Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  But no one had. At that moment, in fact, almost everyone had begun to watch a slender fourth-kafo girl who was dipping and whirling around as light as a feather, her head tossing, her eyes rolling, her arms describing graceful patterns. Soon the other dancers, exhausted, were moving to the sides to catch their breaths and stare; even her partner was hard put to keep up.

  When he quit, gasping, a shout went up, and when finally even she went stumbling toward the sidelines, a whooping and hollering engulfed her. The cheering got even louder when Massa Waller awarded that girl a half-dollar prize. And smiling broadly at the fiddler, who grinned and bowed in return, the massa left them amid more shouting. But the cakewalk was far from over, and the other couples, rested by now, rushed back out and went on as before, seemingly ready to dance all night.

  Kunta was lying on his mattress thinking about what he had heard and seen when suddenly there came a rapping at his door.

  “Who dat?” he demanded, astonished, for only twice had anyone ever come to his hut in all the time he’d lived there.

  “Kick dis do’ in, nigger!”

  Kunta opened the door, for it was the voice of the fiddler; instantly he smelled the liquor on his breath. Though he was repelled, Kunta said nothing, for the fiddler was bursting to talk, and it would have been unkind to turn him away just because he was drunk.

  “You seen massa!” said the fiddler. “He ain’t knowed I could play dat good! Now you watch an’ see if ’n he don’t ’range for me to play for white folks to hear me, an’ den hire me out!” Beside himself with happiness, the fiddler sat on Kunta’s three-legged stool, fiddle across his lap, and went on babbling.

  “Looka here, I second fiddled with the best! You ever hear of Sy Gilliat from Richmond?” He hesitated. “Naw, ’course you ain’t! Well, dat’s de fiddlin’est slave nigger in de worl’, and I fiddled wid him. Looka here, he play for nothin’ but big white folks’ balls an’ dances, I mean like the Hoss Racin’ Ball every year, and like dat. You oughta see him wid dat gold-painted fiddle of his an’ him wearin’ court dress wid his brown wig an’ Lawd, dem manners! Nigger name London Briggs behin’ us playin’ flute an’ clarinet! De minuets, de reels, de congos, hornpipes, jigs, even jes’ caperin’’bout—don’t care what it was, we’d have dem white folks dancin’ up a storm!”

  The fiddler carried on like this for the next hour—until the alcohol wore off—telling Kunta of the famous singing slaves who worked in Richmond’s tobacco factories; of other widely known slave musicians who played the “harpsichord,” the “pianoforte,” and the “violin”—whatever they were—who had learned to play by listening to toubob musicians from someplace called “Europe,” who had been hired to come to plantations to teach the massas’ children.

  The following crispy cold morning saw the starting of new tasks. Kunta watched as the women mixed hot melted tallow with wood-ash lye and water, boiling and stirring, then cooling the thick brown mixture in wooden trays to let it set for four nights and three days before they cut it into oblong cakes of hard, brown soap. To his complete distaste, he saw men fermenting apples, peaches, and persimmons into something foul-smelling that they called “brandy,” which they put into bottles and barrels. Others mixed gluey red clay, water, and dried hog hair to press into cracks that had appeared in their huts. Women stuffed some mattresses with cornshucks like Kunta’s, and some others with the moss he had seen drying; and a new mattress for the massa was filled with goose feathers.

  The slave who built things from wood was making new tubs in which clothes would be soaked in soapy water before being boiled and lumped onto a wooden block to be beaten with a stick. The man who made things with leather—horse collars, harnesses, and shoes—was now busily tanning cows’ hides. And women were dyeing into different colors the white cotton cloth the massa had bought to make clothes with. And just as it was in Juffure, all of the nearby vines, bushes, and fences were draped with drying cloths of red, yellow, and blue.

  With each passing day, the air became colder and colder, the sky grayer and grayer, until soon the ground was covered once again with snow and ice that Kunta found as unpleasant as it was extraordinary. And before long the other blacks were beginning to talk with great excitement about “Christmas,” which he had heard of before. It seemed to have to do with singing, dancing, eating, and the giving of gifts, which sounded fine—but it also seemed to involve their Allah, so even though Kunta really enjoyed by now the gatherings at the fiddler’s, he decided it would be best to stay to himself until the pagan festivities were safely over. He didn’t even visit the fiddler, who looked curiously at Kunta the next time he saw him, but said nothing about it.

