Roots (65 page)

Missy Anne still continued to visit at Massa Waller’s, although much less often than before since—as Roosby confided to Bell—young massas had begun to occupy her time. When she visited, she always saw Kizzy; and usually she’d bring along an old dress for Bell to “let out” for Kizzy, who was physically bigger, despite being years younger. But now, as if by some unspoken agreement, the two of them would spend around a half hour together, walking and talking quietly in the backyard near slave row, and then Missy Anne would leave.

Kizzy would always stand looking after her, then very quickly she would walk back into the cabin and bury herself in study, often reading and writing until suppertime. Kunta still didn’t like the
idea of her increasing abilities to do either, but he accepted that she must have something to occupy herself with now that she’d lost her lifelong friend. His Kizzy was herself now approaching adolescence, he reflected, which likely was going to present them both with a whole new area of worries.

Just after Christmas of the next year—1803—the winds blew the snow into deep, feathery drifts until in places the roads were hidden and impassable for all but the biggest wagons. When the massa went out—in response to only the most desperate summons—he had to ride on one of the horses, and Kunta stayed behind, busily helping Cato, Noah, and the fiddler to keep the driveway clear and to chop wood to keep all of the fireplaces steadily going.

Cut off as they were—even from Massa Waller’s
Gazette,
which had stopped arriving about a month before with the first big snow—the slave-row people were still talking about the last bits of news that had gotten through to them: how pleased the white massas were with the way President Jefferson was “runnin’ the gubmint,” despite the massas’ initial reservations toward his views regarding slaves. Since taking office, President Jefferson had reduced the size of the Army and Navy, lowered the public debt, even abolished the personal property tax—that last act, the fiddler said, particularly having impressed those of the massa class with his greatness.

But Kunta said that when he had made his last trip to the county seat before they had gotten snowed in, white folks had seemed to him even more excited about President Jefferson’s purchase of the huge “Louisiana Territory” for but three cents an acre. “What I likes ’bout it,” he said, “’cordin’ to what I heared, dat Massa Napoleon had to sell it so cheap ’cause he in sich hot water in France over what it cost ’im in money, long wid fifty thousan’ Frenchmans got killed or died fo’ dey beat dat Toussaint in Haiti.”

They were all still warming themselves in the glow of that thought a later afternoon when a black rider arrived amid a snow-storm with an urgently ill patient’s message for the massa—and another of dismal news for the slave row. In a damp dungeon on a remote French mountain where Napoleon had sent him, Haiti’s General Toussaint had died of cold and starvation.

Three days later, Kunta was still feeling stricken and depressed when he trudged back to the cabin one afternoon for a mug of hot soup, and stamping snow from his shoes, then entering pulling off his gloves, he found Kizzy stretched out on her pallet in the front room, her face drawn and frightened. “She feelin’ po’ly,” was the explanation that Bell offered as she strained a cup of her herb tea and ordered Kizzy to sit up and drink it. Kunta sensed that something more was being kept from him; then when he was a few more minutes there in the over-warm, tightly closed, mud-chinked cabin, his nostrils helped him to guess that Kizzy was experiencing her first time of the bloodiness.

He had watched his Kizzy growing and maturing almost every day now for nearly thirteen rains, and he had lately come to accept within himself that her ripening into womanhood would be only a matter of time, yet somehow he felt completely unprepared for this pungent evidence. After another day abed, though, the hardy Kizzy was back up and about in the cabin, then back at work in the big house—and it was as if overnight that Kunta began actually noticing for the first time how his girlchild’s always previously narrow body had budded. With a kind of embarrassed awe, he saw that somehow she had gotten mango-sized breasts and that her buttocks had begun to swell and curve. She even seemed to be walking in a less girlish way. Now, whenever he came through the bedroom separator curtain into the front room where Kizzy slept, he began to avert his eyes, and whenever Kizzy happened not to be clothed fully, he sensed that she felt the same.

