Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  “Ah-salakium-salaam.”

  “Malaika-salaam.”

  And Kunta cripped hurriedly out into the deepening dusk, past the other small huts, and up toward the big house, wondering if the massa had already come out looking for him. But it was another half hour before the massa appeared, and as Kunta drove the buggy homeward—scarcely feeling the reins in his hands or hearing the horses’ hooves on the road—he felt as if he had been talking with his dear father Omoro. No evening of his life had ever meant more to him.

  CHAPTER 62

  “Seen Toby passin’ yestiday, hollered at ’im, ‘Hey, drop by an’ set awhile, nigger!’ You oughta seen de look he give me, an’ ain’t even spoke! What you reckon it is?” the fiddler asked the gardener. The gardener had no idea, and they both asked Bell. “Cain’t tell. If he sick or sump’n, he oughta say so. I’m jes’ leavin’ him’lone, he actin’ so funny!” she declared.

  Even Massa Waller noticed that his commendably reserved and reliable driver seemed not to be his usual self. He hoped it wasn’t an incubating stage of a current local contagion to which they both had been exposed, so one day he asked Kunta if he felt badly. “Nawsuh,” Kunta quickly replied, so Massa Waller put further concern out of his mind, so long as his driver got him where he was going.

  Kunta had been rocked to the core by his encounter with the Ghanaian, and that very fact made it clear to him how lost he had become. Day by day, year by year, he had become less resisting, more accepting, until finally, without even realizing it, he had forgotten who he was. It was true that he had come to know better and learned to get along with the fiddler, the gardener, Bell, and the other blacks, but he knew now that he could never really be one of them, any more than they could be like him. Alongside the Ghanaian, in fact, the fiddler and the gardener and Bell now seemed to Kunta only irritating. He was glad that they were keeping their distance. Lying on his pallet at night, he was torn with guilt and shame about what he had let happen to himself. He had still been an African when he used to awaken suddenly here in his cabin, jerking upright, shocked to discover that he wasn’t in Juffure; but the last time that happened had been many years ago. He had still been an African when his memories of The Gambia and its people had been the only thing that sustained him, but months might pass now without his having a single thought about Juffure. He had still been an African back in those early years when each new outrage had sent him onto his knees imploring Allah to give him strength and understanding; how long had it been since he had even properly prayed to Allah?

  His learning to speak the toubob tongue, he realized, had played a big part in it. In this everyday talking, he seldom even thought of Mandinka words any more, excepting those few that for some reason his mind still clung to. Indeed, by now—Kunta grimly faced it—he even thought in the toubob tongue. In countless things he did as well as said and thought, his Mandinka ways had slowly been replaced by those of the blacks he had been among. The only thing in which he felt he could take some small pride was that in twenty rains he had never touched the meat of the swine.

  Kunta searched his mind; there must have been something else of his original self that he could find someplace. And there was: He had kept his dignity. Through everything, he had worn his dignity as once in Juffure he had worn his saphie charms to keep away the evil spirits. He vowed to himself that now more than ever, his dignity must become as a shield between him and all of those who called themselves “niggers.” How ignorant of themselves they were; they knew nothing of their ancestors, as he had been taught from boyhood. Kunta reviewed in his mind the names of the Kintes from the ancient clan in old Mali down across the generations in Mauretania, then in The Gambia all the way to his brothers and himself; and he thought of how the same ancestral knowledge was possessed by every member of his kafo.

  It set Kunta to reminiscing about those boyhood friends. At first he was only surprised, but then he grew shocked when he found that he couldn’t remember their names. Their faces came back to him—along with memories of them racing out beyond the village gate like blackbirds to serve as chattering escorts in Juffure for every traveler who passed by; hurling sticks at the scolding monkeys overhead, who promptly hurled them back; of contests they’d held to see who could eat six mangoes the fastest. But try as Kunta might, he couldn’t recall their names, not one of them. He could see his kafo gathered, frowning at him.

  In his hut, and driving the massa, Kunta racked his brain. And finally the names did begin to come, one by one: yes, Sitafa Silla—he and Kunta had been best friends! And Kalilu Conteh—he had stalked and caught the parrot at the kintango’s command. Sefo Kela—he had asked the Council of Elders for permission to have a teriya sexual friendship with that widow.

