Roots (55 page)

“S
he jes’ like a l’il nigger doll!” squealed Missy Anne, hopping ecstatically up and down, clapping her hands with delight, as she saw Kizzy for the first time three days later in Bell’s kitchen. “Cain’t she be mine?”

Bell smiled widely with pleasure. “Well, she belongst to me an’ her daddy, honey, but jes’ soon’s she big enough, you sho’ can play wid her all you wants!”

And so she did. As often as not, whenever Kunta went to the kitchen now to find out if the buggy would be needed, or simply to visit Bell, he would find the massa’s flaxen-haired little niece—four years old now—bent over the edge of Kizzy’s basket cooing down at her. “Jes’ pretty as you can be. We gonna have plenty fun soon’s you get some size, you hear me? You jes’ hurry up an’ grow, now!” Kunta never said anything about it, but it galled him to think how that toubob child acted as if Kizzy had entered the world to serve as her plaything, like some extraordinary doll. Bell hadn’t even respected his manhood and fatherhood enough to ask his feelings about his daughter playing with the daughter of the man who bought him, he thought bitterly.

It seemed to him sometimes that Bell was less concerned about his feelings than she was about the massa’s. He’d lost count of the evenings she’d spent talking about what a blessing it was that little
Missy Anne had come along to replace Massa Waller’s real daughter, who had died at birth along with her mother.

“Oh, Lawd, I jes’ even hates to think back on it,” she told him sniffing one night. “Po’ l’il pretty Missis Priscilla weren’t hardly no bigger’n a bird. Walkin’ roun’ here every day singin’ to herself an’ smilin’ at me an’ pattin’ herself, jes’ waitin’ for her baby’s time. An’ den dat mornin’ jes’ a-screamin’ and finally dyin’, her an’ de l’il baby gal, too! Look like I ain’t hardly seen po’ massa do no smilin’ since—leastways not ’til dis here l’il Missy Anne.”

Kunta felt no pity for the massa’s loneliness, but it seemed to him that getting married again would keep the massa too busy to spend so much time doting on his niece, and that way would almost certainly cut down on Missy Anne’s visits to the plantation—and therefore to play with Kizzy.

“Ever since then I been watchin’ how massa git dat l’il gal in his lap, hol’ her close, talk to her, sing her to sleep, an’ den jes’ set on dere holdin’ her ruther’n put her to bed. Jes’ act like he don’t never want his eyes to leave her all de time she be roun’ here. An’ I know it’s ’cause he’s her daddy in his heart.”

It could only dispose the massa even more kindly toward both of them, not to mention toward Kizzy, Bell would tell him, for Missy Anne to strike up a friendship that would bring her over to the massa’s house even more often than before. Nor could it hurt Massa John and his sickly wife, she reasoned slyly, that their daughter was developing a special closeness to her uncle, “’cause den de closer dey figgers dey is to massa’s money.” However important the massa’s brother acted, she said she knew for a fact that he borrowed from the massa now and then, and Kunta knew enough not to disbelieve her—not that he really cared which toubob was richer than which, since they were all alike to him.

Oftentimes now, since Kizzy’s arrival, as Kunta drove the massa around to see his patients and his friends, he would find himself
sharing the wish Bell had often expressed that the massa would marry again—although Kunta’s reasons were entirely different from Bell’s. “He jes’ be’s so pitiful to me livin’ all by hisself in dis big house. Fact, I believes dat’s how come he keep y’all always out dere in de buggy on dem roads, he jes’ want to keep hisself movin’, ruther’n settin’ roun’ here by hisself Lawd, even l’il ol’ Missy Anne sees it! Las’ time she was here, I was servin’ dem lunch an’ all of a sudden she say, ‘Uncle William, how come you ain’t got no wife like everybody else?’ An’ po’ thing, he didn’t know what to say to her.”

Though he had never told Bell about it because he knew how much she loved prying into toubob affairs, Kunta knew of several women who would run almost on their tiptoes out to meet the massa’s buggy whenever Kunta turned into their driveway. The fat black cook of one of massa’s more incurable patients had told Kunta scornfully, “Dat hateful huzzy ain’t got nothin’ wrong dat catchin’ yo’ massa wouldn’t cure mighty fast. She done already drive one man to de grave wid her ornery, evil ways, an’ now she jes’ claimin’ sickness to keep yo’ massa comin’ back here. I sho’ wish he could see her soon’s y’all leave, a-hollerin’ an’ carryin’ on at us niggers like we was mules or somethin’, an’ she don’t never touch dem medicines he give ’er!” There was another woman patient who would always come onto her front porch with the massa as he left, clinging to one of his arms as if she might fall, and looking up into his face while fluttering her fan weakly. But with both of these women, the massa always acted very stiff and formal, and his visits always seemed to be shorter than with his other patients.