  Thence swiftly came another springtime season, and as he knelt planting among his rows, Kunta remembered how lush the fields around Juffure always looked at this time of year. And he recalled as a second-kafo boy how happily he had gone prancing out behind the hungry goats in this green season. Here in this place the black “young’uns” were helping to chase and catch the baaaing, bounding “sheep,” as the animals were called, and then fighting over whose turn was next to sit on the head of a desperately struggling sheep while a man snipped off the thick, dirty wool with a pair of shears. The fiddler explained to Kunta that the wool would be taken off somewhere to be cleaned and “carded into bats,” which then would be returned for the women to spin woolen thread from which they would weave cloth for the making of winter clothes.

  The garden’s plowing, planting, and cultivating went by for Kunta in a sweating blur of dawns to darks. Early in the midsummer month they called “July,” those who worked out in the fields would return exhausted to their huts every night as they pressed to complete the last hoeing of grass from around the waist-high cotton and corn that was heavy with tasseled heads. It was hard work, but at least there was plenty to eat in the storehouses that had been filled to overflowing the past fall. At this time in Juffure, Kunta thought, the people’s stomachs would be aching as they made soup from roots, grubworms, grass, and anything else they could find, because the crops and fruits so lushly green were not yet ripe.

  The “laying by” had to be finished before the second “Sunday” in July, Kunta learned, when the blacks from most of the plantations in this area—which was called “Spotsylvania County”—would be permitted to travel someplace to join in some kind of “camp meetin’.” Since, whatever it was, it had to do with their Allah, no one even suggested that Kunta go along with the more than twenty of them who left very early that Sunday morning, packed into a wagon whose use Massa Waller had approved.

  Nearly everyone was gone for the next few days—so many that few would have been there to notice if Kunta had tried to run away again—but he knew that even though he had learned to get around all right and make himself fairly useful, he would never be able to get very far before some slave catcher caught up with him again. Though it shamed him to admit it, he had begun to prefer life as he was allowed to live it here on this plantation to the certainty of being captured and probably killed if he tried to escape again. Deep in his heart, he knew he would never see his home again, and he could feel something precious and irretrievable dying inside of him forever. But hope remained alive; though he might never see his family again, perhaps someday he might be able to have one of his own.

  CHAPTER 54

  Another year had passed—so fast that Kunta could hardly believe it—and the stones in his gourd told him that he had reached his twentieth rain. It was cold again, and “Christmas” was once more in the air. Though he felt the same as he always had about the black ones’ Allah, they were having such a good time that he began to feel his own Allah would have no objection to his merely observing the activities that went on during this festive season.

  Two of the men, having received week-long traveling passes from Massa Waller, were packing to go and visit their mates living on other plantations; one of the men was going to see a new baby for the first time. But every hut except theirs—and Kunta’s
—was busy with some kind of preparations, chiefly the fixing up of party clothes with lace and beads, and the taking of nuts and apples from their storage places.

  And up in the big house, all of Bell’s pots and pans were bubbling with yams and rabbits and roast pig—and many dishes made from animals Kunta had never seen or heard of until he came to this country: turkey, ’coons, ’possums, and the like. Though he was hesitant at first, the succulent smells from her kitchen soon persuaded Kunta to try everything—except for pig, of course. Nor was he interested in sampling the liquor Massa Waller had promised for the black ones: two barrels of hard cider, one of wine, and a keg of whiskey he had brought in his buggy from somewhere else.

  Kunta could tell that some of the liquor was being quietly consumed in advance, no little of it by the fiddler. And along with the drinkers’ antics, the black children were running around holding dried hog bladders on sticks closer and closer to fires until each one burst with a loud bang amid general laughing and shouting. He thought it was all unbelievably stupid and disgusting.

