Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Then they turned to the next in line—a boy in his early twenties who stood staring at them, too terrified to move. They practically had to drag him in. Kunta watched with his mouth open wider as each person—next a middle-aged man, then another young girl around twelve, then an elderly woman who could barely walk—were led one by one into the pond and subjected to the same incredible ordeal. Why did they do it? What sort of cruel “Gawd” demanded such suffering for those who wished to believe in him? How could half drowning someone wash away his evil? Kunta’s mind teemed with questions—none of which he could answer—until finally the last one had been pulled spluttering from the water.

  It must be over, he thought. But the preacher, wiping his face with his sopping sleeve, stood in the pond and spoke again: “An’ now, is dey any ’mongst y’all wishes to consecrate dey chilluns to JESUS dis holy day?” Four women stood up—the first of them Bell, holding Kizzy by the hand.

  Kunta leaped up beside the wagon. Surely they wouldn’t! But then he saw Bell leading the way to the bank of the pond, and began to walk—slowly, uncertainly at first, then faster and faster—toward the crowd at the water’s edge. When the preacher beckoned to Bell, she leaned down to pick up Kizzy in her arms and strode vigorously into the water. For the first time in twenty-five years, since the day his foot had been chopped, Kunta began to run—but when he reached the pond, his foot throbbing, Bell was standing in the middle at the preacher’s side. Gasping to catch his breath, Kunta opened his mouth to call out—just as the preacher began to speak:

  “Dearly beloved, we’s gathered here to welcome another lamb unto de fold! What de chile’s name, sister?”

  “Kizzy, reveren’.”

  “Lawd ...” he began, placing his left hand under Kizzy’s head and squeezing his eyes shut.

  “Naw!” Kunta shouted hoarsely.

  Bell’s head jerked around, her eyes were burning into his. The preacher stood looking from him to her and back again. Kizzy began to whimper. “Hush, chile,” Bell whispered. Kunta felt the hostile stares surrounding him. Everything hung poised.

  Bell broke the stillness. “It’s awright, reveren’. Dat’s jes’ my African husban’. He don’ unnerstan’. I ’splain to him later. You go ’head.”

  Kunta, too stunned to speak, saw the preacher shrug, turn back to Kizzy, shut his eyes, and start again.

  “Lawd, wid his holy water, bless dis chile. . . . What her name again, sister?”

  “Kizzy.”

  “Bless dis chile Kizzy and take her wid you safe into dat Promise Lan’!” With that the preacher dipped his right hand into the water, flicked a few drops into Kizzy’s face, and shouted “AMEN!”

  Bell turned, carried Kizzy back to shore, trudged up out of the water, and stood dripping in front of Kunta. Feeling foolish and ashamed, he looked down at her muddy feet, then raised his eyes to meet hers, which were wet—with tears? She put Kizzy in his arms.

  “It awright. She jes’ wet,” he said, his rough hand caressing Kizzy’s face.

  “All dat runnin’, you must be hungry. I sure is. Le’s go eat. I brung fried chicken an’ devil eggs an’ dat sweet tater custard you can’t never git enough of.”

  “Sound good,” said Kunta.

  Bell took his arm and they walked slowly back across the meadow to where their picnic basket sat on the grass in the shade of a walnut tree.

  CHAPTER 74

  Bell told Kizzy one night in the cabin, “You’s gwine on seven years ol’! Fiel-hand young’uns be awready out dere workin’ ey’yday—like dat Noah—so you’s gwine start bein’ some use to me in de big house!” Knowing by now how her father felt about such things, Kizzy looked uncertainly at Kunta. “You hear what yo’ mammy say,” he said without conviction. Bell already had discussed it with him, and he had to agree that it was prudent for Kizzy to start doing some work that was visible to Massa Waller, rather than continue solely as a playmate for Missy Anne. He privately further liked the idea of her making herself useful, since in Juffure at her age mothers started teaching their daughters the skills that would later enable their fathers to demand a good bride price from a prospective husband. But he knew Bell didn’t expect his enthusiasm about anything to bring Kizzy even closer to the toubob—and take her even farther away from him and the sense of dignity and heritage he was still determined to instill in her. When Bell reported a few mornings later that Kizzy was already learning to polish silverware, scrub floors, wax woodwork, even to make up the massa’s bed, Kunta found it difficult to share her pride in such accomplishments. But when he saw his daughter emptying then washing the white-enameled slopjar in which the massa relieved himself at night, Kunta recoiled in anger, convinced that his worst fears had been fulfilled.

