Kindred (35 page)

I thought for a moment. “Yes, that sounds about right.”

“It doesn’t sound right to me.”

“I mean it sounds like what he said! I don’t have any control over what he says.”

“But still …” He paused, looked at me as though he expected me to say something. I didn’t. “It sounded more like what I might say to you if you were leaving.”

“Would you?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Say what you mean. I can’t answer you unless you say it.”

He drew a deep breath. “All right. You’ve said he was a man of his time, and you’ve told me what he’s done to Alice. What’s he done to you?”

“Sent me to the field, had me beaten, made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor of his mother’s room, sold people … He’s done plenty, but the worst of it was to other people. He hasn’t raped me, Kevin. He understands, though you don’t seem to, that for him that would be a form of suicide.”

“You mean there’s something he could do to make you kill him, after all?”

I sighed, went over to him, and sat down on the arm of his chair. I looked down at him. “Tell me you believe I’m lying to you.”

He looked at me uncertainly. “Look, if anything did happen, I could understand it. I know how it was back then.”

“You mean you could forgive me for having been raped?”

“Dana, I lived there. I know what those people were like. And Rufus’s attitude toward you …”

“Was sensible most of the time. He knew I could kill him just by turning my back at the right moment. And he believed that I wouldn’t have him because I loved you. He said something like that once. He was wrong, but I never told him so.”

“Wrong?”

“At least partly. Of course I love you, and I don’t want anyone else. But there’s another reason, and when I’m back there it’s the most important reason. I don’t think Rufus would have understood it. Maybe you won’t either.”

“Tell me.”

I thought for a moment, tried to find the right words. If I could make him understand, then surely he would believe me. He had to believe. He was my anchor here in my own time. The only person who had any idea what I was going through.

“You know what I thought,” I said, “when I saw Tess tied into that coffle?” I had told him about Tess and about Sam—that I had known them, that Rufus had sold them. I hadn’t told him the details though—especially not the details of Sam’s sale. I had been trying for two weeks to avoid sending his thoughts in the direction they had taken now.

“What does Tess have to do with …?”

“I thought, that could be me—standing there with a rope around my neck waiting to be led away like someone’s dog!” I stopped, looked down at him, then went on softly. “I’m not property, Kevin. I’m not a horse or a sack of wheat. If I have to seem to be property, if I have to accept limits on my freedom for Rufus’s sake, then he also has to accept limits—on his behavior toward me. He has to leave me enough control of my own life to make living look better to me than killing and dying.”

“If your black ancestors had felt that way, you wouldn’t be here,” said Kevin.

“I told you when all this started that I didn’t have their endurance. I still don’t. Some of them will go on struggling to survive, no matter what. I’m not like that.”

He smiled a little. “I suspect that you are.”

I shook my head. He thought I was being modest or something. He didn’t understand.

Then I realized that he had smiled. I looked down at him questioningly.

He sobered. “I had to know.”

“And do you, now?”

“Yes.”

That felt like truth. It felt enough like truth for me not to mind that he had only half understood me.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do about Rufus?” he asked.

I shook my head. “You know, it’s not only what will happen to the slaves that worries me … if I turn my back on him. It’s what might happen to me.”

“You’ll be finished with him.”

“I might be finished period. I might not be able to get home.”

“Your coming home has never had anything to do with him. You come home when your life is in danger.”

“But how do I come home? Is the power mine, or do I tap some power in him? All this started with him, after all. I don’t know whether I need him or not. And I won’t know until he’s not around.”

3

A couple of Kevin’s friends came over on the Fourth of July and tried to get us to go to the Rose Bowl with them for the fireworks. Kevin wanted to go—more to get out of the house than for any other reason, I suspected. I told him to go ahead, but he wouldn’t go without me. As it turned out, there was no chance for me to go, anyway. As Kevin’s friends left the house, I began to feel dizzy.

I stumbled toward my bag, fell before I reached it, crawled toward it, grabbed it just as Kevin came in from saying good-bye to his friends.

