Butler, Octavia - Wild Seed

“If my children show any signs of growing as old as I am, they may do as they please.”

“They will anyway.”

“But without you to guide them, Doro. Without you to make them animals. What would my son be in your hands? Another Thomas? You are going everywhere tending ten different settlements, twenty, and not giving enough of yourself to any of them. I am staying here looking after my family and offering to let your children marry mine. And if the offspring are strange and hard to handle, I will handle them. I will take care of them. They need not live alone in the woods and drink too much and neglect their bodies until they are nearly dead.”

To her surprise, he hugged her very much as Luisa had, and he laughed. He took her arm and walked her over to the slave quarters, still laughing. He quieted though as he pushed open a random door and peered into one of the neat, sturdy cabins. There was a large brick fireplace with a bake kettle down amid the nearly dead coals.

Someone’s supper bread. There was a large bed in one corner and a trundle bed beneath. There were a table and four chairs all of which looked homemade, but adequate. There was a cradle that also looked homemade—and much used. There were a wood box and a water bucket with its gourd dipper. There were bunches of herbs and ears of corn hung from the ceiling to dry and cooking utensils over and alongside the fireplace. Overall, the cabin gave the impression of being a plain but comfortable place to live.

“Is it enough?” Anyanwu asked.

“I have several people, black and white, who don’t live this well.”

“I don’t.”

He tried to draw her into the cabin toward the chairs or the bed—she did not know which—but she held back.

“This is someone else’s home,” she said. “We can go back into the house if you like.”

“No. Later, perhaps.” He put an arm around her waist. “You must feed me again and find us another earthen couch to lie on.”

And hear you threaten my children again,she thought.

As though in answer, he said: “And I must tell you why I laughed. It isn’t because your offer doesn’t please me, Anyanwu; it does. But you have no idea what kinds of creatures you are volunteering to care for.”

Didn’t she? Hadn’t she seen them in Wheatley?

“I’m going to bring you some of your own descendants,” Doro said. “I think they will surprise you. I’ve done a great deal of work with them since Nweke. I think you won’t be wanting to care for them or their children for long.”

“Why? What new thing is wrong with them?”

“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps your influence is just what they need. On the other hand, perhaps they will disrupt the family you’ve made for yourself here as nothing else could. Will you still have them?”

“Doro, how can I know? You haven’t told me anything.”

Her hair was loose and short and rounded as it had been when he first styled it for her. Now he put his hands on either side of it, pressing it to her head. “Sun Woman, either you will accept my people in this way that you have defined or you will come with me, taking mates when and where I command, or you will give me your children. One way or another, you will serve me. What is your choice?”

Yes,she thought bitterly.Now the threats. “Bring me my grandchildren,” she said. “Even though they have never seen me, they will remember me. Their bodies will remember me down to the smallest structures of their flesh. You cannot know how well people’s bodies remember their ancestors.”

“You will teach me,” he said. “You seem to have learned a great deal since I saw you last. I’ve been breeding people nearly all my life and I still don’t know why some things work and others don’t, or why a thing will work only some of the time even with the same couple. You will teach me.”

“You will not harm my people?” she asked, watching him carefully.

“What do they know about me?”

“Everything. I thought if you ever found us, there wouldn’t be time for me to explain the danger.”

“Tell them to obey me.”

She winced as though in pain and looked away. “You cannot always take everything,” she said. “Or just take my life. What is the good of living on and on and having nothing?”

There was silence for a moment. “Did they obey Denice?” he asked finally. “Or Mgbada?”

“Sometimes. They are a very independent people.”

“But they obey you.”

“Yes.”

“Then tell them to obey me. If you don’t, I’ll have to tell them myself—in whichever way they understand.”

“Don’t hurt them!”

He shrugged. “If they obey me, I won’t.”

He was making a new Wheatley. He had settlements everywhere, families everywhere. She had only one, and he was taking it. He had taken her from one people and driven her from another, and now, he was casually reaching out to strip her of a third. And she was wrong. She could live on and on and have nothing. She would. He would see to it.

CHAPTER 12

Anyanwu had never watched a group like her own break apart. She did not know whether there had ever before been a group like her own. Certainly, once Doro began to spend time at the plantation, exercising his authority as he chose while Anyanwu stood by and said nothing, the character of the group began to change. When he brought Joseph Toler as husband for one of Anyanwu’s daughters, the young man changed the group more by refusing to do work of any kind. His foster parents had pampered him, allowed him to spend his time drinking and gambling and bedding young women. But he was a beautiful young man—honey-colored with curly black hair, tall and slender. Anyanwu’s daughter Margaret Nneka was fascinated by him. She accepted him very quickly. Few other people on the plantation accepted him at all. He was not doing his share of the work, yet he could not be fired and sent away. He could, however, make a great deal of trouble. He had been on the plantation for only a few weeks when he went too far and lost a fist fight with Anyanwu’s son Stephen.

Anyanwu was alone when Stephen came to tell her what had happened. She had just come from treating a four-year-old who had wandered down to the bayou and surprised a water moccasin. She had been able to manufacture within her own body a medicine to counter the poison easily, since one of the first things she had done on settling in Louisiana was allow herself to be bitten by such a snake. By now, countering the poison was almost second nature to her. She did like to have a meal afterward, though; thus Stephen, bruised and disheveled, found her in the dining room eating.

“You’ve got to get rid of that lazy, worthless bastard,” he said.

Anyanwu sighed. There was no need to ask who the boy meant. “What has he done?”

“Tried to rape Helen.”

Anyanwu dropped the piece of cornbread she had been about to bite. Helen was her youngest daughter—eleven years old. “He what!”

“I caught them in the Duran cabin. He was tearing her clothes off.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes. She’s in her room.”

Anyanwu stood up. “I’ll see her in a little while, then. Where is he?”

“Lying in front of the Duran cabin.”

She went out, not knowing whether she was going to give the young man another beating or help him if Stephen had hurt him seriously. But what kind of animal was he to try to rape a child? How could Anyanwu possibly tolerate him here after this? Doro would have to take him away, breeding be damned.

The young man was not beautiful when Anyanwu found him. He was half again as large as Stephen and strong in spite of his indolence, but Stephen had inherited much of Anyanwu’s strength. And he knew how to administer a good beating, even with his tender, newly finished arms and hands.