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By Root 1582 0

their vows before some white preacher with the massa and mistress looking on, but that was a pagan ceremony. If marrying someone in whatever manner was even to be thought about, the proper bride’s age for a Mandinka was fourteen to sixteen rains, with the man about thirty. And in his years in the white folks’ land, Kunta hadn’t seen one black female of fourteen to sixteen—or even twenty to twenty-five—whom he had not considered preposterously giggling and silly; especially when on Sundays, or for festivities, they painted and powdered their faces until they looked to him more like the death dancers in Juffure who covered themselves with ashes.

As for the twenty or so older women whom Kunta had come to know, they were mostly senior cooks at the big houses where he had driven Massa Waller, such as Liza at Enfield. In fact, Liza was the only one among them all whom he had come to look forward to seeing. She had no mate, and she had given Kunta clear signs of her willingness, if not her anxiety, to get him into much closer quarters than he had ever responded to, although he had thought about it privately. He would have died of shame if there had been any way for her to suspect even remotely that more than once it had been she about whom he had had the sticky dream.

Suppose—just suppose—he were to take Liza for a wife, Kunta thought. It would mean that they would be like so many couples he knew, living separately, each of them on the plantation of their own massa. Usually the man was permitted Saturday afternoon traveling passes to visit his wife, so long as he faithfully returned before dark on Sunday in order to rest up from his often long trip before work resumed at dawn on Monday. Kunta told himself that he would want no part of a wife living not where he was. And he told himself that settled the matter.

But his mind, as if on its own, kept on thinking about it. Considering how talkative and smothery Liza was, and how he liked to spend a lot of time alone, maybe their being able to see each other just on weekends would be a blessing in disguise. And if he were to marry Liza, it was unlikely that they would have to live as so many black couples did, in fear that one of them, or both, might get sold away. For the massa seemed to be happy with him, and Liza was owned by the massa’s parents, who apparently liked her. The family connections would also make unlikely the kind of frictions that sometimes arose when two massas were involved, sometimes even causing one or both of them to forbid the marriage.

On the other hand, Kunta thought ... over and over he turned it in his mind. But no matter how many perfectly sound reasons he could think of for marrying Liza, something held him back. Then one night, while he was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, it struck him like a lightning bolt!—there was another woman he might consider.

Bell.

He thought he must be crazy. She was nearly three times too old—probably beyond forty rains. It was absurd to think about it.

Bell.

Kunta tried to hurl her from his mind. She had entered it only because he had known her for so long, he told himself. He had never even dreamed of her. Grimly, he remembered a parade of indignities and irritations she had inflicted on him. He remembered how she used to all but slam the screen door in his face when he carried her vegetable basket to the kitchen. Even more keenly, he remembered her indignation when he told her she looked Mandinka; she was a heathen. Furthermore, she was just generally argumentative and bossy. And she talked too much.

But he couldn’t help remembering how, when he had lain wanting to die, she had visited him five and six times daily; how she had nursed and fed him, even cleaned his soiling of himself, and how her hot poultice of mashed leaves had broken his fever. She was also strong and healthy. And she did cook endless good things in her black pots.

The better she began to look to him, the ruder he was to her whenever he had to go to the kitchen, and the sooner he would leave when he had told her or found out from her whatever