  When the day finally came, the drinking and eating began in earnest. From the door of his hut, Kunta watched as guests of Massa Waller’s arrived for the midday feast, and afterward as the slaves assembled close by the big house and began to sing, led by Bell, he saw the massa raise the window, smiling; then he and the other white folks came outside and stood listening, seeming to be enthralled. After that the massa sent Bell to tell the fiddler to come and play for them, which he did.

  Kunta could understand their having to do what they were told, but why did they seem to enjoy it so much? And if the whites were so fond of their slaves that they gave them presents, why didn’t they make them really happy and set them free? But he wondered if some of these blacks, like pets, would be able to survive, as he could, unless they were taken care of.

  But was he any better than they were? Was he all that different? Slowly but surely, he couldn’t deny that he was easing into acceptance of their ways. He was most troubled about his deepening friendship with the fiddler. His drinking of liquor deeply offended Kunta, and yet had not a pagan the right to be a pagan? The fiddler’s boastfulness also bothered Kunta, yet he believed that all the fiddler had boasted of was true. But the fiddler’s crude and irreverent sense of humor was distasteful to him; and Kunta had come to dislike intensely hearing the fiddler call him “nigger,” since he had learned that it was the white man’s name for blacks. But had it not been the fiddler who had taken it upon himself to teach him to talk? Was it not he whose friendship had made it easier for him to feel less of a stranger with the other blacks? Kunta decided that he wanted to know the fiddler better.

  Whenever the proper time came, in the best roundabout way he could, he would ask the fiddler about some of the questions that were in his mind. But two more pebbles had been dropped into his gourd before one quiet Sunday afternoon, when no one was working, he went down to the familiar last hut on slave row, and found the fiddler in a rare quiet mood.

  After exchanging greetings, they were both silent for a time. Then, just to make conversation, Kunta said he had overheard the massa’s driver, Luther, say that white folks were talking about “taxes” wherever he drove the massa. What were taxes, anyway, he wanted to know.

  “Taxes is money got to be paid extry on near ’bout anything white folks buys,” replied the fiddler. “Dat king ’crost de water puts on de taxes to keep him rich.”

  It was so unlike the fiddler to be so brief that Kunta figured he must be in a bad mood. Discouraged, he sat there for a while in silence, but finally he decided to spit out what was really on his mind: “Where you was fo’ here?”

  The fiddler stared at him for a long, tense moment. Then he spoke, his voice cutting. “I know every nigger here figgerin’ ’bout me! Wouldn’t tell nobody else nothin’! But you diff ’rent.”

  He glared at Kunta. “You know how come you diff ’rent? ’Cause you don’t know nothin’! You done got snatched over here, an’ got your foot cut, you thinks you been through all dey is! Well, you ain’t de only one had it bad.” His voice was angry. “You ever tells what I’m gonna tell you, I’ll catch you upside de head!”

  “I ain’t!” Kunta declared.

  The fiddler leaned forward and spoke softly so as not to be overheard. “Massa I had in No’th Ca’lina got drowned. Ain’t nobody’s bidness how. Anyway, same night I lit out, an’ he ain’t had no wife or young’uns to claim me. I hid out with Injuns ’til I figured it was safe to leave an’ git here to Virginia an’ keep on fiddlin’.”

  “What ‘Virginia’?” asked Kunta.

  “Man, you really don’t know nothin’, does you? Virginia’s the colony you livin’ in, if you want to call dis livin’.”

  “What’s a colony?”

  “You even dumber’n you look. Dey’s thirteen colonies that go to make up this country. Down south of here there’s the Ca’linas, and up north they’s Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and a bunch of others. I ain’t never been up dere, an’ neither has most niggers. I hear tell lotta white folks up dere don’t hold with slavery and sets us folk free. Myself, I’m kind of a half-free nigger. I have to be roun’ some massa ’case pattyrollers ever catches me.” Kunta didn’t understand, but he acted as if he did, since he didn’t feel like getting insulted again.

  “You ever seen Injuns?” the fiddler demanded.

  Kunta hesitated. “I seen some.”

