Butler, Octavia - Kindred

His green eyes glittered. “She’ll never get away from me again. Never!” He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “You know, Daddy wants me to send her to the fields and take you.”

“Does he?”

“He thinks all I want is a woman. Any woman. So you, then. He says you’d be less likely to give me trouble.”

“Do you believe him?”

He hesitated, managed to smile a little. “No.” I nodded. “Good.”

“I know you, Dana. You want Kevin the way I want Alice. And you had more luck than I did because no matter what happens now, for a while he wanted you too. Maybe I can’t ever have that—both wanting, both loving. But I’m not going to give up what I can have.”

“What do you mean, ‘no matter what happens now?’ ”

“What in hell do you think I mean? It’s been five years! You want to write another letter. Did you ever think maybe he threw the first letter out? Maybe he got like Alice—wanted to be with one of his own kind.” I said nothing. I knew what he was doing—trying to share his pain, hurt me as he was hurting. And of course, he knew just where I was vul-

nerable. I tried to keep a neutral expression, but he went on.

“He told me once that you two had been married for four years. That means he’s been here away from you even longer than you’ve been together. I doubt if he’d have waited as long as he did if you weren’t the only one who could get him back to his home time. But now … who knows. The right woman could make this time mighty sweet to him.”

“Rufe, nothing you say to me is going to ease your way with Alice.” “No? How about this: You talk to her—talk some sense into her—or

you’re going to watch while Jake Edwards beats some sense into her!” I stared at him in revulsion. “Is that what you call love?”

He was on his feet and across the room to me before I could take another breath. I sat where I was, watching him, feeling frightened, and

164

KINDRED

suddenly very much aware of my knife, of how quickly I could reach it. He wasn’t going to beat me. Not him, not ever.

“Get up!” he ordered. He didn’t order me around much, and he’d never done it in that tone. “Get up, I said!”

I didn’t move.

“I’ve been too easy on you,” he said. His voice was suddenly low and ugly. “I treated you like you were better than the ordinary niggers. I see I made a mistake!”

“That’s possible,” I said. “I’m waiting for you to show me I made a mistake.”

For several seconds, he stood frozen, towering over me, glaring down as though he meant to hit me. Finally, though, he relaxed, leaned against his desk. “You think you’re white!” he muttered. “You don’t know your place any better than a wild animal.”

I said nothing.

“You think you own me because you saved my life!”

And I relaxed, glad not to have to take the life I had saved—glad not to have to risk other lives, including my own.

“If I ever caught myself wanting you like I want her, I’d cut my throat,” he said.

I hoped that problem would never arise. If it did, one of us would do some cutting all right.

“Help me, Dana.” “I can’t.”

“You can! You and nobody else. Go to her. Send her to me. I’ll have her whether you help or not. All I want you to do is fix it so I don’t have to beat her. You’re no friend of hers if you won’t do that much!”

Of hers! He had all the low cunning of his class. No, I couldn’t refuse to help the girl—help her avoid at least some pain. But she wouldn’t think much of me for helping her this way. I didn’t think much of myself.

“Do it!” hissed Rufus.

I got up and went out to find her.

She was strange now, erratic, sometimes needing my friendship, trust- ing me with her dangerous longings for freedom, her wild plans to run away again; and sometimes hating me, blaming me for her trouble.

One night in the attic, she was crying softly and telling me something about Isaac. She stopped suddenly and asked, “Have you heard from your husband yet, Dana?”

“Not yet.”

THE FIGHT 165

“Write another letter. Even if you have to do it in secret.” “I’m working on it.”

“No sense in you losing your man too.”

Yet moments later for no reason that I could see, she attacked me, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, whining and crying after some poor white trash of a man, black as you are. You always try to act so white. White nigger, turning against your own people!”

I never really got used to her sudden switches, her attacks, but I put up with them. I had taken her through all the other stages of healing, and somehow, I couldn’t abandon her now. Most of the time, I couldn’t even get angry. She was like Rufus. When she hurt, she struck out to hurt oth- ers. But she had been hurting less as the days passed, and striking out less. She was healing emotionally as well as physically. I had helped her to heal. Now I had to help Rufus tear her wounds open again.

She was at Carrie’s cabin watching Jude and two other older babies someone had left with her. She had no regular duties yet, but like me, she had found her own work. She liked children, and she liked sewing. She would take the coarse blue cloth Weylin bought for the slaves and make neat sturdy clothing of it while small children played around her feet. Weylin complained that she was like old Mary with the children and the sewing, but he brought her his clothing to be mended. She worked better and faster than the slave woman who had taken over much of old Mary’s sewing—and if she had an enemy on the plantation, it was that woman, Liza, who was now in danger of being sent to more onerous work.

I went into the cabin and sat down with Alice before the cold fireplace. Jude slept beside her in the crib Nigel had made for him. The other two babies were awake lying naked on blankets on the floor quietly playing with their feet.

Alice looked up at me, then held up a long blue dress. “This is for you,” she said. “I’m sick of seeing you in them pants.”

I looked down at my jeans. “I’m so used to dressing like this, I forget sometimes. At least it keeps me from having to serve at the table.”

“Serving ain’t bad.” She’d done it a few times. “And if Mister Tom wasn’t so stingy, you’d have had a dress a long time ago. Man loves a dollar more than he loves Jesus.”

That, I believed literally. Weylin had dealings with banks. I knew because he complained about them. But I had never known him to have

166

KINDRED

any dealings with churches or hold any kind of prayer meeting in his home. The slaves had to sneak away in the night and take their chances with the patrollers if they wanted to have any kind of religious meeting. “Least you can look like a woman when your man comes for you,”

Alice said.

I drew a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Now tell me what you come here to say … that you don’t want to say.”

I looked at her, startled.

“You think I don’t know you after all this time? You got a look that says you don’t want to be here.”

“Yes. Rufus sent me to talk to you.” I hesitated. “He wants you tonight.” Her expression hardened. “He sent you to tell me that?”

“No.”

She waited, glaring at me, silently demanding that I tell her more. I said nothing.

“Well! What did he send you for then?”

“To talk you into going to him quietly, and to tell you you’d be whipped this time if you resist.”

“Shit! Well, all right, you told me. Now get out of here before I throw this dress in the fireplace and light it.”

“I don’t give a damn what you do with that dress.”

Now it was her turn to be startled. I didn’t usually talk to her that way, even when she deserved it.