Kindred

by Octavia Butler

  I had my Excedrin. I turned to leave the room.

  “Dana!”

  I stopped, looked at him. He was thin and weak and hollow-eyed; his illness had left its marks on him. He probably couldn’t have carried me to his horse if he’d tried. And he couldn’t stop me from leaving now—I thought.

  “You walk away from me, Dana, you’ll be back in the fields in an hour!”

  The threat stunned me. He meant it. He’d send me back out. I stood straring at him, not with anger now, but with surprise—and fear. He could do it. Maybe later, I would have a chance to make him pay, but for now, he could do as he pleased. He sounded more like his father than himself. In that moment, he even looked like his father.

  “Don’t you ever walk away from me again!” he said. Strangely, he began to sound a little afraid. He repeated the words, spacing them, emphasizing each one. “Don’t you ever walk away from me again!”

  I stood where I was, my head throbbing, my expression as neutral as I could make it. I still had some pride left.

  “Get back in here!” he said.

  I stood there for a moment longer, then went back to his desk and sat down. And he wilted. The look I associated with his father vanished. He was himself again—whoever that was.

  “Dana, don’t make me talk to you like that,” he said wearily. “Just do what I tell you.”

  I shook my head, unable to think of anything safe to say. And I guess I wilted. To my shame, I realized I was almost crying. I needed desperately to be alone. Somehow, I kept back the tears.

  If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I remembered I still had the Excedrin tablets in my hand, and I took them, swallowed them without water, hoping they’d work quickly, steady me a little. Then I looked at Rufus, saw that he’d lain back again. Was I supposed to stay and watch him sleep?

  “I don’t see how you can swallow those things like that,” he said, rubbing his throat. There was a long silence, then another command. “Say something! Talk to me!”

  “Or what?” I asked. “Are you going to have me beaten for not talking to you?”

  He muttered something I didn’t quite hear.

  “What?”

  Silence. Then a rush of bitterness from me.

  “I saved your life, Rufus! Over and over again.” I stopped for a moment, caught my breath. “And I tried to save your father’s life. You know I did. You know I didn’t kill him or let him die.”

  He moved uncomfortably, wincing a little. “Give me some of your medicine,” he said.

  Somehow, I didn’t throw the bottle at him. I got up and handed it to him.

  “Open it,” he said. “I don’t want to be bothered with that damn top.”

  I opened it, shook one tablet into his hand, and snapped the top back on.

  He looked at the tablet. “Only one?”

  “These are stronger than the others,” I said. And also, I wanted to hang on to them for as long as I could. Who knew how many more times he would make me need them. The ones I had taken were beginning to help me already.

  “You took three,” he said petulantly.

  “I needed three. No one has been beating you.”

  He looked away from me, put the one into his mouth. He still had to chew tablets before he could swallow them. “This tastes worse than the others,” he complained.

  I ignored him, put the bottle away in the desk.

  “Dana?”

  “What?”

  “I know you tried to help Daddy. I know.”

  “Then why did you send me to the field? Why did I have to go through all that, Rufe?”

  He shrugged, winced, rubbed his shoulders. He still had plenty of sore muscles, apparently. “I guess I just had to make somebody pay. And it seemed that … well, people don’t die when you’re taking care of them.”

  “I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “No. Daddy thought you were, though. He didn’t like you, but he thought you could heal better than a doctor.”

  “Well I can’t. Sometimes I’m less likely to kill than the doctor, that’s all.”

  “Kill?”

  “I don’t bleed or purge away people’s strength when they need it most. And I know enough to try to keep a wound clean.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s enough to save a few lives around here, but no, it’s not all. I know a little about some diseases. Only a little.”

  “What do you know about … about a woman who’s been hurt in childbearing?”

  “Been hurt how?” I wondered whether he meant Alice.

  “I don’t know. The doctor said she wasn’t to have any more and she did. The babies died and she almost died. She hasn’t been well since.”

  Now I knew who he was talking about. “Your mother?”

  “Yes. She’s coming home. I want you to take care of her.”

  “My God! Rufe, I don’t know anything about problems like that! Believe me, nothing at all.” What if the woman died in my care. He’d have me beaten to death!

  “She wants to come home, now that … She wants to come home.”

  “I can’t care for her. I don’t know how.” I hesitated. “Your mother doesn’t like me anyway, Rufe. You know that as well as I do.” She hated me. She’d make my life hell out of pure spite.

  “There’s no one else I’d trust,” he said. “Carrie’s got her own family now. I’d have to take her out of her cabin away from Nigel and the boys …”

  “Why?”

  “Mama has to have someone with her through the night. What if she needed something?”

  “You mean I’d have to sleep in her room?”

  “Yes. She’d never have a servant sleep in her room before. Now, though, she’s gotten used to it.”

  “She won’t get used to me. I’m telling you, she won’t have me.” Please heaven!

  “I think she will. She’s older now, not so full of fire. You give her her laudanum when she needs it and she won’t give you much trouble.”

  “Laudanum?”

  “Her medicine. She doesn’t need it so much for pain anymore, Aunt May says. But she still needs it.”

