Roots (52 page)

Kunta felt as if he were suffocating. In his mind was flashing how marriages were conducted in his Juffure. He could see the dancers, hear the praise singers and the prayers, and the talking drums relaying the glad tidings to other villages. He hoped that he would be forgiven for what he was doing, that whatever words were spoken to their pagan God, Allah would understand that Kunta still believed in Him and only Him. And then, as if from afar, he heard Aunt Sukey asking, “Now, y’all two is sho’ you wants to git married?” Softly, alongside Kunta, Bell said, “I does.” And Aunt Sukey turned her gaze to Kunta; he felt her eyes boring into him. And then Bell was squeezing his arm very hard. He forced the words from his mouth: “I does.” And then Aunt
Sukey said, “Den, in de eyes of Jesus, y’all jump into de holy lan’ of matrimony.”

Kunta and Bell jumped high over the broomstick together, as Bell had forced him to practice over and over the day before. He felt ridiculous doing it, but she had warned that a marriage would meet the very worst kind of bad luck if the feet of either person should touch the broomstick, and whoever did it would be the first to die. As they landed safely together on the other side of the broom, all the observers applauded and cheered, and when they had quieted, Aunt Sukey spoke again: “What God done j’ined, let no man pull asunder. Now y’all be faithful to one ’nother.” She looked at Kunta directly. “An’ be good Christians.” Aunt Sukey turned next to look at Massa Waller. “Massa, is it anything you cares to say for dis here occasion?”

The massa clearly looked as if he would prefer not to, but he stepped forward and spoke softly. “He’s got a good woman in Bell. And she’s got a good boy. And my family here, along with myself, wish them the rest of their lives of good luck.” The loud cheering that followed from all of the slave-row people was punctuated with the happy squeals of little Missy Anne, who was jumping up and down, until her mother pulled her away, and all the Wallers went into the big house to let the blacks continue the celebration in their own way.

Aunt Sukey and other friends of Bell’s had helped her cook enough pots of food that they all but hid the top of a long table. And amid the feasting and good cheer, everyone there but Kunta and the Ghanaian partook of the brandy and wines that the massa had sent up from the big-house cellar as his gift. With the fiddler playing steadily and loudly on his instrument ever since the party began, Kunta didn’t know how he’d managed to sneak a drink, but from the way he swayed as he played, it was clear that he’d managed to get hold of more than one. He had endured the fiddler’s
drinking so often that he was resigned to it, but when he saw
Bell
busy filling and refilling her wine glass, he began to get increasingly concerned and embarrassed. He was shocked to overhear her exclaiming to Sister Mandy, another of her friends, “Been had my eye on him for ten years!” And not long after that, she wobbled over, threw her arms around him, and kissed him full on the mouth right there in front of everyone, amid crude jokes, elbows in the ribs, and uproarious laughter. Kunta was taut as a bowstring by the time the rest of the guests finally began to take their leave. Finally, they were all alone there in the yard, and as Bell wove unsteadily toward him, she said softly in a slurred voice, “Now you done bought de cow, you gits all de milk you wants!” He was horrified to hear her talk so.

But it wasn’t long before he got over it. In fact, before many weeks had passed, he had gained considerably more knowledge of what a big, strong, healthy woman was really like. His hands had explored in the darkness until now he knew for a certainty that Bell’s big behind was entirely her own, and none of it was one of those padded bustles that he had heard many women were wearing to make their behinds look big. Though he hadn’t seen her naked—she always blew out the candles before he got the chance—he had been permitted to see her breasts, whose largeness he noted with satisfaction were the kind that would supply much milk for a manchild, and that was very good. But it had been with horror that Kunta first saw the deep lash marks on Bell’s back. “I’s carryin’ scars to my grave jes’ like my mammy did,” Bell said, “but my back sure ain’t as bad as your’n,” and Kunta was taken with surprise, for he hadn’t seen his own back. He had all but forgotten all those lashings, over twenty years ago.

With her warmth always beside him, Kunta greatly enjoyed sleeping in Bell’s tall bed on its soft mattress; filled as it was with cotton instead of straw or cornshucks. Her handmade quilts, too,
were comfortable and warm, and it was a completely new and luxurious experience for him to sleep between a pair of sheets. Almost as pleasurable for him were the nicely fitted shirts she made for him, then washed, starched, and ironed freshly every day. Bell even softened the leather of his stiff, high-topped shoes by greasing them with tallow, and she knitted him more socks that were thickly cushioned to fit his half foot.

