Kindred

by Butler, Octavia

  “You might be able to go through this whole experience as an ob- server,” I said. “I can understand that because most of the time, I’m still an observer. It’s protection. It’s nineteen seventy-six shielding and cush- ioning eighteen nineteen for me. But now and then, like with the kids’ game, I can’t maintain the distance. I’m drawn all the way into eighteen nineteen, and I don’t know what to do. I ought to be doing something though. I know that.”

  “There’s nothing you could do that wouldn’t eventually get you whipped or killed!”

  I shrugged.

  “You … you haven’t already done anything, have you?”

  “Just started to teach Nigel to read and write,” I said. “Nothing more subversive than that.”

  “If Weylin catches you and I’m not around …”

  “I know. So stay close. The boy wants to learn, and I’m going to teach him.”

  He raised one leg against his chest and leaned forward looking at me. “You think someday he’ll write his own pass and head North, don’t you?”

  “At least he’ll be able to.”

  “I see Weylin was right about educated slaves.” I turned to look at him.

  “Do a good job with Nigel,” he said quietly. “Maybe when you’re gone, he’ll be able to teach others.”

  I nodded solemnly.

  “I’d bring him in to learn with Rufus if people weren’t so good at lis- tening at doors in that house. And Margaret is always wandering in and out.”

  “I know. That’s why I didn’t ask you.” I closed my eyes and saw the children playing their game again. “The ease seemed so frightening,” I said. “Now I see why.”

  “What?”

  “The ease. Us, the children … I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

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  8

  I said good-bye to Rufus the day my teaching finally did get me into trouble. I didn’t know I was saying good-bye, of course—didn’t know what trouble was waiting for me in the cookhouse where I was to meet Nigel. I thought there was trouble enough in Rufus’s room.

  I was there reading to him. I had been reading to him regularly since his father caught me that first time. Tom Weylin didn’t want me reading on my own, but he had ordered me to read to his son. Once he had told Rufus in my presence, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! A nigger can read better than you!”

  “She can read better than you too,” Rufus had answered.

  His father had stared at him coldly, then ordered me out of the room. For a second I was afraid for Rufus, but Tom Weylin left the room with me.

  “Don’t go to him again until I say you can,” he told me.

  Four days passed before he said I could. And again he chastised Rufus before me.

  “I’m no schoolmaster,” he said, “but I’ll teach you if you can be taught. I’ll teach you respect.”

  Rufus said nothing.

  “You want her to read to you?” “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you got something to say to me.” “I … I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “Read,” said Weylin to me. He turned and left the room.

  “What exactly are you supposed to be sorry for?” I asked when Weylin was gone. I spoke very softly.

  “Talking back,” said Rufus. “He thinks everything I say is talking back. So I don’t say very much to him.”

  “I see.” I opened the book and began to read.

  We had finished Robinson Crusoe long ago, and Kevin had chosen a couple of other familiar books from the library. We had already gone through the first, Pilgrim’s Progress. Now we were working on Gulliver’s Travels. Rufus’s own reading was improving slowly under Kevin’s tutor-

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  ing, but he still enjoyed being read to.

  On my last day with him, though, as on a few others, Margaret came in to listen—and to fidget and to fiddle with Rufus’s hair and to pet him while I was reading. As usual, Rufus put his head on her lap and accepted her caresses silently. But today, apparently, that was not enough.

  “Are you comfortable?” she asked Rufus when I had been reading for a few moments. “Does your leg hurt?” His leg was not healing as I thought it should have. After nearly two months, he still couldn’t walk.

  “I feel all right, Mama,” he said.

  Suddenly, Margaret twisted around to face me. “Well?” she demanded. I had paused in my reading to give her a chance to finish. I lowered my

  head and began to read again.

  About sixty seconds later, she said, “Baby, you hot? You want me to call Virgie up here to fan you?” Virgie was about ten—one of the small house servants often called to fan the whites, run errands for them, carry covered dishes of food between the cookhouse and the main house, and serve the whites at their table.

  “I’m all right, Mama,” said Rufus.

  “Why don’t you go on?” snapped Margaret at me. “You’re supposed to be here to read, so read!”

  I began to read again, biting off the words a little.

  “Are you hungry, baby?” asked Margaret a moment later. “Aunt

  Sarah’s just made a cake. Wouldn’t you like a piece?”

  I didn’t stop this time. I just lowered my voice a little and read auto- matically, tonelessly.

  “I don’t know why you want to listen to her,” Margaret said to Rufus. “She’s got a voice like a fly buzzing.”

  “I don’t want no cake, Mama.”

  “You sure? You ought to see the fine white icing Sarah put on it.” “I want to hear Dana read, that’s all.”

