Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [180]
Kunta had become so absorbed in what Bell was saying that he was startled when she stopped walking. “We better git on back,” she said. “Traipsin’ out here till all hours ’mongst dese weeds, be oversleepin’ in de mornin’.” They turned around, and when Bell was quiet for a minute, and Kunta didn’t say anything, she realized that he wasn’t going to tell her whatever he had on his mind, so she went on chattering about whatever came into her mind until they got back to her cabin, where she turned to face him and fell silent. He stood there looking at her for a long, agonizing moment, and then finally he spoke: “Well, it gettin’ late like you said. So I see you tomorra.” As he walked away, still carrying the harnesses, Bell realized that he hadn’t told her whatever it was that he wanted to talk to her about. Well, she told herself—afraid to think that it might be what she thought it was—he’ll get around to it in his own time.
It was just as well that she wasn’t in a hurry, for though Kunta began to spend a lot of time in Bell’s kitchen as she went about her work, she found herself, as usual, doing most of the talking. But she liked having him there to listen. “I foun’ out,” she told him one day, “dat massa done writ out a will that if he die an’ ain’t got married, his slaves gon’ go to little Missy Anne. But de will say if he do marry, den he wife would git us slaves when he die.” Even so, Bell didn’t seem to be unduly disturbed. “Sho’ is a plenty of ’em roun’ here would love to grab de massa, but he ain’t never married no mo’.” She paused. “Jes’ de same as I ain’t.”
Kunta almost dropped the fork from his hand. He was positive that he had heard Bell correctly, and he was jolted to know that Bell had been married before, for it was unthinkable that a desirable wife should not be a virgin. Kunta soon was out of the kitchen and gone into his own cabin. He knew that he must think hard upon this matter.
Two weeks of silence had passed before Bell casually invited Kunta to eat supper with her in her cabin that night. He was so astounded that he didn’t know what to say. He had never been alone in a hut with a woman other than his own mother or grandmother. It wouldn’t be right. But when he couldn’t find the words to speak, she told him what time to show up, and that was that.
He scrubbed himself in a tin tub from head to foot, using a rough cloth and a bar of brown lye soap. Then he scrubbed himself again, and yet a third time. Then he dried himself, and while he was putting on his clothes, he found himself singing softly a song from his village, “Mandumbe, your long neck is very beautiful—.” Bell didn’t have a long neck, nor was she beautiful, but he had to admit to himself that when he was around her, he had a good feeling. And he knew that she felt the same.
Bell’s cabin was the biggest one on the plantation, and the one nearest to the big house, with a small bed of flowers growing before it. Knowing her kitchen, her cabin’s immaculate neatness was no more than Kunta would expect. The room he entered when she opened the door had a feeling of cozy comfort, with its wall of mud-chinked logs and a chimney of homemade bricks that widened down from the roof to her large fireplace, alongside which hung her shining cooking utensils. And Kunta noticed that instead of the usual one room with one window, such as he had, Bell’s cabin had two rooms and two windows, both covered with shutters that she could pull down in case of rain, or when it grew cold. The curtained rear room was obviously where she slept, and Kunta kept his eyes averted from that doorway. On her oblong table in the center of the room he was in, there were knives and