Butler, Octavia - Kindred

I got the food ready, almost on time, then had to hunt down the two lit- tle boys whose job it was to ferry it from cookhouse to table and then serve it. When I found them, they wasted some time staring at the now silent Alice, then they grumbled because I made them wash. Finally, my washhouse friend Tess, who also worked in the main house, ran out and said, “Marse Tom say get food on the table!”

“Is the table set?”

“Been set! Even though you didn’t say nothin’.”

Oops. “I’m sorry, Tess. Here, help me out.” I thrust a covered dish of soup into her hands. “Carrie is having her baby now and Sarah’s gone to help her. Take that in, would you?”

“And come back for more?” “Please.”

She hurried away. I had helped her with the washing several times— had done as much of it as I could myself recently because Weylin had casually begun taking her to bed, and had hurt her. Apparently, she paid her debts.

I went out to the well and got the boys just as they were starting a water fight.

“If you two don’t get yourselves into the house with that food …!” “You sound just like Sarah.”

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“No I don’t. You know what she’d be saying. You know what she’d be doing too. Now move! Or I’ll get a switch and really be like her.”

Dinner was served. Somehow. And it was all edible. There may have been more of it if Sarah had been cooking, but it wouldn’t have tasted any better. Sarah had managed to overcome my uncertainty, my igno- rance of cooking on an open hearth and teach me quite a bit.

As the meal progressed and the leftovers began to come back, I tried to get Alice to eat. I fixed her a plate but she pushed it away, turned her back to me.

She had sat either staring into space or resting her head on the table for hours. Now, finally, she spoke.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked bitterly. “You could have said something, got me out of his room, his bed … Oh Lord, his bed! And he may as well have cut my Isaac’s ears off with his own hand.”

“He never told anyone Isaac beat him.” “Shit!”

“It’s true. He never did because he didn’t want you to get hurt. I know because I was with him until he got back on his feet. I took care of him.”

“If you had any sense, you would have let him die!”

“If I had, it wouldn’t have kept you and Isaac from being caught. It might have gotten you both killed though if anyone guessed what Isaac had done.”

“Doctor-nigger,” she said with contempt. “Think you know so much. Reading-nigger. White-nigger! Why didn’t you know enough to let me die?”

I said nothing. She was getting angrier and angrier, shouting at me. I turned away from her sadly, telling myself it was better, safer for her to vent her feelings on me than on anyone else.

Along with her shouting now, I could hear the thin faint cries of a baby.

11

Carrie and Nigel named their thin, wrinkled, brown son, Jude. Nigel did a lot of strutting and happy babbling until Weylin told him to shut up and

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get back to work on the covered passageway he was supposed to be build- ing to connect the house and the cookhouse. A few days after the baby’s birth, though, Weylin called him into the library and gave him a new dress for Carrie, a new blanket, and a new suit of clothes for himself.

“See,” Nigel told me later with some bitterness. “’Cause of Carrie and me, he’s one nigger richer.” But before the Weylins, he was properly grateful.

“Thank you, Marse Tom. Yes, sir. Sure do thank you. Fine clothes, yes, sir …”

Finally he escaped back to the covered passageway.

Meanwhile, in the library, I heard Weylin tell Rufus, “You should have been the one to give him something—instead of wasting all your money on that worthless girl.”

“She’s well!” Rufus answered. “Dana got her well. Why do you say she’s worthless?”

“Because you’re going to have to whip her sick again to get what you want from her!”

Silence.

“Dana should have been enough for you. She’s got some sense.” He paused. “Too much sense for her own good, I’d say, but at least she wouldn’t give you trouble. She’s had that Franklin fellow to teach her a few things.”

Rufus walked away from him without answering. I had to get away from the library door where I had been eavesdropping very quickly as I heard him approach. I ducked into the dining room and came out again just as he was passing by.

“Rufe.”

He gave me a look that said he didn’t want to be bothered, but he stopped anyway.

“I want to write another letter.”

He frowned. “You’ve got to be patient, Dana. It hasn’t been that long.” “It’s been over a month.”

“Well … I don’t know. Kevin could have moved again, could have done anything. I think you should give him a little more time to answer.” “Answer what?” asked Weylin. He’d done what Rufus had pre-

dicted—come up behind us so silently that I hadn’t noticed him.

Rufus glanced at his father sourly. “Letter to Kevin Franklin telling him she’s here.”

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“She wrote a letter?”

KINDRED

“I told her to write it. Why should I do it when she can?”

“Boy, you don’t have the sense you—” He cut off abruptly. “Dana, go do your work!”

I left wondering whether Rufus had shown lack of sense by letting me write the letter—instead of writing it himself—or by sending it. After all, if Kevin never came back for me, Weylin’s property was increased by one more slave. Even if I proved not to be very useful, he could always sell me.

I shuddered. I had to talk Rufus into letting me write another letter. The first one could have been lost or destroyed or sent to the wrong place. Things like that were still happening in 1976. How much worse might they be in this horse-and-buggy era? And surely Kevin would give up on me if I went home without him again—left him here for more long years. If he hadn’t already given up on me.

I tried to put that thought out of my mind. It came to me now and then even though everything people told me seemed to indicate that he was waiting. Still waiting.

I went out to the laundry yard to help Tess. I had come to almost wel- come the hard work. It kept me from thinking. White people thought I was industrious. Most blacks thought I was either stupid or too intent on pleasing the whites. I thought I was keeping my fears and doubts at bay as best I could, and managing to stay relatively sane.

I caught Rufus alone again the next day—in his room this time where we weren’t likely to be interrupted. But he wouldn’t listen when I brought up the letter. His mind was on Alice. She was stronger now, and his patience with her was gone. I had thought that eventually, he would just rape her again—and again. In fact, I was surprised that he hadn’t already done it. I didn’t realize that he was planning to involve me in that rape. He was, and he did.

“Talk to her, Dana,” he said once he’d brushed aside the matter of my letter. “You’re older than she is. She thinks you know a lot. Talk to her!” He was sitting on his bed staring into the cold fireplace. I sat at his desk looking at the clear plastic pen I had loaned him. He’d used half its

ink already. “What the hell have you been writing with this?” I asked. “Dana, listen to me!”

I turned to face him. “I heard you.” “Well?”

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“I can’t stop you from raping the woman, Rufe, but I’m not going to help you do it either.”

“You want her to get hurt?”

“Of course not. But you’ve already decided to hurt her, haven’t you?” He didn’t answer.

“Let her go, Rufe. Hasn’t she suffered enough because of you?” He wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t.