Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [194]
“Kizzy.”
“Kizzy! Ain’t nobody never heared no name like dat!”
Kunta explained that in Mandinka “Kizzy” meant “you sit down,” or “you stay put,” which, in turn, meant that unlike Bell’s previous two babies, this child would never get sold away.
She refused to be placated. “Jes’ start troubles!” she insisted. But when she felt Kunta’s anger starting to rise again she thought it would be wise to relent. She said she seemed to recall her mother speaking of a grandmother whose name was “Kibby,” which sounded very much the same; at least that’s what they could tell the massa if he got suspicious.
The next morning, Bell did her best to hide her nervousness when the massa came to look in on her—even forcing herself to laugh good-naturedly as she told him the baby’s name. He only commented that it was an odd name, but he said nothing against it, and Bell breathed a heavy sigh of relief the moment he stepped out the door. Back in the big house, before leaving for a day of visiting his patients with Kunta driving him, Massa Waller opened the large black Bible that he kept locked in a case in the drawing room, turned to a page devoted to plantation records, dipped his pen in the inkwell, and wrote in fine black script: “Kizzy Waller, born September 12, 1790.”
CHAPTER 69
“She jes’ like a l’il nigger doll!” squealed Missy Anne, hopping ecstatically up and down, clapping her hands with delight, as she saw Kizzy for the first time three days later in Bell’s kitchen. “Cain’t she be mine?”
Bell smiled widely with pleasure. “Well, she belongst to me an’ her daddy, honey, but jes’ soon’s she big enough, you sho’ can play wid her all you wants!”
And so she did. As often as not, whenever Kunta went to the kitchen now to find out if the buggy would be needed, or simply to visit Bell, he would find the massa’s flaxen-haired little niece—four years old now—bent over the edge of Kizzy’s basket cooing down at her. “Jes’ pretty as you can be. We gonna have plenty fun soon’s you get some size, you hear me? You jes’ hurry up an’ grow, now!” Kunta never said anything about it, but it galled him to think how that toubob child acted as if Kizzy had entered the world to serve as her plaything, like some extraordinary doll. Bell hadn’t even respected his manhood and fatherhood enough to ask his feelings about his daughter playing with the daughter of the man who bought him, he thought bitterly.
It seemed to him sometimes that Bell was less concerned about his feelings than she was about the massa’s. He’d lost count of the evenings she’d spent talking about what a blessing it was that little Missy Anne had come along to replace Massa Waller’s real daughter, who had died at birth along with her mother.
“Oh, Lawd, I jes’ even hates to think back on it,” she told him sniffing one night. “Po’ l’il pretty Missis Priscilla weren’t hardly no bigger’n a bird. Walkin’ roun’ here every day singin’ to herself an’ smilin’ at me an’ pattin’ herself, jes’ waitin’ for her baby’s time. An’ den dat mornin’ jes’ a-screamin’ and finally dyin’, her an’ de l’il baby gal, too! Look like I ain’t hardly seen po’ massa do no smilin’ since—leastways not ’til dis here l’il Missy Anne.”
Kunta felt no pity for the massa’s loneliness, but it seemed to him that getting married again would keep the massa too busy to spend so much time doting on his niece, and that way would almost certainly cut down on Missy Anne’s visits to the plantation—and therefore to play with Kizzy.
“Ever since then I been watchin’ how massa git dat l’il gal in his lap, hol’ her close, talk to her, sing her to sleep, an’ den jes’ set on dere holdin’ her ruther’n put her to bed. Jes’ act like he don’t never want his eyes to leave her all de time she be roun’ here. An’ I know it’s ’cause he’s her daddy in his heart.”
It could only dispose the massa even more kindly toward both of them, not to mention toward Kizzy, Bell would tell him, for Missy Anne to strike up a friendship that would bring her over to the massa’s house even more often than before. Nor could it