Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

  When it seemed as if the very effort of reading had fatigued her, she went thumbing through the inside pages, pointing out to Kunta one after another identical small figures that were recognizable as men carrying a bundle at the end of a stick over their shoulders, and with her finger on the block of print under one of these figures, she said, “Dat’s always ’scribin’ dese runaway niggers—like it was one ’bout you de las’ time you run off. It tell what color dey is, what marks dey got on dey faces or arms or legs or backs from bein’ beat or branded. An’ it tell what dey was wearin’ when dey run off, an’ sich as dat. An’ den it tell who dey belongst to, and what reward bein’ offered to whoever catch dem and bring dem back. I seen it be much as five hunnud, an’ I seen it be where de nigger done run so much dat he massa so mad he advertise ten dollars fo’ de live nigger back an’ fi’teen fo’ jes’ his head.”

  Finally she set the paper down with a sigh, seemingly fatigued by the effort of reading. “Now you knows how I foun’ out ’bout dat nigger doctor. Same way de massa did.”

  Kunta asked if she didn’t think she might be taking chances reading the massa’s paper like that.

  “I’se real careful,” she said. “But I tell you one time I got scared to death wid massa,” Bell added. “One day he jes’ walked in on me when I s’posed to be dustin’ in de livin’ room, but what I was doin’ was looking in one a dem books a his’n. Lawd, I like to froze. Massa jes’ stood dere a minute lookin’ at me. But he never said nothin’. He jes’ walked out, an’ from de next day to dis day it’s been a lock on his bookcase.”

  When Bell put away the newspaper back under the bed, she was quiet for a while, and Kunta knew her well enough by now to know that she still had something on her mind. They were about ready to go to bed when she abruptly seated herself at the table, as if she had just made up her mind about something, and with an expression both furtive and proud on her face, drew from her apron pocket a pencil and a folded piece of paper. Smoothing out the paper, she began to print some letters very carefully.

  “You know what dat is?” she asked, and before Kunta could say no, answered, “Well, dat’s my name. B-e-l-l.” Kunta stared at the penciled characters, remembering of how for years he had shrunk away from any closeness to toubob writing, thinking it contained some toubob greegrees that might bring him harm—but he still wasn’t too sure that was so farfetched. Bell now printed some more letters. “Dat’s your name, K-u-n-t-a.” She beamed up at him. Despite himself, Kunta couldn’t resist bending a little closer to study the strange markings. But then Bell got up, crumpled the paper, and threw it onto the dying embers in the fireplace. “Ain’t never gone git caught wid no writin’.”

  Several weeks had passed before Kunta finally decided to do something about an irritation that had been eating at him ever since Bell showed him so proudly that she could read and write. Like their white massas, these plantation-born blacks seemed to take it for granted that those who had come from Africa had just climbed down from the trees, let alone had any experience whatever with education.

  So very casually one evening after supper, he knelt down before the cabin’s fireplace and raked a pile of ashes out onto the hearth, then used his hands to flatten and smooth them out. With Bell watching curiously, he then took a slender whittled stick from his pocket and proceeded to scratch into the ashes his name in Arabic characters.

  Bell wouldn’t let him finish, demanding, “What dat?” Kunta told her. Then, having made his point, he swept the ashes back into the fireplace, sat down in the rocking chair, and waited for her to ask him how he’d learned to write. He didn’t have long to wait, and for the rest of the evening he talked, and Bell listened for a change. In his halting speech, Kunta told her how all the children in his village were taught to write, with pens made of hollowed dried grass stalks, and ink of water mixed with crushed potblack. He told her about the arafang, and how his lessons were conducted both mornings and evenings. Warming to his subject, and enjoying the novelty of seeing Bell with her mouth shut for a while, Kunta told her how the students in Juffure had to be able to read well from the Koran before they could graduate, and he even recited for her some Koranic verses. He could tell she was intrigued, but it seemed amazing to him that this was the very first time in all the years he’d known her that she had ever shown the slightest interest in anything about Africa.

  Bell tapped the top of the table between them. “How y’all Africans say ’table’?” she asked.

  Although he hadn’t spoken in Mandinka since he left Africa, the word “meso” popped from Kunta’s mouth almost before he realized it, and he felt a surge of pride.

