Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Not that he felt any less strongly about the things he disapproved of in Bell, Kunta reminded himself as the rag picked up speed—most particularly her disgusting habit of smoking tobacco in a pipe. Even more objectionable was her way of dancing whenever there was some festivity among the blacks. He didn’t feel that women shouldn’t dance, or do so less than enthusiastically. What bothered him was that Bell seemed to go out of her way to make her behind shake in a certain manner, which he figured was the reason the fiddler and the gardener had said what they did about her. Bell’s behind, of course, wasn’t any of his business, he just wished she would show a little more respect for herself—and while she was at it, a little more toward him and other men. Her tongue, it seemed to him, was even worse than old Nyo Boto’s. He wouldn’t mind her being critical if she’d only keep it to herself, or do her criticizing in the company of other women, as it was done in Juffure.

  When Kunta had finished with the buggy, he began cleaning and oiling the leather harnesses, and for some reason as he did so, his mind went back to the old men in Juffure who carved things from wood such as the knee-high slab of hickory on which he was sitting. He thought how carefully they would first select and then study some thoroughly seasoned piece of wood before they would ever touch it with their adzes and their knives.

  Kunta got up and toppled the hickory block over on its side, sending the beetles that lived beneath it scurrying away. After closely examining both ends of the block, he rolled it back and forth, tapping it with the piece of iron at different places, and always hearing the same solid, seasoned sound. It seemed to him that this excellent piece of wood was serving no real purpose just sitting here. It was there apparently only because someone had put it there long before and no one had ever bothered to move it. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, Kunta rolled the block rapidly to his hut, where he stood it upright in a corner, closed the door, and went back to work.

  That night, after bringing the massa back from a trip to the county seat that seemed to take forever, Kunta couldn’t sit through supper before getting another look at the hickory block, so he took the food along with him to his cabin. Not even noticing what he was eating, Kunta sat on the floor in front of it and studied it in the light from the flickering candle on his table. In his mind, he was seeing the mortar and pestle that Omoro had carved for Binta, who had worn it slick with many grindings of her corn.

  Merely to pass away some of his free time, Kunta told himself, when Massa Waller didn’t want to go anywhere, Kunta began to chop away at the block with a sharp hatchet, making a rough shape of the outside rim of a mortar for grinding corn. By the third day, with a hammer and a wood chisel, he dug out the mortar’s inside, also roughly, and then he began to carve with a knife. After a week, Kunta’s fingers surprised him at how nimbly they flew, considering that he hadn’t watched the old men in his village carving things for more than twenty rains.

  When he had finished the inside and the outside of the mortar, he found a seasoned hickory limb, perfectly straight and of the thickness of his arm, from which he soon made a pestle. Then he set about smoothing the upper part of the handle, scraping it first with a file, next with a knife, and finally with a piece of glass.

  Finished, they both sat in a corner of Kunta’s hut for two more weeks. He would look at them now and then, reflecting that they wouldn’t look out of place in his mother’s kitchen. But now that he had made them, he was unsure what to do with them; at least that’s what he told himself. Then one morning, without really thinking about why he was doing it, Kunta picked them up and took them along when he went to check with Bell to see if the massa was going to need the buggy. When she gave him her brief, cold report from behind the screen door, saying that the massa had no travel plans that morning, Kunta waited until her back was turned and found himself setting the mortar and pestle down on the steps and turning to leave as fast as he could go. When Bell’s ears caught the gentle thumping sound, which made her turn around, she first saw Kunta cripping away even more hurriedly than usual, then she saw the mortar and pestle on the steps.

  Walking to the door, she peered out at Kunta until he had disappeared, then eased the screen door open and looked down at them; she was flabbergasted. Picking them up and bringing them inside, she examined its painstaking carving with astonishment; and then she began to cry.

  It was the first time in her twenty-two years on the Waller plantation that any man had made something for her with his own hands. She felt flooding guilt for the way she had been acting toward Kunta, and she remembered how peculiar the fiddler and the gardener had acted recently when she complained to them about him. They must have known of this—but she couldn’t be certain, knowing how close-mouthed and reserved Kunta could be in his African way.

