Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“They’re the only clothes I have right now,” I said. “My master will buy me some better ones sooner or later.” Let it be Kevin’s fault that I was “dressed like a man.” It was probably easier for the people here to understand a master too poor or too stingy to buy me proper clothing than it would be for them to imagine a place where it was normal for women to wear pants.

As though to assure me that I had said the right thing, the girl gave me a look of pity, then took my hand and led me out to the cookhouse.

As we went, I took more notice of the house than I had before—more notice of the downstairs hall, anyway. Its walls were a pale green and it ran the length of the house. At the front, it was wide and bright with light from the windows beside and above the door. It was strewn with oriental rugs of different sizes. Near the front door, there was a wooden bench, a chair, and two small tables. Past the stairs the hall narrowed, and at its end there was a back door that we went through.

Outside was the cookhouse, a little white frame cottage not far behind the main house. I had read about outdoor kitchens and outdoor toilets. I hadn’t been looking forward to either. Now, though, the cookhouse

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looked like the friendliest place I’d seen since I arrived. Luke and Nigel were inside eating from wooden bowls with what looked like wooden spoons. And there were two younger children, a girl and boy, sitting on the floor eating with their fingers. I was glad to see them there because I’d read about kids their age being rounded up and fed from troughs like pigs. Not everywhere, apparently. At least, not here.

There was a stocky middle-aged woman stirring a kettle that hung over the fire in the fireplace. The fireplace itself filled one whole wall. It was made of brick and above it was a huge plank from which hung a few utensils. There were more utensils off to one side hanging from hooks on the wall. I stared at them and realized that I didn’t know the proper names of any of them. Even things as commonplace as that. I was in a different world.

The cook finished stirring her kettle and turned to look at me. She was as light-skinned as my mute guide—a handsome middle-aged woman, tall and heavy-set. Her expression was grim, her mouth turned down at the corners, but her voice was soft and low.

“Carrie,” she said. “Who’s this?” My guide looked at me.

“My name is Dana,” I said. “My master’s visiting here. Mrs. Weylin told me to come out for supper.”

“Mrs. Weylin?” The woman frowned at me.

“The red-haired woman—Rufus’s mother.” I didn’t quite catch myself in time to say Mister Rufus. I didn’t really see why I should have to say anything. How many Mrs. Weylins were there on the place anyway?

“Miss Margaret,” said the woman, and under her breath, “Bitch!” I stared at her in surprise thinking she meant me.

“Sarah!” Luke’s tone was cautioning. He couldn’t have heard what the cook said from where he was. Either she said it often, or he had read her lips. But at least now I understood that it was Mrs. Weylin—Miss Margaret—who was supposed to be the bitch.

The cook said nothing else. She got me a wooden bowl, filled it with something from a pot near the fire, and handed it to me with a wooden spoon.

Supper was corn meal mush. The cook saw that I was looking at it instead of eating it, and she misread my expression.

“That’s not enough?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s plenty!” I held my bowl protectively, fearful that she might

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give me more of the stuff. “Thank you.”

I sat down at the end of a large heavy table across from Nigel and Luke. I saw that they were eating the same mush, though theirs had milk on it. I considered asking for milk on mine, but I didn’t really think it would help.

Whatever was in the kettle smelled good enough to remind me that I hadn’t had breakfast, hadn’t had more than a few bites of dinner the night before. I was starving and Sarah was cooking meat—probably a stew. I took a bite of the mush and swallowed it without tasting it.

“We get better food later on after the white folks eat,” said Luke. “We get whatever they leave.”

Table scraps, I thought bitterly. Someone else’s leftovers. And, no doubt, if I was here long enough, I would eat them and be glad to get them. They had to be better than boiled meal. I spooned the mush into my mouth, quickly fanning away several large flies. Flies. This was an era of rampant disease. I wondered how clean our leftovers would be by the time they reached us.

“Say you was from New York?” asked Luke. “Yes.”

“Free state?”

“Yes,” I repeated. “That’s why I was brought here.” The words, the questions made me think of Alice and her mother. I looked at Luke’s broad face, wondering whether it would do any harm to ask about them. But how could I admit to knowing them—knowing them years ago— when I was supposed to be new here? Nigel knew I had been here before, but Sarah and Luke might not. It would be safer to wait—save my ques- tions for Rufus.

“People in New York talk like you?” asked Nigel. “Some do. Not all.”

“Dress like you?” asked Luke.

“No. I dress in what Master Kevin gives me to dress in.” I wished they’d stop asking questions. I didn’t want them to make me tell lies I might forget later. Best to keep my background as simple as possible.

The cook came over and looked at me, at my pants. She pinched up a little of the material, feeling it. “What cloth is this?” she asked.

Polyester double knit, I thought. But I shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shook her head and went back to her pot.

“You know,” I said to her back, “I think I agree with you about Miss

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Margaret.”

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She said nothing. The warmth I’d felt when I came into the room was turning out to be nothing more than the heat of the fire.

“Why you try to talk like white folks?” Nigel asked me.

“I don’t,” I said, surprised. “I mean, this is really the way I talk.” “More like white folks than some white folks.”

I shrugged, hunted through my mind for an acceptable explanation. “My mother taught school,” I said, “and …”

“A nigger teacher?”

I winced, nodded. “Free blacks can have schools. My mother talked the way I do. She taught me.”

“You’ll get into trouble,” he said. “Marse Tom already don’t like you. You talk too educated and you come from a free state.”

“Why should either of those things matter to him? I don’t belong to him.”

The boy smiled. “He don’t want no niggers ’round here talking better than him, putting freedom ideas in our heads.”

“Like we so dumb we need some stranger to make us think about free- dom,” muttered Luke.

I nodded, but I hoped they were wrong. I didn’t think I had said enough to Weylin for him to make that kind of judgment. I hoped he wasn’t going to make that kind of judgment. I wasn’t good at accents. I had deliberately decided not to try to assume one. But if that meant I was going to be in trouble every time I opened my mouth, my life here would be even worse than I had imagined.

“How can Marse Rufe see you before you get here?” Nigel asked.

I choked down a swallow of mush. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I wish to heaven he couldn’t!”

4

I stayed in the cookhouse when I finished eating because it was near the main house, and because I thought I could make it from the cook- house into the hall if I started to feel dizzy—just in case. Wherever Kevin was in the house, he would hear me if I called from the hallway.

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Luke and Nigel finished their meal and went to the fireplace to say something privately to Sarah. At that moment, Carrie, the mute, slipped me bread and a chunk of ham. I looked at it, then smiled at her gratefully. When Luke and Nigel took Sarah out of the room with them, I feasted on a shapeless sandwich. In the middle of it, I caught myself wondering about the ham, wondering how well it had been cooked. I tried to think of something else, but my mind was full of vaguely remembered horror stories of the diseases that ran wild during this time. Medicine was just a little better than witchcraft. Malaria came from bad air. Surgery was per- formed on struggling wide-awake patients. Germs were question marks even in the minds of many doctors. And people casually, unknowingly ingested all kinds of poorly preserved ill-cooked food that could make them sick or kill them.