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By Root 1493 0

conceal. And on more than one occasion, he had learned things from the fiddler or the gardener that had to have been picked up at the massa’s keyhole. It didn’t matter to him what it was she was telling them; what hurt was that she wasn’t telling him, that she was keeping secrets from her own husband. What hurt him even more was that he had always been so open in sharing with her and them—news they might never have learned otherwise, or at least not for a long time. Kunta began to let weeks go by without telling even Bell about whatever he had overheard in town. When she finally said something to him about it, he said he guessed things had just been kind of quiet lately, and maybe it’s just as well because the news never seemed to be any good. But the next time he came back from town, he figured she’d learned her lesson, and he told her that he’d overheard the massa telling one of his friends that he’d just read that in New Orleans a white doctor named Benjamin Rush had written recently that when his longtime black assistant, a slave named James Derham, had learned as much medicine from him as he felt he knew himself, he had set him free.

“Ain’t he de one what become a doctor hisself and got even mo’ famous dan de man what learned him?” asked Bell.

“How you know dat? Massa say he jes’ read ’bout it hisself, an ain’t nobody been here fo’ you to hear him tell about it,” said Kunta, as irritated as he was perlexed.

“Oh, I got my ways,” Bell replied mysteriously, changing the subject.

As far as Kunta was concerned, that was the last time she’d ever hear any news from him, and he didn’t say another word about it—or almost anything else—for the next week or so. Finally Bell got the hint, and after a good dinner by candlelight there in the cabin one Sunday night, she put her hand on his shoulder and said quietly, “Something been hard on my mind to tell you.” Going into their bedroom, she returned in a moment with one of the Virginia Gazettes that Kunta knew she kept in a stack beneath their bed. He had always assumed that she simply enjoyed turning the pages, as he knew so many blacks did, as well as those poor whites who walked around on Saturdays in the county seat with newspapers opened before their faces, though Kunta and everyone else who saw them knew perfectly well that they couldn’t read a word. But in some way now, as he saw the secretive look on Bell’s face, he sensed with astonishment what she was about to say.

“I can read some,” Bell hesitated. “Massa sell me fo’ sunup if’n he knowed dat.”

Kunta made no response, for he had learned that Bell would do more talking on her own than if she was asked questions. “I’s knowed some a de words ever since I was a young’un,” she continued. “It were de chilluns of my massa back den what teached me. Dey liked to play teacher, ’cause dey was going to school, an’ de massa and missis didn’t pay it no ’tention on count of how de white folks tells deyselves dat niggers is too dumb to learn anythin’.”

Kunta thought about the old black he saw regularly at the Spotsylvania County courthouse, who had swept and mopped there for years, with none of the whites ever dreaming that he had copied the handwriting they left lying around on papers until he had gotten good enough at it to forge and sign traveling passes, which he sold to blacks.

Peering hard at the tip of her forefinger as it moved the paper’s front page, Bell said finally, “Here where de House of Burgesses done met again.” She studied the print closely. “Done passed a new law ’bout taxes.” Kunta was simply amazed. Bell moved to a place farther down the page. “Right here it’s somethin’ ’nother’bout dat England done sent some niggers from dere back to Africa.” Bell glanced upward at Kunta. “You want me to pick out mo’ what dey say ’bout dat?” Kunta nodded. Bell needed several minutes of staring at her finger, with her lips silently forming letters and words. Then she spoke again. “Well, ain’t sho ’bout it all, but fo’ hunnud niggers done been sent somewheres called, look like, Sierra Leone, on land de England bought from a king