Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“Maybe.” I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But I can’t close my eyes.”

Kevin frowned thoughtfully. “It’s surprising to me that there’s so little to see. Weylin doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what his people do, but the work gets done.”

“You think he doesn’t pay attention. Nobody calls you out to see the whippings.”

“How many whippings?”

“One that I’ve seen. One too goddamn many!”

“One is too many, yes, but still, this place isn’t what I would have imagined. No overseer. No more work than the people can manage …”

“… no decent housing,” I cut in. “Dirt floors to sleep on, food so inad- equate they’d all be sick if they didn’t keep gardens in what’s supposed to be their leisure time and steal from the cookhouse when Sarah lets them. And no rights and the possibility of being mistreated or sold away from their families for any reason—or no reason. Kevin, you don’t have to beat people to treat them brutally.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’m not minimizing the wrong that’s being done here. I just …”

“Yes you are. You don’t mean to be, but you are.” I sat down against a tall pine tree, pulling him down beside me. We were in the woods now. Not far to one side of us was a group of Weylin’s slaves who were cut-

THE F ALL 101

ting down trees. We could hear them, but we couldn’t see them. I assumed that meant they couldn’t see us either—or hear us over the dis- tance and their own noise. I spoke to Kevin again.

“You might be able to go through this whole experience as an ob- server,” I said. “I can understand that because most of the time, I’m still an observer. It’s protection. It’s nineteen seventy-six shielding and cush- ioning eighteen nineteen for me. But now and then, like with the kids’ game, I can’t maintain the distance. I’m drawn all the way into eighteen nineteen, and I don’t know what to do. I ought to be doing something though. I know that.”

“There’s nothing you could do that wouldn’t eventually get you whipped or killed!”

I shrugged.

“You … you haven’t already done anything, have you?”

“Just started to teach Nigel to read and write,” I said. “Nothing more subversive than that.”

“If Weylin catches you and I’m not around …”

“I know. So stay close. The boy wants to learn, and I’m going to teach him.”

He raised one leg against his chest and leaned forward looking at me. “You think someday he’ll write his own pass and head North, don’t you?”

“At least he’ll be able to.”

“I see Weylin was right about educated slaves.” I turned to look at him.

“Do a good job with Nigel,” he said quietly. “Maybe when you’re gone, he’ll be able to teach others.”

I nodded solemnly.

“I’d bring him in to learn with Rufus if people weren’t so good at lis- tening at doors in that house. And Margaret is always wandering in and out.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t ask you.” I closed my eyes and saw the children playing their game again. “The ease seemed so frightening,” I said. “Now I see why.”

“What?”

“The ease. Us, the children … I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

102

KINDRED

8

I said good-bye to Rufus the day my teaching finally did get me into trouble. I didn’t know I was saying good-bye, of course—didn’t know what trouble was waiting for me in the cookhouse where I was to meet Nigel. I thought there was trouble enough in Rufus’s room.

I was there reading to him. I had been reading to him regularly since his father caught me that first time. Tom Weylin didn’t want me reading on my own, but he had ordered me to read to his son. Once he had told Rufus in my presence, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! A nigger can read better than you!”

“She can read better than you too,” Rufus had answered.

His father had stared at him coldly, then ordered me out of the room. For a second I was afraid for Rufus, but Tom Weylin left the room with me.

“Don’t go to him again until I say you can,” he told me.

Four days passed before he said I could. And again he chastised Rufus before me.

“I’m no schoolmaster,” he said, “but I’ll teach you if you can be taught. I’ll teach you respect.”

Rufus said nothing.

“You want her to read to you?” “Yes, sir.”

“Then you got something to say to me.” “I … I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Read,” said Weylin to me. He turned and left the room.

“What exactly are you supposed to be sorry for?” I asked when Weylin was gone. I spoke very softly.

“Talking back,” said Rufus. “He thinks everything I say is talking back. So I don’t say very much to him.”

“I see.” I opened the book and began to read.

We had finished Robinson Crusoe long ago, and Kevin had chosen a couple of other familiar books from the library. We had already gone through the first, Pilgrim’s Progress . Now we were working on Gulliver’s Travels . Rufus’s own reading was improving slowly under Kevin’s tutor-

THE F ALL 103

ing, but he still enjoyed being read to.

On my last day with him, though, as on a few others, Margaret came in to listen—and to fidget and to fiddle with Rufus’s hair and to pet him while I was reading. As usual, Rufus put his head on her lap and accepted her caresses silently. But today, apparently, that was not enough.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked Rufus when I had been reading for a few moments. “Does your leg hurt?” His leg was not healing as I thought it should have. After nearly two months, he still couldn’t walk.

“I feel all right, Mama,” he said.

Suddenly, Margaret twisted around to face me. “Well?” she demanded. I had paused in my reading to give her a chance to finish. I lowered my

head and began to read again.

About sixty seconds later, she said, “Baby, you hot? You want me to call Virgie up here to fan you?” Virgie was about ten—one of the small house servants often called to fan the whites, run errands for them, carry covered dishes of food between the cookhouse and the main house, and serve the whites at their table.

“I’m all right, Mama,” said Rufus.

“Why don’t you go on?” snapped Margaret at me. “You’re supposed to be here to read, so read!”

I began to read again, biting off the words a little.

“Are you hungry, baby?” asked Margaret a moment later. “Aunt

Sarah’s just made a cake. Wouldn’t you like a piece?”

I didn’t stop this time. I just lowered my voice a little and read auto- matically, tonelessly.

“I don’t know why you want to listen to her,” Margaret said to Rufus. “She’s got a voice like a fly buzzing.”

“I don’t want no cake, Mama.”

“You sure? You ought to see the fine white icing Sarah put on it.” “I want to hear Dana read, that’s all.”

“Well, there she is, reading. If you can call it that.”

I let my voice grow progressively softer as they talked. “I can’t hear her with you talking,” Rufus said.

“Baby, all I said was …”

“Don’t say nothing!” Rufus took his head off her lap. “Go away and stop bothering me!”

“Rufus!” She sounded hurt rather than angry. And in spite of the situ- ation, this sounded like real disrespect to me. I stopped reading and waited for the explosion. It came from Rufus.

104

KINDRED

“Go away, Mama!” he shouted. “Just leave me alone!”

“Be still,” she whispered. “Baby, you’ll make yourself sick.”

Rufus turned his head and looked at her. The expression on his face startled me. For once, the boy looked like a smaller replica of his father. His mouth was drawn into a thin straight line and his eyes were coldly hostile. He spoke quietly now as Weylin sometimes did when he was angry. “You’re making me sick, Mama. Get away from me!”