Butler, Octavia - Kindred

I leaned back comfortably in Nigel’s homemade chair. “Message delivered,” I said. “Do what you want.”

“I mean to.”

“You might look ahead a little though. Ahead and in all three direc- tions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, it looks as though you have three choices. You can go to him as he orders; you can refuse, be whipped, and then have him take you by force; or you can run away again.”

She said nothing, bent to her sewing and drew the needle in quick neat tiny stitches even though her hands were shaking. I bent down to play with one of the babies—one who had forgotten his own feet and crawled over to investigate my shoe. He was a fat curious little boy of several months who began trying to pull the buttons off my blouse as soon as I

picked him up.

THE FIGHT 167

“He go’ pee all over you in a minute,” said Alice. “He likes to let go just when somebody’s holding him.”

I put the baby down quickly—just in time, as it turned out. “Dana?”

I looked at her.

“What am I going to do?”

I hesitated, shook my head. “I can’t advise you. It’s your body.”

“Not mine.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “Not mine, his. He paid for it, didn’t he?”

“Paid who? You?”

“You know he didn’t pay me! Oh, what’s the difference? Whether it’s right or wrong, the law says he owns me now. I don’t know why he hasn’t already whipped the skin off me. The things I’ve said to him …”

“You know why.”

She began to cry. “I ought to take a knife in there with me and cut his damn throat.” She glared at me. “Now go tell him that! Tell him I’m talk- ing ’bout killing him!”

“Tell him yourself.”

“Do your job! Go tell him! That’s what you for—to help white folks keep niggers down. That’s why he sent you to me. They be calling you mammy in a few years. You be running the whole house when the old man dies.”

I shrugged and stopped the curious baby from sucking on my shoe string.

“Go tell on me, Dana. Show him you the kind of woman he needs, not me.”

I said nothing.

“One white man, two white men, what difference do it make?” “One black man, two black men, what difference does that make?” “I could have ten black men without turning against my own.”

I shrugged again, refusing to argue with her. What could I win?

She made a wordless sound and covered her face with her hands. “What’s the matter with you?” she said wearily. “Why you let me run you down like that? You done everything you could for me, maybe even saved my life. I seen people get lockjaw and die from way less than I had wrong with me. Why you let me talk about you so bad?”

“Why do you do it?”

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She sighed, bent her body into a “c” as she crouched in the chair. “Because I get so mad … I get so mad I can taste it in my mouth. And you’re the only one I can take it out on—the only one I can hurt and not be hurt back.”

“Don’t keep doing it,” I said. “I have feelings just like you do.” “Do you want me to go to him?”

“I can’t tell you that. You have to decide.” “Would you go to him?”

I glanced at the floor. “We’re in different situations. What I’d do doesn’t matter.”

“Would you go to him?”

“No.”

“Even though he’s just like your husband?” “He isn’t.”

“But … All right, even though you don’t … don’t hate him like I do?” “Even so.”

“Then I won’t go either.” “What will you do?”

“I don’t know. Run away?” I got up to leave.

“Where you going?” she asked quickly.

“To stall Rufus. If I really work at it, I think I can get him to let you off tonight. That will give you a start.”

She dropped the dress to the floor and came out of her chair to grab me. “No, Dana! Don’t go.” She drew a deep breath, then seemed to sag. “I’m lying. I can’t run again. I can’t. You be hungry and cold and sick out there, and so tired you can’t walk. Then they find you and set dogs on you … My Lord, the dogs …” She was silent for a moment. “I’m going to him. He knew I would sooner or later. But he don’t know how I wish I had the nerve to just kill him!”

12

She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn’t kill, but she seemed to die a little.

THE FIGHT 169

Kevin didn’t come to me, didn’t write. Rufus finally let me write another letter—payment for services rendered, I supposed—and he mailed it for me. Yet another month went by, and Kevin didn’t reply.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rufus told me. “He probably did move again. We’ll be getting a letter from him in Maine any day now.”

I didn’t say anything. Rufus had become talkative and happy, openly affectionate to a quietly tolerant Alice. He drank more than he should have sometimes, and one morning after he’d really overdone it, Alice came downstairs with her whole face swollen and bruised.

That was the morning I stopped wondering whether I should ask him to help me go North to find Kevin. I wouldn’t have expected him to give me money, but he could have gotten me some damned official-looking free papers. He could even have gone with me, at least to the Pennsyl- vania State Line. Or he could have stopped me cold.

He had already found the way to control me—by threatening others. That was safer than threatening me directly, and it worked. It was a lesson he had no doubt learned from his father. Weylin, for instance, had known just how far to push Sarah. He had sold only three of her children—left her one to live for and protect. I didn’t doubt now that he could have found a buyer for Carrie, afflicted as she was. But Carrie was a useful young woman. Not only did she work hard and well herself, not only had she produced a healthy new slave, but she had kept first her mother, and now her husband in line with no effort at all on Weylin’s part. I didn’t want to find out how much Rufus had learned from his father’s handling of her.

I longed for my map now. It contained names of towns I could write myself passes to. No doubt some of the towns on it didn’t exist yet, but at least it would have given me a better idea of what was ahead. I would have to take my chances without it.

Well, at least I knew that Easton was a few miles to the north, and that the road that ran past the Weylin house would take me to it. Unfortu- nately, it would also take me through a lot of open fields—places where it would be nearly impossible to hide. And pass or no pass, I would hide from whites if I could.

I would have to carry food—johnnycake, smoked meat, dried fruit, a bottle of water. I had access to what I needed. I had heard of runaway slaves starving before they reached freedom, or poisoning themselves because they were as ignorant as I was about which wild plants were

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In fact, I had read and heard enough scare stories about the fate of run- aways to keep me with the Weylins for several days longer than I meant to stay. I might not have believed them, but I had the example of Isaac and Alice before me. Fittingly, then, it was Alice who gave me the push I needed.

I was helping Tess with the wash—sweating and stirring dirty clothes as they boiled in their big iron pot—when Alice came to me, crept to me, looking back over her shoulder, her eyes wide with what I read as fear.

“You look at this,” she said to me, not even glancing at Tess who had stopped pounding a pair of Weylin’s pants to watch us. She trusted Tess. “See,” she said. “I been looking where I wasn’t s’pose to look—in Mis- ter Rufe’s bed chest. But what I found don’t look like it ought to be there.”