Page 94 of Queen

But he would not relent. In his heart he believed that she would only get

  better when she wanted to get better, and he had to give her that will.

  "I wants you to be well an' happy," he said. "But if'n you cain't be

  well, I wants you to be happy, an' if'n you cain't be happy, I wants you

  to be well."

  The tiny light that Queen could see in the distance grew stronger. All

  sons of things that had never made sense before suddenly became clear to

  her.

  She didn't know how to be happy. No one had ever taught her. As a child

  she was expected to serve and obey, but no one ever cared about her

  happiness. She had been happy, briefly, in Decatur, but it was some other

  she, the white side that the world rejected, and she had lived a lie, so

  the happiness was a lie. She thought she'd been happy with the sisters

  in Huntsville, but when Abner was born she realized that the sisters

  didn't really care about her at all; they were using her for their own

  selfish needs. She tried to be happy with Davis, but he was too concerned

  with the pain of the world to be able to alleviate hers.

  All her life she'd been trying to work out where she belonged, all her

  life she had tried to fit in with what other people expected her to be,

  but no one had ever asked her what she wanted. No one had ever asked her

  if she was happy.

  And then she realized that wasn't true. One man had asked her that

  question.

  "I loves you with all my heart,'" Alec said.

  And she began to get better.

  "She be pleased to see you," Alec said to Simon, as they pulled up outside

  the institution. "She be better now you home. "

  It was the perfect opportunity for Simon to tell his father of his plans,

  but he could not do it until he had seen his mother. He looked at the

  ugly building where his mother was incarcerated, and shivered slightly,

  but his father would not take him inside.

  "'Tain't fittin'," he said. "'Tain't a good thing fo' a young man to see.

  "

  782 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  He arranged to have Queen meet her son in the garden. Simon waited

  patiently under a tree, and tried to avoid looking at the few inmates who

  were allowed outside to exercise. Their clothes were filthy, and their hair

  matted, and one of them talked soundlessly to someone only she could see,

  and another called on Jesus to deliver her. Simon felt pity for them, but

  could not imagine his mother in the company of these unfortunate souls.

  He saw Alec leading Queen to him. Her appearance shocked him, for she

  seemed so old and frail, and so unlike her old self in this dull garb. He

  wanted to snatch her up, and take her away from here, and never let her out

  of his sight, and protect her always. He moved quickly to her, and when she

  saw him, her eyes lighted up with joy, and she was, for a moment, herself

  again.

  "Oh, Ma," Simon cried.

  She hugged him hard, held on to him, and moaned a little with the love of

  him. Then she told him her secret.

  "I ain't mad," she said.

  Alec went and talked to the doctors, to discover Queen's progress, and to

  give her the chance to talk to her son. Queen and Simon walked together in

  the pretty garden, and he told her things that he thought might make her

  happy, silly, trivial things, and made her smile, and laugh. Then,

  carefully, he told her of his plans.

  He was going back to A & T, just for one semester. He had money saved from

  his summer job, and he would not have to do any part-time work to sustain

  himself. He could devote all his time and attention and energy to his

  studies. He believed he would get good grades, and wanted to prove to

  himself that he could. Just for one semester. Then he could come home to

  the farm, but he could not come back in failure.

  It was better than the best Christmas she could remember. It was what she

  wanted to hear from him, needed to hear from him, and it made her heart

  sing.

  "You can do it," she said, her eyes shining with pride. "It was meant to

  be."

  There was something else to tell her. He wasn't sure if now was the moment,

  but she was his ma, and she deserved to know. Just as Bertha had deserved

  to know the truth about

  A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 783

  Queen's condition, and he had told her, and she had responded with care,

  and affection, and concern. He had been very wrong to doubt that she

  would.

  "I've met a girl, Ma," he said,

  For a moment, he thought he'd done the wrong thing. Queen's eyes

  narrowed.

  "And what's her name?" Queen demanded. "What she call herself, this girl

  who's stealing my baby away from me?"

  "Bertha," Simon said meekly. "Bertha Palmer."

  Queen was silent, staring away from him, at something in the distance.

  Then Simon realized something odd. She was laughing. She turned to him,

  and she was laughing.

  "Not my baby?" she said, "Not my little baby boy?"

  He laughed with her. "Quite a big boy now, Ma," he said.

  It wasn't so hard for Queen to let Simon go. She'd had to let go of

  Abner, and that had pained her, but she had learned from it. And Abner

  had not tied to her; he still loved her, and was more attentive to her

  now, from far away, than ever he had been when he was home. So she let

  go of Simon, and all she prayed for was that he be happy. Because now she

  understood a simple truth. There was one man who loved her more than

  anyone else in the world, and to expect more love than that from life is

  simple greed.

