Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  In Africa now, he thought—Africa had sometimes seemed so distantly in the past—Bell would be instructing Kizzy in how to make her skin shine using shea-tree butter, and how to fashionably beautifully blacken her mouth, palms, and soles, using the powdered crust from the bottom of cooking pots. And Kizzy would at her present age already be starting to attract men who were seeking for themselves a finely raised, well-trained, virginal young wife. Kunta felt jolted even by the thought of some man’s foto entering Kizzy’s thighs; then he felt better after reassuring himself that this would happen only after a proper wedding. In his homeland at this time, as Kizzy’s fa, he would be assuming his responsibility to appraise very closely the personal qualities as well as the family backgrounds of whatever men began to show marriageable interest in Kizzy—in order to select the most ideal of them for her, and he would also be deciding now what proper bride price would be asked for her hand.

  But after a while, as he continued to shovel snow along with the fiddler, young Noah, and Cato, Kunta found himself gradually feeling increasingly ridiculous that he was even thinking about these African customs and traditions anymore, for not only would they never be observed here, nor respected—indeed, he would also be hooted at if he so much as mentioned them, even to other blacks. And anyway, he couldn’t think of any likely, well-qualified suitor for Kizzy who was of proper marriageable age—between thirty and thirty-five rains—but there he was doing it again! He was going to have to force himself to start thinking along lines of the marrying customs here in the toubob’s country—where girls generally married—“jumpin’ de broom,” it was called—someone who was around their same age.

  Immediately then Kunta began thinking about Noah. He had always liked the boy. At fifteen, two years older than Kizzy, Noah seemed to be no less mature, serious, and responsible than he was big and strong. The more Kunta thought about it, the only thing he could find lacking with Noah, in fact, was that he had never seemed to show the slightest personal interest in Kizzy—not to mention that Kizzy herself seemed to act as if Noah didn’t exist. Kunta pondered: Why weren’t they any more interested than that in each other, at the least in being friends? After all, Noah was very much as he himself had been as a young man, and therefore he was highly worthy of Kizzy’s attention, if not her admiration. He wondered: Wasn’t there something he could do to influence them into each other’s paths? But then Kunta sensed that probably would be the best way to insure their never getting together. He decided, as usual, that it was wisest that he mind his own business—and, as he had heard Bell put it, with “de sap startin’ to rise” within the young pair of them who were living right there in the same slave row, he privately would ask if Allah would consider helping nature to take its course.

  CHAPTER 82

  “You listen here, gal, don’ you never lemme hear ’bout you fannin’ yo’ tail roun’ dat Noah no mo’! I take a hik’ry stick to you in a minute.” Headed home, Kunta stopped in his tracks two or three steps from the door of the cabin and stood listening as Bell went on: “Why, you ain’t even turned sixteen yet! What yo’ pappy think, you carryin’ on like dat?”

  He quietly turned and went back down along the path to the privacy of the barn, to consider the implications of what he had heard. “Fannin’ her tail”—around Noah! Bell personally hadn’t seen whatever it was, but someone had told her. No doubt it had been Aunt Sukey or Sister Mandy: Knowing those old biddies, it wouldn’t surprise him if either or both of them had witnessed something completely innocent and made it sound suggestive just to have something to cluck about. But what? From what he’d overheard, Bell probably wouldn’t tell him unless it was repeated and she needed him to put a stop to it. It was a kind of thing he’d never dream of querying Bell about, for that was too much like women’s gossip.

  But what if it hadn’t been so innocent? Had Kizzy been flaunting herself before Noah? And if she had, what had he done to encourage it? He had seemed to be a young man of honor, of good character—but you never knew.

  Kunta wasn’t sure how to feel or what to think. In any case, as Bell had said, their daughter was only fifteen, which in the customs of the toubob’s land was still too young for her to be thinking about getting married. He realized that he wasn’t feeling very African about it, but somehow he just didn’t feel ready to think about Kizzy walking around with a big belly as he’d seen on so many girls her age, even younger.

  If she did marry Noah, though, he thought, at least their child would be black and not one of those pale sasso borro babies, products of the mothers having been raped by lusting massas or overseers. Kunta thanked Allah that neither his Kizzy nor any other slave-row women ever had faced that horrifying experience, or at least not since he had been there, for countless times he had heard Massa Waller strongly expressing among friends his convictions against white and black bloods being mixed.

