reticule, and rushed from the room.
William was at the bottom of the stairs.
"I thought you'd never be ready," he called, as Queen came clattering
down the stairs, a pretty sixteen and vibrant with youth.
"Sorry, Massa Bill," she cried. "I couldn't decide which bonnet to wear."
William was never very cross with her, and was laughing. "You've only got
two, and Papa's going wild!"
Queen reached the bottom of the stairs and she and William were moving
quickly outside when Parson Dick appeared in the hallway.
"Massa William! Miss Queen!" He was always telling them off. A tubby,
gray-haired grizzly bear, William called him. "Young ladies and gentlemen
do not run."
429
430 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
They only laughed, and continued running. Parson Dick was used to being
ignored by them, and went to the kitchen. The family would be away for the
afternoon, and Missy Sally was having a nap, so he could relax until Massa
Henderson came to tea with his new bride.
Jass saw them first.
" There you are at last," he cried. It was a crisp winter day, and they'd
been waiting twenty minutes. Lizzie, pregnant, rugged up and impatient, was
in the landau with Mary, William's younger sister, and Poppy, a slave nurse
who was tending the babies, Little Sally, who was five, and Eleanor, who
was two.
"Sorry, Papa," William said happily, to cover for Queen, as they climbed
into the carriage. "I couldn't decide which cap to wear. "
"But you only have one," said Lizzie, who was feeling the cold.
"I know!" William laughed again, smiled sweetly at his mother, and grinned
at Queen. Everyone knew he was protecting his slave. He was only eleven,
but he adored Queen and always took her side in any argument.
"Well, you both look very splendid, all 'forked up,' " Jass said, anxious
to be away. He nodded at Isaac, the coachman, spurred his horse, and led
the way down the drive. Isaac flicked the horses, and the carriage
followed.
Queen saw her gran'pappy, Cap'n Jack, sitting on a log some distance away,
whittling, and waved at him. He didn't do very much except whittle anymore;
he was quite old, like Missy Sally, and Massa had told him to take things
easy.
Cap'n Jack guessed it was Queen who was waving at him, although his eyesight
troubled him-anything a distance away was unclear-and he waved back. He
guessed she looked pretty, because she always looked pretty when she went
out with all the family, and he watched the carriage until it was a blur to
his sight. He sighed, and went back to his whittling, cursing his weak eyes.
He was getting old, he knew. It had been a bitter blow when Jass relieved
him of his duties, although it was kindly meant, and replaced him as valet
with a younger slave, Alphis. Cap'n Jack knew he had earned some rest, but
he didn't want to feel old because he didn't want to die.
QUEEN 431
It was his dream that he would see freedom, at least for some of the
slaves, if only for Queen, before he died, but that happy day seemed as
much a dream as ever. A lot of angry words were being said about the
North, be knew, but Southemers had been saying angry words about the
North for as long as he could remember, and nothing ever changed. A year
ago, ol' white Massa John Brown had tried to free some slaves and had
been hanged for it. The gentlemen of the South, and a lot of the Missys,
had been frightened into a frenzy, but after the hanging it had all
calmed down again, just like it had with Nat Turner. Now everyone was in
a turmoil because of the presidential election, but Cap'n Jack didn't
think it made much difference who won, and if it was Linkun, they'd
probably hang him too.
He bitterly regretted turning down his own freedom once, and wondered if
it would have made a difference to Queen's status if he had responded
differently. But Queen had not been born then, and the ol' Massa, James,
had said nothing about freedom for Easter.
He spent his days whittling now, or gabbing with some of the older
slaves-the young men had little time for him-and avoiding Massa
Henderson's eye, and dreaming of foolish, forgotten yesterdays that are
an old man's memories.
Queen loved going out, going driving, going to town. It didn't happen very
often. They called on Miss Becky every week, but she was very old now, and
although she was always pleased to see them, she talked about things they
didn't understand, and she didn't seem to mind very much when they left.
William said she was funny in the head because of something that had
happened before Gran'pa Perkins died. Once every three months Massa Jass
would take them into town shopping, but he didn't like taking the children
because he said there were a lot of undesirable people there. Today was
a complete surprise. All the grown-ups had been very depressed and very
excited all at once for weeks now, because of the election and what the
Yankees were doing and saying, and a lot of very important, very angry
gentlemen had visited The Forks, and kept talking about war, which
frightened Queen. Massa didn't say anything about it all for a long time,
432 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
and then this morning he told them they were going on an outing.
They were thrilled, because they loved these outings. William thought the
excitement of the past few weeks was a lot of fuss and bother about
nothing, anyway. He couldn't believe that anyone would go to war because of
slaves and freedomit wasn't important enough-and while Queen wanted to be-
lieve that there wouldn't be a war, she couldn't think of anything more
important than being free.
Except, perhaps, to clarify her relationship with her pappy and the Massa,
who might be one and the same person. Everyone else seemed to think they
were, and Queen had come to believe it too, but she didn't understand why
she was still a slave and a nigra, and he her Massa, if she was white and
he was her pappy.
