Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  Massa Lea had stiffened. But he said, “Awright! Get me three hundred dollars apiece, you can have ’em—” His palm shot up before their exultation could fully erupt. “Hol’ on! They stay here ’til the money’s in my hand!”

  Amid the groans and sobs, Tom’s voice came, bleak, “Us kinda’spected mo’n dat from you, Massa, ’siderin’ everything.”

  “Get ’em out of here, trader!” the massa snapped. Turning on his heel, he walked rapidly toward the big house.

  Back in the desperately despairing slave row, even old Miss Malizy and Sister Sarah were among those comforting Gran’mammy Kizzy. She sat in her rocking chair, that Tom had made for her, amid the welter of her family hugging, kissing her, wetting her with their tears. Everyone was crying.

  From somewhere she found the strength, the courage to rasp hoarsely, “Don’ y’all take on so! Me an’ Sarah, Malizy, an’ Pompey jes’ wait here for George ’til he gits back. Ain’t gwine be dat long, it’s awready gwine on de two years. If’n he ain’t got de money to buy us, den I ’speck won’t take much mo’ time fo’ Tom an’ res’ y’all boys will—”

  Ashford gulped, “Yes’m, we sho’ will!” Wanly she smiled at him, at them all. “’Nother thing,” Gran’mammy Kizzy went on, “any y’all gits mo’ chilluns fo’ I sees you ag’in, don’t forgit to tell ’em’bout my folks, my mammy Bell, an’ my African pappy name Kunta Kinte, what be yo’ chillun’s great-great gran’pappy! Hear me, now! Tell ’em ’bout me, ’bout my George, ’bout yo’selves, too! An’ ’bout what we been through ’midst differen’ massas. Tell de chilluns all de res’ about who we is!”

  Amid a snuffling chorus of “We sho’ will”... “Ain’t gon’ never fo’git, Gran’mammy,” she brushed the nearest faces with her hand, “SHUSH, now! Ever’thing gwine be fine! Heish up, done tol’ you! Y’all gwine flood me right out de do’!”

  Four days somehow passed with those who were leaving getting packed, and finally Saturday morning came. Everyone had been up through most of the night. With scarcely a word uttered, they gathered, holding each other’s hands, watching the sun come up. Finally the wagons arrived. One by one those who were leaving turned silently to embrace those who were to remain behind.

  “Where’s Uncle Pompey?” asked someone.

  Miss Malizy said, “Po’ ol’ soul tol’ me las’ night he couldn’t stan’ to see y’all go—”

  “I run kiss ’im, anyhow!” exclaimed L’il Kizzy, and went running toward the cabin.

  In a little while, they heard her: “Oh, NO!”

  Others already on the ground, or leaping from the wagon, went dashing. The old man sat there in his chair. And he was dead.

  CHAPTER 105

  On the new plantation, it wasn’t until the next Sunday, when Massa and Missis Murray drove off in their buggy to attend church services, that the whole family had a chance to sit down together for a talk.

  “Well, I sho’ ain’t want to judge too quick,” said Matilda, looking around at all of her brood, “but all through de week me an’ Missis Murray done plenty talkin’ in de kitchen whilst I been cookin’. I got to say she an’ dis new massa soun’s like good Christian peoples. I feels like we’s gwine be whole lot better off here,’cept yo’ pappy still ain’t back, an’ Gran’mammy an’ dem still at Massa Lea’s.” Again studying her children’s faces, she asked, “Well, from what y’all’s seed an’ heared, how y’all feel?”

  Virgil spoke. “Well, dis Massa Murray don’t seem like he know much ’bout farmin’, or bein’ no massa, neither.”

  Matilda interrupted. “Dat’s ’cause dey was town folks runnin’ a sto’ in Burlington, ’til his uncle died an’ in ’is will lef’em dis place.”

  Virgil said, “Ever’ time he done talked to me, he’s said he lookin’ fo’ a white oberseer to hire to work us. I done kept tellin’ ’im ain’t no need to spend dat money, dat worse’n a oberseer he needed leas’ five, six mo’ fiel’ han’s. Tol’ ’im jes’ give us chance, we raise ’im good tobacco crops by ourself—”

  Ashford broke in, “I ain’t stayin’ long nowhere wid no cracker oberseer trackin’ every move!”