“Dana,” he was saying, “we can’t stay cooped up in this house any longer waiting for something that isn’t …”

He was gone.

Instead of lying on the floor of my living room, I was lying on the ground in the sun, almost directly over a hill of large black ants.

Before I could get up, someone kicked me, fell on me heavily. I had the breath knocked out of me for a moment.

“Dana!” said Rufus’s voice. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I looked up, saw him sprawled across me where he had fallen. We got up just as something began to bite me—the ants, probably. I brushed myself off quickly.

“I said what are you doing here!” He sounded angry. He looked no older than he had been when I’d last seen him, but something was wrong with him. He looked haggard and weary—looked as though it had been too long since he’d slept last, looked as though it would be even longer before he was able to sleep again.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here, Rufe. I never do until I find out what’s wrong with you.”

He stared at me for a long moment. His eyes were red and under them were dark smudges. Finally, he grabbed me by the arm and led me back the way he had come. We were on the plantation not far from the house. Nothing looked changed. I saw two of Nigel’s sons wrestling, rolling around on the ground. They were the two I had been teaching, and they were no bigger than they had been when I saw them last.

“Rufe, how long have I been gone?”

He didn’t answer. He was leading me toward the barn, I saw, and apparently I wasn’t going to learn anything until I got there.

He stopped at the barn door and pushed me through it. He didn’t follow me in.

I looked around, seeing very little at first as my eyes became accustomed to the dimmer light. I turned to the place where I had been strung up and whipped—and jumped back in surprise when I saw that someone was hanging there. Hanging by the neck. A woman.

Alice.

I stared at her not believing, not wanting to believe … I touched her and her flesh was cold and hard. The dead gray face was ugly in death as it had never been in life. The mouth was open. The eyes were open and staring. Her head was bare and her hair loose and short like mine. She had never liked to tie it up the way other women did. It was one of the things that had made us look even more alike—the only two consistently bareheaded women on the place. Her dress was dark red and her apron clean and white. She wore shoes that Rufus had had made specifically for her, not the rough heavy shoes or boots other slaves wore. It was as though she had dressed up and combed her hair and then …

I wanted her down.

I looked around, saw that the rope had been tied to a wall peg, thrown over a beam. I broke my fingernails, trying to untie it until I remembered my knife. I got it from my bag and cut Alice down.

She fell stiffly like something that would break when it hit the floor. But she landed without breaking and I took the rope from her neck and closed her eyes. For a time, I just sat with her, holding her head and crying silently.

Eventually, Rufus came in. I looked up at him and he looked away.

“Did she do this to herself?” I asked.

“Yes. To herself.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer.

“Rufe?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Where are her children?”

He turned and walked out of the barn.

I straightened Alice’s body and her dress and looked around for something to cover her with. There was nothing.

I left the barn and went across an expanse of grass to the cookhouse. Sarah was there chopping meat with that frightening speed and coordination of hers. I had told her once that it always looked as though she was about to cut off a finger or two, and she had laughed. She still had all ten.

“Sarah?” There was such a difference in our ages now that everyone else my age called her “Aunt Sarah.” I knew it was a title of respect in this culture, and I respected her. But I couldn’t quite manage “Aunt” any more than I could have managed “Mammy.” She didn’t seem to mind.

She looked up. “Dana! Girl, what are you doing back here? What Marse Rufe done now?”

“I’m not sure. But, Sarah, Alice is dead.”

Sarah put down her cleaver and sat on the bench next to the table. “Oh Lord. Poor child. He finally killed her.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I went over and sat beside her. “I think she did it to herself. Hung herself. I just took her down.”

“He did it!” she hissed. “Even if he didn’t put the rope on her, he drove her to it. He sold her babies!”

I frowned. Sarah had spoken clearly enough, loudly enough, but for a moment, I didn’t understand. “Joe and Hagar? His children?”

“What he care ’bout that?”

“But … he did care. He was going to … Why would he do such a thing?”