Polly was the first to say it, years ago, soon after she'd come to live in
the big house. Polly was fat and middle-aged, and thought she was something
much more important than a serving maid. She resented Queen and was always
yelling at her for things she'd done wrong. One day, Queen was in the
kitchen, where she ate her meals, and a cup had somehow slipped from her
hand and broken on the hard stone floor. Polly shouted at her, and told her
she didn't care if the Massa was her pappy, she'd spank Queen if she didn't
learn to be more careful. Everyone had gone very quiet for a moment, and
then Parson Dick told Polly off, and Julie, who was old and fat and always
smelled of food, had pulled Queen onto her knee and rocked her and told her
not to take any notice of a Miss Flibbertigibbet like Polly.
Queen didn't understand what all the fuss was about, but every so often one
of the slaves would make a comment
about the Massa and her pappy, and Queen
had grown up understanding that in some mysterious way they were one and
the same person, and that was why Queen looked white. She asked her mammy
about it when she was ten, but Mammy said the same as Julie, that she
shouldn't pay no nevermind to such things, and that didn't help very much.
Other things confused her. If the Massa was her pappy, she didn't
understand why Miss Lizzie was always stem and cross with her, and she was
never cross with William or Mary. She didn't understand why
QUEEN 433
she had to eat her meals in the kitchen when the others ate in the big
dining room, and she didn't understand why she had to sleep on a hard
pallet at the foot of William's bed, while her brother slept in a big,
comfortable four-poster.
Mostly, she didn't understand why she was a slave. Mammy told her it was
because she was a nigra and all nigras were slaves, but Queen knew she
didn't look like a nigra-she was at least as white as Miss Lizzie or Miss
Mary-and she didn't like a lot of the nigras very much. Parson Dick and
Julie were nice, and Poppy and Pattie, and even Polly these days, and she
liked the coachmen, who were always kind to her. She didn't like the
field hands, who were really black, and they said funny things about her,
or they ignored her, and so Queen returned the insults, and never went
to the slave quarters unless she was sent on an errand, or to see her
gran'pappy, Cap'n Jack.
She developed a rationale for her position, which, once she came to an
understanding of the mysteries of the body, she passionately believed.
She was a secret child, born of a great love between her pappy and her
mammy, who was really a queen of somewhere, in hiding from people who
were trying to harm her. Her pappy looked after her, but couldn't admit
she was really his daughter because she was the eldest, and then she'd
be more important than all his other children, even William. She believed
in her heart that one day everything would be all right, and that her
Massa would finally embrace her as his true daughter and find her a
prince to marry, and she'd live happily ever after at The Forks with her
pappy and her marnmy, and Miss Lizzie would be sent to live with the
field slaves.
Queen hated Lizzie. Miss Lizzie. Ma'am. It didn't matter what Queen did.
Miss Lizzie would find fault with her, and scold her, or, sometimes, take
the switch to her, although she only did that when the Massa was away.
At first, Queen had wanted to run away, back to the weaving house, back
to her real mammy, and would cry herself to sleep every night in the
little attic room she lived in when she first moved to the big house.
Slowly it got better, or easier to bear. After William was bom, Lizzie
had been sick for a long time, and Julie had taken charge of Queen, which
was much nicer. When Lizzie
434 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
got well, things got worse, and then she got sick again when she had another
little baby, Jane, and things got better. Jane died when she was very young,
and Miss Lizzie had staved in her room for weeks, but when she came out she
was cro~ser with Queen than ever. Things got better again after Mary was
bom, and for quite a long time afterward, because Miss Lizzie had been
really ill.
When William was about five he moved into his own bedroom, the same one
Massa used to sleep in when he was little, and it became Queen's room as
well, for she had to look after him. The two grew up together as brother
and sister who were not brother and sister, but young Massa and slave. They
became good friends, but sometimes William laughed at Queen, and reminded
her that she was a slave, and sometimes he said unkind things, especially
about nigras, which hurt Queen, even when she agreed with him. Next year
Queen was to move out of William's room, because he was growing up, and
look after Mary. Mary was nice, but always poorly, and Miss Lizzie's
favorite. Queen knew she would miss William.
She saw her mammy sometimes, walking around the plantation, but she wasn't
allowed to speak to her then. In the early days, when she first moved to
the big house, Queen thought her mammy walked by on purpose, just to see
her, and she ran to her once, and hugged her and cried, but Miss Lizzie had
been really angry and Mammy hadn't walked by as often. Once a week, on
Saturday afternoons, she was sent to visit her mammy for a few hours, and
Queen loved those visits. They'd sit and talk for hours, and Easter wanted
to know everything that was happening at the big house, and how Queen was
being treated. Queen used to tell her of the times when Miss Lizzie was
nasty to her, and begged Mammy to tell the Massa when he came to visit, so
that he would stop Miss Lizzie, but Marnmy said she had to put up with it
because of the other advantages she was getting. Still, it did seem to
Queen that Miss Lizzie had been a little bit less cross after that, and she
was sure someone had said something to somebody, and that someone was her
mammy and that somebody was her pappy, the Massa.
