Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Kunta returned to his cabin feeling doubly grieved—not only because the gardener was dead, but also because he hadn’t been visiting him as much as he could have ever since Kizzy was born. It had just seemed that there was hardly ever enough time anymore; and now it was too late. He arrived to find Bell in tears, which he expected, but he was taken aback at the reason she gave for crying. “Jes’ always seem like to me he was de daddy I ain’t never seed,” she sobbed. “Don’t know how come I didn’t never let him know, but it ain’t gon’ never seem de same widout him bein’ roun’ here.” She and Kunta ate their supper in silence before taking Kizzy with them—bundled against the cool autumn night—to join the others “settin’ wid de dead” until late into the night.

  Kunta sat a little apart from the others, with the restless Kizzy on his lap during the first hour of prayers and soft singing, and then some hushed conversation was begun by Sister Mandy, asking if anyone there could recall the old man ever having mentioned any living relatives. The fiddler said, “One time ’way back I ’members he said he never knowed his mammy. Dat’s all I ever heared him say of family.” Since the fiddler had been the closest among them to the old man, and he would know if anyone did, it was decided that there was probably no one to whom word should be sent.

  Another prayer was said, another song was sung, then Aunt Sukey said, “Seem like he done always belonged to some a’ de Wallers. I’se heared him talk ’bout de massa ridin’ on his shoulders as a boy, so I reckon dat’s why massa bring him here later on when he got his own big house.”

  “Massa real sorry, too,” said Bell. “He say for me to tell y’all won’t be no workin’ for half a day tomorra.”

  “Well, leas’ he gwine git buried right,” said Ada, the field-hand mother of the boy Noah, who sat impassively beside her. “It’s aplenty o’ massas jes’ ’lows you to quit workin’ long enough to come look at de dead nigger ’fore he git stuck in de ground still warm.”

  “Well, all dese Wallers is quality white folks, so wouldn’t none us here have to worry ’bout dat,” said Bell.

  Others started talking then about how rich plantation owners sometimes staged very elaborate funerals for usually either longtime big-house cooks or for the old mammies who had suckled and helped to raise two or even three broods of the family’s children. “Dey even gits buried in de white folks’ graveyards, wid flat rocks to mark where dey is.”

  What a heartwarming—if somewhat belated—reward for a lifetime of toil, thought Kunta bitterly. He remembered the gardener telling him that he had come to the massa’s big house as a strong young stablehand, which he had remained for many years until he was kicked badly by a horse. He stayed on the job, but gradually he had become more and more disabled, and finally Massa Waller had told him to spend his remaining years doing whatever he felt able to do. With Kunta as his assistant, he had tended the vegetable garden until he was too feeble to do even that, and from then on had spent most of his time weaving cornshucks into hats and straw into chairbottoms and fans, until advancing arthritis had crippled even his fingers. Kunta recalled another old man he had seen now and then at a rich big house across the county. Though he had long since been allowed to retire, he demanded every morning that some younger blacks carry him out to the garden, where he would lie on his side plucking weeds with gnarled hands among the flowerbeds of his equally old and crippled beloved lifetime missis. And these were the lucky ones, Kunta knew. Many old folks began to get beaten when they were no longer able to perform their previous quota of work, and finally they got sold away for perhaps twenty or thirty dollars to some “po’ white trash” farmer—with aspirations of rising into the planter class—who worked them literally to death.

  Kunta was snapped out of those thoughts as everyone rose from their seats all around him, said a final prayer, and headed wearily home for a few hours of sleep that were left before daybreak.

  Right after breakfast, the fiddler dressed the old man in the worn dark suit the old man had been given many years before by Massa Waller’s daddy. His few other clothes had been burned, since whoever might wear a dead person’s clothes would soon die too, Bell told Kunta. Then Cato tied the body on a wide board that he had shaped to a point at both ends with an ax.