In Africa now, he thought—Africa had sometimes seemed so distantly in the past—Bell would be instructing Kizzy in how to make her skin shine using shea-tree butter, and how to fashionably beautifully blacken her mouth, palms, and soles, using the powdered crust from the bottom of cooking pots. And Kizzy would at her present age already be starting to attract men who were seeking for themselves a finely raised, well-trained, virginal young wife. Kunta felt jolted even by the thought of some man’s
foto
entering Kizzy’s thighs; then he felt better after reassuring himself that this would happen only after a proper wedding. In his homeland at this time, as Kizzy’s
fa,
he would be assuming his responsibility to appraise very closely the personal qualities as well as the family backgrounds of whatever men began to show marriageable interest in Kizzy—in order to select the most ideal of them for her, and he would also be deciding now what proper bride price would be asked for her hand.

But after a while, as he continued to shovel snow along with the fiddler, young Noah, and Cato, Kunta found himself gradually feeling increasingly ridiculous that he was even thinking about these African customs and traditions anymore, for not only would they never be observed here, nor respected—indeed, he would also be hooted at if he so much as mentioned them, even to other blacks. And anyway, he couldn’t think of any likely, well-qualified suitor for Kizzy who was of proper marriageable age—between thirty and thirty-five rains—but there he was doing it again! He was going to have to force himself to start thinking along lines of the marrying customs here in the toubob’s country—where girls generally married—“jumpin’ de broom,” it was called—someone who was around their same age.

Immediately then Kunta began thinking about Noah. He had always liked the boy. At fifteen, two years older than Kizzy, Noah seemed to be no less mature, serious, and responsible than he was
big and strong. The more Kunta thought about it, the only thing he could find lacking with Noah, in fact, was that he had never seemed to show the slightest personal interest in Kizzy—not to mention that Kizzy herself seemed to act as if Noah didn’t exist. Kunta pondered:
Why
weren’t they any more interested than that in each other, at the least in being friends? After all, Noah was very much as he himself had been as a young man, and therefore he was highly worthy of Kizzy’s attention, if not her admiration. He wondered: Wasn’t there something he could do to influence them into each other’s paths? But then Kunta sensed that probably would be the best way to insure their never getting together. He decided, as usual, that it was wisest that he mind his own business—and, as he had heard Bell put it, with “de sap startin’ to rise” within the young pair of them who were living right there in the same slave row, he privately would ask if Allah would consider helping nature to take its course.

“Y
ou listen here, gal, don’ you never lemme hear ’bout you fannin’ yo’ tail roun’ dat Noah no mo’! I take a hik’ry stick to you in a minute.” Headed home, Kunta stopped in his tracks two or three steps from the door of the cabin and stood listening as Bell went on: “Why, you ain’t even turned sixteen yet! What yo’ pappy think, you carryin’ on like dat?”

He quietly turned and went back down along the path to the privacy of the barn, to consider the implications of what he had heard. “Fannin’ her tail”—around Noah! Bell personally hadn’t seen whatever it was, but someone had told her. No doubt it had been Aunt Sukey or Sister Mandy: Knowing those old biddies, it wouldn’t surprise him if either or both of them had witnessed something completely innocent and made it sound suggestive just to have something to cluck about. But what? From what he’d overheard, Bell probably wouldn’t tell him unless it was repeated and she needed him to put a stop to it. It was a kind of thing he’d never dream of querying Bell about, for that was too much like women’s gossip.

But what if it
hadn’t
been so innocent? Had Kizzy been flaunting herself before Noah? And if she had, what had he done to encourage it? He had seemed to be a young man of honor, of good character—but you never knew.

Kunta wasn’t sure how to feel or what to think. In any case, as Bell had said, their daughter was only fifteen, which in the customs of the toubob’s land was still too young for her to be thinking about getting married. He realized that he wasn’t feeling very African about it, but somehow he just didn’t feel ready to think about Kizzy walking around with a big belly as he’d seen on so many girls her age, even younger.

If she
did
marry Noah, though, he thought, at least their child would be black and not one of those pale sasso borro babies, products of the mothers having been raped by lusting massas or overseers. Kunta thanked Allah that neither his Kizzy nor any other slave-row women ever had faced that horrifying experience, or at least not since he had been there, for countless times he had heard Massa Waller strongly expressing among friends his convictions against white and black bloods being mixed.