  “How ’bout dat?” asked Bell, pointing at her chair. “Sirango,” said Kunta. He was so pleased with himself that he got up and began to walk around in the cabin, pointing at things.

  Tapping Bell’s black iron pot over the fireplace, he said “kalero,” and then a candle on the table: “kandio.” Astonished, Bell had risen from her chair and was following him around. Kunta nudged a burlap bag with his shoe and said “boto,” touched a dried gourd and said “mirango,” then a basket that the old gardener had woven: “sinsingo.” He led Bell on into their bedroom. “Larango,” he said, pointing to their bed, and then a pillow: “kunglarang.” Then at the window: “janerango,” and at the roof: “kankarango.”

  “Lawd have mercy!” exclaimed Bell. That was far more respect for his homeland than he had ever expected to arouse in Bell.

  “Now it time to put our head on de kunglarang,” said Kunta, sitting down on the edge of the bed and starting to undress. Bell knitted her brow, then laughed and put her arms around him. He hadn’t felt so good in a long time.

  CHAPTER 67

  Though Kunta still liked to visit and swap stories with the fiddler and the gardener, it didn’t happen nearly as often as it used to when he was single. This was hardly surprising, since he spent most of his free time with Bell now. But even when they did get together lately, they seemed to feel differently toward him than before—certainly not unfriendly, but undeniably less companionable. It had been they who practically pushed Kunta into Bell’s arms, yet now that he was married, they acted a little as if they were afraid it might be catching—or that it might never be; his obvious contentment with hearth and home didn’t make them feel any warmer on cold winter nights. But if he didn’t feel as close to them as before—in the comradeship they had shared as single men, despite their different origins—he felt somehow more accepted now, as if by marrying Bell he had become one of them. Though their conversations with their married friend weren’t as earthy as they had sometimes been before—not that Kunta would admit even to himself that he had ever enjoyed the fiddler’s crudities—they had become, with the building of trust and the passage of years, even deeper and more serious.

  “Scairt!” declared’ the fiddler one night. “Dat’s how come white folks so busy countin’ everybody in dat census! Dey scairt dey’s done brung mo’ niggers ’mongst ’em dan dey is white folks!” declared the fiddler.

  Kunta said that Bell had told him she’d read in the Gazette that in Virginia, the census had recorded only a few more thousand whites than blacks.

  “White folks scairder of free niggers dan dey is of us’ns!” the old gardener put in.

  “I’s heared it’s near ’bout sixty thousand free niggers jes’ in Virginia,” the fiddler said. “So it ain’t no tellin’ how many slave niggers. But even dis state ain’t where de mos’ is. Dat’s down in dem states where de richest lan’ make the bes’ crops, an’ dey got water for boats to take dey crops to de markets, an’ ... ”

  “Yeah, dem places it be’s two niggers for every white folks!” the old gardener interrupted. “All down in dat Lou’siana Delta, an’ de Yazoo Miss’ippi where dey grows sugar cane, an’ all down in dat black belt of Alabama, South Ca’lina, and Geo’gia where dey grows all dat rice an’ indigo, let me tell you dat down on dem great big ’way-back plantations, dey’s got all kinds of niggers
ain’t never been counted.”

  “Some o’ dem plantations so big dey’s split up into littler ones wid oberseers in charge,” the fiddler said. “An’ de massas dat owns dem big plantations is mostly dem big lawyers an’ politicians an’ businessmen what lives in de cities, an’ dey wimminfolks don’t want no parts of no plantations ’ceptin’ maybe to bring out fancy carriages full of dey friends maybe for Thanksgivln’ or Christmas, or summertime picnics.”

  “But you know what,” the old gardener exclaimed, “dem rich city white folks is de very kin’ ’mongst which it’s dem dat speaks’gainst slavery.”

  The fiddler cut him off. “Humph! Dat don’ mean nothin’! Always been some big white folks dat wants de slavery ’bolished. Shoot, slavery been outlawed here in Virginia ten years now but law or no, you notice we still slaves, an’ dey still bringin’ in more shiploads of niggers.”

  “Where dey all bein’ taken?” asked Kunta. “Some buggy drivers I knows say dey massas go on long trips where dey don’ hardly see another black face for days at a time.” “It’s a plenty whole counties dat ain’t even got one big plantation on ’em, an’ hardly no niggers atall,” said the gardener. “Jes’ nothin’ but dem little rocky farms dat’s sol’ for fifty cents a acre to dem white folks so po’ dey eats dirt. An’ not a whole lot better off dan dem is de ones dat got not much better land an’ jes’ a handful of slaves.”