  A little while later, Massa Waller came out of the big house carrying his big black Bible and fell in behind the slave-row people as they walked with a peculiar pausing, hitching step behind the body being drawn on a mule cart. They were softly chanting a song Kunta had never heard before: “In de mawnm’, when I gits dere, gwine tell my Jesus hi’dy! Hi’dy! . . . In de mawnin’, gwine to rise up, tell my Jesus hi’dy! Hi’dy! . . . ” They kept on singing all the way to the slave graveyard, which Kunta had noticed everyone avoided in a deep fear of what they called “ghoses” and “haints,” which he felt must bear some resemblance to his Africa’s evil spirits. His people also avoided the burial ground, but out of consideration for the dead whom they didn’t wish to disturb, rather than out of fear.

  When Massa Waller stopped on one side of the grave, his slaves on the other, old Aunt Sukey began to pray. Then a young field-hand woman named Pearl sang a sad song, “Hurry home, my weary soul . . . I heared from heab’m today.... Hurry ’long, my weary soul . . . my sin’s forgived, an’ my soul’s set free.... ” And then Massa Waller spoke with his head bowed, “Josephus, you have been a good and faithful servant. May God rest and bless your soul. Amen.” Through his sorrow, Kunta was surprised to hear that the old gardener had been called “Josephus.” He wondered what the gardener’s true name had been—the name of his African forefathers—and to what tribe they had belonged. He wondered if the gardener himself had known. More likely he had died as he had lived—without ever learning who he really was. Through misted eyes, Kunta and the others watched as Cato and his helper lowered the old man into the earth he had spent so many years making things grow in. When the shovelfuls of dirt began to thud down onto his face and chest, Kunta gulped and blinked back the tears as the women around him began to weep and the men to clear their throats and blow their noses.

  As they trudged silently back from the graveyard, Kunta thought how the family and close friends of one who had died in Juffure would wail and roll in ashes and dust within their huts while the other villagers danced outside, for most African people believed that there could be no sorrow without happiness, no death without life, in that cycle that his own father had explained to him when his beloved Grandma Yaisa had died. He remembered that Omoro had told him, “Stop weeping now, Kunta,” and explained that Grandma had only joined another of the three peoples in every village—those who had gone to be with Allah, those who were still living, and those who were yet to be born. For a moment, Kunta thought he must try to explain that to Bell, but he knew she wouldn’t understand. His heart sank—until he decided a moment later that this would become another of the many things he would one day tell Kizzy about the homeland she would never see.

  CHAPTER 72

  The death of the gardener continued to weigh so heavily on Kunta’s mind that Bell finally said something about it one evening after Kizzy went to bed.

  “Looka here, Kunta, I knows how you felt ’bout dat gardener, but ain’t it ’bout time you snap out of it an’ jine de livin’?” He just glared at her. “Suit yo’se’f. But ain’t gwine be much of a secon’ birfday fo’ Kizzy nex’ Sunday wid you mopin’ roun’ like dis.”

  “I be fine,” said Kunta stiffly, hoping Bell couldn’t tell that he’d forgotten all about it.

  He had five days to make Kizzy a present. By Thursday afternoon he had carved a beautiful Mandinka doll out of pine wood, rubbed it with linseed oil and lampblack, then polished it until it shone like the ebony carvings of his homeland. And Bell, who had long since finished making her a dress, was in the kitchen—dipping two tiny pink candles to put on the chocolate cake Aunt Sukey and Sister Mandy were going to help them eat on Sunday evening—when Massa John’s driver Roosby arrived in the buggy.

&nb
sp; Bell had to bite her tongue when the massa, beaming, called her in to announce that Missy Anne had persuaded her parents to let her spend an entire weekend with her uncle; she’d be arriving tomorrow evening. “Make sure you have a guest room ready,” said the massa. “And why don’t you bake a cake or something for Sunday? My niece tells me your little girl is celebrating a birthday, and she’d like to have a party—just the two of them—up in her room. Anne also asked if she could spend the night with her up here in the house, and I said that would be all right, so be sure to prepare a pallet for the floor at the foot of the bed.”

  When Bell broke the news to Kunta—adding that the cake she was going to make would have to be served in the big house instead of their cabin, and that Kizzy was going to be so busy partying with Missy Anne that they wouldn’t be able to have a party of their own—Kunta was so angry that he couldn’t speak or even look at her. Stomping outside, he went straight to the barn, where he’d hidden the doll under a pile of straw, and pulled it out.