The next few weeks, as the opportunity would present, Kunta covertly watched Kizzy’s bottom for any signs of wiggling. He never caught her at it, but once or twice both he and she were startled when he came upon her in the cabin twirling round and round, tossing her head and humming dreamily to herself. Kunta also kept a close eye on Noah; he noticed that now—unlike before—Noah and Kizzy would nod and smile whenever they passed each other within the sight of anyone else. The more he mused on it, the more strongly he speculated that they were skillfully concealing their ardor. After a while Kunta decided that there should be no harm in Noah and Kizzy’s publicly taking conversational walks together, in his accompanying her to camp meeting, or to the “dance-ol’-Jenny-down” frolics that were held each summer, where Noah as her partner would surely be preferable to some impudent stranger. Indeed, it was possible that, after another rain or so for them both, Noah might even make Kizzy a good mate.

An awareness began to dawn within Kunta that Noah had begun to observe
him
, just as closely as the other way around, and now Kunta anticipated, nervously, that the boy was trying to muster the nerve to ask if he could marry Kizzy. It was on a Sunday afternoon in early April—Massa Waller had brought a family of guests home with him after church, and Kunta was outside the barn polishing the guests’ buggy—when something told him to glance up, and he saw the dark, slender Noah walking purposefully down along the path from slave row.

Reaching Kunta, he spoke without hesitation, as if his words were rehearsed: “Ol’ suh, you’s de onlest one I feels like I can trust. I got to tell somebody. I can’t live no mo’ like dis. I got to run away.”

Kunta was so astounded that at first he could think of nothing to say—he just stood there staring at Noah.

Kunta finally found some words. “You ain’t gon’ run nowhere wid Kizzy!” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

“Nawsuh, wouldn’t want to git ’er in no trouble.”

Kunta felt embarrassed. After a while he said noncommittally, “Reckon sometime ever’body feel like runnin’.”

Noah’s eyes inspected his. “Kizzy tol’ me Miss Bell say you run off fo’ times.”

Kunta nodded, his face still showing nothing of how he was thinking back on himself at the same age, freshly arrived, so desperately obsessed with
run, run, run
that every day spent waiting and watching for the next even half-decent opportunity was an unbearable torment. A swift realization thrust itself into his head that if Kizzy didn’t know, as Noah’s earlier statement could be interpreted she didn’t, then whenever her loved one suddenly disappeared, she was sure to be utterly devastated—so soon again after her crushing heartbreak involving the toubob girl. He thought that it just couldn’t be helped. He thought that, for numerous reasons, whatever he said to Noah must be considered carefully.

He said gravely, “Ain’t gwine tell you run or don’t run. But less’n you ready to die if you gits caught, you ain’t ready.”

“Ain’t plannin’ to git caught,” said Noah. “I’se heared de main thing is you follows de Nawth Star, an’ it’s different Quaker white folks an’ free niggers he’ps you hide in de daytimes. Den you’s free once you hits dat Ohio.”

How little he knows
, thought Kunta. How could escaping seem anywhere near so simple? But then he realized that Noah was young—as he had been; also that like most slaves, Noah had seldom set foot beyond the boundaries of his plantation. This was why most of those who ran, field hands especially, were usually captured so soon, bleeding from briar cuts, half starved and stumbling around in forests and swamps full of water moccasins and rattlesnakes. In a rush, Kunta remembered the running, the dogs, the guns, the whips—the ax.

“You don’ know what you talkm’ ’bout, boy!” he rasped, regretting his words almost as they were uttered. “What I mean to say—it jes’ ain’t dat easy! You know ’bout dem bloodhounds dey uses to cotch you?”

Noah’s right hand slid into his pocket and withdrew a knife. He flicked it open, the blade honed until it gleamed dully. “I figgers dead dogs don’t eat nobody.” Cato had said that Noah feared nothing. “Jes’ can’t let nothin’ stop me,” Noah said, closing the knife and returning it into his pocket.

“Well, if you gwine run, you gwine run,” said Kunta.

“Don’t know ’zactly when,” said Noah. “Jes’ knows I got to go.” Kunta re-emphasized awkwardly, “Jes’ make sho’ Kizzy ain’t in none o’ dis.”

Noah didn’t seem offended. His eyes met Kunta’s squarely. “Naw-suh.” He hesitated. “But when I gits Nawth, I means to work an’ buy her free.” He paused. “You ain’t gon’ tell her none o’ dis, is you?”