  He bridled, too, at the counsel he would hear Bell giving Kizzy about how to be a personal maid. “Now, you listen to me good, gal! It ain’t every nigger git chance to work fer quality white folks like massa. Right off, dat put you ’bove de rest o’ young ’uns. Now, de big thing is to learn what massa want without him never havin’ to tell you. You’ gwine start gittin’ up an’ out early wid me, ’way fo’ massa do. Dat’s how I gits a head start on ’im—done always b’lieve in dat. First thing, gwine show you how to whup de dus’ out’n his coat an’ pants when you hangs ’em out to air on de clothesline. Jes’ be sho’ you don’t break or scratch none o’ de buttons—” and so on, sometimes for hours at a time.

  Not a single evening passed, it seemed to Kunta, without more instructions, down to the most ridiculous detail. “For blackin’ his shoes,” she told Kizzy one night, “I shakes up in ajar l’il simmon beer an’ lampblack wid l’il sweet oil an’ rock candy. Dat stan’ overnight, den shake it up good again, it make dem black shoes of his’n shine like glass.” Before he could stand no more of it and retreated for relief to the fiddler’s hut, Kunta acquired such invaluable household hints as “if you set a teaspoon o’ black pepper an’ brown sugar mashed to a paste wid a l’il cow’s cream in a saucer in a room, ain’t no flies comin’ in dere nohow!” And that soiled wallpaper was best cleaned by rubbing it with the crumbly insides of two-day-old biscuits.

  Kizzy seemed to be paying attention to her lessons, even if Kunta didn’t, for Bell reported one day, weeks later, that the massa had mentioned to her that he was pleased with the way the andirons in the fireplace had been shining since Kizzy started polishing them.

  But whenever Missy Anne came over for a visit, of course, the massa didn’t have to say that Kizzy was excused from work for the duration of her stay. Then, as always, the two girls would go romping and skipping about, jumping rope, playing hide-and-seek and a few games they invented. “Playing nigger,” bursting open a ripe watermelon and jamming their faces down into its crisp wetness one afternoon, they ruined the fronts of their dresses, prompting Bell to send Kizzy yelping with a backhand slap, and to snap even at Missy Anne. “You knows you’s raised better’n dat! Ten years ol’, gwine to school, an’ fo’ you knows it gwine be a high-class missy!”

  Though Kunta no longer bothered to complain about it, he remained a most difficult mate for Bell to deal with during Missy Anne’s visits and for at least another day afterward. But whenever Kunta was told to drive Kizzy to Massa John’s house, it was all he could do to keep from showing his eagerness to be alone again with his girlchild in the buggy. By this time, Kizzy had come to understand that whatever was said during their buggy rides was a matter between the two of them, so he considered it safer now to teach her more about his homeland without fear that Bell would find them out.

  Rolling along the dusty Spotsylvania County roads, he would tell her the Mandinka names of things they passed along the road. Pointing at a tree, he’d say “yiro,” then downward at the road, “silo.” As they passed a grazing cow, he’d say, “ninsemuso,” and went over a small bridge, “salo.” Once when they got caught in a sudden shower, Kunta shouted “sanjio,” waving out at the rain, and when the sun reappeared, pointing at it, he said “tilo.” Kizzy
would watch his mouth intently as he said each word, then imitate what she saw with her own lips, repeating it over and over until she got it right. Soon she began pointing to things herself and asking him for their Mandinka names. One day they were hardly beyond the shadow of the big house when Kizzy poked him in the ribs, tapped her finger above an ear and whispered, “What you call my head?” “Kungo,” Kunta whispered back. She tweaked her hair; he said “kuntinyo.” She pinched her nose; he told her “nungo”; she squeezed her ear; he said “tulo.” Giggling, Kizzy jerked up her foot and tapped her large toe. “Sinkumba!” exclaimed Kunta. Seizing her exploring forefinger, wiggling it, he said “bulokonding.” Touching her mouth, he said “da.” Then Kizzy seized Kunta’s forefinger and pointed it at him. “Fa!” she exclaimed. He felt overwhelmed with his love for her.

