Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  He awakened more lighthearted than he had felt since leaving Africa—but he told no one why he was acting so uncharacteristically cheerful and outgoing. But he hardly needed to. Word began to get around that Kunta had actually been seen smiling and even laughing in Bell’s kitchen. And at first every week or so, then twice a week, Bell would invite Kunta home for supper. Though he thought that once in a while he should make some excuse, he could never bring himself to say no. And always Bell cooked things Kunta had let her know were also grown in The Gambia, such as black-eyed peas, okra, a stew made of peanuts, or yams baked with butter.

  Most of their conversations were still one-sided, but neither one seemed to mind. Her favorite topic, of course, was Massa Waller, and it never ceased to amaze Kunta how much Bell knew that he didn’t about the man he spent so much more time with than she did.

  “Massa funny ’bout different, things,” Bell said. “Like he believe in banks, all right enough, but he keep money hid, too; nobody else don’t know where but me. He funny ’bout his niggers, too. He do ’bout anything for ’em, but if one mess up, he’ll sell ’im jes’ like he done Luther.

  “’Nother thing massa funny ’bout,” Bell went on. “He won’t have a yaller nigger on his place. You ever notice, ceptin’ fo’ de fiddler, ain’t nothin’ here but black niggers? Massa tell anybody jes’ what he think ’bout it, too. I done heared ’im tellin’ some of de biggest mens in dis county, I mean ones dat got plenty yaller niggers deyselves, dat too many white mens is havin’ slave chilluns, so dey ain’t doin’ nothin’ but buyin’ an’ sellin’ dey own blood, an’ it need to be stopped.”

  Though he never showed it, and he kept up a steady drone of “uh-huh’s” when Bell was talking, Kunta would sometimes listen with one ear while he thought about something else. Once when she cooked him a hoe cake, using meal she had made in the mortar and pestle he had carved for her, Kunta was watching her in his mind’s eye beating the couscous for breakfast in some African village while she stood at the stove telling him that hoe cakes got their name from slaves cooking them on the flat edge of a hoe when they were working out in the fields.

  Now and then Bell even gave Kunta some special dish to take to the fiddler and the gardener. He wasn’t seeing as much of them as he had, but they seemed to understand, and the time they spent apart even seemed to increase the pleasure of conversation with them whenever they got together. Though he never discussed Bell with them—and they never brought her up—it was clear from their expressions that they knew she and he were courtin’ as well as if their meetings took place on the front lawn. Kunta found this vaguely embarrassing, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it—not that he particularly cared to.

  He was more concerned that there remained some serious matters he wanted to take up with Bell, but he never could quite seem to get around to them. Among them was the fact that she kept on her front-room wall a large, framed picture of the yellow-haired “Jesus,” who seemed to be a relative of their heathen “O Lawd.” But finally he did manage to mention it, and Bell promptly said, “Ain’t but two places everybody’s headin’ for, heab’n or hell, and where you goin’, dat’s yo’ business!” And she would say no more about it. Her reply discomfited him every time he thought of it, but finally he decided that she had a right to her beliefs, however misguided; just as he had a right to his. Unshaken, he had been born with Allah and he was going to die with Allah—although he hadn’t been praying to Him regularly again ever since he started seeing a lot of Bell. He resolved to correct that and hoped that Allah would forgive him.

  Anyway, he couldn’t feel too harshly about someone, even a pagan Christian, who was so good to one of another faith, even someone as worthy as he was. She was so nice to him, in fact, that Kunta wanted to do something special for her—something at least as special as the mortar and pestle. So one day when he was on his way over to Massa John’s to pick up Missy Anne for a weekend visit with Massa Waller, Kunta stopped off by a fine patch of bulrushes he had often noticed, and picked some of the best he could find. With the rushes split into fine pieces, and with some selected, soft inner white cornshucks, over the next several days he plaited an intricate mat with a bold Mandinka design in its center. It came out even better than he had expected, and he presented it to Bell the next time she had him over for supper. She looked upward from the mat to Kunta. “Ain’t nobody gon’ put dey feets on dat!” she exclaimed, turning and disappearing into her bedroom. Back a few moments later with a hand behind her, she said, “Dis was gonna be for yo’ Christmas, but I make you somethin’ else.”

  She held out her hand. It was a pair of finely knitted woolen socks—one of them with a half foot, the front part filled with soft woolen cushion. Neither he nor Bell seemed to know what to say.

  He could smell the aroma of the food she had been simmering, ready to be served, but a strange feeling was sweeping over him as they kept on looking at each other. Bell’s hand suddenly grasped his, and with a single motion she blew out both of the candles and swiftly with Kunta feeling as if he were a leaf being borne by a rushing stream, they went together through the curtained doorway into the other room and lay down facing one another on the bed. Looking deeply into his eyes, she reached out to him, they drew together, and for the first time in the thirty-nine rains of his life, he held a woman in his arms.

  CHAPTER 65

  “Massa ain’t want to believe me when I tol’ ’im,” Bell said toto Kunta. “But he finally say he feel us ought to think on it for a spell yet, ’cause peoples gittin’ married is sacred in de eyes of Jesus.” To Kunta, however, Massa Waller said not a word about it during the next few weeks. Then one night Bell came running out to Kunta’s cabin and reported breathlessly, “I done tol’ ’im we still wants to marry, an’ he say, well, den, he reckon it’s awright!”

  The news coursed swiftly through slave row. Kunta was embarrassed as different ones offered their congratulations. He could have choked Bell for telling even Missy Anne when she came next to visit her uncle, for the first thing she did after finding out was race about screaming, “Bell gon’ git married! Bell gon’ git married!” Yet at the same time, deep inside himself, Kunta felt that it was improper for him to feel any displeasure at such an announcement, since the Mandinka people considered marriage to be the most important thing after birth itself.

  Bell somehow managed to get the massa’s promise not to use the buggy—or Kunta—for the entire Sunday before Christmas, when everyone would be off work and therefore available to attend the wedding. “I knows you don’t want no marriage in de big house,” she told Kunta, “like we could of had if I’d of asked massa. And I knows he don’t really want dat neither, so at leas’ y’all togedder on dat.” She arranged for it to be held in the front yard alongside the oval flower garden.

  Everybody on slave row was there in their Sunday best, and standing together on across from them were Massa Waller with little Missy Anne and her parents. But as far as Kunta was concerned, the guest of honor—and, in a very real sense, the one responsible for the whole thing—was his friend the Ghanaian, who had hitched a ride all the way from Enfield just to be there. As Kunta walked with Bell out into the center of the yard, he turned his head toward the qua-qua player, and they exchanged a long look before Bell’s main praying and singing friend, Aunt Sukey, the plantation’s laundress, stepped forward to conduct the ceremony. After calling for all present to stand closer together, she said, “Now, I ax everybody here to pray for dis union dat God’bout to make. I wants y’all to pray dat dis here couple is gwine a stay togedder—” she hesitated “—an’ dat nothin’ don’t happen to cause ’em to git sol’ away from one ’nother. And pray dat dey has good, healthy young’uns.” And then very solemnly, Aunt Sukey placed a broomstick on the close-cropped grass just in front of Kunta and Bell, whom she now motioned to link their arms.

  Kunta felt as if he were suffocating. In his mind was flashing how marriages were conducted in his Juffure. He could see th
e 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.

  CHAPTER 66

  As 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.”