be served in the big house instead of their cabin, and that Kizzy was going to be so busy partying with Missy Anne that they wouldn’t be able to have a party of their own—Kunta was so angry that he couldn’t speak or even look at her. Stomping outside, he went straight to the barn, where he’d hidden the doll under a pile of straw, and pulled it out.

He had vowed to Allah that this kind of thing would never happen to his Kizzy—but what could he do? He felt such a sickening sense of frustration that he could almost begin to understand why these blacks finally came to believe that resisting the toubob was as useless as a flower trying to keep its head above the falling snow. But then, staring at the doll, he thought of the black mother he’d heard about who had bashed out her infant’s brains against the auction block, screaming, “Ain’t gon’ do to her what you done to me!” And he raised the doll over his head to dash it against the wall, then lowered it. No, he could never do that to her. But what about escape? Bell herself had mentioned it once. Would she really go? And if she would, could they ever make it—at their age, with his half foot, with a child barely old enough to walk? He hadn’t seriously considered the idea for many years, but he did know the region by now as well as he did the plantation itself. Maybe ...

Dropping the doll, he got up and walked back to the cabin. But Bell started talking before he got the chance to. “Kunta, I feels de same as you, but listen to me! I ruther dis dan her growin’ up a fiel’-han’ young’un like dat l’il ol’ Noah. He ain’t but two years older’n Kizzy, an’ awready dey done started takin’ him out dere to
pullin’ weeds an’ totin’ water. Don’ care how else you feels, seem like you got to ’gree wid dat.” As usual, Kunta said nothing, but he had seen and done enough during his quarter-century years as a slave to know that the life of a field hand was the life of a farm animal, and he would rather die than be responsible for sentencing his daughter to such a fate.

Then one evening a few weeks later, he arrived home to find Bell waiting at the door with the cup of cold milk he always looked forward to after a long drive. When he sat down in his rocking chair to wait for supper, she came up behind him and—without even being asked—rubbed his back in just the spot where she knew it always hurt after a day at the reins. When she set a plate of his favorite African stew in front of him, he knew she must be trying to soften him up for something, but he knew enough not to ask her what. All the way through supper she chattered even more than usual about things that mattered even less than usual, and he was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get around to it when, about an hour after supper, as they were getting ready to go to bed, she stopped talking for a long moment, took a deep breath, and put her hand on his arm. He knew this was it.

“Kunta, I don’ know how to tell you this, so I’ll jes’ spit it out. Massa done tol’ me he promise Missy Anne to drop Kizzy off at Massa John’s to spen’ de day wid her when he pass by dere on his roun’s tomorra.”

This was too much. It was outrageous enough to have to sit by and watch while Kizzy was turned slowly into a well-mannered lap dog, but now that she’d been housebroken, they wanted him to deliver the animal to its new keeper. Kunta shut his eyes, struggling to contain his rage, then leaped up from his chair—pulling his arm viciously away from Bell—and bolted out the door. While she lay sleepless in their bed that night, he sat sleepless in the stable beneath his harnesses. Both of them were weeping.

When they pulled up in front of Massa John’s house the next morning, Missy Anne ran out to meet them before Kunta even had the chance to lift Kizzy to the ground. She didn’t even say goodbye, he thought bitterly, hearing behind them the pealings of girlish laughter as he swerved the horses back down the driveway toward the main road.

It was late afternoon and he had been waiting several hours for the massa outside a big house about twenty miles down the road when a slave came out and told him that Massa Waller might have to sit up all night with their sick missy, and for Kunta to come back for him the next day. Morosely, Kunta obeyed, arriving to find that Missy Anne had begged her sickly mother to let Kizzy stay overnight. Deeply relieved when the reply came that their noise had given her a headache, Kunta was soon rolling back homeward again with Kizzy holding on and bouncing beside him on the narrow driver’s seat.