  After a pointed look at Ashford, Virgil went on. “Massa Murray say he watch awhile an’ see how we do.” He paused. “I jes’ ’bout begged ’im to buy my Lilly Sue an’ young’un from Massa Curry back yonder an’ bring ’em here. Tol’ ’im Lilly Sue work hard as anybody he ever gon’ git. He say he think ’bout it, but to buy us, dey already done had to take out a bank mor’gage on de big house, an’ he see how much ’baccy he sell dis year.” Virgil paused. “So we all got to pitch in! I can tell odder white folks been givin’ ’im plenty advisin’ niggers won’t half work by deyselves. Let ’im see any hangin’ back an’ playin’ roun’, we sho’ liable win’ up wid some oberseer.” Glancing again at the sullen Ashford, Virgil added, “Fac’, I ’speck it be good when Massa Murray ride out where we’s workin’ I’ll holler at y’all some, but y’all know why.”

  “Sho’!” burst out Ashford, “you an’ somebody else I knows always tries to be massa’s special nigger!”

  Tom tensed, but managed to seem as if he totally ignored Ashford’s remark while Virgil half rose, lancing forward a work-calloused forefinger, “Boy, lemme tell you, sump’n wrong anybody don’ git ’long wid nobody! Gwine git you in big trouble one dese days! Jes’ speakin’ fo’ myself, if’n it be’s wid me, somebody gwine carry off one us!”

  “Heish! Bofe y’all heish up dat mess!” Matilda glared at them both, then particularly at Ashford, before turning an entreating look onto Tom, clearly seeking an easing of the sudden tension. “Tom, whole lot o’ times I seen you an’ Massa Murray talkin’ down dere while you puttin’ up yo’ shop. What’s yo’ feelin’s?”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, Tom said, “I ’gree we ought to be better off here. But ’pend a lot on how we handles it. Like you said, Massa Murray don’t ’pear no mean, lowdown white man. I feel like Virgil say, he jes’ ain’t had much ’sperience to put no trus’ in us. Even mo’n dat, I b’leeve he worried we git to figgerin’ he’s easy, dat’s how come he make hisself act an’ soun’ harder’n he na’chly is, an’ dat’s how come de oberseer talk.” Tom paused. “Way I sees it, mammy handle de missis. Res’ us needs to teach de massa he do fine jes’ leave us ’lone.”

  After murmurs of approval, Matilda’s tone was vibrant with her joy at clearly a potentially promising family future, “Well, now, linin’ it up, long wid what y’all says, we’s got to ’suade Massa Murray to buy Lilly Sue an’ dat l’il Uriah, too. ’Bout y’all’s pappy, ain’t nothin’ we can do but jes’ wait. He walk in here one dese days—”

  Giggling, Mary interrupted, “Wid dat green scarf trailin’, an’ black derby settin’ upon his head!”

  “Sho’ right ’bout dat, daughter,” Matilda smiled with the others. She went on. “An’ ’cose I ain’t even got to say ’bout gittin’ Gran’mammy, Sarah, an’ Malizy. I already got Missis Murray promised to he’p wid dat. ’Scribed to ’er stronges’ I could how it jes’ ’bout tore us all up to have to leave ’em. Lawd! Missis got to cryin’ hard as I was! She say weren’t no use nobody includin’ her axin’ Massa Murray to buy no three real ol’ womens, but she promsie faithful she ax massa to git Tom hire-out jobs, an’ de res’ y’all boys, too. So le’s all keep in mind we ain’t jes’ here workin’ for ’nother massa, we’s workin’ to git our fam’ly back togedder.”

  With that resolve, the family settled into the planting season of 1856, with Matilda commanding the increasing trust and appreciation of both Missis and Massa Murray through her clear loyalty and sincerity, her excellent cooking, and her spotless housekeeping. The massa saw how Virgil steadily urged and pressed his brothers and sisters toward a bumper tobacco crop. He saw Tom visibly putting the plantation into an enviable state of repair, his talented hands wielding his mostly homemade tools, transforming foraged old rusted, discarded, scrap iron into eventually scores of sturdy new farming tools and implements, along with b
oth functional and decorative household items.

