Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“That’s what I thought when I accepted.” “And what about me?”

“You?”

“Weylin didn’t say anything about me?”

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“No. Why should he? If I stay here, he knows you stay too.”

“Yes.” I smiled. “You’re right. If you didn’t remember me in your bar- gaining, why should he? I’ll bet he won’t forget me though when he has work that needs to be done.”

“Wait a minute, you don’t have to work for him. You’re not supposed to belong to him.”

“No, but I’m here. And I’m supposed to be a slave. What’s a slave for, but to work? Believe me, he’ll find something for me to do—or he would if I didn’t plan to find my own work before he gets around to me.”

He frowned. “You want to work?”

“I want to … I have to make a place for myself here. That means work. I think everyone here, black and white, will resent me if I don’t work. And I need friends. I need all the friends I can make here, Kevin. You might not be with me when I come here again. If I come here again.”

“And unless that kid gets a lot more careful, you will come here again.”

I sighed. “It looks that way.”

“I hate to think of your working for these people.” He shook his head. “I hate to think of you playing the part of a slave at all.”

“We knew I’d have to do it.” He said nothing.

“Call me away from them now and then, Kevin. Just to remind them that whatever I am, they don’t own me … yet.”

He shook his head again angrily in what looked like a refusal, but I

knew he’d do it.

“What lies did you tell Weylin about us?” I asked him. “The way peo- ple ask questions around here, we’d better make sure we’re both telling the same story.”

For several seconds, he said nothing. “Kevin?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to be a writer from New York,” he said finally. “God help us if we meet any New Yorkers. I’m traveling through the South doing research for a book. I have no money because I drank with the wrong people a few days ago and was robbed. All I have left is you. I bought you before I was robbed because you could read and write. I thought you could help me in my work as well as be of use otherwise.”

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“Did he believe that?”

KINDRED

“It’s possible that he did. He was already pretty sure you could read and write. That’s one reason he seemed so suspicious and mistrustful. Educated slaves aren’t popular around here.”

I shrugged. “So Nigel has been telling me.”

“Weylin doesn’t like the way you talk. I don’t think he’s had much education himself, and he resents you. I don’t think he’ll bother you—I wouldn’t stay here if I did. But keep out of his way as much as you can.” “Gladly. I plan to fit myself into the cookhouse if I can. I’m going to

tell Sarah you want me to learn how to cook for you.”

He gave a short laugh. “I’d better tell you the rest of the story I told Weylin. If Sarah hears it all, she might teach you how to put a little poi- son in my food.”

I think I jumped.

“Weylin was warning me that it was dangerous to keep a slave like you—educated, maybe kidnapped from a free state—as far north as this. He said I ought to sell you to some trader heading for Georgia or Louisiana before you ran away and I lost my investment. That gave me the idea to tell him I planned to sell you in Louisiana because that was where my journey ended—and I’d heard I could make a nice profit on you down there.

“That seemed to please him and he told me I was right—prices were better in Louisiana if I could hold on to you until I got you there. So I said educated or not, you weren’t likely to run away from me because I’d promised to take you back to New York with me and set you free. I told him you didn’t really want to leave me right now anyway. He got the idea.”

“You make yourself sound disgusting.”

“I know. I think I was trying to at the end—trying to see whether any- thing I did to you could make me someone he wouldn’t want anywhere near his kid. I think he did cool a little toward me when I said I’d prom- ised you freedom, but he didn’t say anything.”

“What were you trying to do? Lose the job you’d just gotten?”

“No, but while I was talking to him, all I could think was that you might be coming back here alone someday. I kept trying to find the humanity in him to reassure myself that you would be all right.”

“Oh, he’s human enough. If he were of a little higher social class, he might even have been disgusted enough with your bragging not to want

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you around. But he wouldn’t have had the right to stop you from betray- ing me. I’m your private property. He’d respect that.”

“You call that human? I’m going to do all I can to see that you never come here alone again.”

I leaned back against the tree, watching him. “Just in case I do, Kevin, let’s take out some insurance.”

“What?”

“Let me help you with Rufus as much as I can. Let’s see what we can do to keep him from growing up into a red-haired version of his father.”

5

But for three days I didn’t see Rufus. Nor did anything happen to bring on the dizziness that would tell me I was going home at last. I helped Sarah as well as I could. She seemed to warm up to me a little and she was patient with my ignorance of cooking. She taught me and saw to it that I ate better. No more corn meal mush once she realized I didn’t like it. (“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked me.) Under her direc- tion, I spent God knows how long beating biscuit dough with a hatchet on a well-worn tree stump. (“Not so hard! You ain’t driving nails. Regu- lar, like this …” ) I cleaned and plucked a chicken, prepared vegetables, kneaded bread dough, and when Sarah was weary of me, helped Carrie and the other house servants with their work. I kept Kevin’s room clean. I brought him hot water to wash and shave with, and I washed in his room. It was the only place I could go for privacy. I kept my canvas bag there and went there to avoid Margaret Weylin when she came rubbing her fingers over dustless furniture and looking under rugs on well-swept floors. Differences be damned, I did know how to sweep and dust no matter what century it was. Margaret Weylin complained because she couldn’t find anything to complain about. That, she made painfully clear to me the day she threw scalding hot coffee at me, screaming that I had brought it to her cold.

So I hid from her in Kevin’s room. It was my refuge. But it was not my sleeping place.

82 KINDRED

I had been given sleeping space in the attic where most of the house

servants slept. It apparently never occurred to anyone that I should sleep in Kevin’s room. Weylin knew what kind of relationship Kevin was sup- posed to have with me, and he made it clear that he didn’t care. But our sleeping arrangement told us that he expected discretion—or we assumed it did. We co-operated for three days. On the fourth day, Kevin caught me on my way out to the cookhouse and took me to the oak tree again.

“Are you having trouble with Margaret Weylin?” he asked. “Nothing I can’t handle,” I said, surprised. “Why?”

“I heard a couple of the house servants talking, just saying vaguely that there was trouble. I thought I should find out for sure.”

I shrugged, said, “I think she resents me because Rufus likes me. She probably doesn’t want to share her son with anyone. Heaven help him when he gets a little older and tries to break away. Also, I don’t think Margaret likes educated slaves any better than her husband does.”

“I see. I was right about him, by the way. He can barely read and write. And she’s not much better.” He turned to face me squarely. “Did she throw a pot of hot coffee on you?”