Butler, Octavia - Kindred

strode up the steps to the house. Kevin followed him.

“You watch out,” said the black man softly as I started after them. I looked at him, surprised, not sure he was talking to me. He was. “Marse Tom can turn mean mighty quick,” he said. “So can the boy,

now that he’s growing up. Your face looks like maybe you had enough white folks’ meanness for a while.”

I nodded. “I have, all right. Thanks for the warning.”

Nigel had come to stand next to the man, and I realized as I spoke that the two looked much alike, the boy a smaller replica of the man. Father and son, probably. They resembled each other more than Rufus and Tom Weylin did. As I hurried up the steps and into the house, I thought of Rufus and his father, of Rufus becoming his father. It would happen some day in at least one way. Someday Rufus would own the plantation. Someday, he would be the slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins. The boy was literally growing up as I watched—growing up because I watched and because I helped to keep him safe. I was the worst possible guardian for him—a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that consid- ered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come. I might even be making things easier for Alice.

Now, I followed Weylin up the stairs to a bedroom—not the same one Rufus had occupied on my last trip. The bed was bigger, its full canopy and draperies blue instead of green. The room itself was bigger. Weylin dumped Rufus onto the bed, ignoring the boy’s cries of pain. It did not look as though Weylin was trying to hurt Rufus. He just didn’t seem to pay any attention to how he handled the boy—as though he didn’t care.

Then, as Weylin was leading Kevin out of the room, a red-haired woman hurried in.

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“Where is he?” she demanded breathlessly. “What happened?” Rufus’s mother. I remembered her. She pushed her way into the room

just as I was putting Rufus’s pillow under his head.

“What are you doing to him?” she cried. “Leave him alone!” She tried to pull me away from her son. She had only one reaction when Rufus was in trouble. One wrong reaction.

Fortunately for both of us, Weylin reached her before I forgot my- self and pushed her away from me. He caught her, held her, spoke to her quietly.

“Margaret, now listen. The boy has a broken leg, that’s all. There’s nothing you can do for a broken leg. I’ve already sent for the doctor.”

Margaret Weylin seemed to calm down a little. She stared at me. “What’s she doing here?”

“She belongs to Mr. Kevin Franklin here.” Weylin waved a hand pre- senting Kevin who, to my surprise, bowed slightly to the woman. “Mr. Franklin is the one who found Rufus hurt,” Weylin continued. He shrugged. “Rufus wanted the girl to stay with him. Can’t do any harm.” He turned and walked away. Kevin followed him reluctantly.

The woman may have been listening as her husband spoke, but she didn’t look as though she was. She was still staring at me, frowning at me as though she was trying to remember where she’d seen me before. The years hadn’t changed her much, and, of course, they hadn’t changed me at all. But I didn’t expect her to remember. Her glimpse of me had been too brief, and her mind had been on other things.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said.

Hell! “Yes, ma’am, you may have.” I looked at Rufus and saw that he was watching us.

“Mama?” he said softly.

The accusing stare vanished, and the woman turned quickly to attend him. “My poor baby,” she murmured, cradling his head in her hands. “Seems like everything happens to you, doesn’t it? A broken leg!” She looked close to tears. And there was Rufus, swung from his father’s indifference to his mother’s sugary concern. I wondered whether he was too used to the contrast to find it dizzying.

“Mama, can I have some water?” he asked.

The woman turned to look at me as though I had offended her. “Can’t you hear? Get him some water!”

“Yes, ma’am. Where shall I get it?”

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She made a sound of disgust and rushed toward me. Or at least I

thought she was rushing toward me. When I jumped out of her way, she kept right on going through the door that I had been standing in front of.

I looked after her and shook my head. Then I took the chair that was near the fireplace and put it beside Rufus’s bed. I sat down and Rufus looked up at me solemnly.

“Did you ever break your leg?” he asked. “No. I broke my wrist once, though.” “When they fixed it, did it hurt much?”

I drew a deep breath. “Yes.” “I’m scared.”

“So was I,” I said remembering. “But … Rufe, it won’t take long. And when the doctor is finished, the worst will be over.”

“Won’t it still hurt after?”

“For a while. But it will heal. If you stay off it and give it a chance, it will heal.”

Margaret Weylin rushed back into the room with water for Rufus and more hostility for me than I could see any reason for.

“You’re to go out to the cookhouse and get some supper!” she told me as I got out of her way. But she made it sound as though she were say- ing, “You’re to go straight to hell!” There was something about me that these people didn’t like—except for Rufus. It wasn’t just racial. They were used to black people. Maybe I could get Kevin to find out what it was.

“Mama, can’t she stay?” asked Rufus.

The woman threw me a dirty look, then turned gentler eyes on her son. “She can come back later,” she told him. “Your father wants her down- stairs now.”

More likely, it was his mother who wanted me downstairs now, and possibly for no more substantial reason than that her son liked me. She gave me another look, and I left the room. The woman would have made me uncomfortable even if she’d liked me. She was too much nervous energy compacted into too small a container. I didn’t want to be around when she exploded. But at least she loved Rufus. And he must have been used to her fussing over him. He hadn’t seemed to mind.

I found myself in a wide hallway. I could see the stairs a few feet away and I started toward them. Just then, a young black girl in a long blue dress came out of a door at the other end of the hall. She came toward

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me, staring at me with open curiosity. She wore a blue scarf on her head and she tugged at it as she came toward me.

“Could you tell me where the cookhouse is, please?” I said when she was near enough. She seemed a safer person to ask than Margaret Weylin.

Her eyes opened a little wider and she continued to stare at me. No doubt I sounded as strange to her as I looked.

“The cookhouse?” I said.

She looked me over once more, then started down the stairs without a word. I hesitated, finally followed her because I didn’t know what else to do. She was a light-skinned girl no older than fourteen or fifteen. She kept looking back at me, frowning. Once she stopped and turned to face me, her hand tugging absently at her scarf, then moving lower to cover her mouth, and finally dropping to her side again. She looked so frus- trated that I realized something was wrong.

“Can you talk?” I asked.

She sighed, shook her head.

“But you can hear and understand.”

She nodded, then plucked at my blouse, at my pants. She frowned at me. Was that the problem, then—hers and the Weylins’?