  Nearly every Sunday afternoon, unless the Murrays had gone off somewhere themselves, various of the local plantation families would pay them welcoming visits, along with their old friends from Burlington, Graham, Haw River, Mebane, and other towns around. In showing their guests about the big house and yards, the Murrays always proudly pointed out different examples of Tom’s craftsmanship. Few of their farm or township guests left without urging that the massa permit Tom to make or repair something for them, and Massa Murray would agree. Gradually more of Tom’s custom-made articles appeared about Alamance County, as word of mouth further advertised him, and Missis Murray’s original request that the massa seek hire-out jobs for Tom became entirely unnecessary. Soon, every day saw slave men, young and old, come riding on mules, or sometimes afoot, bringing broken tools or other items for Tom to fix. Some massas or missis sketched decorative items they wanted made for their homes. Or sometimes customers’ requests required that Massa Murray write out a traveling pass for Tom to ride a mule to other plantations, or into local towns, to make on-site repairs or installations. By 1857, Tom was working from dawn to dark every day excepting Sundays, his over-all volume of work at least equaling that of Mr. Isaiah, who had taught him. The customers would pay Massa Murray, either at the big house or when they saw him at church, such rates as fourteen cents a hoof for the shoeing of horses, mules, or oxen, thirty-seven cents for a new wagon tire, eighteen cents to mend a pitchfork, or six cents to sharpen a pick. Prices for customer-designed decorative work were specially negotiated, such as five dollars for a trellis-shaped front gate adorned with oak leaves. And each weekend Massa Murray figured out for Tom’s pay ten cents of each dollar that his work had brought in during the previous week. After thanking the massa, Tom gave the weekly sum to his mother Matilda, who soon had it buried in one of her glass jars whose locations only she and Tom knew.

  On Saturday noons the workweek ended for the family’s field hands. L’il Kizzy and Mary, now nineteen and seventeen, respectively, quickly bathed, wrapped their short, kinky braids tightly with string, and rubbed their faces to shiny blackness with beeswax. Then donning their best starchily ironed cotton-print dresses, they soon appeared at the blacksmith shop, one bringing a pitcher of water, or sometimes “lemonegg,” with the other carrying a gourd dipper. Once Tom had quenched his thirst, they next offered welcomed gourdfuls among each Saturday afternoon’s invariable small gathering of slave men whose massas had sent them to pick up items that Tom had promised to complete by the weekend. Tom noted, with wry amusement, how his sisters’ lightest, gayest banter was always with the better-looking younger men. One Saturday night he was not surprised to overhear Matilda shrilly voicing chastisement: “I ain’t blin’! Sees y’all down dere flouncin’ yo’ tails ’mongst dem mens!” L’il Kizzy came back defiantly, “Well, Mammy, we’s wimmins! Ain’t met no mens at Massa Lea’s!” Matilda loudly muttered something that Tom couldn’t distinguish, but he suspected that she was privately less disapproving than she was trying to act. It was confirmed when, shortly after, Matilda said to him, “Look like you lettin’ dem two gals go to courtin’ right under yo’ nose. Reckon de leas’ you can do is keep out a eye it ain’t de wrong ones dey hooks up wid!”

  To the entire family’s astonishment, not the particularly “flouncy” L’il Kizzy but the much quieter Mary soon quietly announced her wish to “jump de broom” with a stablehand from a plantation near the village of Mebane. She pleaded to Matilda, “I knows you can he’p ’suade massa to sell me reasonable when Nicodemus’ massa ax ’im ’bout it, Mammy, so us can live togedder!” But Matilda only muttered vaguely, sending Mary into tears.

  “Lawd, Tom, I jes’ don’t know how to feel!” Matilda said. “’Cose I’se happy fo’ de gal, I see she so happy. But jes’ hates to see any us sol’ off no mo’.”

  “You’s wrong, Mammy. You knows you is!” Tom said. “I sho’ wouldn’t want to be married wid nobody livin’ somewhere else. Look what happened to Virgil. Ever since we got sol’, you can see he sick ’bout Lilly Sue lef’ back yonder.”

  “Son,” she said, “don’t tell me ’bout bein’ married to somebody you don’ never hardly see! Whole lot o’ times, lookin’ at y’all chilluns he’p me know I got a husban’—” Matilda hesitated. “But gittin’ back to Mary leavin’, ain’t jes’ her on my min’, it’s all y’all. You workin’ so much guess you ain’t paid no ’tention, but on Sundays off nowdays don’ hardly never see yo’ brudders roun’ here no mo’, jes’ you an’ Virgil. De res’ all off co’tin’ heavy—”

  “Mammy,” Tom sharply interrupted, “we’s grown mens!”

  “Sho’ you is!” retorted Matilda. “Ain’t what I’m gittin’ at! I’se meanin’ it look like dis fam’ly gwine split to de winds fo’ we ever gits it back togedder!”

  In a silent moment between them, Tom was trying to think of what comforting thing he might say, sensing that underlying his mother’s recent quick irritability or unaccustomed depressions were the months now passed beyond when his father should have returned. As she had just mentioned, she was again living with his absence.

  Tom was shocked when abruptly Matilda glanced at him, “When you gwine git married?”

  “Ain’t thinkin’ ’bout dat now—” Embarrassed, he hesitated, and changed the subject. “Thinkin’ ’bout us gittin’ back Gran’mammy, Sister Sarah, an’ Miss Malizy. Mammy, ’bout how much we got saved up now?”