  “Well, there she is, reading. If you can call it that.”

  I let my voice grow progressively softer as they talked. “I can’t hear her with you talking,” Rufus said.

  “Baby, all I said was …”

  “Don’t say nothing!” Rufus took his head off her lap. “Go away and stop bothering me!”

  “Rufus!” She sounded hurt rather than angry. And in spite of the situ- ation, this sounded like real disrespect to me. I stopped reading and waited for the explosion. It came from Rufus.

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  “Go away, Mama!” he shouted. “Just leave me alone!”

  “Be still,” she whispered. “Baby, you’ll make yourself sick.”

  Rufus turned his head and looked at her. The expression on his face startled me. For once, the boy looked like a smaller replica of his father. His mouth was drawn into a thin straight line and his eyes were coldly hostile. He spoke quietly now as Weylin sometimes did when he was angry. “You’re making me sick, Mama. Get away from me!”

  Margaret got up and dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t see how you can talk to me that way,” she said. “Just because of some nigger …”

  Rufus just looked at her, and finally she left the room.

  He relaxed against his pillows and closed his eyes. “I get so tired of her sometimes,” he said.

  “Rufe …?”

  He opened weary, friendly eyes and looked at me. The anger was gone. “You’d better be careful,” I said. “What if your mother told your father

  you talked to her that way?”

  “She never tells.” He grinned. “She’ll be back after ’while to bring me a piece of cake with fine white icing.”

  “She was crying.”

  “She always cries. Read, Dana.”

  “Do you talk to her that way often?”

  “I have to, or she won’t leave me alone. Daddy does it too.”

  I took a deep breath, shook my head, and plunged back into Gulliver’s

  Travels.

  Later, as I left Rufus, I passed Margaret on her way back to his room. Sure enough, she was carrying a large slice of cake on a plate.

  I went downstairs and out to the cookhouse to give Nigel his reading lesson.

  Nigel was waiting. He already had our book out of its hiding place and was spelling out words to Carrie. That surprised me because I ha
d offered Carrie a chance to learn with him, and she had refused. Now though, the two of them, alone in the cookhouse, were so involved in what they were doing that they didn’t even notice me until I shut the door. They looked up then, wide-eyed with fear. But they relaxed when they saw it was only me. I went over to them.

  “Do you want to learn?” I asked Carrie.

  The girl’s fear seemed to return and she glanced at the door.

  “Aunt Sarah’s afraid for her to learn,” said Nigel. “Afraid if she learns, she might get caught at it, and then be whipped or sold.”

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  I lowered my head, sighed. The girl couldn’t talk, couldn’t communi- cate at all except in the inadequate sign language she had invented—a language even her mother only half-understood. In a more rational soci- ety, an ability to write would be of great help to her. But here, the only people who could read her writing would be those who might punish her for being able to write. And Nigel. And Nigel.

  I looked from the boy to the girl. “Shall I teach you, Carrie?” If I did and her mother caught me, I might be in more trouble than if Tom Weylin caught me. I was afraid to teach her both for her sake and for mine. Her mother wasn’t a woman I wanted to offend or to hurt, but my conscience wouldn’t let me refuse her if she wanted to learn.

  Carrie nodded. She wanted to learn all right. She turned away from us for a moment, did something to her dress, then turned back with a small book in her hand. She too had stolen from the library. Her book was a volume of English history illustrated with a few drawings which she pointed out to me.

  I shook my head. “Either hide it or put it back,” I told her. “It’s too hard for you to begin with. The one Nigel and I are using was written for people just starting to learn.” It was an old speller—probably the one Weylin’s first wife had been taught from.

  Carrie’s fingers caressed one of the drawings for a moment. Then she put the book back into her dress.

  “Now,” I said, “find something to do in case your mother comes in. I

  can’t teach you in here. We’ll have to find someplace else to meet.”

  She nodded, looking relieved, and went over to sweep the other side of the room.

  “Nigel,” I said softly when she was gone, “I surprised you when I

  came in here, didn’t I?” “Didn’t know it was you.”

  “Yes. It could have been Sarah, couldn’t it?” He said nothing.

  “I teach you in here because Sarah said I could, and because the

  Weylins never seem to come out here.”

  “They don’t. They send us out here to tell Sarah what they want. Or to tell her to come to them.”

  “So you can learn here, but Carrie can’t. We might have trouble no matter how careful we are, but we don’t have to ask for it.”

  He nodded.

  “By the way, what does your father think of my teaching you?”

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  “I don’t know. I didn’t tell him you was.”