  The faces of some of the elders began to come back now, and with them the names he thought he had long since forgotten. The kintango was Silla Ba Dibba! The alimamo was Kujali Demba! The wadanela was Karamo Tamba! Kunta remembered his third-kafo graduating ceremony, where he had read his Koranic verses so well that Omoro and Binta gave a fat goat to the arafang, whose name was Brima Cesay. Remembering them all filled Kunta with joy—until it occurred to him that those elders would have died by now, and his kafo mates whom he remembered as little boys would be his age back in Juffure—and he would never see them again. For the first time in many years, he cried himself to sleep.

  In the county seat a few days later, another buggy driver told Kunta that some free blacks up North who called themselves “The Negro Union” had proposed a mass return to Africa of all blacks—both free and slaves. The very thought of it excited Kunta, even as he scoffed that it couldn’t ever happen, with massas not only competing to buy blacks but also paying higher prices than ever. Though he knew the fiddler would almost rather stay a slave in Virginia than go to Africa a free man, Kunta wished he could discuss it with him, for the fiddler always seemed to know all there was to know about what was going on anywhere if it had anything to do with freedom.

  But for almost two months now Kunta hadn’t done more than scowl at the fiddler or at Bell and the gardener either. Not that he needed them or even liked them that much, of course—but the feeling of being stranded kept growing within him. By the time the next new moon rose, and he miserably dropped another pebble into his gourd, he was feeling inexpressibly lonely, as if he had cut himself off from the world.

  The next time Kunta saw the fiddler pass by, he nodded at him uncertainly, but the fiddler kept walking as if he hadn’t even seen anyone. Kunta was furiously embarrassed. The very next day he and the old gardener saw each other at the same moment, and without missing a step, the gardener turned in another direction. Both hurt and bitter—and with a mounting sense of guilt—Kunta paced back and forth in his hut for more hours that night. The next morning, bracing himself, he cripped outside and down slave row to the door of the once-familiar last hut. He knocked.

  The door opened. “What you want?” the fiddler asked coldly.

  Swallowing with embarrassment, Kunta said, “Jes’ figgered I’d come by.”

  The fiddler spat on the ground. “Look here, nigger, now hear what I tells you. Me an’ Bell an’ de ol’ man been ’scussin’ you. An’ we all ’grees if it’s anythin’ we can’t stan’, it’s a sometimey nigger!” He glared at Kunta. “Dat’s all been wrong wid you! You ain’t sick or nothin’. ”

  Kunta stood looking at his shoes. After a moment, the fiddler’s glare softened and he stepped aside. “Since you’s already here, c’mon in. But I’m gon’ tell you—show yo’ ass one mo’ time, an’ you won’t git spoke to again ’til you’s ol’ as Methuselah!”

  Choking down his rage and humiliation, Kunta went on inside and sat down, and after a seemingly endless silence between them—which the fiddler obviously had no intention of ending—Kunta forced himself to tell about the back-to-Africa proposal. The fiddler said coolly that he had long known about that, and that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would ever happen.

 
Seeing Kunta’s hurt expression, the fiddler seemed to relent a little. “Lemme tell you sump’n I bets you ain’t heared. Up Nawth in New York, dey’s what you call a Manumission Society dat done open a school for free niggers what wants to get learned readin’ an’ writin’ an’ all kin’s a trades.”

  Kunta was so happy and relieved to have the fiddler talking to him again that he hardly heard what his old friend was saying to him. A few minutes later, the fiddler stopped talking for a moment and sat looking at Kunta inquiringly.

  “Is I keepin’ you up?” he asked finally.

  “Hmm?” said Kunta, who had been lost in thought.

  “I ax you a question ’bout five minutes ago.”

  “Sorry, I was thinkin’ ’bout sump’n.”

  “Well, since you don’ know how to listen, I show ya how its done.” He sat back and crossed his arms.

  “Ain’t you gonna go on wid what you was sayin’?” asked Kunta.