  Bell was confused about how she should feel—or how she should act the next time he came to check on the massa again after lunch. She was glad she would have at least the rest of the morning to get her mind made up about that. Kunta, meanwhile, sat in his cabin feeling as if he were two people, one of them completely humiliated by the foolish and ridiculous thing the other one had just done—and felt almost deliriously happy and excited about it. What made him do it? What would she think? He dreaded having to return to the kitchen after lunch.

  Finally the hour came, and Kunta trudged up the walk as if he were going to his execution. When he saw that the mortar and pestle were gone from the back steps, his heart leaped and sank at the same time. Reaching the screen door, he saw that she had put them on the floor just inside, as if she were uncertain why Kunta had left them there. Turning when he knocked—as if she hadn’t heard him coming—she tried to look calm as she unlatched the door and opened it for him to come on in. That was a bad sign, thought Kunta; she hadn’t opened the door to him in months. But he wanted to come in; yet he couldn’t seem to take that first step. Rooted where he stood, he asked matter-of-factly about the massa, and Bell, concealing her hurt feelings and her confusion, managed to reply just as matter-of-factly that the massa said he had no afternoon plans for the buggy either. As Kunta turned to go, she added hopefully, “He been writin’ letters all day.” All of the possible things that Bell had thought of that she might say had fled her head, and as he turned again to go, she heard herself blurting “What dat?” with a gesture toward the mortar and pestle.

  Kunta wished that he were anywhere else on earth. But finally he replied, almost angrily, “For you to grin’ cawn wid.” Bell looked at him with her mingled emotions now clearly showing on her face. Seizing the silence between them as an excuse to leave, Kunta turned and hurried away without another word. Bell stood there feeling like a fool.

  For the next two weeks, beyond exchanging greeetings, neither of them said anything to each other. Then one day, at the kitchen door, Bell gave Kunta a round cake of cornbread. Mumbling his thanks, he took it back to his hut and ate it still hot from the pan and soaked with butter. He was deeply moved. Almost certainly she had made it with meal ground in the mortar he had given her. But even before this he had decided that he was going to have a talk with Bell. When he checked in with her after lunch, he forced himself to say, as he had carefully rehearsed and memorized it, “I wants a word wid you after supper.” Bell didn’t delay her response overlong. “Don’t make me no difference,” she said too quickly, regretting it.

  By suppertime, Kunta had worked himself into a state. Why had she said what she did? Was she really as indifferent as she seemed? And if she was, why did she make the cornbread for him? He would have it out with her. But neither he nor Bell had remembered to say exactly when or where they would meet. She must have intended for him to meet her at her cabin, he decided finally. But he hoped desperately that some emergency medical call would come for Massa Waller. When none did, and he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer, he took a deep breath, opened his cabin door, and strolled casually over to the barn. Coming back outside swinging in his hand a set of harnesses that he figured would satisfy the
curiosity of anyone who might happen to see him and wonder why he was out and around, he ambled on down to slave row to Bell’s cabin and—looking around to make sure no one was around—knocked very quietly on the door.

  It opened almost before his knuckles touched the wood, and Bell stepped immediately outside. Glancing down at the harness, and then at Kunta, she said nothing—and when he didn’t either, she began to walk slowly down toward the back fencerow; he fell into step beside her. The half moon had begun to rise, and in its pale light they moved along without a word. When a groundvine entangled the shoe on his left foot, Kunta stumbled—his shoulder brushing against Bell—and he all but sprang away. Ransacking his brain for something—anything—to say, he wished wildly that he was walking with the gardener or the fiddler, or practically anyone except Bell.

  Finally it was she who broke the silence. She said abruptly, “De white folks done swore in dat Gen’l Washington for de Pres’dent.” Kunta wanted to ask her what that was, but he didn’t, hoping that she’d keep on talking. “An’ it’s annuder massa name of John Adams is Vice Pres’dent,” she went on.