So the months kept on rolling past, with Missy Anne being brought to visit Massa Waller about twice a week, and each time she came she’d spend hours playing with Kizzy. Though he was helpless to do anything about it, Kunta tried at least to avoid seeing them together, but they seemed to be everywhere he turned, and he couldn’t escape the sight of his little girl being patted,
kissed, or fondled by the massa’s niece. It filled him with revulsion—and reminded him of an African saying so old that it had come down from the forefathers: “In the end, the cat always eats the mouse it’s played with.”

The only thing that made it bearable for Kunta was the days and nights in between her visits. It was summer by the time Kizzy began to crawl, and Bell and Kunta would spend the evenings in their cabin watching with delight as she scuttled about the floor with her little diapered behind upraised. But then Missy Anne would show up again and off they’d go, with the older girl frisking in circles around her shouting, “C’mon, Kizzy, c’mon!” and Kizzy crawling in pursuit as quickly as she could, gurgling with pleasure at the game and the attention. Bell would beam with pleasure, but she’d know that even if Kunta was away driving the massa, he only needed to find out that Missy Anne had been there to return to the cabin that night with his face set and his lips compressed, and for the rest of the night he would be totally withdrawn, which Bell found extremely irritating. But when she considered what might happen if Kunta should ever exhibit his feelings even vaguely in any manner that might reach the massa, she was also a little frightened when he acted that way.

So Bell tried to convince Kunta that no harm could come of the relationship if only he could bring himself to accept it. Oftentimes, she told him, white girls grew up into lifetimes of true devotion and even deep loyalties to black childhood playmates. “’Fo’ you commence to drivin’ de buggy,” she said, “dey was a white missis died havin’ a chile—jes’ like his own missis did—only dis time de baby girl lived an’ got suckled by a nigger woman what jes’ had a baby girl o’ her own. Dem l’il gals had growed up near ’bout like sisters when dat massa married again. But dat new missis was so strong ’gainst dem gals bein’ close, she finally ’suaded dat massa to sell away de black gal an’ her mammy both.” But the moment they
were gone, she went on, the white girl went into such continuing hysterics that time and again Massa Waller was sent for, until finally he told the father that further weakness and grief would kill his daughter unless the black girl was returned. “Dat massa was’bout ready to whip dat new wife of his’n. He lef’ on his ridin’ hoss an’ ain’t no tellin’ how much he must o’ spent trackin’ down de nigger trader dat took de gal an’ her mammy away, an’ den buyin’ dem back from de new massa de nigger trader had sol’ dem to. But he brung back dat black gal an’ got a lawyer an’ deeded her over to be de property o’ his own gal.” And Bell said that even now, years later, though that white girl had grown to womanhood, she had never entirely regained her health. “De black one still livin’ right wid her an’ takin’ care of her, an’ neither one ain’t never even married!”

As far as Kunta was concerned, if Bell had intended her story as an argument
against
friendship between black and whites rather than in favor of it, she could hardly have made a more eloquent case.

F
rom about the time Kizzy had been born, both Kunta and the fiddler had returned to the plantation now and then with news about some island across the big water called “Haiti,” where it was said that around thirty-six thousand mostly French whites were outnumbered by about half a million blacks who had been brought there on ships from Africa to slave on huge plantations growing sugar cane, coffee, indigo, and cocoa. One night Bell said she had heard Massa Waller telling his dinner guests that reportedly Haiti’s rich class of whites lived like kings while snubbing the many poorer whites who couldn’t afford slaves of their own.

“’Magin’ dat! Who ever heared o’ such a thing?” said the fiddler sarcastically.

“Hush!” said Bell, laughing, and went on to say that the massa then told his horrified guests that for several generations in Haiti, so much breeding had gone on between white men and slave women that there were now almost twenty-eight thousand mulattoes and high-yallers, commonly called “colored people,” of whom nearly all had been given freedom by their French owners and fathers. According to one of the other guests, said Bell, these “colored people” invariably sought yet lighter-complexioned mates, with their goal being children of entirely white appearance, and those who remained visibly mulatto would bribe officials
for documents declaring that their forefathers had been Indians or Spanish or anything but Africans. As astonishing as he found it to believe, and as deeply as he deplored it, Massa Waller had said that through the gift deeds or the last wills of many whites, quite a sizable number of these “coloreds” had come to own at least one fifth of all the Haitian land—and its slaves—that they vacationed in France and schooled their children there just as the rich whites did, and even snubbed poor whites. Bell’s audience was as delighted to hear that as the massa’s had been scandalized.

