Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [178]
It was the first time in her twenty-two years on the Waller plantation that any man had made something for her with his own hands. She felt flooding guilt for the way she had been acting toward Kunta, and she remembered how peculiar the fiddler and the gardener had acted recently when she complained to them about him. They must have known of this—but she couldn’t be certain, knowing how close-mouthed and reserved Kunta could be in his African way.
Bell was confused about how she should feel—or how she should act the next time he came to check on the massa again after lunch. She was glad she would have at least the rest of the morning to get her mind made up about that. Kunta, meanwhile, sat in his cabin feeling as if he were two people, one of them completely humiliated by the foolish and ridiculous thing the other one had just done—and felt almost deliriously happy and excited about it. What made him do it? What would she think? He dreaded having to return to the kitchen after lunch.
Finally the hour came, and Kunta trudged up the walk as if he were going to his execution. When he saw that the mortar and pestle were gone from the back steps, his heart leaped and sank at the same time. Reaching the screen door, he saw that she had put them on the floor just inside, as if she were uncertain why Kunta had left them there. Turning when he knocked—as if she hadn’t heard him coming—she tried to look calm as she unlatched the door and opened it for him to come on in. That was a bad sign, thought Kunta; she hadn’t opened the door to him in months. But he wanted to come in; yet he couldn’t seem to take that first step. Rooted where he stood, he asked matter-of-factly about the massa, and Bell, concealing her hurt feelings and her confusion, managed to reply just as matter-of-factly that the massa said he had no afternoon plans for the buggy either. As Kunta turned to go, she added hopefully, “He been writin’ letters all day.” All of the possible things that Bell had thought of that she might say had fled her head, and as he turned again to go, she heard herself blurting “What dat?” with a gesture toward the mortar and pestle.
Kunta wished that he were anywhere else on earth. But finally he replied, almost angrily, “For you to grin’ cawn wid.” Bell looked at him with her mingled emotions now clearly showing on her face. Seizing the silence between them as an excuse to leave, Kunta turned and hurried away without another word. Bell stood there feeling like a fool.
For the next two weeks, beyond exchanging greeetings, neither of them said anything to each other. Then one day, at the kitchen door, Bell gave Kunta a round cake of cornbread. Mumbling his thanks, he took it back to his hut and ate it still hot from the pan and soaked with butter. He was deeply moved. Almost certainly she had made it with meal ground in the mortar he had given her. But even before this he had decided that he was going to have a talk with Bell. When he checked in with her after lunch, he forced himself to say, as he had carefully rehearsed and memorized it, “I wants a word wid you after supper.” Bell didn’t delay her response overlong. “Don’t make me no difference,” she said too quickly, regretting it.
By suppertime, Kunta had worked himself into a state. Why had she said what she did? Was she really as indifferent as she seemed? And if she was, why did she make the cornbread for him? He would have it out with her. But neither he nor Bell had remembered to say exactly when or where they would meet. She must have intended for him to meet her at her cabin, he decided finally. But he hoped desperately that some emergency medical call would come for Massa Waller. When none did, and he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer, he took a deep breath, opened his cabin door, and strolled casually over to the barn. Coming back outside swinging in his hand a set of harnesses that he figured would satisfy the curiosity of anyone who might happen to see him and wonder why he was out and around, he ambled on down to slave row to Bell’s cabin and—looking around