  Simon visited her every day for the week he was in Savannah, and on the

  last day when he went to say good-bye, she hugged him and wished him

  Godspeed and good luck.

  He went back to Greensboro, and settled to his studies. He wrote to Bertha

  regularly, and gave the good news of his progress, and of his excellent

  grades. Then one day he was summoned to the president's office. It made

  him nervous, because he could not imagine what he had done wrong.

  But the president was fulsome in praise of his work, and gave him some

  extraordinary news. A certain Mr. Boyce had written to ask the cost of

  one full year's tuition, and then sent a check. It covered everything:

  tuition, dormitory, meals, and books. Simon was speechless. Why had

  someone he didn't know done this extraordinary thing? He hardly heard

  what the president said after that, because all the dark clouds had

  lifted from his horizon, and in his future he saw nothing but unbounded

  joy.

  784 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

  When he left the president's office, he walked across the lawn trying to

  work out who his benefactor was.

  Then the penny-or rather, the five dollars-dropped, and he remembered a

  courtly, elderly man on a train, whose wife couldn't sleep.

  He let out a whoop of exultation that shocked the students near him, and

  leaped several feet into the air.

  At about t
he same time, Alec drove his buggy to the institution to bring

  Queen home. A nurse escorted her from the forbidding building and

  delivered her to her husband. Alec put his arms around her, and hugged her

  hard, then helped her into the buggy. They didn't speak very much on the

  journey home, because they never spoke very much about the things that

  were important.

  It was a hot and dusty day, and when they got to the shack all was quiet.

  Queen stared at the little house, loving it, loving being home.

  "Dunno where's the family," Alec wondered. "They said they'd be here, to

  meet you."

  But Queen shook her head.

  "It don't matter," she said. "This is all I need."

  He helped her down, and held her arm, and took her into the quiet house.

  Inside, as if from nowhere, there was a burst of color, and noise, and

  people. Streamers flew around her, and all her family were there to

  welcome her. Minnie and Julie with their husbands and children, and

  Freeland with his wife and sons. George was there, with his family, and

  Abner, who had tired of city life, and had come home for good.

  Queen stood among them all, surrounded by their love, and could not keep

  from crying.

  That night she sat with Alec on the porch, rocking in their chairs, and

  puffing on their pipes, as if she had never been away. They laughed about

  the day, and gossiped about the family, and Queen thanked him for all he

  had done for her.

  ... Tain't nuttin'," he said.

  But it was something, she wanted to tell him, it was something of

  enormous importance to her, but she did not know how to say it. She

  realized something that shocked her. In all their years together, she had

  never actually told him how much

  A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 785

  she loved him. She had always assumed that he knew, but it was thoughtless

  to make such an assumption. She sought for a way to tell him what was in

  her heart, and an odd memory burst into her mind.

  "Years ago," she said, "when I was a little girl, I lived in the big

  house, my pappy's house, with my half brother William. We slept in the

  same room, only he had a big four-poster, and I had a pallet at the foot

  of his bed. We'd lie in bed and dream of our futures."

  She was lost in memory.

  "I always said that I was going to marry a prince on a white horse, and

  William would laugh at me. 'Who's going to marry an itty-bitty slave girl

  like you, QueenT he'd say."

  She looked at Alec, and saw his gray hair, and knew that her own was at

  least as gray, and her face lined, and her figure full, and that they had

  grown old together. But that didn't matter, because in his company she

  was a girl again, dreaming of the man she would marry, and he was a young

  ferryman, who was kind to her.

  "He shouldn't have laughed, because he was wrong. The only thing is, how

  could I possibly have known that when I did find my prince, he wouldn't

  be on a white horse. He'd be riding on a ferryboat, across a mighty

  river."

  Alec nodded gently. They sat together in silence, puffing on their pipes

  and rocking in their chairs. Then he put out his hand to her. She reached

  to him, and put her hand in his, and he grasped it hard, and when he

  spoke, his voice was gruff with love.

  "That's all right, then," he said.

  92

  Simon graduated from A & T College, and when World War I came, he enlisted

  in the U. S. Army. He was sent to France, where, in the Argonne Forest,

  shortly before the end of the war, he was gassed. After treatment in a

  hospital overseas, he was returned home and mustered out of the army.

  He received his master's degree at Cornell University, and went on to have

  an outstanding career as Dean of Agriculture at AM & N College, in

  Arkansas.