“You gon’ laugh out o’ de other sides you’ moufs,” the fiddler interrupted, “when you hears what I heared some o’ dem rich massas talkin’ ’bout at one o’ dem so-ciety co-tillyums I played at a while back.” The massas, he said, were nodding their heads as they discussed how those poor whites down in Haiti hated those mulattoes and high-yallers so much that they’d signed petitions until France finally passed laws prohibiting “coloreds” from walking about at night, from sitting alongside whites in churches, or even from wearing the same kind of fabrics in their clothes. In the meantime, said the fiddler, both whites and “coloreds” would take out their bitterness toward each other on Haiti’s half-million black slaves. Kunta said he had overheard talk in town among laughing whites that made it sound as if Haitian slaves were suffering worse than here. He said he’d heard that blacks getting beaten to death or buried alive as punishment was commonplace, and that pregnant black women were often driven at work until they miscarried. Since he felt it wouldn’t have served any purpose other than to terrify them, he didn’t tell them that he had heard about even more inhuman bestialities, such as a black man’s hands being nailed to a wall until he was forced to eat his own cut-off ears; a toubob woman having all her slaves’ tongues cut out; another gagging a black child’s mouth until he starved.

In the wake of such horror stories over the past nine or ten months, it didn’t surprise Kunta, on one of his trips to town during this summer of 1791, to learn that Haiti’s black slaves had risen in a wild, bloody revolt. Thousands of them had swept forth slaughtering, clubbing, and beheading white men, gutting children, raping women, and burning every plantation building until northern Haiti lay in smoking ruins and the terrorized escaped white population was fighting to stay alive and lashing back—torturing, killing, even skinning every black they could catch. But they had been only a handful of survivors steadily dwindling before the wildly spreading black revolt, until by the end of August the few remaining thousands of whites still alive were in hiding places or trying to flee the island.

Kunta said he had never seen Spotsylvania County’s toubob so angry and afraid. “Seem like dey’s even scairder dan de las’ uprisin’ right here in Virginia,” said the fiddler. “Was maybe two, three years after you come, but you still weren’t hardly talkin’ to nobody, so don’ reckon you even knowed it. Was right over yonder in New Wales, in Hanover County, during one Christmastime. A oberseer beat some young nigger to de groun’, an’ dat nigger sprung up an’ went at him wid a ax. But he missed ’im, an’ de other niggers jumped de oberseer an’ beat ’im so bad dat de first nigger come an’ saved his life. Dat oberseer went runnin’ for help, all bloody, an’ meanwhile dem mad niggers caught two more white mens an’ tied ’em up and was beatin’ on ’em when a great big bunch a’ whites come a-runnin’ wid guns. Dem niggers took cover in a barn, an’ de white folks tried to sweet-talk’em to come on out, but dem niggers come a-rushin’ wid barrel staves an’ clubs, an’ it woun’ up wid two niggers shot dead an’ a lot of both white mens an’ niggers hurt. Dey put out militia patrols, an’ some mo’ laws was passed, an’ sich as dat, till it simmered down. Dis here Haiti thing done freshened white folks’ minds, ’cause dey knows jes’ good as me it’s a whole heap o’ niggers right under dey
noses wouldn’t need nothin’ but de right spark to rise up right now, an’ once dat ever get to spreadin’, yessuh, it be de same as Haiti right here in Virginia.” The fiddler clearly relished the thought.

Kunta was soon to see the whites’ fright for himself wherever he drove in the towns, or near the crossroads stores, taverns, church meetinghouses, or wherever else they gathered in small, agitated clusters, their faces red and scowling whenever he or any other black passed nearby. Even the massa, who rarely spoke to Kunta other than to tell him where he wanted to be driven, made even those words noticeably colder and more clipped. Within a week, the Spotsylvania County militia was patrolling the roads, demanding to know the destination and to inspect the traveling permit of any passing blacks, and beating and jailing any they thought acted or even looked suspicious. At a meeting of the area’s massas, the soon approaching big annual harvest frolic for slaves was canceled, along with all other black gatherings beyond home plantations; and even any home slave-row dancing or prayer meetings were to be watched by an overseer or some other white. “When massa tol’ me dat, I tol’ him me an’ Aunt Sukey an’ Sister Mandy gits on our knees an’ prays to Jesus togedder every Sunday an’ any other chance we gits, but he ain’t say nothin’ ’bout watchin’ us, so we gon’ keep right on prayin’!” Bell told the others on slave row.