  “One place I heared ’bout ain’t got no handful o’ niggers, it’s dem West Indies, whatever dem is,” said the fiddler, turning to Kunta. “You know where? It’s ’crost de water like you come from.” Kunta shook his head.

  “Anyway,” the fiddler went on, “I hears it’s many as a thousan’ niggers b’longin’ to one massa dere, raisin’ and cuttin’ dat cane dat dey makes sugar an ’lasses an’ rum out of. Dey tells me a whole lots of dem ships like brung you over here stops off African niggers in dem West Indies to keep ’em awhile jes’ to fatten ’em up from dem long trips dat gits ’em so sick an’ starved dey’s near ’bout dead. Fattens ’em up, den brings ’em on here to git de better prices for niggers dat’s fit to work. Leas’ways, dat’s what I’se heared.”

  It had never failed to amaze Kunta how the fiddler and the gardener seemed to know so much about things they’d never seen and places they’d never been to, for he distinctly recalled having heard both of them say they had never been outside of Virginia and North Carolina. He had traveled far more widely than they had—not only all the way from Africa but also back and forth across the state in the massa’s buggy—but they still knew so much more than he did that even after all these years of talking to them, he was finding out things he hadn’t known before.

  It didn’t really bother Kunta to find out how ignorant he was, since they were helping him become less so; but it troubled him deeply to learn over the years that even he was better informed than the average slave. From what he’d been able to observe, most blacks literally didn’t even know where they were, let alone who they were.

  “I bet you half de niggers in Virginia ain’t never been off dey massa’s plantations,” said Bell when he raised the subject with her. “An’ ain’t never heard of nowhere else ’ceptin’ maybe Richmond an’ Fredericksburg an’ up Nawth, an’ don’ have no idea where none of dem is. De white folks keeps niggers ign’ant o’ where dey is ’cause dey so worried ’bout niggers uprisin’ or ’scapin’.”

  Before Kunta had the chance to recover from his surprise at hearing an insight like this one coming from Bell rather than the fiddler or the gardener, she spoke again. “You reckon you still would run again if’n you had de chance?”

  Kunta was stunned by the question, and for a long time he didn’t answer. Then finally he said, “Well, long time I ain’t done no thinkin’ ’bout dat.”

  “Whole lots of times I be’s thinkin’ a heap o’ things nobody wouldn’t figger I does,” said Bell. “Like sometime I gits to thinkin’’bout bein’ free, like I hears ’bout dem dat gits away up to de Nawth.” She looked dosely at Kunta. “Don’ care how good de massa is, I gits to feelin’ like if you an’ me was younger’n we is, I believes I’d be ready to leave ’way from here tonight.” As Kunta sat there astonished, she said quietly, “Reckon I’se got to be too old and scairt now.”

  Bell could have been reading the thought he was having at that moment about himself, and it hit him like a fist. He was too old to run away again and too beat up. And scared. All the pain and terror of those terrible days and nights of running came back: the blistered feet, the bursting lungs, the bleeding hands, the tearing thorns, the baying of the hounds, the snarling jaws, the gunshots, the sting of the lash, the falling ax. Without even realizing it, Kunta had plunged into a black depression. Knowing that she had aroused it without meaning to, but knowing also that she’d only make it worse by talking about it any further, even to apologize, Bell simply got up and went to bed.

  When he finally realized that she was gone, Kunta felt badly that he had cut her out of his thoughts. And it pained him to think how grievously he had underestimated her and the other blacks.

  Though they never showed it except to those they loved, and sometimes not even then, he realized at last that they felt—and hated—no less than he the oppressiveness under which they all lived. He wished he could find a way to tell her how sorry he was, how he felt her pain, how grateful he was to feel her love, how strong he felt the bond between them growing deep within himself. Quietly he got up, went into the bedroom, took off his clothes, got into bed, took her in his arms, and made love to her—and she to him—with a kind of desperate intensity.

