Butler, Octavia - Kindred

She looked at me as though she’d just noticed me. “See to the supper,” she said. “I was going to send somebody in to finish cooking, but you can, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She and Nigel hurried away. Nigel had a cabin away from the quarter, not far from the cookhouse. A neat wood-floored brick- chimneyed cabin that he had built for himself and Carrie. He had shown it to me. “Don’t have to sleep on rags up in the attic no more,” he’d said. He’d built a bed and two chairs. Rufus had let him hire his time, work for other whites in the area, until he had money enough to buy the things he couldn’t make. It had been a good investment for Rufus. Not only did he get part of Nigel’s earnings, but he got the assurance that Nigel, his only valuable piece of property, was not likely to run away again soon.

“Can I go see?” Alice asked me.

“No,” I said reluctantly. I wanted to go myself, but Sarah didn’t need either of us getting in her way. “No, you and I have work to do here. Can you peel potatoes?”

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“Sure.”

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I sat her down at the table and gave her a knife and some potatoes to peel. The scene reminded me of my own first time in the cookhouse when I had sat peeling potatoes until Kevin called me away. Kevin might have my letter by now. He almost surely did. He might already be on his way here.

I shook my head and began cutting up a chicken. No sense tormenting myself.

“Mama used to make me cook,” said Alice. She frowned as though try- ing to remember. “She said I’d have to be cooking for my husband.” She frowned again, and I almost cut myself trying to watch her. What was she remembering?

“Dana?” “Yes?”

“Don’t you have a husband? I remember once … something about you having a husband.”

“I do. He’s up North now.” “He free?”

“Yes.”

“Good to marry a freeman. Mama always said I should.” Mama was right, I thought. But I said nothing.

“My father was a slave, and they sold him away from her. She said marrying a slave is almost bad as being a slave.” She looked at me. “What’s it like to be a slave?”

I managed not to look surprised. It hadn’t occurred to me that she didn’t realize she was a slave. I wondered how she had explained her presence here to herself.

“Dana?”

I looked at her.

“I said what’s it like to be a slave?”

“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I wonder how Carrie is doing—

in all that pain, and not even able to scream.”

“How could you not know what it’s like to be a slave. You are one.” “I haven’t been one for very long.”

“You were free?” “Yes.”

“And you let yourself be made a slave? You should run away.”

I glanced at the door. “Be careful how you say things like that. You

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could get into trouble.” I felt like Sarah, cautioning. “Well it’s true.”

“Sometimes it’s better to keep the truth to yourself.”

She stared at me with concern. “What will happen to you?”

“Don’t worry about me, Alice. My husband will help me get free.” I went to the door to look out toward Carrie’s cabin. Not that I expected to see anything. I just wanted to distract Alice. She was getting too close, “growing” too fast. Her life would change so much for the worse when she remembered. She would be hurt more, and Rufus would do much of the hurting. And I would have to watch and do nothing.

“Mama said she’d rather be dead than be a slave,” she said.

“Better to stay alive,” I said. “At least while there’s a chance to get free.” I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.

Suddenly, she threw the potato she had been peeling into the fire. I jumped, looked at her. “Why’d you do that?”

“There’s things you ain’t saying.” I sighed.

“I’m here too,” she said. “Been here a long time.” She narrowed her eyes. “Am I a slave too?”

I didn’t answer.

“I said am I a slave?” “Yes.”

She had risen half off the bench, her whole body demanding that I answer her. Now that I had, she sat down again heavily, her back and shoulders rounded, her arms crossed over her stomach hugging herself. “But I’m supposed to be free. I was free. Born free!”

“Yes.”

“Dana, tell me what I don’t remember. Tell me!” “It will come back to you.”

“No, you tell—”

“Oh, hush, will you!”

She drew back a little in surprise. I had shouted at her. She probably thought I was angry—and I was. But not at her. I wanted to pull her back from the edge of a cliff. It was too late though. She would have to take her fall.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I said wearily. “But believe

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me, you don’t want to know as much as you think you do.” “Yes I do!”

I sighed. “All right. What do you want to know?”

She opened her mouth, then frowned and closed it again. Finally, “There’s so much … I want to know everything, but I don’t know where to start. Why am I a slave?”

“You committed a crime.” “A crime? What’d I do?”

“You helped a slave to escape.” I paused. “Do you realize that in all the time you’ve been here, you never asked me how you were hurt?”

That seemed to touch something in her. She sat blank-faced for several seconds, then frowned and stood up. I watched her carefully. If she was going to have hysterics, I wanted her to have them where she was, out of sight of the Weylins. There were too many things she could say that Tom Weylin in particular would resent.

“They beat me,” she whispered. “I remember. The dogs, the rope … They tied me behind a horse and I had to run, but I couldn’t … Then they beat me … But … but …”

I walked over to her, stood in front of her, but she seemed to look through me. She had that same look of pain and confusion she’d had when Rufus brought her from town.

“Alice?”

She seemed not to hear me. “Isaac?” she whispered. But it was more a soundless moving of her lips than a whisper. Then,

“ Isaac! ” An explosion of sound. She bolted for the door. I let her take about three steps before I grabbed her.

“Let go of me! Isaac! Isaac! ”

“Alice, stop. You’ll make me hurt you.” She was struggling against me with all her feeble strength.

“They cut him! They cut off his ears!”

I had been hoping she hadn’t seen that. “Alice!” I held her by the shoulders and shook her.

“I’ve got to get away,” she wept. “Find Isaac.”

“Maybe. When you can walk more than ten steps without getting tired.” She stopped her struggles, stared at me through streaming tears.

“Where’d they send him?” “Mississippi.”

“Oh Jesus …” She collapsed against me, crying. She would have

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fallen if I hadn’t held her and half-dragged and half-carried her back to the bench. She sat slumped where I put her, crying, praying, cursing. I sat with her for a while, but she didn’t tire, or at least, she didn’t stop. I had to leave her to finish preparing supper. I was afraid I would anger Weylin and get Sarah into trouble if I didn’t. There would be trouble enough in the house now that Alice had her memory back, and somehow, it had become my job to ease troubles—first Rufus’s, now Alice’s—as best I could.

I finished the meal somehow, though my mind wasn’t on it. There was the soup that Sarah had left simmering; fish to fry; ham that had been rock-hard before Sarah soaked it, then boiled it; chicken to fry and corn bread and gravy to make; Alice’s forgotten potatoes to finish; bread to bake in the little brick oven alongside the fireplace; vegetables, including salad; a sugary peach dessert—Weylin raised peaches; a cake that Sarah had already made, thank God; and both coffee and tea. There would be company to help eat it all. There usually was. And they would all eat too much. It was no wonder the main medicines of this era were laxatives.