Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [205]
Bell forced a nervous giggle. “Oh, I knows what you’s talkin’’bout. Nawsuh, Massa, ain’t no voodoo. Ol’ African nigger I got jes cain’t count, dat’s all, Massa. So every new moon, he drop l’il rock in de gourd so all dem rocks say how ol’ he is!”
Massa Waller, still frowning, gestured for Bell to return to the kitchen. Ten minutes later she charged into the cabin, snatched Kizzy from Kunta’s lap, and laid into her rear end with an open hand—almost screaming, “Don’t you never bring dat gal in here no mo’, I’ll wring yo’ neck, you hear me!”
After sending the weeping Kizzy fleeing to bed, Bell managed to calm herself enough to explain to Kunta. “I knows dem gourd an’ rocks ain’t no harm,” she said, “but it jes’ go to show you what I tol’ you ’bout dem African things brings troubles! An’ massa don’t never forgit nothin’!”
Kunta felt such an impotent fury that he couldn’t eat supper. After driving the massa nearly every day for over twenty rains, Kunta was amazed and enraged that it could still be a matter of suspicion that he simply recorded his age by dropping stones into a gourd.
It was another two weeks before the tension subsided enough for Missy Anne’s visits to resume, but once they did it was as if the incident had never happened; Kunta was almost sorry. With the berry season in full bloom, the girls ranged up and down the vine-covered fencerows finding the dark green wild strawberry patches and coming home with full pails, their hands—and mouths—tinted crimson. Other days they would return with such treasures as snail shells, a wren’s nest, or a crusted old arrowhead, all of which they would exhibit gleefully to Bell before hiding them somewhere with great secrecy, whereafter they might make mud pies. By the midafternoons, after trooping into the kitchen covered to the elbows with mud-pie batter and being ordered straight outside again to wash up at the well, the joyfully exhausted pair would eat snacks that Bell had ready for them and then lie down together on a quilt pallet for a nap. If Missy Anne was staying overnight, after her supper with the massa, she would keep him company until her bedtime, when he would send her out to tell Bell that it was time for her story. And Bell would bring in an equally worn-out Kizzy and tell them both about the further adventures of Br’er Rabbit getting tricked by Br’er Fox, who finally got tricked himself.
Kunta resented this deepening intimacy between the two girls even more intensely than when he saw it coming in Kizzy’s crib. Part of him, he had to admit, was pleased that Kizzy was enjoying her girlhood so much, and he had come to agree with Bell that even being a toubob’s pet was better than having to spend her life in the fields. But he was sure that every now and then he could sense even in Bell a certain uneasiness when she was watching the girls romping and playing so closely together. He would dare to think that at least some of those times, Bell must have felt and feared the same things he did. Some nights in their cabin, as he watched her caressing Kizzy in her lap and humming one of her “Jesus” songs, he would have the feeling, as she looked down at the sleepy face, that she was afraid for her, that she wanted to warn her child about caring too much for any toubob, no matter how mutual the affection seemed. Kizzy was too young to understand such things, but Bell knew all too well what wrenching anguish could result from trusting toubob; had they not sold her away from her first two babies? There was no way even to guess at what might lie ahead for Kizzy, but also for him and Bell. But he knew one thing: Allah would wreak terrible vengeance on any toubob who ever harmed their Kizzy.
CHAPTER 73
Two Sundays every month, Kunta drove the massa to church at the Waller Meetinghouse about five miles from the plantation. The fiddler had told him that not only the Wallers but also several other important white families had built their own meetinghouses around the county. Kunta had been surprised to discover that the services also were attended by some of the neighboring