  Pointing to a sluggish small river they were passing a little later, Kunta said “Dat a bolongo.” He told her that in his homeland he had lived near a river called the “Kamby Bolongo.” That evening, when on the way back home, passing by it again, Kizzy pointed, and shouted, “Kamby Bolongo!” Of course, she didn’t understand when he tried to explain that this was the Mattaponi River, not the Gambia River, but he was so delighted that she had remembered the name at all that it didn’t seem to matter. The Kamby Bolongo, he said, was much bigger, swifter, and more powerful than this puny specimen. He wanted to tell her how the life-giving river was revered by his people as a symbol of fertility, but he couldn’t find a way to say it, so he told her about the fish that teemed in it—including the powerful, succulent kujalo, which sometimes leaped right into a canoe—and about the vast living carpet of birds that floated on it until some young boy like himself would jump growling from the brush on the banks so that he could watch them rise up and fill the sky like some feathery snow-storm. Kunta said that reminded him of a time his Grandmother Yaisa had told him about when Allah sent The Gambia a plague of locusts so terrible that they darkened the sun and devoured everything green until the wind shifted and carried them out to sea, where they finally fell and were eaten by the fish.

  “Do I got a gran’ma?” asked Kizzy.

  “You got two—my mammy and yo’ mammy’s mammy.”

  “How come dey ain’t wid us?”

  “Dey don’ know where we is,” said Kunta. “Does you know where we is?” he asked her a moment later.

  “We’s in de buggy,” Kizzy said.

  “I means where does we live.”

  “At Massa Waller’s.”

  “An where dat is?”

  “Dat way,” she said, pointing down the road. Disinterested in their subject, she said, “Tell me some more ’bout dem bugs an’ things where you come from.”

  “Well, dey’s big red ants knows how to cross rivers on leafs, dat fights wars an’ marches like a army, an’ builds hills dey lives in dat’s taller dan a man.”

  “Dey soun’ scary. You step on ’em?”

  “Not less’n you has to. Every critter got a right to be here same as you. Even de grass is live an’ got a soul jes’ like peoples does.”

  “Won’t walk on de grass no mo’, den. I stay in de buggy.”

  Kunta smiled. “Wasn’t no buggies where I come from. Walked wherever we was goin’. One time I walked four days wid my pappy all de way from Juffure to my uncles’ new village.”

  “What Joo-fah-ray?”

  “Done tol’ you don’ know how many times, dat where I come from.”

  “I thought you was from Africa. Dat Gambia you talks about in Africa?”

  “Gambia a country in Africa. Juffure a village in Gambia.”

  “Well, where dey at, Pappy?”

  “’Crost de big water.”

  “How big dat big water?”

  “So big it take near ’bout four moons to get crost it.”

  “Four what?”

  “Moons. Like you say ‘months.’”

  “How come you don’t say months?”

  “’Cause moons my word for it.”

  “What you call a ‘year’?”

  “A rain.”

  Kizzy mused briefly.

  “How you get ’crost dat big water?”

  “In a big boat.”

  “Bigger dan dat rowboat we seen dem fo’ mens fishin’ in?”

  “Big ’nough to hol’ a hunnud mens.”

  “How come it don’ sink?”

  “I use to wish it would of.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause we all so sick seem like we gon’ die anyhow.”

  “How you get sick?”

  “Got sick from layin’ in our own mess prac’ly on top each other.”

  “Whyn’t you go de toilet?”

  “De toubob had us chained up.”

  “Who ‘toubob’?”

  “White folks.”

  “How come you chained up? You done sump’n wrong?”

  “Was jes’ out in de woods near where I live—Juffure—lookin’ fer a piece o’ wood to make a drum wid, an’ dey grab me an’ take me off.”

  “How ol’ you was?”

  “Sebenteen.”

  “Dey ask yo’ mammy an’ pappy if’n you could go?”

  Kunta looked incredulously at her. “Woulda took dem too if’n dey could. To dis day my fam’ly don’ know where I is.”

  “You got brothers an’ sisters?”

  “Had three brothers. Maybe mo’ by now. Anyways, dey’s all growed up, prob’ly got chilluns like you.”

  “We go see dem someday?”

  “We cain’t go nowhere.”

  “We’s gon’ somewheres now.”

  “Jes’ Massa John’s. We don’t show up, dey have de dogs out at us by sundown.”