Queen adored Jass. He was always kind to her, and gave her little presents
at Christmas and on her birthday. She loved
QUEEN 435
him so much she called him her pappy once, but Miss Lizzie had been really
angry then and had insisted that Parson Dick cane her on her bare bottom.
Parson Dick didn't want to do it, Queen knew that, but he was a slave like
Queen, and had to do what he was told. He caned her hard and told her
never to say it again, and Queen was a good girl and did what she was
told, and never called her Massa her pappy again.
She attended the dancing classes and music lessons that the tutors who
came to The Forks gave William and, later, Mary. She learned to sew and
to set and wait at table, and Julie taught her to cook. She wasn't
allowed to take real school lessons, because she wasn't allowed to learn
to read and write, but that didn't matter because Cap'n Jack taught her
those things, although he made her swear on a Bible she would never tell
anyone, but she knew Massa knew because he gave her a book for her
birthday once. She became supremely skilled at selfprotection, she seldom
said the wrong thing to anyone anymore, she bit her tongue when Miss
Lizzie was sharp with her, she ignored the other slaves when they made
fun of her, and she learned to put on one face for Lizzie and another for
Missy Sally, who always treated her nicely. She didn't inquire too much
about the outside world because the world she lived in was complicated
enough, and because she had no ambition to live anywhere else but at The
Forks of Cypress with her true pappy and her real mammy.
She loved going out though, if only to escape for a while from her
sometimes suffocating circumstances, and town was a real adventure. But
first they had to visit Miss Becky.
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The Sinks was a pretty house, in a glade about three miles from The
Forks. The Massa had built it about five years ago, when Massa Perkins
died. Miss Becky had made a lot of fuss about it, and was furious when
Massa told her the name of the house, because she said it was very
unromantic. She preferred to call it "Chez Pocahontas," which Queen and
William thought was funny. They giggled about the name now, as the
carriage pulled into the drive, until Lizzie told them off sharply, and
told Queen to remember her place.
Tragic circumstances had attended the Perkinses a few years ago. Convinced
that his fortune was being frittered away by
436 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
his wife's extravagances, William Perkins had plunged, once again, into land
speculation, this time with disastrous results. If he had consulted wiser,
more cautious minds, catastrophe might have been avoided, but he was
convinced he was a better businessman than any of his associates, and
especially Tom Kirkman, who had been his original adviser. After all, Tom
had not been doing all that well recently. The Jackson fortune was still
considerable, but no one could deny that it had not thriven under Tom's
stewardship. He had ignored all his father-in-law's precepts, divested them
of much of their land and invested everything in cotton and the banks. Which
was fine, thought William, when the price of cotton was high, but cotton was
a commodity subject to market forces, and banks frequently failed.
Willing prey to his fears and unscrupulous developers, William invested far
too much money in new territories in the West, and bought thousands of
acres in California, sight unseen. When this land proved to be unusable,
unsellable desert, the Perkins fortune collapsed, and William with it. He
panicked, and sold everything he had at giveaway prices. He also sold his
wife's slaves. Becky was away in Atlanta attending some function, and,
knowing he didn't have much time, he called the auctioneer in one morning,
and by evening all the slaves but three were gone: the cook, the
housekeeper, and the gardener.
Becky was speechless with rage when she found out, and wept for her darling
darkies, and for herself. How could she live? How could she visit anyone of
quality now, bereft of attendants? How could she hold her head up in
public? She took to her room with a sick headache, and swore she would
never speak to her husband again. She never did. The money resulting from
the sale of the slaves was a useless, tiny flame quickly extinguished in
the ocean of William's disasters. Blinded by panic, he could see no
alternative but bankruptcy, and died of a bleeding ulcer the day after
Becky withdrew to her bedroom.
All this affected Becky's mind. Increasingly unstable since Lizzie's
marriage, she dwelt near the border of the insane, but the loss of money,
slaves, position, and husband in such quick succession persuaded her to
cross the dividing line and take
QUEEN 437
up residence in the comforting country of the deranged. Lizzie was
distraught, but Jass had been good to Becky, and built her a house so that
she might be in close proximity to her daughter, and had given Becky a
couple of slaves to look after her. She spent her days in a sweetly
remembered but illogically recalled past Above everything, she realized
how very much she had always adored her husband, and her loveliest memo-
ries were of William, who was waiting for her patiently, in another house
he was building somewhere not far away, and of her former slaves, who were
mysteriously visiting her husband, and would come for her one day,
carriage ready, to take her to him. In her more lucid moments, she
understood that William was dead, and she saw no reason for living, but
Fate was cruel to her, and would not remove her from her vale of grief.
She loved her daughter, but Lizzie had her own life as mistress of a