  He had vowed to Allah that this kind of thing would never happen to his Kizzy—but what could he do? He felt such a sickening sense of frustration that he could almost begin to understand why these blacks finally came to believe that resisting the toubob was as useless as a flower trying to keep its head above the falling snow. But then, staring at the doll, he thought of the black mother he’d heard about who had bashed out her infant’s brains against the auction block, screaming, “Ain’t gon’ do to her what you done to me!” And he raised the doll over his head to dash it against the wall, then lowered it. No, he could never do that to her. But what about escape? Bell herself had mentioned it once. Would she really go? And if she would, could they ever make it—at their age, with his half foot, with a child barely old enough to walk? He hadn’t seriously considered the idea for many years, but he did know the region by now as well as he did the plantation itself. Maybe ...

  Dropping the doll, he got up and walked back to the cabin. But Bell started talking before he got the chance to. “Kunta, I feels de same as you, but listen to me! I ruther dis dan her growin’ up a fiel’-han’ young’un like dat l’il ol’ Noah. He ain’t but two years older’n Kizzy, an’ awready dey done started takin’ him out dere to pullin’ weeds an’ totin’ water. Don’ care how else you feels, seem like you got to ’gree wid dat.” As usual, Kunta said nothing, but he had seen and done enough during his quarter-century years as a slave to know that the life of a field hand was the life of a farm animal, and he would rather die than be responsible for sentencing his daughter to such a fate.

  Then one evening a few weeks later, he arrived home to find Bell waiting at the door with the cup of cold milk he always looked forward to after a long drive. When he sat down in his rocking chair to wait for supper, she came up behind him and—without even being asked—rubbed his back in just the spot where she knew it always hurt after a day at the reins. When she set a plate of his favorite African stew in front of him, he knew she must be trying to soften him up for something, but he knew enough not to ask her what. All the way through supper she chattered even more than usual about things that mattered even less than usual, and he was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get around to it when, about an hour after supper, as they were getting ready to go to bed, she stopped talking for a long moment, took a deep breath, and put her hand on his arm. He knew this was it.

  “Kunta, I don’ know how to tell you this, so I’ll jes’ spit it out. Massa done tol’ me he promise Missy Anne to drop Kizzy off at Massa John’s to spen’ de day wid her when he pass by dere on his roun’s tomorra.”

  This was too much. It was outrageous enough to have to sit by and watch while Kizzy was turned slowly into a well-mannered lap dog, but now that she’d been housebroken, they wanted him to deliver the animal to its new keeper. Kunta shut his eyes, struggling to contain his rage, then leaped up from his chair—pulling his arm viciously away from Bell—and bolted out the door. While she lay sleepless in their bed that night, he sat sleepless in the stable beneath his harnesses. Both of them were weeping.

  When they pulled up in front of Massa John’s house the next morning, Missy Anne ran out to meet them before Kunta even had the chance to lift Kizzy to the ground. She didn’t even say goodbye, he thought bitterly, hearing behind them the pealings of girlish laughter as he swerved the horses back down the driveway toward the main road.

  It was late afternoon and he had been waiting several hours for the massa outside a big house about twenty miles down the road when a slave came out and told him that Massa Waller might have to sit up all night with their sick missy, and for Kunta to come back for him the next day. Morosely, Kunta obeyed, arriving to find that Missy Anne had begged her sickly mother to let Kizzy stay overnight. Deeply relieved when the reply came that their noise had given her a headache, Kunta was soon rolling back homeward again with Kizzy holding on and bouncing beside him on the narrow driver’s seat.

  As they rode along, it dawned on Kunta that this was the first time he had been absolutely alone with her since the night he had told her what her name was. He felt a strange and mounting exhilaration as they drove on into the gathering dusk. But he also felt rather foolish. As much thought as he had given to his plans for and his responsibilities to this firstborn, he found himself uncertain how to act. Abruptly he lifted Kizzy up onto his lap. Awkwardly he felt her arms, her legs, her head, as she squirmed and stared at him curiously. He lifted her again, testing how much she weighed. Then, very gravely, he placed the reins within her warm, small palms—and soon Kizzy’s happy laughter seemed the most delightful sound he had ever heard.