  Since laudanum was an opium extract, I didn’t doubt that she still needed it. I was going to have a drug addict on my hands. A drug addict who hated me. “Rufe, couldn’t Alice …”

  “No!” A very sharp no. It occurred to me that Margaret Weylin had more reason to hate Alice than she did to hate me.

  “Alice will be having another baby in a few months anyway,” said Rufus.

  “She will? Then maybe …” I shut my mouth, but the thought went on. Maybe this one would be Hagar. Maybe for once, I had something to gain by staying here. If only …

  “Maybe what?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Rufe, I’m asking you not to put your mother in my care, for her sake and for mine.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’ll think about it, Dana, and talk to her. Maybe she remembers someone she’d like. Let me sleep now. I’m still so damn weak.”

  I started out of the room.

  “Dana.”

  “Yes?” What now?

  “Go read a book or something. Don’t do any more work today.”

  “Read a book?”

  “Do whatever you want to.”

  In other words, he was sorry. He was always sorry. He would have been amazed, uncomprehending if I refused to forgive him. I remembered suddenly the way he used to talk to his mother. If he couldn’t get what he wanted from her gently, he stopped being gentle. Why not? She always forgave him.

  7

  Margaret Weylin wanted me. She was thin and pale and weak and older than her years. Her beauty had gone to a kind of fragile gaunt- ness. As I was reintroduced to her, she sipped at her little bottle of dark brownish-red liquid and smiled beneficently.

  Nigel carried her up to her room. She could walk a little, but she couldn’t manage the stairs. Sometime later, she wanted to see Nigel’s children. She was sugary sweet with them. I couldn’
t remember her being that way with anyone but Rufus before. Slave children hadn’t interested her unless her husband had fathered them. Then her interest had been negative. But she gave Nigel’s sons candy and they loved her.

  She asked to see another slave—one I didn’t know—and then wept a little when she heard that one had been sold. She was full of sweetness and charity. It scared me a little. I couldn’t quite believe she’d changed that much.

  “Dana, can you still read the way you used to?” she asked me.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I wanted you because I remembered how well you read.”

  I kept my expression neutral. If she didn’t remember what she had thought of my reading, I did.

  “Read the Bible to me,” she said.

  “Now?” She had just had her breakfast. I hadn’t had anything yet, and I was hungry.

  “Now, yes. Read the Sermon on the Mount.”

  That was the beginning of my first full day with her. When she was tired of hearing me read, she thought of other things for me to do. Her laundry, for instance. She wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it. I wondered whether she had already found out that Alice generally did the laundry. And there was cleaning. She didn’t believe her room had been swept and dusted until she saw me do it. She didn’t believe Sarah understood how she wanted dinner prepared until I went down, got Sarah, and brought her back with me to receive instructions. She had to talk to Carrie and Nigel about the cleaning. She had to inspect the boy and girl who served at the table. In short, she had to prove that she was running her own house again. It had gone along without her for years, but she was back now.

  She decided to teach me to sew. I had an old Singer at home and I could sew well enough with it to take care of my needs and Kevin’s. But I thought sewing by hand, especially sewing for “pleasure” was slow torture. Margaret Weylin never asked me whether I wanted to learn though. She had time to fill, and it was my job to help her fill it. So I spent long tedious hours trying to imitate her tiny, straight, even stitches, and she spent minutes ripping out my work and lecturing me none too gently on how bad it was.

  As the days passed, I learned to take longer than necessary when she sent me on errands. I learned to tell lies to get away from her when I thought I was about to explode. I learned to listen silently while she talked and talked and talked … mostly about how much better things were in Baltimore than here. I never learned to like sleeping on the floor of her room, but she wouldn’t permit the trundle bed to be brought in. She honestly didn’t see that it was any hardship for me to sleep on the floor. Niggers always slept on the floor.

  Troublesome as she was, though, Margaret Weylin had mellowed. She didn’t have the old bursts of temper any more. Maybe it was the laudanum.

  “You’re a good girl,” she said to me once as I sat near her bed stitching at a slip cover. “Much better than you used to be. Someone must have taught you to behave.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I didn’t even look up.

  “Good. You were impudent before. There’s nothing worse than an impudent nigger.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She depressed me, bored me, angered me, drove me crazy. But my back healed completely while I was with her. The work wasn’t hard and she never complained about anything but my sewing. She never threatened me or tried to have me whipped. Rufus said she was pleased with me. That seemed to surprise even him. So I endured her quietly. By now, I knew enough to realize when I was well off. Or I thought I did.

  “You ought to see yourself,” Alice told me one day as I was hiding out in her cabin—the cabin Rufus had had Nigel build her just before the birth of her first child.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Marse Rufe really put the fear of God in you, didn’t he?”

  “Fear of … What are you talking about?”

  “You run around fetching and carrying for that woman like you love her. And half a day in the fields was all it took.”

  “Hell, Alice, leave me alone. I’ve been listening to nonsense all morning. I don’t need yours.”

