Butler, Octavia - Kindred

Young people began disappearing in pairs after a while, and some of the older ones stopped their eating or drinking or singing or talking long enough to give them looks of disapproval—or more understanding wist- ful looks. I thought about Kevin and missed him and knew I wasn’t going to sleep well that night.

At Christmas, there was another party—dancing, singing, three marriages.

“Daddy used to make them wait until corn shucking or Christmas to marry,” Rufus told me. “They like parties when they marry, and he made a few parties do.”

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“Anything to pinch a few pennies,” I said tactlessly.

He glanced at me. “You’d better be glad he didn’t waste money. You’re the one who gets upset when some quick money has to be raised.”

My mind had caught up with my mouth by then, and I kept quiet. He hadn’t sold anyone else. The harvest had been good and the creditors patient.

“Found anybody you want to jump the broom with?” he asked me.

I looked at him startled and saw that he wasn’t serious. He was smil- ing and watching the slaves do a bowing, partner-changing dance to the music of a banjo.

“What would you do if I had found someone?” I asked.

“Sell him,” he said. His smile was still in place, but there was no longer any humor in it. I noticed, now, that he was watching the big mus- cular man who had tried to get me to dance—the same man who had spo- ken to me at the corn husking. I would have to ask Sarah to tell him not to speak to me again. He didn’t mean anything, but that wouldn’t save him if Rufus got angry.

“One husband is enough for me,” I said. “Kevin?”

“Of course, Kevin.” “He’s a long way off.”

There was something in his tone that shouldn’t have been there. I

turned to face him. “Don’t talk stupid.”

He jumped and looked around quickly to see whether anyone had heard.

“You watch your mouth,” he said. “Watch yours.”

He stalked away angrily. We’d been working together too much lately, especially now that Alice was so advanced in her pregnancy. I was grate- ful when Alice herself created another job for me—a job that got me away from him regularly. Sometime during the week-long Christmas holiday, Alice persuaded him to let me teach their son Joe to read and write.

“It was my Christmas present,” she told me. “He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I wanted my son not to be ignorant. You know, I had to fight with him all week to get him to say yes!”

But he had said it, finally, and the boy came to me every day to learn to draw big clumsy letters on the slate Rufus bought him and read sim-

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ple words and rhymes from the books Rufus himself had used. But unlike Rufus, Joe wasn’t bored with what he was learning. He fastened onto the lessons as though they were puzzles arranged for his entertainment— puzzles he loved solving. He could get so intense—throw screaming kicking tantrums when something seemed to be eluding him. But not all that much eluded him.

“You’ve got a damn bright little kid there,” I told Rufus. “You ought to be proud.”

Rufus looked surprised—as though it had never occurred to him that there might be anything special about the undersized runny-nosed child. He had spent his life watching his father ignore, even sell the children he had had with black women. Apparently, it had never occurred to Rufus to break that tradition. Until now.

Now, he began to take an interest in his son. Perhaps he was only curi- ous at first, but the boy captured him. I caught them together once in the library, the boy sitting on one of Rufus’s knees and studying a map that Rufus had just brought home. The map was spread on Rufus’s desk.

“Is this our river?” the boy was asking.

“No, that’s the Miles River, northeast of here. This map doesn’t show our river.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too small.”

“What is?” The boy peered up at him. “Our river or this map?” “Both, I suspect.”

“Let’s draw it in, then. Where does it go?”

Rufus hesitated. “Just about here. But we don’t have to draw it in.” “Why? Don’t you want the map to be right?”

I made a noise and Rufus looked up at me. I thought he looked almost ashamed for a moment. He put the boy down quickly and shooed him away.

“Nothing but questions,” Rufus complained to me.

“Enjoy it, Rufe. At least he’s not out setting fire to the stable or trying to drown himself.”

He couldn’t quite keep from laughing. “Alice said something like that.” He frowned a little. “She wants me to free him.”

I nodded. Alice had already told me she meant to ask for the boy’s freedom.

“You put her up to it, I guess.”

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I stared at him. “Rufe, if there’s a woman on the place who makes up her own mind, it’s Alice. I didn’t put her up to a thing.”

“Well … now she’s got something else to make up her mind about.” “What?”

“Nothing. Nothing to you. I just mean to make her earn what she wants for a change,” he said.

I couldn’t get any more out of him than that. Eventually, though, Alice told me what he wanted.

“He wants me to like him,” she said with heavy contempt. “Or maybe even love him. I think he wants me to be more like you!”

“I guarantee you he doesn’t.”

She closed her eyes. “I don’t care what he wants. If I thought it would make him free my children, I’d try to do it. But he lies! And he won’t put it down on no paper.”

“He likes Joe,” I said. “He ought to. Joe looks like a slightly darker version of him at that age. Anyway, he might decide on his own to free the boy.”

“And this one?” She patted her stomach. “And the others? He’ll make sure there’re others.”

“I don’t know. I’ll push him whenever I can.”

“I should have took Joe and tried to run before I got pregnant again.” “You’re still thinking about running?”

“Wouldn’t you be if you didn’t have another way to get free?” I nodded.

“I don’t mean to spend my life here watching my children grow up as slaves and maybe get sold.”

“He wouldn’t …”

“You don’t know what he would do! He don’t treat you the way he treats me. When I’m strong again after I have this baby, I’m going.”

“With the baby?”

“You don’t think I’m going to leave it here, do you?” “But … I don’t see how you can make it.”

“I know more now than I did when Isaac and me left. I can make it.”

I drew a deep breath. “When the time comes, if I can help you, I will.” “Get me a bottle of laudanum,” she said.

“Laudanum!”

“I’ll have the baby to keep quiet. Old Mama won’t let me near her, but she likes you. Get it.”

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“All right.” I didn’t like it. Didn’t like the idea of her trying to run with a baby and a small child, didn’t like the idea of her trying to run at all. But she was right. In her place, I would have tried. I would have tried sooner and gotten killed sooner, but I would have done it alone.

“You think about this awhile longer,” I said. “You’ll get the laudanum and anything else I can supply, but you think.”

“I’ve already thought.”

“Not enough. I shouldn’t say this, but think what’s going to happen if the dogs catch Joe, or if they pull you down and get the baby.”

12

The baby was a girl, born in the second month of the new year. She was her mother’s daughter, born darker skinned than Joe would probably ever be.

“ ’Bout time I had a baby to look like me,” said Alice when she saw her. “You could have at least tried for red hair,” said Rufus. He was there too, peering at the baby’s wrinkled little face, peering with even more