  The next few weeks, as the opportunity would present, Kunta covertly watched Kizzy’s bottom for any signs of wiggling. He never caught her at it, but once or twice both he and she were startled when he came upon her in the cabin twirling round and round, tossing her head and humming dreamily to herself. Kunta also kept a close eye on Noah; he noticed that now—unlike before—Noah and Kizzy would nod and smile whenever they passed each other within the sight of anyone else. The more he mused on it, the more strongly he speculated that they were skillfully concealing their ardor. After a while Kunta decided that there should be no harm in Noah and Kizzy’s publicly taking conversational walks together, in his accompanying her to camp meeting, or to the “dance-ol’-Jenny-down” frolics that were held each summer, where Noah as her partner would surely be preferable to some impudent stranger. Indeed, it was possible that, after another rain or so for them both, Noah might even make Kizzy a good mate.

  An awareness began to dawn within Kunta that Noah had begun to observe him, just as closely as the other way around, and now Kunta anticipated, nervously, that the boy was trying to muster the nerve to ask if he could marry Kizzy. It was on a Sunday afternoon in early April—Massa Waller had brought a family of guests home with him after church, and Kunta was outside the barn polishing the guests’ buggy—when something told him to glance up, and he saw the dark, slender Noah walking purposefully down along the path from slave row.

  Reaching Kunta, he spoke without hesitation, as if his words were rehearsed: “Ol’ suh, you’s de onlest one I feels like I can trust. I got to tell somebody. I can’t live no mo’ like dis. I got to run away.”

  Kunta was so astounded that at first he could think of nothing to say—he just stood there staring at Noah.

  Kunta finally found some words. “You ain’t gon’ run nowhere wid Kizzy!” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

  “Nawsuh, wouldn’t want to git ’er in no trouble.”

  Kunta felt embarrassed. After a while he said noncommittally, “Reckon sometime ever’body feel like runnin’.”

  Noah’s eyes inspected his. “Kizzy tol’ me Miss Bell say you run off fo’ times.”

  Kunta nodded, his face still showing nothing of how he was thinking back on himself at the same age, freshly arrived, so desperately obsessed with run, run, run that every day spent waiting and watching for the next even half-decent opportunity was an unbearable torment. A swift realization thrust itself into his head that if Kizzy didn’t know, as Noah’s earlier statement could be interpreted she didn’t, then whenever her loved one suddenly disappeared, she was sure to be utterly devastated—so soon again after her crushing heartbreak involving the toubob girl. He thought that it just couldn’t be helped. He thought that, for numerous reasons, whatever he said to Noah must be considered carefully.

  He said gravely, “Ain’t gwine tell you run or don’t run. But less’n you ready to die if you gits caught, you ain’t ready.”

  “Ain’t plannin’ to git caught,” said Noah. “I’se heared de main thing is you follows de Nawth Star, an’ it’s different Quaker white folks an’ free niggers he’ps you
hide in de daytimes. Den you’s free once you hits dat Ohio.”

  How little he knows, thought Kunta. How could escaping seem anywhere near so simple? But then he realized that Noah was young—as he had been; also that like most slaves, Noah had seldom set foot beyond the boundaries of his plantation. This was why most of those who ran, field hands especially, were usually captured so soon, bleeding from briar cuts, half starved and stumbling around in forests and swamps full of water moccasins and rattlesnakes. In a rush, Kunta remembered the running, the dogs, the guns, the whips—the ax.

  “You don’ know what you talkm’ ’bout, boy!” he rasped, regretting his words almost as they were uttered. “What I mean to say—it jes’ ain’t dat easy! You know ’bout dem bloodhounds dey uses to cotch you?”

  Noah’s right hand slid into his pocket and withdrew a knife. He flicked it open, the blade honed until it gleamed dully. “I figgers dead dogs don’t eat nobody.” Cato had said that Noah feared nothing. “Jes’ can’t let nothin’ stop me,” Noah said, closing the knife and returning it into his pocket.

  “Well, if you gwine run, you gwine run,” said Kunta.

