Butler, Octavia - Kindred

“I’m Sam,” he said. “Remember at Christmas?” “Yes. But I thought Sarah told you …”

“She did. Look, it ain’t that. I just wanted to see if maybe you’d teach my brother and sister to read.”

“Your … Oh. How old are they?”

“Sister was born the year you came here last … brother, the year before that.”

“I’ll have to get permission. Ask Sarah about it in a few days but don’t come to me again.” I thought of the expression I had seen on Rufus’s face as he looked at this man. “Maybe I’m too cautious, but I don’t want you getting in trouble because of me.”

He gave me a long searching look. “You want to be with that white man, girl?”

“If I were anywhere else, no black child on the place would be learn- ing anything.”

“That ain’t what I mean.”

“Yes it is. It’s all part of the same thing.” “Some folks say …”

“Hold on.” I was suddenly angry. “I don’t want to hear what ‘some folks’ say. ‘Some folks’ let Fowler drive them into the fields every day and work them like mules.”

“ Let him …?”

“Let him! They do it to keep the skin on their backs and breath in their bodies. Well, they’re not the only ones who have to do things they don’t like to stay alive and whole. Now you tell me why that should be so hard for ‘some folks’ to understand?”

He sighed. “That’s what I told them. But you better off than they are, so they get jealous.” He gave me another of his long searching looks. “I still say it’s too bad you already spoke for.”

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I grinned. “Get out of here, Sam. Field hands aren’t the only ones who can be jealous.”

He went. That was all. Innocent—completely innocent. But three days later, a trader led Sam away in chains.

Rufus never said a word to me. He didn’t accuse me of anything. I wouldn’t have known Sam had been sold if I hadn’t glanced out the win- dow of Margaret Weylin’s room and seen the coffle.

I told Margaret some hasty lie, then ran out of her room, down the stairs, and out the door. I ran headlong into Rufus, and felt him steady me, hold me. The weakness that his dengue fever had left was finally gone. His grip was formidable.

“Get back in the house!” he hissed.

I saw Sam beyond him being chained into line. There were people a few feet away from him crying loudly. Two women, a boy and a girl. His family.

“Rufe,” I pleaded desperately, “don’t do this. There’s no need!” He pushed me back toward the door and I struggled against him. “Rufe, please! Listen, he came to ask me to teach his brother and sis-

ter to read. That’s all!”

It was like talking to the wall of the house. I managed to break away from him for a moment just as the younger of the two weeping women spotted me.

“You whore!” she screamed. She had not been permitted to approach the coffle, but she approached me. “You no-’count nigger whore, why couldn’t you leave my brother alone!”

She would have attacked me. And field hand that she was, strength- ened by hard work, she would probably have given me the beating she thought I deserved. But Rufus stepped between us.

“Get back to work, Sally!”

She didn’t move, stood glaring at him until the older woman, probably her mother, reached her and pulled her away.

I caught Rufus by the hand and spoke low to him. “Please, Rufe. If you do this, you’ll destroy what you mean to preserve. Please don’t …”

He hit me.

It was a first, and so unexpected that I stumbled backward and fell. And it was a mistake. It was the breaking of an unspoken agreement

between us—a very basic agreement—and he knew it.

I got up slowly, watching him with anger and betrayal.

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“Get in the house and stay there,” he said.

I turned my back and went to the cookhouse, deliberately disobeying. I could hear one of the traders say, “You ought to sell that one too. Trou- blemaker!”

At the cookhouse, I heated water, got it warm, not hot. Then I took a basin of it up to the attic. It was hot there, and empty except for the pal- lets and my bag in its corner. I went over to it, washed my knife in anti- septic, and hooked the drawstring of my bag over my shoulder.

And in the warm water I cut my wrists.

The Rope

1

I awoke in darkness and lay still for several seconds trying to think where I was and when I had gone to sleep.

I was lying on something unbelievably soft and comfortable … My bed. Home. Kevin?

I could hear regular breathing beside me now. I sat up and reached out to turn on the lamp—or I tried to. Sitting up made me faint and dizzy. For a moment, I thought Rufus was pulling me back to him before I could even see home. Then I became aware that my wrists were bandaged and throbbing—and I remembered what I had done.

The lamp on Kevin’s side of the bed went on and I could see him beardless now, but with his thatch of gray hair uncut.

I lay flat and looked up at him happily. “You’re beautiful,” I said. “You look a little like a heroic portrait I saw once of Andrew Jackson.”

“No way,” he said. “Man was skinny as hell. I’ve seen him.” “But you haven’t seen my heroic portrait.”

“Why the hell did you cut your wrists? You could have bled to death! Or did you cut them yourself ?”

“Yes. It got me home.” “There must be a safer way.”

I rubbed my wrists gingerly. “There isn’t any safe way to almost kill yourself. I was afraid of the sleeping pills. I took them with me because I wanted to be able to die if … if I wanted to die. But I was afraid that if

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I used them to get home, I might die before you or some doctor figured out what was wrong with me. Or that if I didn’t die, I’d have some grisly side-effect—like gangrene.”

“I see,” he said after a while. “Did you bandage me?”

“Me? No, I thought this was too serious for me to handle alone. I stopped the bleeding as best I could and called Lou George. He bandaged you.” Louis George was a doctor friend Kevin had met through his writ- ing. Kevin had interviewed George for an article once, and the two had taken a liking to each other. They wound up doing a nonfiction book together.

“Lou said you managed to miss the main arteries in both arms,” Kevin told me. “Said you didn’t do much more than scratch yourself.”

“With all that blood!”

“It wasn’t that much. You were probably too frightened to cut as deeply as you could have.”

I sighed. “Well … I guess I’m glad I didn’t do much damage—as long as I got home.”

“How would you feel about seeing a psychiatrist?” “Seeing a … Are you kidding?”

“I am, but Lou wasn’t. He says if you’re doing things like this, you need help.”

“Oh God. Do I have to? The lies I’d have to invent!”

“No, this time you probably won’t have to. Lou is a friend. You do it again, though, and … well, you could be locked up for psychiatric treat- ment whether you like it or not. The law tries to protect people like you from themselves.”

I found myself laughing, almost crying. I put my head on his shoulder and wondered whether a little time in some sort of mental institution would be worse than several months of slavery. I doubted it.

“How long was I gone this time?” I asked. “About three hours. How long was it for you?” “Eight months.”

“Eight …” He put his arm over me, holding me. “No wonder you cut your wrists.”

“Hagar has been born.”

“Has she?” There was silence for a moment, then, “What’s that going to mean?”

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I twisted uncomfortably and, by accident, put pressure on one of my wrists. The sudden pain made me gasp.