  “Dey was here ’fo’ white folks. White folks tell you one of dem name Columbus discover dis place. But if he foun’ Injuns here, he ain’t discover it, is he?” The fiddler was warming to his subject.

  “White man figger whoever somewhere ’fore him don’t count. He call dem savages.”

  The fiddler paused to appreciate his wit, and then went on. “You ever seen Injuns’ teepees?” Kunta shook his head no. The fiddler enclosed three of his spread fingers within a small rag. “De fingers is poles an’ de rag is hides. Dey lives inside dat.”

  He smiled. “Bein’ from Africa, you prob’ly thinks you knows all dey is ’bout huntin’ and like that, but ain’t nobody hunts or travels good as Injuns. Once one go somewhere it’s a map in his head how he went. But Injun mammies—dey calls ’em squaws—carries dey young’uns on dey backs, like I hears y’all’s mammies does in Africa.”

  Kunta was surprised that the fiddler knew that, and couldn’t help showing it. The fiddler smiled again and continued the lesson. “Some Injuns hates niggers, an’ some likes us. Niggers an’ lan’ is Injuns’ big troubles with white folks. White folks wants all the Injuns’ land and hates Injuns what hides niggers!” The fiddler’s eyes searched Kunta’s face. “Tall Africans and Injuns made de same mistake—lettin’ white folks into where you live. You offered him to eat and sleep, then first thing you know he kickin’ you out or lockin’ you up!”

  The fiddler paused again. Then suddenly he burst out: “What put me out with you African niggers, looka here! I knowed five or six ack like you! Don’t know how come I took up wid you in de firs’ place! You git over here figgerin’ niggers here ought to be like you is! How you ’spec we gon’ know ’bout Africa? We ain’t never been dere, an’ ain’t goin’ neither!” Glaring at Kunta, he lapsed into silence.

  And fearful of provoking another outburst, Kunta soon left without another word, rocked onto his heels by what the fiddler had said to him. But the more he thought about it back in his hut, the better he felt about it. The fiddler had taken off his mask; that meant he was beginning to trust Kunta. For the first time in his acquaintance with anyone in the three rains since he had been stolen from his homeland, Kunta was actually beginning to know someone.

  CHAPTER 55

  Over the next several days, as he worked in the garden, Kunta thought a great deal about how long it had taken him to realize how little he really knew about the fiddler, and about how much more there was to know about him. Almost certainly he reflected no less of a mask was still being worn for him by the old gardener, whom Kunta
had been going to visit now and then. And he didn’t know Bell much better, though he and she had some daily exchange of talk—or rather Kunta mostly listened while he ate whatever food she gave him, but it was always about small and impersonal matters. It occurred to him how both Bell and the gardener had sometimes started to say something, or hinted at something, but then never finished. They were both cautious people in general, but it seemed they were especially so with him. He decided to get to know them both better. On his next visit to the old gardener, Kunta began in his indirect Mandinka way by asking about something the fiddler had told him. Kunta said he had heard about “pattyrollers,” but he was uncertain who or what they were.

  “Dey’s low-down po’ white trash dat ain’t never owned a nigger in dey lives!” the old gardener said heatedly. “It’s a ol’ Virginia law to patrol de roads, or anywhere else niggers is, an’ whip an’ jail any of’em gits cotched widdout a writ-out pass from dey massa. An’ who gits hired to do it is dem po’ whites what jes’ loves cotchin’ an’ beatin’ somebody else’s niggers ’cause dey ain’t got none. What’s behind it, y’understan’, all white folks scared to death dat any loose nigger is plannin’ a re-volt. Fact, ain’t nothin’ pattyrollers loves more’n claimin’ to suspicion some nigger, an’ bustin’ in an’ strippin’ him buck naked right before his wife an’ young’uns an’ beatin’ him bloody.”

  Seeing Kunta’s interest, and pleased by his visit, the old gardener went on: “Massa we got don’t ’prove a dat. It’s how come he don’t have no oberseer. He say he don’t want nobody beatin’ his niggers. He tell his niggers to obersee deyselves, jes’ do de work like dey know to, an’ don’t never break none a his rules. He swear sun won’t set here on no nigger break his rules.”