Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [204]
While he was waiting for the massa to finish a house call at a nearby plantation the next day, another buggy driver told Kunta the latest story he’d heard about Toussaint, a former slave who had organized a large army of black rebels in Haiti and was leading them successfully against not only the French but also the Spanish and the English. Toussaint, the driver said, had learned about war from reading books about famous ancient fighters named “Alexander the Great” and “Julius Caesar,” and that these books had been given to him by his former massa, who he later helped escape from Haiti to the “Newnited States.” Over the past few months, Toussaint had become for Kunta a hero, ranking second in stature only to the legendary Mandinka warrior Sundiata, and Kunta could hardly wait to get back home and pass this fascinating story along to the others.
He forgot to tell them. Bell met him at the stable with the news that Kizzy had come down with a fever and broken out in bumps. The massa called it “mumps,” and Kunta was worried until Bell told him it was only normal in young’uns. When he learned later that Missy Anne had been ordered to stay away until Kizzy recovered—for at least two weeks—he was even a little bit happy about it. But Kizzy had been sick only a few days when Massa John’s driver Roosby showed up with a fully dressed toubob doll from Missy Anne. Kizzy fell in love with it. She sat in bed hugging the doll close, rocking it back and forth, exclaiming with her eyes half shut, “Jes’ so pretty!” Kunta left without a word and stormed across the yard to the barn. The doll was still in the loft where he’d dropped it and forgotten it months before. Wiping it off on his sleeve, he carried it back to the cabin and almost shoved it at Kizzy. She laughed with pleasure when she saw it, and even Bell admired it. But Kunta could see, after a few minutes, that Kizzy liked the toubob doll better, and for the first time in his life, he was furious with his daughter.
It didn’t make him any happier to notice how eagerly the two girls made up for the weeks of being together they had missed. Although sometimes Kunta was told to take Kizzy to play at Missy Anne’s house, it was no secret that Missy Anne preferred to visit at her uncle’s, since her mother was quick to complain of headaches because of the noise they made, and would even resort to fainting spells as a final weapon, according to their cook, Omega. But she said, “ol’ missy” had her match in her quick-tongued daughter. Roosby told Bell one day that his missis had yelled at the girls, “You’re actin’ just like niggers!” and Missy Anne had shot back, “Well, niggers has more fun than us, ’cause they ain’t got nothin’ to worry about!” But the two girls made all the noise they pleased at Massa Waller’s. Kunta seldom drove the buggy either way along the flowered drive without hearing the girls shrieking somewhere as they romped in the house, the yards, the garden, and—despite Bell’s best efforts to prevent it—even in the chicken coops, the hog pen, and the barn, as well as the unlocked slave-row cabins.
One afternoon, while Kunta was off with the massa, Kizzy took Missy Anne into her cabin to show her Kunta’s gourd of pebbles, which she had discovered and become fascinated with while she was home with the mumps. Bell, who happened to walk in just as Kizzy was reaching into the mouth of the gourd, took one look and yelled, “Git ’way from yo’ daddy’s rocks! Dey’s how he tell how ol’ he is!” The next day Roosby arrived with a letter for the massa from his brother, and five minutes later Massa Waller called Bell into the drawing room, the sharpness of his tone frightening her before she left the kitchen. “Missy Anne told her parents about something she saw in your cabin. What is this African voodoo about rocks being put into a gourd every full moon?” he demanded.
Her mind racing, Bell blurted, “Rocks? Rocks, Massa?”
“You know very well what I mean!” said the massa.