  “Don’t know ’zactly when,” said Noah. “Jes’ knows I got to go.” Kunta re-emphasized awkwardly, “Jes’ make sho’ Kizzy ain’t in none o’ dis.”

  Noah didn’t seem offended. His eyes met Kunta’s squarely. “Naw-suh.” He hesitated. “But when I gits Nawth, I means to work an’ buy her free.” He paused. “You ain’t gon’ tell her none o’ dis, is you?”

  Now Kunta hesitated. Then he said, “Dat ’tween you and her.”

  “I tell her in good time,” said Noah.

  Impulsively, Kunta grasped the young man’s hand between both of his own. “I hopes you makes it.”

  “Well, I see you!” said Noah, and he turned to walk back toward slave row.

  Sitting that night in the cabin’s front room, staring into the low flames of the hickory log burning in the fireplace, Kunta wore a faraway expression that made both Bell and Kizzy know out of past experiences that it would be futile to make any effort to talk with him. Quietly Bell knitted. Kizzy was as usual hunched over the table practicing her writing. At sunup, Kunta decided he would ask Allah to grant Noah good luck. He thought afresh that if Noah did get away, it would yet again crush utterly Kizzy’s trusting faith that already had been wounded so badly by Missy Anne. He glanced up and watched his precious Kizzy’s face as her lips moved silently, following her finger across a page. The lives of all black people in the toubob land seemed full of suffering, but he wished he could spare her some of it.

  CHAPTER 83

  It was a week after Kizzy’s sixteenth birthday, the early morning of the first Monday of October, when the slave-row field hands were gathering as usual to leave for their day’s work, when someone asked curiously, “Where Noah at?” Kunta, who happened to be standing nearby talking to Cato, knew immediately that he was gone. He saw heads glancing around, Kizzy’s among them, straining to maintain a mask of casual surprise. Their eyes met—she had to look away.

  “Thought he was out here early wid you,” said Noah’s mother Ada to Cato.

  “Naw, I was aimin’ to give ’im de debbil fo’ sleepin’ late,” said Cato.

  Cato went banging his fist at the closed door of the cabin, once occupied by the old gardener, but which Noah had inherited recently on his eighteenth birthday. Jerking the door open, Cato charged inside, shouting angrily, “Noah!” He came out looking worried. “Am’t like ’im,” he said quietly. Then he ordered everyone to go quickly and search their cabins, the toilet, the storerooms, the fields.

  All the others ran off in all directions; Kunta volunteered to search the barn. “NOAH! NOAH!” he called loudly for the benefit of any who might hear, although he knew there was no need of it, as the animals in their stalls stopped chewing their morning hay to look at him oddly. Then, peering from the door and seeing no one coming that way, Kunta hastened back inside to climb quickly to the hayloft, where he prostrated himself and made his second appeal to Allah for Noah’s successful escape.

  Cato worriedly dispatched the rest of the field hands off to their work, telling them that he and the fiddler would join them shortly; the fiddler had wisely volunteered to help with the fieldwork ever since his income from playing for dances had fallen off.

  “B’lieve he done run,” the fiddler muttered to Kunta as they stood in the backyard.

  As Kunta grunted, Bell said, “He ain’t never been missin’, an’ he don’t slip off nights.”

  Then Cato said what was uppermost in all of their minds. “Gwine have to tell massa, Lawd have mercy!” After a hurried consultation, Bell recommmended that Massa Waller not be told until after he had eaten his breakfast, “’case de boy done jes’ eased off somewhere an’ got scairt to slip back fo’ it’s dark again, less’n dem road paterollers cotches ’im.”

  Bell served the massa his favorite breakfast—canned peaches in heavy cream, hickory-smoked fried ham, scrambled eggs, grits, heated apple butter, and buttermilk biscuits—and waited for him to ask for his second cup of coffee before speaking.

  “Massa—” she swallowed, “—Massa, Cato ax me to tell you look like dat boy Noah ain’t here dis mawnin’!”

  The massa set down his cup, frowning. “Where is he, then? Are you trying to tell me he’s off drunk or tomcatting somewhere, and you think he’ll slip back today, or are you saying you think he’s trying to run?”

