Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“It hasn’t that I’ve noticed.”

“I know.” He frowned. “Why doesn’t she like you? Did you do some- thing to her?”

“Not likely! After all, what would happen to me if I did something to her?”

“Yeah. But why doesn’t she like you?” “You’ll have to ask her.”

“She won’t tell me.” He looked up solemnly. “I keep thinking you’re going to go home—that somebody will come and tell me you and Kevin are gone. I don’t want you to go. But I don’t want you to get hurt here either.”

I said nothing.

“You be careful,” he said softly.

I nodded and left the room. Just as I reached the stairs, Tom Weylin came out of his bedroom.

“What are you doing up here?” he demanded.

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“Visiting Mister Rufus,” I said. “He asked to see me.” “You were reading to him!”

Now I knew how he happened to come out just in time to catch me. He

had been eavesdropping, for Godsake. What had he expected to hear? Or rather, what had he heard that he shouldn’t have? About Alice, perhaps. What would he make of that? For a moment my mind raced, searching for excuses, explanations. Then I realized I wouldn’t need them. I would have met him outside Rufus’s door if he had stayed long enough to hear about Alice. He had probably heard me addressing Rufus a little too familiarly. Nothing worse. I had deliberately not said anything damaging about Margaret because I thought her own attitude would damage her more in her son’s eyes than anything I could say. I made myself face Weylin calmly.

“Yes, I was reading to him,” I admitted. “He asked me to do that too. I think he was bored lying in there with nothing to do.”

“I didn’t ask you what you thought,” he said. I said nothing.

He walked me farther from Rufus’s door, then stopped and turned to look hard at me. His eyes went over me like a man sizing up a woman for sex, but I got no message of lust from him. His eyes, I noticed, not for the first time, were almost as pale as Kevin’s. Rufus and his mother had bright green eyes. I liked the green better, somehow.

“How old are you?” he asked. “Twenty-six, sir.”

“You say that like you’re sure.” “Yes, sir. I am.”

“What year were you born?”

“Seventeen ninety-three.” I had figured that out days ago thinking that it wasn’t a part of my personal history I should hesitate over if someone asked. At home, a person who hesitated over his birthdate was probably about to lie. As I spoke though, I realized that here, a person might hes- itate over his birthdate simply because he didn’t know it. Sarah didn’t know hers.

“Twenty-six then,” said Weylin. “How many children have you had?” “None.” I kept my face impassive, but I couldn’t keep myself from

wondering where these questions were leading.

“No children by now?” He frowned. “You must be barren then.”

I said nothing. I wasn’t about to explain anything to him. My fertility

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was none of his business, anyway.

He stared at me a little longer, making me angry and uncomfortable, but I concealed my feelings as well as I could.

“You like children though, don’t you?” he asked. “You like my boy.” “Yes, sir, I do.”

“Can you cipher too—along with your reading and writing?” “Yes, sir.”

“How’d you like to be the one to do the teaching?”

“Me?” I managed to frown … managed not to laugh aloud with relief. Tom Weylin wanted to buy me. In spite of all his warnings to Kevin of the dangers of owning educated, Northern-born slaves, he wanted to buy me. I pretended not to understand. “But that’s Mr. Franklin’s job.”

“Could be your job.” “Could it?”

“I could buy you. Then you’d live here instead of traveling around the country without enough to eat or a place to sleep.”

I lowered my eyes. “That’s for Mr. Franklin to say.” “I know it is, but how do you feel about it?”

“Well … no offense, Mr. Weylin, I’m glad we stopped here, and as I

said, I like your son. But I’d rather stay with Mr. Franklin.”

He gave me an unmistakable look of pity. “If you do, girl, you’ll live to regret it.” He turned and walked away.

I stared after him believing in spite of myself that he really felt sorry for me.

That night I told Kevin what had happened, and he wondered too.

“Be careful, Dana,” he said, unwittingly echoing Rufus. “Be as care- ful as you can.”

6

I was careful. As the days passed, I got into the habit of being careful. I played the slave, minded my manners probably more than I had to because I wasn’t sure what I could get away with. Not much, as it turned out.

Once I was called over to the slave cabins—the quarter—to watch

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Weylin punish a field hand for the crime of answering back. Weylin ordered the man stripped naked and tied to the trunk of a dead tree. As this was being done—by other slaves—Weylin stood whirling his whip and biting his thin lips. Suddenly, he brought the whip down across the slave’s back. The slave’s body jerked and strained against its ropes. I watched the whip for a moment wondering whether it was like the one Weylin had used on Rufus years before. If it was, I understood com- pletely why Margaret Weylin had taken the boy and fled. The whip was heavy and at least six feet long, and I wouldn’t have used it on anything living. It drew blood and screams at every blow. I watched and listened and longed to be away. But Weylin was making an example of the man. He had ordered all of us to watch the beating—all the slaves. Kevin was in the main house somewhere, probably not even aware of what was happening.

The whipping served its purpose as far as I was concerned. It scared me, made me wonder how long it would be before I made a mistake that would give someone reason to whip me. Or had I already made that mistake?

I had moved into Kevin’s room, after all. And though that would be perceived as Kevin’s doing, I could be made to suffer for it. The fact that the Weylins didn’t seem to notice my move gave me no real comfort. Their lives and mine were so separate that it might take them several days to realize that I had abandoned my place in the attic. I always got up before they did to get water and live coals from the cookhouse to start Kevin’s fire. Matches had apparently not been invented yet. Neither Sarah nor Rufus had ever heard of them.

By now, the manservant Weylin had assigned to Kevin ignored him completely, and Kevin and his room were left to me. It took us twice as long to get a fire started, and it took me longer to carry water up and down the stairs, but I didn’t care. The jobs I had assigned myself gave me legitimate reason for going in and out of Kevin’s room at all hours, and they kept me from being assigned more disagreeable work. Most impor- tant to me, though, they gave me a chance to preserve a little of 1976 amid the slaves and slaveholders.

After washing and watching Kevin bloody his face with the straight razor he had borrowed from Weylin, I would go down to help Sarah with breakfast. Whole mornings went by without my seeing either of the Weylins. At night, I helped clean up after supper and prepare for the next

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day. So, like Sarah and Carrie, I rose before the Weylins and went to bed after them. That gave me several days of peace before Margaret Weylin discovered that she had another reason to dislike me.

She cornered me one day as I swept the library. If she had walked in two minutes earlier, she would have caught me reading a book. “Where did you sleep last night?” she demanded in the strident, accusing voice she reserved for slaves.

I straightened to face her, rested my hands on the broom. How lovely it would have been to say, None of your business, bitch! Instead, I spoke softly, respectfully. “In Mr. Franklin’s room, ma’am.” I didn’t bother to lie because all the house servants knew. It might even have been one of them who alerted Margaret. So now what would happen?