As they rode along, it dawned on Kunta that this was the first time he had been absolutely alone with her since the night he had told her what her name was. He felt a strange and mounting exhilaration as they drove on into the gathering dusk. But he also felt rather foolish. As much thought as he had given to his plans for and his responsibilities to this firstborn, he found himself uncertain how to act. Abruptly he lifted Kizzy up onto his lap. Awkwardly he felt her arms, her legs, her head, as she squirmed and stared at him curiously. He lifted her again, testing how much she weighed. Then, very gravely, he placed the reins within her warm, small palms—and soon Kizzy’s happy laughter seemed the most delightful sound he had ever heard.

“You pretty l’il gal,” he said to her finally. She just looked at him. “You look jes’ like my little brudder Madi.”

She just kept looking at him. “Fa!” he said, pointing to himself. She looked at his finger. Tapping his chest, he repeated, “Fa.” But
she had turned her attention back to the horses. Flicking the reins, she squealed, “Giddup!” imitating something else she’d heard him say. She smiled proudly up at him, but he looked so hurt that it faded quickly, and they rode on the rest of the way in silence.

It was weeks later, while they were riding home from a second visit with Missy Anne, that Kizzy leaned over toward Kunta, stuck her chubby little finger against his chest, and with a twinkle in her eye, said, “Fa!”

He was thrilled.
“Ee to mu Kizzy leh!”
he said, taking her finger and pointing it back at her. “Yo’ name Kizzy.” He paused. “Kizzy!” She began to smile, recognizing her own name. He pointed toward himself. “Kunta Kinte.”

But Kizzy seemed perpelxed. She pointed at him: “Fa!” This time they both smiled wide.

By midsummer Kunta was delighted with how fast Kizzy was learning the words he was teaching her—and how much she seemed to be enjoying their rides together. He began to think there might be hope for her yet. Then one day she happened to repeat a word or two of Mandinka when she was alone with Bell, who later had sent Kizzy over to Aunt Sukey’s for supper and was waiting for Kunta when he got home that night.

“Ain’t you got no sense atall, man?” she shouted. “Don’t you know you better pay me ’tention—git dat chile an’ all us in bad trouble wid dat mess! You better git in yo’ hard head she ain’t no African!” Kunta never had come so close to striking Bell. Not only had she committed the unthinkable offense of raising her voice to her husband, but even worse, she had disowned his blood and his seed. Could not one breathe a word of one’s true heritage without fearing punishment from some toubob? Yet something warned him not to vent the wrath he felt, for any head-on collision with Bell might somehow end his buggy trips with Kizzy. But then he thought she couldn’t do that without telling the massa why, and she
would never dare to tell. Even so, he couldn’t comprehend what had ever possessed him to marry any woman born in toubob land.

While he was waiting for the massa to finish a house call at a nearby plantation the next day, another buggy driver told Kunta the latest story he’d heard about Toussaint, a former slave who had organized a large army of black rebels in Haiti and was leading them successfully against not only the French but also the Spanish and the English. Toussaint, the driver said, had learned about war from reading books about famous ancient fighters named “Alexander the Great” and “Julius Caesar,” and that these books had been given to him by his former massa, who he later helped escape from Haiti to the “Newnited States.” Over the past few months, Toussaint had become for Kunta a hero, ranking second in stature only to the legendary Mandinka warrior Sundiata, and Kunta could hardly wait to get back home and pass this fascinating story along to the others.

He forgot to tell them. Bell met him at the stable with the news that Kizzy had come down with a fever and broken out in bumps. The massa called it “mumps,” and Kunta was worried until Bell told him it was only normal in young’uns. When he learned later that Missy Anne had been ordered to stay away until Kizzy recovered—for at least two weeks—he was even a little bit happy about it. But Kizzy had been sick only a few days when Massa John’s driver Roosby showed up with a fully dressed toubob doll from Missy Anne. Kizzy fell in love with it. She sat in bed hugging the doll close, rocking it back and forth, exclaiming with her eyes half shut, “Jes’ so pretty!” Kunta left without a word and stormed across the yard to the barn. The doll was still in the loft where he’d dropped it and forgotten it months before. Wiping it off on his sleeve, he carried it back to the cabin and almost shoved it at Kizzy. She laughed with pleasure when she saw it, and even Bell admired it. But Kunta could see, after a few minutes, that Kizzy liked the
toubob doll better, and for the first time in his life, he was furious with his daughter.