After years of driving the massa all day and returning at night to a cold supper before crawling onto his solitary pallet, now Bell saw to it that the same supper she fed the massa—unless it was pork, of course—was simmering over the fireplace in their cabin when he got home. And he liked eating on her white crockery dishes with the knives, spoons, and forks she had obviously supplied for herself from the big house. Bell had even whitewashed her cabin—he often had to remind himself that now it was
their
cabin—on the outside as well as the inside. All in all, he was amazed to find that he liked almost everything about her, and he would have rebuked himself for not having come to his senses sooner if he hadn’t been feeling too good to spend much time thinking about all the years he’d wasted. He just couldn’t believe how different things were, how much better life was, than it had been just a few months before and a few yards away.

A
s close as they’d become since they “jumped de broom,” there were times when Kunta would sense that Bell still didn’t totally trust him. Sometimes when she was talking to him in the kitchen or the cabin, she would nearly say something, then abruptly veer off onto another subject, filling Kunta with a rush of anger that only his pride enabled him to conceal. And on more than one occasion, he had learned things from the fiddler or the gardener that had to have been picked up at the massa’s keyhole. It didn’t matter to him what it was she was telling them; what hurt was that she wasn’t telling
him,
that she was keeping secrets from her own husband. What hurt him even more was that he had always been so open in sharing with her and them—news they might never have learned otherwise, or at least not for a long time. Kunta began to let weeks go by without telling even Bell about whatever he had overheard in town. When she finally said something to him about it, he said he guessed things had just been kind of quiet lately, and maybe it’s just as well because the news never seemed to be any good. But the next time he came back from town, he figured she’d learned her lesson, and he told her that he’d overheard the massa telling one of his friends that he’d just read that in New Orleans a white doctor named Benjamin Rush had written recently that when his longtime black assistant, a slave
named James Derham, had learned as much medicine from him as he felt he knew himself, he had set him free.

“Ain’t he de one what become a doctor hisself and got even mo’ famous dan de man what learned him?” asked Bell.

“How you know dat? Massa say he jes’ read ’bout it hisself, an ain’t nobody been here fo’ you to hear him tell about it,” said Kunta, as irritated as he was perlexed.

“Oh, I got my ways,” Bell replied mysteriously, changing the subject.

As far as Kunta was concerned, that was the last time she’d ever hear any news from him, and he didn’t say another word about it—or almost anything else—for the next week or so. Finally Bell got the hint, and after a good dinner by candlelight there in the cabin one Sunday night, she put her hand on his shoulder and said quietly, “Something been hard on my mind to tell you.” Going into their bedroom, she returned in a moment with one of the Virginia
Gazettes
that Kunta knew she kept in a stack beneath their bed. He had always assumed that she simply enjoyed turning the pages, as he knew so many blacks did, as well as those poor whites who walked around on Saturdays in the county seat with newspapers opened before their faces, though Kunta and everyone else who saw them knew perfectly well that they couldn’t read a word. But in some way now, as he saw the secretive look on Bell’s face, he sensed with astonishment what she was about to say.

“I can read some,” Bell hesitated. “Massa sell me fo’ sunup if’n he knowed dat.”

Kunta made no response, for he had learned that Bell would do more talking on her own than if she was asked questions. “I’s knowed some a de words ever since I was a young’un,” she continued. “It were de chilluns of my massa back den what teached me. Dey liked to play teacher, ’cause dey was going to school, an’
de massa and missis didn’t pay it no ’tention on count of how de white folks tells deyselves dat niggers is too dumb to learn anythin’.”

Kunta thought about the old black he saw regularly at the Spotsylvania County courthouse, who had swept and mopped there for years, with none of the whites ever dreaming that he had copied the handwriting they left lying around on papers until he had gotten good enough at it to forge and sign traveling passes, which he sold to blacks.

Peering hard at the tip of her forefinger as it moved the paper’s front page, Bell said finally, “Here where de House of Burgesses done met again.” She studied the print closely. “Done passed a new law ’bout taxes.” Kunta was simply amazed. Bell moved to a place farther down the page. “Right here it’s somethin’ ’nother’bout dat England done sent some niggers from dere back to Africa.” Bell glanced upward at Kunta. “You want me to pick out mo’ what dey say ’bout dat?” Kunta nodded. Bell needed several minutes of staring at her finger, with her lips silently forming letters and words. Then she spoke again. “Well, ain’t sho ’bout it all, but fo’ hunnud niggers done been sent somewheres called, look like, Sierra Leone, on land de England bought from a king dat’s dere, an’ de niggers is been give some land apiece ’long wid some money for a ’lowance.”

