Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  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.

  CHAPTER 70

  From 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 d
windling 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.

  Alone at home with Kunta and Kizzy for the next several nights in search of the latest news, Bell spelled her way through several newspapers the massa thought he had discarded. It took her the better part of an hour on one big story before she could tell him that “some kin’ o’ Bill o’ Rights done got . . .” Bell hesitated and drew a deep breath, “well, it done got rat-ti-fied, or somethin’ ’nother.” But there were far more reports about recent events in Haiti—most of which they’d already heard through the slave grapevine. The gist of most of them, she said, was that the Haitian slave revolt could easily spread foolhardy notions among black malcontents in this country, that extreme restrictions and harsh punishments should be imposed. As she folded up the papers and put them away, Bell said, “Look like to me ain’t much more dey can do ’gainst us, less’n it’s jes’ chain us all up, I reckon.”

  Over the next month or two, however, news of further developments in Haiti slowly ebbed, and with it came a gradual easing of tensions—and a lightening of restrictions—throughout the South. The harvest season had begun, and whites were congratulating one another on the bumper cotton crop—and the record prices they were getting for it. The fiddler was being sent for to play at so many big-house balls and parties that during the daytime when he was back home, he did little more than sleep. “Look like dem massas makin’ so much cotton money dey jes’ gwine dance deyselves to death!” he told Kunta.

  It wasn’t long, however until the white folks had something to be unhappy about again. On his visits to the county seat with the massa, Kunta began to hear angry talk of increasing numbers of “antislavery societies” organized by “traitors to the white race” not only in the North but also in the South. Highly dubious, he told Bell what he had heard, and she said she’d been reading the same thing in the massa’s newspapers, which attributed their recent and rapid growth to Haiti’s black revolt.

  “Keeps tryin’ tell you it’s some good white folks!” she exclaimed. “Fact of de matter, I’se heared a whole heap of ’em was ’gainst de firs’ ships ever bringin’ any y’all African niggers here!” Kunta wondered where on earth Bell thought her own grandparents had come from, but she was so wound up that he let it pass. “’Cose, anytime somethin’ like dat be’s in de paper,” she went on, “de massas gits riled up, rantin’ an’ hollerin’ ’bout enemies of de country an’ sich as dat, but what’s ’portant is de mo’ white folks ’gainst slavery says what dey thinks, den de mo’ of dem massas git to wonderin’ in dey secret heart is dey right or not.” She stared at Kunta. “’Specially dem callin’ deyselves Christians.”

  She looked at him again, a slyness in her eyes. “What you think me an’ Aunt Sukey an’ Sister Mandy be’s talkin’ ’bout dese Sundays massa think we jes’ singin’ an’ prayin’? I follows white folks close. Take dem Quakers. Dey was ’gainst slavin’ even fo’ dat Rebolution, I means right here in Virginia,” she went on. “An’ plenty o’ dem was massas ownin’ a heap o’ niggers. But den preachers commence to sayin’ niggers was human bein’s, wid rights to be free like anybody else, an’ you ’members some Quaker massas started to lettin’ dey niggers loose, an’ even helpin’ ’em git up Nawth. By now it done got to where de Quakers dat’s still keepin’ dey niggers is bein’ talked ’bout by de res’, an’ I’se heared if dey still don’t let dem niggers go, dey gwine git disowned by dey church. Gwine on right today, sho’ is!” Bell exclaimed.

  “An’ dem Methodists is de nex’ bes’. I ’members readin’ ten, leben years back, Methodists called a great big meetin’ in Baltimore, an’ finally dey ’greed slavin’ was ’gainst Gawd’s laws an’ dat anybody callin’ hisself Christian wouldn’t have it did to deyselves. So it’s mostly de Methodists an’ Quakers makin’ church fuss to git laws to free niggers. Dem Baptist an’ Presbyterian white folks—dat’s what massa an’ all de Wallers is—well, dey seems like to me jes’ halfhearted. Dey’s mostly worried ’bout dey own freedom to worship like dey pleases, an’ den how dey can keep a clear conscience an’ dey niggers bofe.”

  For all of Bell’s talk of whites who were against slavery—even though she had read some of it in the massa’s own newspaper—Kunta had never once heard a toubob opinion expressed that was not absolutely the opposite. And during that spring and summer of 1792, the massa shared his buggy with some of the biggest and richest massas, politicians, lawyers, and merchants in the state. Unless something else was more pressing, their ever-ready topic of conversation was the problems created for them by blacks.

  Whoever would successfully manage slaves, someone would always say, must first understand that their African pasts of living in jungles with animals gave them a natural inheritance of stupidity, laziness, and unclean habits, and that the Christian duty of those God had blessed with superiority was to teach these creatures some sense of discipline, morality, and respect for work—through example, of course, but also with laws and punishment as needed, although encouragement and rewards should certainly be given to those who proved deserving.

  Any laxity on the part of whites, the conversation always continued, would simply invite the kind of dishonesty, tricks, and cunning that came naturally to a lower species, and the bleatings of antislavery societies and others like them could come only from those, particularly in the North,
who had never owned any black ones themselves or tried to run a plantation with them; such people couldn’t be expected to realize how one’s patience, heart, spirit, and very soul could be strained to the breaking point by the trials and burdens of owning slaves.

  Kunta had been listening to the same outrageous nonsense for so long that it had become like a litany to him, and he hardly paid any attention to it anymore. But sometimes, while he drove along, he couldn’t help asking himself why it was that his countrymen didn’t simply kill every toubob who set foot on African soil. He was never able to give himself an answer that he was able to accept.

  CHAPTER 71

  It was about the noon hour on a sultry day late in August when Aunt Sukey came waddling as fast as she could out to the fiddler among his tomato plants and—between gasps—told him that she was worried to death about the old gardener. When he didn’t come to her cabin for breakfast, she hadn’t thought anything about it, she said breathlessly, but when he didn’t appear for lunch either, she became concerned, went to his cabin door, knocked, and called as loudly as she could, but got no answer, became alarmed, and thought she’d better come to find out if the fiddler had seen him anywhere. He hadn’t.

  “Knowed it somehow or ’nother even ’fore I went in dere,” the fiddler told Kunta that night. And Kunta said that he had been unable to explain an eerie feeling he had himself as he had driven the massa homeward that afternoon. “He was jes’ lyin’ dere in bed real peaceful like,” said the fiddler, “wid a l’il smile on ’is face. Look like he sleepin’. But Aunt Sukey say he awready waked up in heab’m.” He said he had gone to take the sad news out to those working in the fields, and the boss field hand Cato returned with him to help wash the body and place it on a cooling board. Then they had hung the old gardener’s sweat-browned straw hat on the outside of his door in the traditional sign of mourning before the fieldworkers returned and gathered in front of the cabin to pay their last respects, and then Cato and another field hand went to dig a grave.