Butler, Octavia - Kindred

concern at Alice’s face, sweat-streaked and weary.

For the first and only time, I saw her smile at him—a real smile. No sarcasm, no ridicule. It silenced him for several seconds.

Carrie and I had helped with the birth. Now, we left quietly, both of us probably thinking the same thing. That if Alice and Rufus were going to make peace, finally, neither of us wanted to break their mood.

They called the baby Hagar. Rufus said that was the ugliest name he had ever heard, but it was Alice’s choice, and he let it stand. I thought it was the most beautiful name I had ever heard. I felt almost free, half-free if such a thing was possible, half-way home. I was gleeful at first— secretly elated. I even kidded Alice about the names she chose for her children. Joseph and Hagar. And the two others whose names I thought silently—Miriam and Aaron. I said, “Someday Rufus is going to get reli- gion and read enough of the Bible to wonder about those children’s names.”

Alice shrugged. “If Hagar had been a boy, I would have called her Ish- mael. In the Bible, people might be slaves for a while, but they didn’t

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have to stay slaves.”

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My mood was so good, I almost laughed. But she wouldn’t have understood that, and I couldn’t have explained. I kept it all in somehow, and congratulated myself that the Bible wasn’t the only place where slaves broke free. Her names were only symbolic, but I had more than symbols to remind me that freedom was possible—probable—and for me, very near.

Or was it?

Slowly, I began to calm down. The danger to my family was past, yes. Hagar had been born. But the danger to me personally … the danger to me personally still walked and talked and sometimes sat with Alice in her cabin in the evening as she nursed Hagar. I was there with them a couple of times, and I felt like an intruder.

I was not free. Not any more than Alice was, or her children with their names. In fact, it looked as though Alice might get free before I did. She caught me alone one evening and pulled me into her cabin. It was empty except for the sleeping Hagar. Joe was out collecting cuts and bruises from sturdier children.

“Did you get the laudanum?” she demanded.

I peered at her through the semidarkness. Rufus kept her well supplied with candles, but at the moment, the only light in the room came from the window and from a low fire over which two pots simmered. “Alice, are you sure you still want it?”

I saw her frown. “Sure I want it! ’Course I want it! What’s the matter with you?”

I hedged a little. “It’s so soon … The baby’s only a few weeks old.” “You get me that stuff so I can leave when I want to!”

“I’ve got it.” “Give it to me!”

“Goddamnit, Alice, will you slow down! Look, you keep working on him the way you have been, and you can get whatever you want and live to enjoy it.”

To my surprise, her stony expression crumbled, and she began to cry. “He’ll never let any of us go,” she said. “The more you give him, the more he wants.” She paused, wiped her eyes, then added softly, “I got to go while I still can—before I turn into just what people call me.” She looked at me and did the thing that made her so much like Rufus, though

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neither of them recognized it. “I got to go before I turn into what you are!” she said bitterly.

Sarah had cornered me once and said, “What you let her talk to you like that for? She can’t get away with it with nobody else.”

I didn’t know. Guilt, maybe. In spite of everything, my life was easier than hers. Maybe I tried to make up for that by taking her abuse. Every- thing had its limits, though.

“You want my help, Alice, you watch your mouth!” “Watch yours,” she mocked.

I stared at her in astonishment, remembering, knowing exactly what she had overheard.

“If I talked to him the way you do, he’d have me hangin’ in the barn,”

she said.

“If you go on talking to me the way you do, I won’t care what he does to you.”

She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she smiled. “You’ll care. And you’ll help me. Else, you’d have to see your- self for the white nigger you are, and you couldn’t stand that.”

Rufus never called my bluff. Alice did it automatically—and because I was bluffing, she got away with it. I got up and walked away from her. Behind me, I thought I heard her laugh.

Some days later, I gave her the laudanum. Later that same day, Rufus began talking about sending Joe to school up North when he was a little older.

“Do you mean to free the boy, Rufe?” He nodded.

“Good. Tell Alice.”

“When I get around to it.”

I didn’t argue with him; I told her myself.

“It don’t matter what he says,” she told me. “Did he show you any free papers?”

“No.”

“When he does, and you read them to me, maybe I’ll believe him. I’m tellin’ you, he uses those children just the way you use a bit on a horse. I’m tired of havin’ a bit in my mouth.”

I didn’t blame her. But still, I didn’t want her to go, didn’t want her to risk Joe and Hagar. Hell, I didn’t even want her to risk herself. Else-

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where, under other circumstances, I would probably have disliked her. But here, we had a common enemy to unite us.

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I planned to stay on the Weylin plantation long enough to see Alice leave, to find out whether she would be able to keep her freedom this time. I managed to talk her into waiting until early summer to go. And I was prepared to wait that long myself before I tried some dangerous trick that might get me home. I was homesick and Kevinsick and damned sick of Margaret Weylin’s floor and Alice’s mouth, but I could wait a few more months. I thought.

I talked Rufus into letting me teach Nigel’s two older sons and the two children who served at the table along with Joe. Surprisingly, the chil- dren liked it. I couldn’t recall having liked school much when I was their ages. Rufus liked it because Joe was as bright as I had said—bright and competitive. He had a head start on the others, and he didn’t intend to lose it.

“Why weren’t you like that about learning?” I asked Rufus. “Don’t bother me,” he muttered.

Some of his neighbors found out what I was doing and offered him fatherly advice. It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Educa- tion made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have. Another man said educating slaves was illegal. When Rufus replied that he had checked and that it wasn’t illegal in Maryland, the man said it should have been. Talk. Rufus shrugged it off without ever saying how much of it he believed. It was enough that he sided with me, and my school continued. I got the feeling that Alice was keeping him happy—and maybe finally enjoying herself a little in the process. I guessed from what she had told me that this was what was frightening her so, driving her away from the plantation, caus- ing her to lash out at me. She was trying to deal with guilt of her own.

But she was waiting and using some discretion. I relaxed, spent my spare moments trying to think of a way to get home. I didn’t want to

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depend on someone else’s chance violence again—violence that, if it came, could be more effective than I wanted.

Then Sam James stopped me out by the cookhouse and my compla- cency was brought to an end.

I saw him waiting for me beside the cookhouse door—a big young man. I mistook him for Nigel at first. Then I recognized him. Sarah had told me his name. He had spoken to me at the corn husking, and again at Christmas. Then Sarah had spoken to him for me and he had said noth- ing else. Until now.