  “No ’bout! Tell you ’zactly! Dat two dollars’ an’ fo’ cents you give me las’ Sunday make it eighty-seben dollars an’ fifty-two cents.”

  Tom shook his head. “I’se got to do better—”

  “Sho’ wish Virgil an’ dem was he’pin’ mo’.”

  “Can’t blame dem. Hire-out fiel’ work jes’ hard to fin’, ’cause mos’ massas needin’ it hires free niggers what works fit to kill deyselves to git dat twenty-five cents a day less’n dey starves. I jes’ got to make mo’! Gran’mammy, Sister Sarah, an’ Miss Malizy, dey’s all gittin’ ol’!”

  “Yo’ gran’mammy right roun’ sebenty now, an’ Sarah an’ Malizy nigh ’bout eighty.”

  A sudden thought struck Matilda; her features took on a faraway expression. “Tom, you know what jes’ come to me? Yo’ gran’mammy use to say her African pappy kep’ up wid how ol’ he was by droppin’ l’il rocks in a gourd. You ’member her sayin’ dat?”

  “Yas’m, sho’ does.” He paused. “Wonder how ol’ was he?”

  “Ain’t never heard, leas’ not to my recollection.” A puzzlement grew on her face. “Would ’pend when was you talkin’ ’bout. He’d o’ been one age when Gran’mammy Kizzy was sol’ from him an’ her mammy. Den he’d o’ been ’nother age whenever de Lawd claimed’im—” She hesitated. “Wid Gran’mammy pushin’ seb’nty, you know her pappy got to be long dead’n gone. Her mammy, too. Po’ souls!”

  “Yeah—” said Tom, musing. “Sometime I wonders what dey looked like. Done heared so much ’bout ’em.”

  Matilda said, “Me, too, son.” She straightened in her chair. “But gittin’ back to yo’ gran’mammy, Sarah, an’ Malizy, every night down on my knees, I jes’ ax de Lawd to be wid ’em an’ I prays any day yo’ pappy git dere wid lump o’ money in ’is pocket an’ buy’em.” She laughed brightly. “One mawnin’ we looks up an’ dere all fo’ be, free as birds!”

  “Dat be sho’ one sight to see!” grinned Tom.

  A silence fell between them, each in their private thoughts. Tom was pondering that now was as good a time and atmosphere as any to confide in his mother something he had kept carefully guarded from anyone, but which now did seem likely to develop further.

  He used as his avenue an earlier query of Matilda’s. “Mammy, while back you ax if ’n I ever think maybe ’bout gittin’ married?”

  Matilda jerked upright, her face and eyes alight. “Yeah, son?”

  Tom could have kicked himself for ever having brought it up. He all but squirmed seeking how
to go on. Then, firmly, “Well, I’se kinda met a gal, an’ we been talkin’ some—”

  “Lawd-a-mussy, Tom! Who?”

  “Ain’t nobody you knows! Her name Irene. Some calls ’er ’Reeny.’ She b’longst to dat Massa Edwin Holt, work in dey big house—”

  “De rich Massa Holt massa and missis talks ’bout own dat cotton mill on Alamance Creek?”

  “Yas’m—”

  “Dey big house where you put up dem pretty window grills?”

  “Yas’m—” Tom’s expression was rather like that of a small boy caught taking cookies.

  “Lawd!” A beaming spread across Matilda’s face. “Somebody cotched ol’ coon at las’!” Springing up, suddenly embracing her embarrassed son, she burbled, “I’se so happy fo’ y’all, Tom, sho’ is!”

  “Hol’ on! Hol’ on, Mammy!” Extricating himself, he gestured her back toward her chair. “I jes’ say we been talkin’.”

  “Boy, you’s my close-mouthdes’ young’un since you first drawed breath! If you ’mits you’s much as seed a gal, I know it mo’ to it dan dat!”

  He all but glared at her. “Don’ want no whisperin’ to nobody, you hear me?”

  “I know massa buy ’er fo’ you, boy! Tell me mo’ ’bout ’er, Tom!” So much was tumbling in Matilda’s head that it poured out together... across the back of her mind flashed a vision of the wedding cakes she would bake...

  “Gittin’ late, got to go—” But she beat him to the door. “So glad somebody be catchin’ all y’all young’uns fo’ long! You’s jes’ my bes’!” Matilda’s laughter was the happiest Tom had seen her in a long time. “Gittin’ older, guess I’se same as Gran’mammy Kizzy, wantin’ mo’ gran’chilluns!” Tom brushed past, hearing her as he strode outside, “I live long ’nough, might even see some great-gran’chilluns!”