  “You pretty l’il gal,” he said to her finally. She just looked at him. “You look jes’ like my little brudder Madi.”

  She just kept looking at him. “Fa!” he said, pointing to himself. She looked at his finger. Tapping his chest, he repeated, “Fa.” But she had turned her attention back to the horses. Flicking the reins, she squealed, “Giddup!” imitating something else she’d heard him say. She smiled proudly up at him, but he looked so hurt that it faded quickly, and they rode on the rest of the way in silence.

  It was weeks later, while they were riding home from a second visit with Missy Anne, that Kizzy leaned over toward Kunta, stuck her chubby little finger against his chest, and with a twinkle in her eye, said, “Fa!”

  He was thrilled. “Ee to mu Kizzy leh!” he said, taking her finger and pointing it back at her. “Yo’ name Kizzy.” He paused. “Kizzy!” She began to smile, recognizing her own name. He pointed toward himself. “Kunta Kinte.”

  But Kizzy seemed perpelxed. She pointed at him: “Fa!” This time they both smiled wide.

  By midsummer Kunta was delighted with how fast Kizzy was learning the words he was teaching her—and how much she seemed to be enjoying their rides together. He began to think there might be hope for her yet. Then one day she happened to repeat a word or two of Mandinka when she was alone with Bell, who later had sent Kizzy over to Aunt Sukey’s for supper and was waiting for Kunta when he got home that night.

  “Ain’t you got no sense atall, man?” she shouted. “Don’t you know you better pay me ’tention—git dat chile an’ all us in bad trouble wid dat mess! You better git in yo’ hard head she ain’t no African!” Kunta never had come so close to striking Bell. Not only had she committed the unthinkable offense of raising her voice to her husband, but even worse, she had disowned his blood and his seed. Could not one breathe a word of one’s true heritage without fearing punishment from some toubob? Yet something warned him not to vent the wrath he felt, for any head-on collision with Bell might somehow end his buggy trips with Kizzy. But then he thought she couldn’t do that without telling the massa why, and she would never dare to tell. Even so, he couldn’t comprehend what had ever possessed him to marry any woman born in toubob land.

  While he was waiting for the massa to finish a house call at a nearby plantation the next day, another buggy driver told Kunta the latest story he’d heard
about Toussaint, a former slave who had organized a large army of black rebels in Haiti and was leading them successfully against not only the French but also the Spanish and the English. Toussaint, the driver said, had learned about war from reading books about famous ancient fighters named “Alexander the Great” and “Julius Caesar,” and that these books had been given to him by his former massa, who he later helped escape from Haiti to the “Newnited States.” Over the past few months, Toussaint had become for Kunta a hero, ranking second in stature only to the legendary Mandinka warrior Sundiata, and Kunta could hardly wait to get back home and pass this fascinating story along to the others.

  He forgot to tell them. Bell met him at the stable with the news that Kizzy had come down with a fever and broken out in bumps. The massa called it “mumps,” and Kunta was worried until Bell told him it was only normal in young’uns. When he learned later that Missy Anne had been ordered to stay away until Kizzy recovered—for at least two weeks—he was even a little bit happy about it. But Kizzy had been sick only a few days when Massa John’s driver Roosby showed up with a fully dressed toubob doll from Missy Anne. Kizzy fell in love with it. She sat in bed hugging the doll close, rocking it back and forth, exclaiming with her eyes half shut, “Jes’ so pretty!” Kunta left without a word and stormed across the yard to the barn. The doll was still in the loft where he’d dropped it and forgotten it months before. Wiping it off on his sleeve, he carried it back to the cabin and almost shoved it at Kizzy. She laughed with pleasure when she saw it, and even Bell admired it. But Kunta could see, after a few minutes, that Kizzy liked the toubob doll better, and for the first time in his life, he was furious with his daughter.