“She run off.” Sarah faced me. “You must have known she was goin’. You and her was like sisters.”

I didn’t need the reminder. I got up, feeling that I had to move around, distract myself, or I would cry again.

“You sure fought like sisters,” said Sarah. “Always fussin’ at each other, stompin’ away from each other, comin’ back. Right after you left, she knocked the devil out of a field hand who was runnin’ you down.”

Had she? She would. Insulting me was her prerogative. No trespassing. I paced from the table to the hearth to a small work table. Back to Sarah.

“Dana, where is she?”

“In the barn.”

“He’ll give her a big funeral.” Sarah shook her head. “It’s funny. I thought she was finally settlin’ down with him—getting not to mind so much.”

“If she was, I don’t think she could have forgiven herself for it.”

Sarah shrugged.

“When she ran … did he beat her?”

“Not much. ’Bout much as old Marse Tom whipped you that time.”

That gentle spanking, yes.

“The whipping didn’t matter much. But when he took away her children, I thought she was go’ die right there. She was screaming and crying and carrying on. Then she got sick and I had to take care of her.” Sarah was silent for a moment. “I didn’t want to even be close to her. When Marse Tom sold my babies, I just wanted to lay down and die. Seeing her like she was brought all that back.”

Carrie came in then, her face wet with tears. She came up to me without surprise, and hugged me.

“You know?” I asked.

She nodded, then made her sign for white people and pushed me toward the door. I went.

I found Rufus at his desk in the library fondling a hand gun.

He looked up and saw me just as I was about to withdraw. It had occurred to me suddenly, certainly, that this was where he had been heading when he called me. What had his call been, then? A subconscious desire for me to stop him from shooting himself?

“Come in, Dana.” His voice sounded empty and dead.

I pulled my old Windsor chair up to his desk and sat down. “How could you do it, Rufe?”

He didn’t answer.

“Your son and your daughter … How could you sell them?”

“I didn’t.”

That stopped me. I had been prepared for almost any other answer—or no answer. But a denial … “But … but …”

“She ran away.”

“I know.”

“We were getting along. You know. You were here. It was good. Once, when you were gone, she came to my room. She came on her own.”

“Rufe …?”

“Everything was all right. I even went on with Joe’s lessons. Me! I told her I would free both of them.”

“She didn’t believe you. You wouldn’t put anything into writing.”

“I would have.”

I shrugged. “Where are the children, Rufe?”

“In Baltimore with my mother’s sister.”

“But … why?”

“To punish her, scare her. To make her see what could happen if she didn’t … if she tried to leave me.”

“Oh God! But you could have at least brought them back when she got sick.”

“I wish I had.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

I turned away from him in disgust. “You killed her. Just as though you had put that gun to her head and fired.”

He looked at the gun, put it down quickly.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Nigel’s gone to get a coffin. A decent one, not just a homemade box. And he’ll hire a minister to come out tomorrow.”

“I mean what are you going to do for your son and your daughter?”

He looked at me helplessly.

“Two certificates of freedom,” I said. “You owe them that, at least. You’ve deprived them of their mother.”

“Damn you, Dana! Stop saying that! Stop saying I killed her.”

I just looked at him.

“Why did you leave me! If you hadn’t gone, she might not have run away!”

I rubbed my face where he had hit me when I begged him not to sell Sam.

“You didn’t have to go!”

“You were turning into something I didn’t want to stay near.”

Silence.

“Two certificates of freedom, Rufe, all legal. Raise them free. That’s the least you can do.”

4

There was an outdoor funeral the next day. Everyone attended—field hands, house servants, even the indifferent Evan Fowler.

The minister was a tall coal-black deep-voiced freedman with a face that reminded me of a picture I had of my father who had died before I was old enough to know him. The minister was literate. He held a Bible in his huge hands and read from Job and Ecclesiastes until I could hardly stand to listen. I had shrugged off my aunt and uncle’s strict Baptist teachings years before. But even now, especially now, the bitter melancholy words of Job could still reach me. “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not …”