  “By now I forgits what I was sayin’. Is you forgit what you was thinkin’?”

  “It ain’t impo’tant. Jes’ sump’n been on my mind.”

  “Better get it off dere fo’ you gits a headache—or gives me one.”

  “I cain’t ’scuss it.”

  “Huh!” said the fiddler, acting insulted. “If’n dat de way you feel . . . ”

  “Ain’t you. It’s jes’ too personal.”

  A light began to dawn in the fiddler’s eye. “Don’ tell me! It’s’bout a woman, right?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ a de kin’!” said Kunta, flushing with embarrassment. He sat speechless for a moment, then got up and said, “Well, I be late fo’ work, so I see ya later. Thanks fo’ talkin’ wid me.”

  “Sho thing. Jes’ lemme know when you wants to do some talkin’.”

  How had he known? Kunta asked himself on his way to the stable. And why had he insisted on making him talk about it? It was only with the greatest reluctance that Kunta had even let himself think about it. But lately he could hardly seem to think about anything else. It had to do with the Ghanaian’s advice about planting his seeds.

  CHAPTER 63

  Long before he met the Ghanaian, Kunta had often had a hollow feeling whenever he thought about the fact that if he had been in Juffure, he would have had three or four sons by now—along with the wife who had given birth to them. What usually occasioned these thoughts was when about once each moon, Kunta had a dream from which he always awakened abruptly in the darkness, acutely embarrassed at the hot stickiness that had just burst from his still rigid foto. Lying awake afterward, he thought not so much of a wife as he did about how he knew that there was hardly a slave row where some man and woman who cared for one another had not simply begun living together in whichever’s hut was the better one.

  There were many reasons why Kunta didn’t want to think about getting married. For one thing, it seemed to involve the couple’s “jumpin’ de broomstick” before witnesses from slave row, which seemed ridiculous to Kunta for such a solemn occasion. In a few cases he had heard of, certain favored house servants might repeat their vows before some white preacher with the massa and mistress looking on, but that was a pagan ceremony. If marrying someone in whatever manner was even to be thought about, the proper bride’s age for a Mandinka was fourteen to sixteen rains, with the man about thirty. And in his years in the white folks’ land, Kunta hadn’t seen one black female of fourteen to sixteen—or even twenty to twenty-five—whom he had not considered preposterously giggling and silly; especially when on Sundays, or for festivities, they painted and powdered their faces until they looked to him more like the death dancers in Juffure who covered themselves with ashes.

  As for the twenty or so older women whom Kunta had come to know, they were mostly senior cooks at the big houses where he had driven Massa Waller, such as Liza at Enfield. In fact, Liza was the only one among them all whom he had come to look forward to seeing. She had no mate, and she had given Kunta clear signs of her willingness, if not her anxiety, to get him into much closer quarters than he had ever responded to, although he had thought about it privately. He would have died of shame if there had been any way for her to suspect even remotely that more than once it had been she about whom he had had the sticky dream.

  Suppose—just suppose—he were to take Liza for a wife, Kunta thought. It would mean that they would be like so many couples he knew, living separately, each of them on the plantation of their own massa. Usually the man was permitted Saturday afternoon traveling passes to visit his wife, so long as he faithfully returned before dark on Sunday in order to rest up from his often long trip before work resumed at dawn on Monday. Kunta told himself that he would want no part of a wife living not where he was. And he told himself that settled the matter.

  But his mind, as if on its own, kept on thinking about it. Considering how talkative and smothery Liza was, and how he liked to spend a lot of time alone, maybe their being able to see each other just on weekends would be a blessing in disguise. And if he were to marry Liza, it was unlikely that they would have to live as so many black couples did, in fear that one of them, or both, might get sold away. For the massa seemed to be happy with him, and Liza was owned by the massa’s parents, who apparently liked her. The family connections would also make unlikely the kind of frictions that sometimes arose when two massas were involved, sometimes even causing one or both of them to forbid the marriage.

  On the other hand, Kunta thought ... over and over he turned it in his mind. But no matter how many perfectly sound reasons he could think of for marrying Liza, something held him back. Then one night, while he was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, it struck him like a lightning bolt!—there was another woman he might consider.

