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By Root 1298 0

that the massa had sent up from the big-house cellar as his gift. With the fiddler playing steadily and loudly on his instrument ever since the party began, Kunta didn’t know how he’d managed to sneak a drink, but from the way he swayed as he played, it was clear that he’d managed to get hold of more than one. He had endured the fiddler’s drinking so often that he was resigned to it, but when he saw Bell busy filling and refilling her wine glass, he began to get increasingly concerned and embarrassed. He was shocked to overhear her exclaiming to Sister Mandy, another of her friends, “Been had my eye on him for ten years!” And not long after that, she wobbled over, threw her arms around him, and kissed him full on the mouth right there in front of everyone, amid crude jokes, elbows in the ribs, and uproarious laughter. Kunta was taut as a bowstring by the time the rest of the guests finally began to take their leave. Finally, they were all alone there in the yard, and as Bell wove unsteadily toward him, she said softly in a slurred voice, “Now you done bought de cow, you gits all de milk you wants!” He was horrified to hear her talk so.

But it wasn’t long before he got over it. In fact, before many weeks had passed, he had gained considerably more knowledge of what a big, strong, healthy woman was really like. His hands had explored in the darkness until now he knew for a certainty that Bell’s big behind was entirely her own, and none of it was one of those padded bustles that he had heard many women were wearing to make their behinds look big. Though he hadn’t seen her naked—she always blew out the candles before he got the chance—he had been permitted to see her breasts, whose largeness he noted with satisfaction were the kind that would supply much milk for a manchild, and that was very good. But it had been with horror that Kunta first saw the deep lash marks on Bell’s back. “I’s carryin’ scars to my grave jes’ like my mammy did,” Bell said, “but my back sure ain’t as bad as your’n,” and Kunta was taken with surprise, for he hadn’t seen his own back. He had all but forgotten all those lashings, over twenty years ago.

With her warmth always beside him, Kunta greatly enjoyed sleeping in Bell’s tall bed on its soft mattress; filled as it was with cotton instead of straw or cornshucks. Her handmade quilts, too, were comfortable and warm, and it was a completely new and luxurious experience for him to sleep between a pair of sheets. Almost as pleasurable for him were the nicely fitted shirts she made for him, then washed, starched, and ironed freshly every day. Bell even softened the leather of his stiff, high-topped shoes by greasing them with tallow, and she knitted him more socks that were thickly cushioned to fit his half foot.

After years of driving the massa all day and returning at night to a cold supper before crawling onto his solitary pallet, now Bell saw to it that the same supper she fed the massa—unless it was pork, of course—was simmering over the fireplace in their cabin when he got home. And he liked eating on her white crockery dishes with the knives, spoons, and forks she had obviously supplied for herself from the big house. Bell had even whitewashed her cabin—he often had to remind himself that now it was their cabin—on the outside as well as the inside. All in all, he was amazed to find that he liked almost everything about her, and he would have rebuked himself for not having come to his senses sooner if he hadn’t been feeling too good to spend much time thinking about all the years he’d wasted. He just couldn’t believe how different things were, how much better life was, than it had been just a few months before and a few yards away.

CHAPTER 66

As close as they’d become since they “jumped de broom,” there were times when Kunta would sense that Bell still didn’t totally trust him. Sometimes when she was talking to him in the kitchen or the cabin, she would nearly say something, then abruptly veer off onto another subject, filling Kunta with a rush of anger that only his pride enabled him to