  “All us sayin’, Massa,” Bell quavered, “is seem like he ain’t here, an’ us done searched eve’ywheres.”

  Massa Waller studied his coffee cup. “I’ll give him until tonight—no, tomorrow morning—before I take action.”

  “Massa, he a good boy, born and bred right here on yo’ place, an’ work good all his life, ain’t never give you, or nobody a minute’s trouble—”

  He looked levelly at Bell. “If he’s trying to run, he’ll be sorry.”

  “Yassuh, Massa.” Bell fled to the yard, where she told the others what the massa had said. But no sooner had Cato and the fiddler hurried off toward the fields than Massa Waller called Bell back and ordered the buggy.

  All day long, as he drove him from one patient to the next, Kunta soared from exhilaration—as he thought of Noah running—to anguish as he thought of the thorns and the briars and the dogs. And he felt what hope and suffering Kizzy must be enduring.

  At that night’s huddled gathering, everyone spoke barely above whispers.

  “Dat boy done lef’ here. Fo’ now, I done seed it in his eyes,” Aunt Sukey said.

  “Well, I knows he ain’t no young’un to jes’ steal off gittin’ drunk, no suh!” said Sister Mandy.

  Noah’s mother Ada was hoarse from a day of weeping. “My baby sho’ ain’t never talked to me nothin’ ’bout no runnin’! Lawd, y’all reckon massa gwine sell ’im?” No one chose to reply.

  When they returned to their cabin, Kizzy burst into tears the moment she got inside; Kunta felt helpless and tongue-tied. But without a word, Bell went over to the table, put her arms around her sobbing daughter, and pulled her head against her stomach.

  Tuesday morning came, still with no sign of Noah, and Massa Waller ordered Kunta to drive him to the county seat, where he went directly to the Spotsylvania jailhouse. After about half an hour, he came out with the sheriff, ordering Kunta brusquely to tie the sheriff’s horse behind the buggy and then to drive them home. “We’ll be dropping the sheriff off at the Creek Road,” said the massa.

  “So many niggers runnin’ these days, can’t hardly keep track they’d ruther take their chances in the woods than get sold down South—” The sheriff was talking from when the buggy started rolling.

  “Since I’ve had a plantation,” said Massa Waller, “I’ve never sold one of mine unless my rules were broken, and they know that well.”

  “But it’s mighty rare niggers appreciate good masters, Doctor, you know that,” said the sheriff. “You say this boy around eighteen? Well, I’d gu
ess if he’s like most field hands his age, there’s fair odds he’s tryin’ to make it North.” Kunta stiffened. “If he was a house nigger, they’re generally slicker, faster talkers, they like to try passin’ themselves off as free niggers or tell the road patrollers they’re on their master’s errands and lost their traveling passes, tryin’ to make it to Richmond or some other big city where they can easier hide among so many niggers and maybe find jobs.” The sheriff paused. “Besides his mammy on your place, this boy of yours got any other kin livin’ anywheres he might be tryin’ to get to?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “Well, would you happen to know if he’s got some gal somewhere, because these young bucks get their sap risin’, they’ll leave your mule in the field and take off.”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said the massa. “But there’s a gal on my place, my cook’s young’un, she’s still fairly young, fifteen or sixteen, if I guess correctly. I don’t know if they’ve been haystacking or not.”

  Kunta nearly quit breathing.

  “I’ve known ’em to have pickaninnies at the age of twelve!” the sheriff chortled. “Plenty of these young nigger wenches even draw white men, and nigger boys’ll do anything!”

  Through churning outrage, Kunta heard Massa Waller’s abrupt chilliness. “I have the least possible personal contact with my slaves, and neither know nor concern myself regarding their personal affairs!”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said the sheriff quickly.

  But then the massa’s tone eased. “Along your line of thinking, though, this boy could have slipped off to see some other plantation gal. I don’t know, and of course the others wouldn’t say if they did. In fact, anything might have happened—some fight, perhaps; he could be half dead somewhere. It’s even possible that some of these slave-stealing poor whites could have grabbed him. That’s been going on around here, as you know; even some of the more unscrupulous traders engage in it. Again, I don’t know. But I’m told this is the boy’s first time being unaccounted for.”