  “You don’t want to hear me, get out of here. The way you always suckin’ up to that woman is enough to make anybody sick.”

  I got up and went to the cookhouse. There were times when it was stupid to expect reason from Alice, times when it did no good to point out the obvious.

  There were two field hands in the cookhouse. One young man who had a broken leg splinted and obviously healing crooked, and one old man who didn’t do much work any more. I could hear them before I went in.

  “I know Marse Rufe’ll get rid of me if he can,” said the young man. “I ain’t no good to him. His daddy would have got rid of me.”

  “Won’t nobody buy me,” said the old man. “I was burnt out long time ago. It’s you young ones got to worry.”

  I went into the cookhouse and the young man who had his mouth open to speak closed it quickly, looking at me with open hostility. The old man simply turned his back. I’d seen slaves do that to Alice. I hadn’t noticed them doing it to me before. Suddenly, the cookhouse was no more comfortable than Alice’s cabin had been. It might have been different if Sarah or Carrie had been there, but they weren’t. I left the cookhouse and went back toward the main house, feeling lonely.

  Once I was inside, though, I wondered why I had crept away like that. Why hadn’t I fought back? Alice accusing me was ridiculous, and she knew it. But the field hands … They just didn’t know me, didn’t know how loyal I might be to Rufus or Margaret, didn’t know what I might report.

  And if I told them, how likely would they be to believe me?

  But still …

  I went down the hall and toward the stairs slowly, wondering why I hadn’t tried to defend myself—at least tried. Was I getting so used to being submissive?

  Upstairs, I could hear Margaret Weylin thumping on the floor with her cane. She didn’t use the cane much for walking because she hardly ever walked. She used it to call me.

  I turned and went back out of the house, out toward the woods. I had to think. I wasn’t getting enough time to myself. Once—God knows how long ago—I had worried that I was keeping too much distance between myself and this alien time. Now, there was no distance at all. When had I stopped acting? Why had I stopped?

  There were people coming toward me through the woods. Several people. They were on the road, and I was several feet off it. I crouched in the trees to wait for them to pass. I was in no mood to answer some white man’s stupid inevitable questions: “What are you doing here? Who’s your master?”

  I could have answered without trouble. I was nowhere near the edge of Weylin land. But just for a while, I wanted to be my own master. Before I forgot what it felt like.

  A white man went by on horseback leading two dozen black men chained two by two. Chained. They wore handcuffs and iron collars with chains connecting the collars to a central chain that ran between the two lines. Behind the men walked several women roped together neck to neck. A coffle—slaves for sale.

  At the end of the procession rode a second white man with a gun in his belt. They were all headed for the Weylin house.

  I realized suddenly that the slaves in the cookhouse had not been speculating idly about the possibility of being sold. They had known that there was a sale coming. Field hands who never set foot in the main house, and they had known. I hadn’t heard a thing.

  Lately, Rufus spent his time either straightening out his father’s affairs, or sleeping. The weakness left over from his illness was still with him, and he had no time for me. He barely had time for his mother. But he had time to sell slaves. He had time to make himself that much more like his father.

  I let the coffle reach the house far ahead of me. By the time I got there, three slaves were already being added to the line. Two men, one grim-faced, one openly weeping; and one woman who moved as though she were sleepwalking. As I got closer, the woman began to look familiar to me. I stopped, almost not wanting
to know who it was. A tall, strongly built, handsome woman.

  Tess.

  I’d seen her only two or three times this trip. She was still working in the fields, still serving the overseer at night. She’d had no children, and that may have been why she was being sold. Or maybe this was something Margaret Weylin had arranged. She might be that vindictive if she knew of her husband’s temporary interest in Tess.

  I started toward Tess and the white man who had just tied a rope around her neck, fastening her into the line, saw me. He turned to face me, gun drawn.

  I stopped, alarmed, confused … I had made no threatening move. “I just wanted to say good-bye to my friend,” I told him. I was whispering for some reason.

  “Say it from there. She can hear you.”

  “Tess?”

  She stood, head down, shoulders rounded, a little red bundle hanging from one hand. She should have heard me, but I didn’t think she had.

  “Tess, it’s Dana.”

  She never looked up.

  “Dana!” Rufus’s voice from near the steps where he was talking with the other white man. “You get away from here. Go inside.”

  “Tess?” I called once more, willing her to answer. She knew my voice, surely. Why wouldn’t she look up? Why wouldn’t she speak? Why wouldn’t she even move? It was as though I didn’t exist for her, as though I wasn’t real.

  I stepped toward her. I think I would have gone to her, taken the rope from her neck or gotten shot trying. But at that moment, Rufus reached me. He grabbed me, hustled me into the house, into the library.

  “Stay here!” he ordered. “Just stay …” He stopped, suddenly stumbled against me, clutching at me now, not to hold me where I was, but to keep himself upright. “Damn!”

  “How could you do it!” I hissed as he straightened. “Tess … those others …”

  “They’re my property!”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Oh my God …!”

  He passed a hand over his face, turned away. “Look, this sale is something my father arranged before he died. You can’t do anything about it, so just stay out of the way!”