  Floundering, he felt that he must say something to keep the talk going. He said finally, “Rode massa over to see his brother’s young’un yestiddy,” instantly feeling foolish, as he knew full well that Bell already knew that.

  “Lawd, he do love dat chile!” Bell said, feeling foolish, since that’s about all she ever said about little Missy Anne whenever the subject came up. The silence had built up a little bit again when she went on. “Don’t know how much you knows ’bout massa’s brother. He de Spotsylvania County clerk, but he ain’t never had our massa’s head fo’ binness.” Bell was quiet for a few more steps. “I keeps my ears sharp on little things gits dropped. I knows whole lot more’n anybody thinks I knows.”

  She glanced over at Kunta. “I ain’t never had no use for dat Massa John—an’ I’s sure you ain’t neither—but dere’s sump’n you ought to know ’bout him dat I ain’t never tol’ you. It weren’t him had your foot cut off. Fact, he pitched a fit wid dem low-down po’ white trash what done it. He’d hired ’em to track you wid dey nigger dogs, an’ dey claim how come dey done it was you tried to kill one of ’em wid a rock.” Bell paused. “I ’members it like yestiddy when Sheriff Brock come a-rushin’ you to our massa.” Under the moonlight, Bell looked at Kunta. “You near ’bout dead, massa said. He got so mad when Massa John say he ain’t got no use for you no more wid your foot gone, he swore he gon’ buy you from him, an’ he done it, too. I seen de very deed he bought you wid. He took over a good-sized farm long wid you in de place of money his brother owed him. It’s dat big farm wid de pond right where de big road curve, you passes it all de time.”

  Kunta knew the farm instantly. He could see the pond in his mind, and the surrounding fields. “But dey business dealin’s don’t make no difference, ’cause all dem Wallers is very close,” Bell continued. “Dey’s ’mongst de oldes’ families in Virginia. Fact, dey was ol’ family in dat England even fo’ day come crost de water to here. Was all kinds of ‘Sirs’ an’ stuff, all b’longin’ to de Church of England. Was one of dem what writ poems, name of Massa Edmund Waller. His younger brother Massa John Waller was de one what comes here first. He weren’t but eighteen, I’s heared massa say, when some King Charles de Secon’ give him a big lan’ grant over where Kent County is now.”

  Their pace had become much slower as Bell talked, and Kunta couldn’t have been more pleased with Bell’s steady talking, although he had already heard from some other Waller family cooks at least some of the things she was saying, though he never would have told her that.

  “Anyhow, dis John Waller married a Miss Mary Key, an’ dey built de Enfield big house where you takes massa to see his folks. An’ dey had three boys, ’specially John de Secon’, de younges’, who come to be a whole heap of things—read de law while he was a sheriff, den was in de House of Burgesses, an’ he helped to found Fredericksburg an’ to put together Spotsylvania County. It was him an’ his Missis Dorothy what built Newport, an’ dey had six young’uns. An’ co’se out of all dem, it commence to be Waller chilluns spreadin’ all over, an’ growin’ on up, an’ havin’ young’uns of dey own. Our massa an’ de other Wallers what lives roun’ here ain’t but a han’ful of ’em all. Dey’s all pretty much high-respected peoples, too, sheriffs an’ preachers, county clerks, House of Burgesses, doctors like massa; whole heap of ’em fought in de Revolution, an’ I don’t know what all.”

  Kunta had become so absorbed in what Bell was saying that he was startled when she stopped walking. “We better git on back,” she said. “Traipsin’ out here till all hours ’mongst dese weeds, be oversleepin’ in de mornin’.” They turned around, and when Bell was quiet for a minute, and Kunta didn’t say anything, she realized that he wasn’t going to tell her whatever he had on his mind, so she went on chattering about whatever came into her mind until they got back to her cabin, where she turned to face him and fell silent. He stood there looking at her for a long, agonizing moment, and then finally he spoke: “Well, it gettin’ late like you said. So I see you tomorra.” As he walked away, still carrying the harnesses, Bell realized that he hadn’t told her whatever it was that he wanted to talk to her about. Well, she told herself—afraid to think that it might be what she thought it was—he’ll get around to it in his own time.