  Bell.

  He thought he must be crazy. She was nearly three times too old—probably beyond forty rains. It was absurd to think about it.

  Bell.

  Kunta tried to hurl her from his mind. She had entered it only because he had known her for so long, he told himself. He had never even dreamed of her. Grimly, he remembered a parade of indignities and irritations she had inflicted on him. He remembered how she used to all but slam the screen door in his face when he carried her vegetable basket to the kitchen. Even more keenly, he remembered her indignation when he told her she looked Mandinka; she was a heathen. Furthermore, she was just generally argumentative and bossy. And she talked too much.

  But he couldn’t help remembering how, when he had lain wanting to die, she had visited him five and six times daily; how she had nursed and fed him, even cleaned his soiling of himself, and how her hot poultice of mashed leaves had broken his fever. She was also strong and healthy. And she did cook endless good things in her black pots.

  The better she began to look to him, the ruder he was to her whenever he had to go to the kitchen, and the sooner he would leave when he had told her or found out from her whatever he had come for. She began to stare at his retreating back even more coldly than before.

  One day after he had been talking for some time with the gardener and the fiddler and worked the conversation very slowly around to Bell, it seemed to Kunta that he had just the right tone of casualness in his voice when he asked, “Where she was fo’ she come here?” But his heart sank when they instantly sat up straighter and looked at him, sensing something in the air.

  “Well,” the gardener said after a minute, “I ’members she come here ’bout two years fo’ you. But she ain’t never done much talkin’’bout herself. So ain’t much I knows more’n you does—.”

  The fiddler said Bell had never spoken of her past to him either. Kunta couldn’t put his finger on what it was about their expressions that irritated him. Yes, he could: It was smugness.

  The fiddler scratched his right ear. “Sho’ is funny you ax ’bout Bell,” he said, nodding in the gardener’s direction, “’cause me’n him ain’t been long back ’scussin’ y’all.” He looked carefully at Kunta.

  “We was sayin’ seem like y’all both m
ight be jes’ what de other’n needs,” said the gardener.

  Outraged, Kunta sat with his mouth open, only nothing came out.

  Still scratching his ear, the fiddler wore a sly look. “Yeah, her big behin’ be too much to handle for most mens.”

  Kunta angrily started to speak, but the gardener cut him off, demanding sharply, “Listen here, how long you ain’t touched no woman?”

  Kunta glared daggers. “Twenty years anyhow!” exclaimed the fiddler.

  “Lawd, Gawd!” said the gardener. “You better git you some ’fo’ you dries up!”

  “If he ain’t a-reddy!” the fiddler shot in. Unable to speak but able to contain himself a moment longer, Kunta leaped up and stamped out. “Don’ you worry!” the fiddler shouted after him. “You ain’t gon’ stay dry long wid her!”

  CHAPTER 64

  For the next few days, whenever Kunta wasn’t off driving the massa somewhere, he spent both his mornings and afternoons oiling and polishing the buggy. Since he was right outside the barn in any one’s view, it couldn’t be said that he was isolating himself again, but at the same time it said that his work was keeping him too busy to spend time talking with the fiddler and the gardener—at whom he was still furious for what they had said about him and Bell.

  Being off by himself also gave him more time to sort out his feelings for her. Whenever he was thinking of something he didn’t like about her, his polishing rag would become a furious blur against the leather; and whenever he was feeling better about her, it would move slowly and sensuously across the seats, sometimes almost stopping as his mind lingered on some disarming quality of hers. Whatever her shortcomings, he had to admit that she had done a great deal in his best interests over the years. He felt certain that Bell had even played a quiet role in the massa’s having selected him as his buggy driver. There was no question that in her own subtle ways, Bell had more influence on the massa than anyone else on the plantation, or probably all of them put together. And a parade of smaller things came and went through Kunta’s mind. He remembered a time back when he was gardening and Bell had noticed that he was often rubbing at his eyes, which had been itching him in a maddening way. Without a word, she had come out to the garden one morning with some wide leaves still wet with dewdrops, which she shook into his eyes, whereupon the itching had soon stopped.