  He married Bertha Palmer, and they had three sons. After Bertha's death,

  Simon was married again, to Zeona Hatcher, and they had a daughter.

  The grandchildren of Queen Haley by her son Simon were:

  George, who became a lawyer.

  Julius, who became an architect.

  Lois, who taught music.

  And Alex Haley, who became a writer.

  786

  Afterword

  Alex was often asked how much of Roots was fact and how much fiction. I

  have been asked the same question, and my answer is similar to his,

  although less emphatic.

  Most of the lineage statements in this book can be documented, except the

  most critical one. I do not have in my possession written evidence that

  James Jackson, Jr., fathered Queen, and I think it is unlikely that such

  evidence exists. Queen believed it. Alex believed it. It was accepted,

  in my presence, by several of the white descendants of the Jackson

  family. Alex was welcomed by them as a cousin, and several of them

  journeyed from Alabama to his farm in Tennessee to give him a memento of

  The Forks of Cypress, and to welcome him, officially, into the family.

  There is a major genealogical error, however, concerning the Jackson

  family, and to them I apologize. In all my discussions with Alex, my

  concern was for Queen and her direct lineage, and the early research

  provided to me suggested that James Jackson, Jr. ("Jass"), was the

  firstborn son of James and Sally Jackson. After Alex's death, when I

  began work on the book, I uncovered later research that documented the

  birth of an earlier son, Andrew Jackson Jackson ("A.J."). Obviously, Alex

  was aware of this, but none of his notes for the novel gave me any

  indication of how he intended to incorporate A.J: into the story. In

  trying to find a path through the clutter of this nineteenth-century

  family, and because A.J. hardly affected Queen's life, I have invented

  an untimely death for him. In fact, he lived to a good age.

  Beyond that, almost all the people are where they should be almost all

  the time, although I have given a couple more years of life to Pocahontas

  Perkins than she actually enjoyed, and her daughter, Lizzie, is bom a tad

  earlier than in life.

  787

  788 AFTERWORD

  Uncle Henry in Ireland and Uncle Hugh in Philadelphia have been combined

  into one character.

  I doubt that young James was ever called Jass, but as he, his father, and

  his grandfather were all called James Jackson, I thought some clarifying

  nickname was necessary.

  I have also been asked how much of the book was written by Alex and how

  much by me, and I find this impossible to quantify. I have a

  seven-hundred-page outline provided by Alex, boxes and boxes of his

  research are available to me, and some finished pages for the book, but

  my major resource was Alex himself. His head was full of the stories that

  constitute this work, and I spent two of the happiest and most informa-

  tive years of my life listening to those stories and debating them with

  him. Some scenes we wrote together, around the kitchen
table at his farm,

  on a banana boat to Ecuador, and during journeys of exploration to the

  South.

  I am aware that some historians dispute some of Alex's conclusions. Given

  certain constraints of time, I have done my utmost, and have employed

  staff, to verify his research. In the mass of reference works we have

  consulted, some few stand out: the several volumes of A People's History

  by Page Smith; Reconstruction by Eric Foner; Michael Paul Rogin's Fathers

  and Children, and specifically for Andrew Jackson, The Border Captain by

  Marquis James. The diaries of Mary Chestnut were invaluable for

  confin-nations of the society's attitude to relationships such as that

  of Jass and Easter, as were several reference works about Thomas

  Jefferson and his thirty-nineyear relationship with his slave mistress,

  Sally Hernings.

  I am keenly aware that this is not the book Alex would have written. Like

  Roots, this was to have been a personal history of his family, and he

  told it to me as such. But it is not my history, my family, or my people,

  black or white. When Alex died, I had to move into new and unfamiliar

  territories. Not a historian, I had to piece this history together, and

  it is a period of high definition for many Americans. I am sure some will

  be offended by my assumptions, and to those offended I can only shrug my

  shoulders and say sorry.

  Alex wrote the following statement about his intentions:

  "This book will convey visceral America. For our land of immigrants is

  a testimonial to the merging of the cultures of the world, and of their

  bloodlines."

  AFTERWORD 789

  I am not American, but for me, the overriding achievement of Roots was

  as a spectacular metaphor for the travails of every black family in this

  country and their journey through history. In that sense Queen is also

  a metaphor, a representative woman for the thousands upon thousands of

  children of the plantation who were dispossessed of their families and

  their heritage. I can only be grateful for this extraordinary opportunity

  to pass on what Alex left behind, and grieve with all my heart the

  circumstance that brought it about.

 


 

  Alex Haley, Queen

  (Series: # )

 

 


 

 
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