It didn’t make him any happier to notice how eagerly the two girls made up for the weeks of being together they had missed. Although sometimes Kunta was told to take Kizzy to play at Missy Anne’s house, it was no secret that Missy Anne preferred to visit at her uncle’s, since her mother was quick to complain of headaches because of the noise they made, and would even resort to fainting spells as a final weapon, according to their cook, Omega. But she said, “ol’ missy” had her match in her quick-tongued daughter. Roosby told Bell one day that his missis had yelled at the girls, “You’re actin’ just like niggers!” and Missy Anne had shot back, “Well, niggers has more fun than us, ’cause they ain’t got nothin’ to worry about!” But the two girls made all the noise they pleased at Massa Waller’s. Kunta seldom drove the buggy either way along the flowered drive without hearing the girls shrieking somewhere as they romped in the house, the yards, the garden, and—despite Bell’s best efforts to prevent it—even in the chicken coops, the hog pen, and the barn, as well as the unlocked slave-row cabins.

One afternoon, while Kunta was off with the massa, Kizzy took Missy Anne into her cabin to show her Kunta’s gourd of pebbles, which she had discovered and become fascinated with while she was home with the mumps. Bell, who happened to walk in just as Kizzy was reaching into the mouth of the gourd, took one look and yelled, “Git ’way from yo’ daddy’s rocks! Dey’s how he tell how ol’ he is!” The next day Roosby arrived with a letter for the massa from his brother, and five minutes later Massa Waller called Bell into the drawing room, the sharpness of his tone frightening her before she left the kitchen. “Missy Anne told her parents about something she saw in your cabin. What is this African voodoo about rocks being put into a gourd every full moon?” he demanded.

Her mind racing, Bell blurted, “Rocks? Rocks, Massa?”

“You know very well what I mean!” said the massa.

Bell forced a nervous giggle. “Oh, I knows what you’s talkin’’bout. Nawsuh, Massa, ain’t no voodoo. Ol’ African nigger I got jes cain’t count, dat’s all, Massa. So every new moon, he drop l’il rock in de gourd so all dem rocks say how ol’ he is!”

Massa Waller, still frowning, gestured for Bell to return to the kitchen. Ten minutes later she charged into the cabin, snatched Kizzy from Kunta’s lap, and laid into her rear end with an open hand—almost screaming, “Don’t you never bring dat gal in here no mo’, I’ll wring yo’ neck, you hear me!”

After sending the weeping Kizzy fleeing to bed, Bell managed to calm herself enough to explain to Kunta. “I knows dem gourd an’ rocks ain’t no harm,” she said, “but it jes’ go to show you what I tol’ you ’bout dem African things brings troubles! An’ massa don’t never forgit nothin’!”

Kunta felt such an impotent fury that he couldn’t eat supper. After driving the massa nearly every day for over twenty rains, Kunta was amazed and enraged that it could still be a matter of suspicion that he simply recorded his age by dropping stones into a gourd.

It was another two weeks before the tension subsided enough for Missy Anne’s visits to resume, but once they did it was as if the incident had never happened; Kunta was almost sorry. With the berry season in full bloom, the girls ranged up and down the vine-covered fencerows finding the dark green wild strawberry patches and coming home with full pails, their hands—and mouths—tinted crimson. Other days they would return with such treasures as snail shells, a wren’s nest, or a crusted old arrowhead, all of which they would exhibit gleefully to Bell before hiding them somewhere with great secrecy, whereafter they might make mud pies. By the midafternoons, after trooping into the kitchen covered to the elbows with mud-pie
batter and being ordered straight outside again to wash up at the well, the joyfully exhausted pair would eat snacks that Bell had ready for them and then lie down together on a quilt pallet for a nap. If Missy Anne was staying overnight, after her supper with the massa, she would keep him company until her bedtime, when he would send her out to tell Bell that it was time for her story. And Bell would bring in an equally worn-out Kizzy and tell them both about the further adventures of Br’er Rabbit getting tricked by Br’er Fox, who finally got tricked himself.