  Oh God. I took a shaky breath. “But he does know, doesn’t he?” “Aunt Sarah probably told him. He never said nothing to me though.” If anything went wrong, there would be blacks to take their revenge on

  me when the whites finished. When would I ever go home? Would I ever go home? Or if I had to stay here, why couldn’t I just turn these two kids away, turn off my conscience, and be a coward, safe and comfortable?

  I took the book from Nigel and handed him my own pencil and a piece of paper from my tablet. “Spelling test,” I said quietly.

  He passed the test. Every word right. To my surprise as well as his, I hugged him. He grinned, half-embarrassed, half-pleased. Then I got up and put his test paper into the hot coals of the hearth. It burst into flames and burned completely. I was always careful about that, and I always hated being careful. I couldn’t help contrasting Nigel’s lessons with Rufus’s. And the contrast made me bitter.

  I turned to go back to the table where Nigel was waiting. In that moment, Tom Weylin opened the door and stepped in.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen. For as long as I had been on the planta- tion, it had not happened—no white had come into the cookhouse. Not even Kevin. Nigel had just agreed with me that it didn’t happen.

  But there stood Tom Weylin staring at me. He lowered his gaze a lit- tle and frowned. I realized that I was still holding the old speller. I’d got- ten up with it in my hand and I hadn’t put it down. I even had one finger in it holding my place.

  I withdrew my finger and let the book close. I was in for a beating now. Where was Kevin? Somewhere inside the house, probably. He might hear me if I screamed—and I would be screaming shortly, anyway. But it would be better if I could just get past Weylin and run into the house.

  Weylin stood squarely in front of the door. “Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want you reading!”

  I said nothing. Clearly, nothing I could say would help. I felt myself trembling, and I tried to be still. I hoped Weylin couldn’t see. And I hoped Nigel had had the sense to get the pencil off the table. So far, I was the only one in trouble. If it could just stay that way …

  “I treated you good,” said Weylin quietly, “and you pay me back by stealing from me! Stealing my books! Reading!”

  He snatched the book from me and threw it on the floor. Then he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward the door. I managed to

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  twist around to face Nigel and mouth the words, “Get Kevin.” I saw

  Nigel stand up.

  Then I was out of the cookhouse. Weylin dragged me a few feet, then pushed me hard. I fell, knocked myself breathless. I never saw where the whip came from, never even saw the first blow coming. But it came— like a hot iron across my back, burning into me through my light shirt, searing my skin …

  I screamed, convulsed. Weylin struck again and again, until I couldn’t have gotten up at gunpoint.

  I kept trying to crawl away from the blows, but I didn’t have the strength or the coordination to get far. I may have been still screaming or just whimpering, I couldn’t tell. All I was really aware of was the pain. I thought Weylin meant to kill me. I thought I would die on the ground there with a mouth full of dirt and blood and a white man cursing and lec- turing as he beat me. By then, I almost wanted to die. Anything to stop the pain.

  I vomited. And I vomited again because I couldn’t move my face away.

  I saw Kevin, blurred, but somehow still recognizable. I saw him run- ning toward me in slow motion, running. Legs churning, arms pumping, yet he hardly seemed to be getting closer.

  Suddenly, I realized what was happening and I screamed—I think I

  screamed. He had to reach me. He had to!

  And I passed out.

  The Fight

  1

  We never really moved in together, Kevin and I. I had a sardine-can sized apartment on Crenshaw Boulevard and he had a bigger one on Olympic not too far away. We both had books shelved and stacked and boxed and crowding out the furniture. Together, we would never have fitted into either of our apartments. Kevin did suggest once that I get rid of some of my books so that I’d fit into his place.

  “You’re out of your mind!” I told him.

  “Just some of that book-club stuff that you don’t read.”

  We were at my apartment then, so I said, “Let’s go to your place and I’ll help you decide which of your books you don’t read. I’ll even help you throw them out.”

  He looked at me and sighed, but he didn’t say anything else. We just sort of drifted back and forth between our two apartments and I got less sleep than ever. But it didn’t seem to bother me as much as it had before. Nothing seemed to bother me much. I didn’t love the agency now, but, on the other hand, I didn’t kick the furniture in the morning anymore, either.

  “Quit,” Kevin told me. “I’ll help you out until you find a better job.” If I hadn’t already loved him by then, that would have done it. But I
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  didn’t quit. The independence the agency gave me was shaky, but it was real. It would hold me together until my novel was finished and I was ready to look for something more demanding. When that time came, I

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  could walk away from the agency not owing anybody. My memory of my aunt and uncle told me that even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met sim- ply because I owed them.

  I knew Kevin wasn’t that way. The situation was completely different. But I kept my job.