When it seemed as if the very effort of reading had fatigued her, she went thumbing through the inside pages, pointing out to Kunta one after another identical small figures that were recognizable as men carrying a bundle at the end of a stick over their shoulders, and with her finger on the block of print under one of these figures, she said, “Dat’s always ’scribin’ dese runaway niggers—like it was one ’bout you de las’ time you run off. It tell what color dey is, what marks dey got on dey faces or arms or legs or backs from bein’ beat or branded. An’ it tell what dey was wearin’
when dey run off, an’ sich as dat. An’ den it tell who dey belongst to, and what reward bein’ offered to whoever catch dem and bring dem back. I seen it be much as five hunnud, an’ I seen it be where de nigger done run so much dat he massa so mad he advertise ten dollars fo’ de live nigger back an’ fi’teen fo’ jes’ his head.”

Finally she set the paper down with a sigh, seemingly fatigued by the effort of reading. “Now you knows how I foun’ out ’bout dat nigger doctor. Same way de massa did.”

Kunta asked if she didn’t think she might be taking chances reading the massa’s paper like that.

“I’se real careful,” she said. “But I tell you one time I got scared to death wid massa,” Bell added. “One day he jes’ walked in on me when I s’posed to be dustin’ in de livin’ room, but what I
was
doin’ was looking in one a dem books a his’n. Lawd, I like to froze. Massa jes’ stood dere a minute lookin’ at me. But he never said nothin’. He jes’ walked out, an’ from de next day to dis day it’s been a lock on his bookcase.”

When Bell put away the newspaper back under the bed, she was quiet for a while, and Kunta knew her well enough by now to know that she still had something on her mind. They were about ready to go to bed when she abruptly seated herself at the table, as if she had just made up her mind about something, and with an expression both furtive and proud on her face, drew from her apron pocket a pencil and a folded piece of paper. Smoothing out the paper, she began to print some letters very carefully.

“You know what dat is?” she asked, and before Kunta could say no, answered, “Well, dat’s my name. B-e-l-l.” Kunta stared at the penciled characters, remembering of how for years he had shrunk away from any closeness to toubob writing, thinking it contained some toubob greegrees that might bring him harm—but he still wasn’t too sure that was so farfetched. Bell now printed some more letters. “Dat’s your name, K-u-n-t-a.” She beamed up at him. Despite
himself, Kunta couldn’t resist bending a little closer to study the strange markings. But then Bell got up, crumpled the paper, and threw it onto the dying embers in the fireplace. “Ain’t never gone git caught wid no writin’.”

Several weeks had passed before Kunta finally decided to do something about an irritation that had been eating at him ever since Bell showed him so proudly that she could read and write. Like their white massas, these plantation-born blacks seemed to take it for granted that those who had come from Africa had just climbed down from the trees, let alone had any experience whatever with education.

So very casually one evening after supper, he knelt down before the cabin’s fireplace and raked a pile of ashes out onto the hearth, then used his hands to flatten and smooth them out. With Bell watching curiously, he then took a slender whittled stick from his pocket and proceeded to scratch into the ashes his name in Arabic characters.

Bell wouldn’t let him finish, demanding, “What dat?” Kunta told her. Then, having made his point, he swept the ashes back into the fireplace, sat down in the rocking chair, and waited for her to ask him how he’d learned to write. He didn’t have long to wait, and for the rest of the evening he talked, and Bell listened for a change. In his halting speech, Kunta told her how all the children in his village were taught to write, with pens made of hollowed dried grass stalks, and ink of water mixed with crushed potblack. He told her about the arafang, and how his lessons were conducted both mornings and evenings. Warming to his subject, and enjoying the novelty of seeing Bell with her mouth shut for a while, Kunta told her how the students in Juffure had to be able to read well from the Koran before they could graduate, and he even recited for her some Koranic verses. He could tell she was intrigued, but it seemed amazing to him that this was the very first
time in all the years he’d known her that she had ever shown the slightest interest in anything about Africa.