  “’Cause dey be worried ’bout us?”

  “’Cause we b’longs to dem, jes’ like dese hosses pullin’ us.”

  “Like I b’longs to you an’ mammy?”

  “You’se our young’un. Dat different.”

  “Missy Anne say she want me fo’ her own.”

  “You ain’t no doll fo’ her to play wid.”

  “I plays wid her, too. She done tole me she my bes’ frien’.”

  “You can’t be nobody’s frien’ an’ slave both.”

  “How come, Pappy?”

  “’Cause frien’s don’t own one ’nother.”

  “Don’t mammy an’ you b’long to one ’nother? Ain’t y’all frien’s?”

  “Ain’t de same. We b’longs to each other ’cause we wants to,’cause we loves each other.”

  “Well, I loves Missy Anne, so I wants to b’long to her.”

  “Couldn’t never work out.”

  “What you mean?”

  “You couldn’t be happy when y’all grow up.”

  “Would too. I bet you wouldn’t be happy.”

  “Yo sho’ right ’bout dat!”

  “Aw, Pappy, I couldn’t never leave you an’ Mammy.”

  “An’ chile, speck we couldn’t never let you go, neither!”

  CHAPTER 75

  Late one afternoon, the driver for Massa Waller’s parents at Enfield brought him their invitation to attend a dinner party in honor of an important Richmond businessman who had stopped for a night’s lodging on his way to Fredericksburg. About a dozen buggies were already parked outside the Enfield big house when Kunta arrived with the massa soon after dark.

  Though he had been there many times in the eight years since he and Bell were married, it had been only during the past few months that the fat black cook Hattie, who had been so smitten with Kunta, decided to begin speaking with him again—ever since he had brought Kizzy along with Missy Anne one day on a visit to her grandparents. Tonight, when he went to the kitchen door to say hello—and for something to eat—she invited him in to visit while she, her helper, and four serving women completed their preparations for dinner; Kunta thought that he had never seen so much food bubbling in so many pots and pans.

  “How dat l’il puddin’-pie young’un o’ your’n?” Hattie asked
between sips and sniffs.

  “She fine,” said Kunta. “Bell got her learnin’ how to cook now. S’prise me other night wid a apple betty she done made.”

  “Dat l’il dickens. Nex’ thing you know, I be eatin’ her cookies’stead o’ her eatin’ mine. She musta put away half a jar o’ my ginger snaps las’ time she here.”

  With a last look at the mouth-watering three or four kinds of breads that were baking in the oven, Hattie turned to the oldest of the serving women, in their starched yellow smocks, and said, “We’se ready. Go tell missis.” As the woman disappeared through the swinging door, she told the other three, “I come after y’all wid a ladle if’n yo’ slops one drop o’ soup on my bes’ linen when you settin’ down de bowls. Git to work now, Pearl,” she said to her teen-age helper. “Git dem turnip greens, de sweet cawn, squash, an’ okra in de good china tureens whilst I wrestles dis here saddle o’ mutton onto de carvin’ bo’d.”

  A few minutes later, one of the serving women came back in, whispered intently to Hattie at some length, and then hurried back out again. Hattie turned to Kunta.

  “You ’members few months back when one dem tradin’ boats got raided somewheres on de big water by dat France?”

  Kunta nodded. “Fiddler say he heared dat Pres’dent Adams so mad he sent de whole Newnited States Navy to whup ’em.”

  “Well, dey sho’ did. Louvina jes’ now tol’ me dat man in dere from Richmon’ say dey done took away eighty boats b’longin’ to dat France. She say de white folks in dere act like dey nigh ’bout ready to start singin’ an’ dancin’ ’bout teachin’ dat France a lesson.”

  As she spoke, Kunta had begun digging into the heaping plateful of food she had set before him, while he marveled at the very sight of the roast beef, baked ham, turkey, chicken, and duck she was now busily arranging on big platters waiting to be served. He had just swallowed a mouthful of buttered sweet potato when the four serving women came bustling back into the kitchen—all loaded down with empty bowls and spoons. “De soup’s et!” Hattie announced to Kunta. A moment later the serving women were trooping out again with heaped trays, and Hattie mopped her face and said, “Got ’bout fo’ty minutes befo’ dey ready fo’ dessert. You was gon’ say sump’n befo’?”