  CHAPTER 68

  For several weeks, it seemed to Kunta that Bell had been acting very oddly. For one thing, she was hardly talking, but she wasn’t even in a bad mood. And she was casting what he felt were peculiar looks at him, then sighing loudly when he stared back. And she had begun smiling mysteriously to herself while rocking in her chair, sometimes even humming tunes. Then one night, just after they’d blown out the candle and climbed into bed, she grasped Kunta’s hand and placed it tenderly on her stomach. Something inside her moved beneath his hand. Kunta sprang up fit to split with joy.

  Over the next days, he hardly noticed where he was driving. For all he knew, the massa could have been pulling the buggy and the horses sitting on the seat behind him, so filled was his mind’s eye with visions of Bell paddling down the bolong to the rice fields with his man-child bundled snugly on her back. He thought of little else but the myriad significances of this coming firstborn, even as for Binta and Omoro he had been the firstborn. He vowed that just as they and others had done for him in Juffure, he was going to teach this man-child to be a true man, no matter what trials and hazards that might involve here in the land of the toubob. For it was the job of a father to be as a giant tree to his man-child. For where girlchildren simply ate food until they grew big enough to marry and go away—and girlchildren were their mothers’ concerns, in any case—it was the man-child who carried on his family’s name and reputation, and when the time came that his parents were old and tottering, it would be the well-reared man-child who put nothing before taking care of them.

  Bell’s pregnancy took Kunta’s mind even farther back to Africa than his encounter with the Ghanaian had done. One night, in fact, he completely forgot Bell was in the cabin while he patiently counted out all the pebbles in his gourd, discovering with astonishment that he hadn’t seen his homeland now for exactly 22½ rains. But most evenings she would be talking almost steadily while he sat there hearing less than usual and gazing off at nothing. “He jes’ go off into his Africanisms,” Bell would tell Aunt Sukey, and after a while Bell would rise unnoticed from her chair, quietly leave the room—muttering to herself—and go to sleep alone.

  It had been one such night when, about an hour after she’d gone to bed, Kunta was snapped back to the cabin by moans from the bedroom. Was it time? Rushing in, he found her still asleep, but rolling back and forth on the verge of screaming. When
he leaned over to touch her cheek, she sat bolt upright there in the darkness, soaked with sweat and breathing hard.

  “Lawd, I’m scairt to death for dis baby in my belly!” she said as she put her arms around him. Kunta didn’t understand until she composed herself enough to tell how she had dreamed that at a white folks’ party game, they had announced that the first prize would be the next black baby to be born on that massa’s plantation. Bell was so distraught that Kunta found himself in the unaccustomed role of calming her with assurances that she knew Massa Waller never would do such a thing. He made her agree with that, then climbed into bed alongside her, and finally she went back to sleep.

  But Kunta didn’t; he lay thinking for quite sometime of how he had heard of such things being done—of unborn black babies being given as presents, wagered as gambling bets at card tables and cockfights. The fiddler had told him how the dying massa of a pregnant fifteen-year-old black girl named Mary had willed as slaves to each of his five daughters one apiece of her first five babies. He had heard of black children being security for loans, of creditors claiming them while they were yet in their mother’s belly, of debtors selling them in advance to raise cash. At that time in the Spotsylvania County seat slave auctions, he knew the average price that was being asked and paid for a healthy black baby past six months of age—when it was assumed then that it would live—was around two hundred dollars.

  None of this was very far from his mind when Bell laughingly told him one evening in the cabin about three months later that during the day the inquisitive Missy Anne had demanded to know why Bell’s belly was growing so big. “I tol’ Missy Anne, ‘I got a l’il biscuit in de oven, honey.’” Kunta was hardly able to keep Bell from seeing his anger at the attention and affection she lavished on that pampered, doll-like child, who was to him but another in the seemingly endless parade of “l’il missies” and “l’il massas” he had seen at so many big houses. Now with Bell about to have a child of her own—and his own—it incensed him to think about the firstborn son of Kunta and Bell Kinte romping in “play” with toubob children who would grow up to become their massas—and sometimes even the fathers of their own children. And Kunta had been to more than a few plantations where one of the slave children was almost the same color as his massas’—in fact, they often looked like twins—because both of them had the same white father. Before Kunta let anything like that happen to Bell, he vowed that he would kill the massa rather than become one of those men he had seen holding their wife’s “high-yaller” baby and living somehow with the knowledge that if he uttered publicly so much as a complaining word, he would certainly get beaten, if not worse.