  It was just as well that she wasn’t in a hurry, for though Kunta began to spend a lot of time in Bell’s kitchen as she went about her work, she found herself, as usual, doing most of the talking. But she liked having him there to listen. “I foun’ out,” she told him one day, “dat massa done writ out a will that if he die an’ ain’t got married, his slaves gon’ go to little Missy Anne. But de will say if he do marry, den he wife would git us slaves when he die.” Even so, Bell didn’t seem to be unduly disturbed. “Sho’ is a plenty of ’em roun’ here would love to grab de massa, but he ain’t never married no mo’.” She paused. “Jes’ de same as I ain’t.”

  Kunta almost dropped the fork from his hand. He was positive that he had heard Bell correctly, and he was jolted to know that Bell had been married before, for it was unthinkable that a desirable wife should not be a virgin. Kunta soon was out of the kitchen and gone into his own cabin. He knew that he must think hard upon this matter.

  Two weeks of silence had passed before Bell casually invited Kunta to eat supper with her in her cabin that night. He was so astounded that he didn’t know what to say. He had never been alone in a hut with a woman other than his own mother or grandmother. It wouldn’t be right. But when he couldn’t find the words to speak, she told him what time to show up, and that was that.

  He scrubbed himself in a tin tub from head to foot, using a rough cloth and a bar of brown lye soap. Then he scrubbed himself again, and yet a third time. Then he dried himself, and while he was putting on his clothes, he found himself singing softly a song from his village, “Mandumbe, your long neck is very beautiful—.” Bell didn’t have a long neck, nor was she beautiful, but he had to admit to himself that when he was around her, he had a good feeling. And he knew that she felt the same.

  Bell’s cabin was the biggest one on the plantation, and the one nearest to the big house, with a small bed of flowers growing before it. Knowing her kitchen, her cabin’s immaculate neatness was no more than Kunta would expect. The room he entered when she opened the door had a feeling of cozy comfort, with its wall of mud-chinked logs and a chimney of homemade bricks that widened down from the roof to her large fireplace, alongside which hung her shining cooking utensils. And Kunta noticed that instead of the usual one room with one window, such as he had, Bell’s cabin had two rooms and two windows, both covered with shutters that she could pull down in case of rain, or when it grew cold. The curtained rear room was obviously where she slept, and Kunta kept his eyes averted from that doorway. On her oblong table in the center of the room he was in, there were knives and forks and spoons standing in ajar, and some flowers from
her garden in another, and two lighted candles were sitting in squat clay holders, and at either end of the table was a high-backed, cane-bottomed chair.

  Bell asked him to sit in a rocking chair that was nearer the fireplace. He did, sitting down carefully; for he had never been in one of these contraptions before, but was trying hard to act casual about the whole visit as Bell seemed to be.

  “I been so busy I ain’t even lit de fire,” she said, and Kunta all but leaped up out of the chair, glad to have something he could do with his hands. Striking the flint sharply against the piece of iron, he lighted the fluffy cotton that Bell had already placed under fat pinesticks beneath the oak logs, and quickly they caught fire.

  “Don’t know how come I ax you to come here nohow, place in a mess, an’ I ain’t got nothin’ ready,” Bell said, bustling about her pots.

  “Ain’t no hurry wid me,” Kunta made himself respond. But her already cooked chicken with dumplings, which she well knew that Kunta loved, was soon bubbling. And when she had served him, she chided him for gobbling so. But Kunta didn’t quit until the third helping, with Bell insisting that there was still a little more in the pot.

  “Naw, I’s fit to bus’,” said Kunta truthfully. And after a few more minutes of small talk, he got up and said he had to get on home. Pausing in the doorway, he looked at Bell, and Bell looked at him, and neither of them said anything, and then Bell turned her eyes away, and Kunta cripped on down along slave row to his own cabin.