Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“In a way,” said Kevin. “She’s my wife.” “Wife?” Rufus squealed.

I sighed. “Kevin, I think we’d better demote me. In this time …” “Niggers can’t marry white people!” said Rufus.

I laid a hand on Kevin’s arm just in time to stop him from saying what- ever he would have said. The look on his face was enough to tell me he

should keep quiet.

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“The boy learned to talk that way from his mother,” I said softly. “And from his father, and probably from the slaves themselves.”

“Learned to talk what way?” asked Rufus.

“About niggers,” I said. “I don’t like that word, remember? Try call- ing me black or Negro or even colored.”

“What’s the use of saying all that? And how can you be married to him?”

“Rufe, how’d you like people to call you white trash when they talk to you?”

“What?” He started up angrily, forgetting his leg, then fell back. “I am not trash!” he whispered. “You damn black …”

“Hush, Rufe.” I put my hand on his shoulder to quiet him. Apparently I’d hit the nerve I’d aimed at. “I didn’t say you were trash. I said how’d you like to be called trash. I see you don’t like it. I don’t like being called nigger either.”

He lay silent, frowning at me as though I were speaking a foreign lan- guage. Maybe I was.

“Where we come from,” I said, “it’s vulgar and insulting for whites to call blacks niggers. Also, where we come from, whites and blacks can marry.”

“But it’s against the law.”

“It is here. But it isn’t where we come from.” “Where do you come from?”

I looked at Kevin.

“You asked for it,” he said. “You want to try telling him?” He shook his head. “No point.”

“Not for you, maybe. But for me …” I thought for a moment trying to find the right words. “This boy and I are liable to have a long association whether we like it or not. I want him to know.”

“Good luck.”

“Where do you come from?” repeated Rufus. “You sure don’t talk like anybody I ever heard.”

I frowned, thought, and finally shook my head. “Rufe, I want to tell you, but you probably won’t understand. We don’t understand ourselves, really.”

“I already don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t know how I can see you when you’re not here, or how you get here, or anything. My leg hurts so

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much I can’t even think about it.”

“Let’s wait then. When you feel better …”

“When I feel better, maybe you’ll be gone. Dana, tell me!”

“All right, I’ll try. Have you ever heard of a place called California?” “Yeah. Mama’s cousin went there on a ship.”

Luck. “Well, that’s where we’re from. California. But … it’s not the California your cousin went to. We’re from a California that doesn’t exist yet, Rufus. California of nineteen seventy-six.”

“What’s that?”

“I mean we come from a different time as well as a different place. I

told you it was hard to understand.” “But what’s nineteen seventy-six?”

“That’s the year. That’s what year it is for us when we’re at home.” “But it’s eighteen nineteen. It’s eighteen nineteen everywhere. You’re

talking crazy.”

“No doubt. This is a crazy thing that’s happened to us. But I’m telling you the truth. We come from a future time and place. I don’t know how we get here. We don’t want to come. We don’t belong here. But when you’re in trouble, somehow you reach me, call me, and I come— although as you can see now, I can’t always help you.” I could have told him about our blood relationship. Maybe I would if I saw him again when he was older. For now, though, I had confused him enough.

“This is crazy stuff,” he repeated. He looked at Kevin. “You tell me. Are you from California?”

Kevin nodded. “Yes.”

“Then are you Spanish? California is Spanish.”

“It is now, but it will be part of the United States eventually, just like

Maryland or Pennsylvania.” “When?”

“It will become a state in eighteen fifty.”

“But it’s only eighteen nineteen. How could you know …?” He broke off, looked from Kevin to me in confusion. “This isn’t real,” he said. “You’re making it all up.”

“It’s real,” said Kevin quietly. “But how could it be?”

“We don’t know. But it is.”

He thought for a while looking from one to the other of us. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

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Kevin made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I don’t blame you.”

I shrugged. “All right, Rufe. I wanted you to know the truth, but I can’t blame you for not being able to accept it either.”

“Nineteen seventy-six,” said the boy slowly. He shook his head and closed his eyes. I wondered why I had bothered to try to convince him. After all, how accepting would I be if I met a man who claimed to be from eighteen nineteen—or two thousand nineteen, for that matter. Time travel was science fiction in nineteen seventy-six. In eighteen nineteen— Rufus was right—it was sheer insanity. No one but a child would even have listened to Kevin and me talk about it.

“If you know California’s going to be a state,” said Rufus, “you must know some other things that are going to happen.”

“We do,” I admitted. “Some things. Not very much. We’re not histo- rians.”

“But you ought to know everything if it already happened in your time.”

“How much do you know about seventeen nineteen, Rufe?” He stared at me blankly.

“People don’t learn everything about the times that came before them,” I said. “Why should they?”

He sighed. “Tell me something, Dana. I’m trying to believe you.”

I dug back into the American history that I had learned both in and out of school. “Well, if this is eighteen nineteen, the President is James Monroe, right?”

“Yeah.”

“The next President will be John Quincy Adams.” “When?”

I frowned, calling back more of the list of Presidents I had memorized for no particular reason when I was in school. “In eighteen twenty-four. Monroe had—will have—two terms.”

“What else?”

I looked at Kevin.

He shrugged. “All I can think of is something I got from those books we looked through last night. In eighteen twenty, the Missouri Compro- mise opened the way for Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state and Maine to come in as a free state. Do you have any idea what I’m talk- ing about, Rufus?”

“No, sir.”

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“I didn’t think so. Have you got any money?” “Money? Me? No.”

“Well, you’ve seen money, haven’t you?” “Yes, sir.”

“Coins should have the year they were made stamped on them, even

now.”

“They do.”

Kevin reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of change. He held it out to Rufus and Rufus picked out a few coins. “Nineteen sixty- five,” he read, “nineteen sixty-seven, nineteen seventy-one, nineteen sev- enty. None of them say nineteen seventy-six.”

“None of them say eighteen-anything either,” said Kevin. “But here.” He picked out a bicentennial quarter and handed it to Rufus.

“Seventeen seventy-six, nineteen seventy-six,” the boy read. “Two dates.”

“The country’s two hundred years old in nineteen seventy-six,” said Kevin. “Some of the money was changed to commemorate the anniver- sary. Are you convinced?”

“Well, I guess you could have made these yourself.”

Kevin took back his money. “You might not know about Missouri, kid,” he said wearily. “But you’d have made a good Missourian.”