Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [228]
“I mus’ be dreamin’,” said Kunta, opening his eyes.
“Not no mo’, you ain’t,” said the fiddler. “I’se sick an’ tired o’ drivin’ yo’ massa all over hell an’ gone. Got burn holes in my coat from his eyes at my back. Time you either git up or move over, nigger!”
CHAPTER 81
Kunta was sitting up in bed the next day when he heard Kizzy enter the cabin laughing and chattering with Missy Anne, who was on vacation from school, and he heard them pulling back chairs to sit at the table in the next room.
“Kizzy, have you studied your lessons?” Missy Anne sternly demanded, playing teacher.
“Yes, ma’am,” snickered Kizzy.
“Very well, then—what’s that?”
After a short silence, the intently listening Kunta heard Kizzy falter that she couldn’t remember.
“It’s a D,” said Missy Ann “Now what’s this one?”
Almost instantly Kizzy cried triumphantly, “Dat’s dat circle, a O!”
Both girls laughed happily.
“Good! You ain’t forgot it. Now, what’s that?”
“Ah ... uh ... um ...” Then Kizzy exulted, “Dat’s G!”
“Right!”
After another brief silence, Missy Anne said, “Now, see that? D-O-G. What’s that?”
Kizzy’s silence told him that she didn’t know—as neither did he.
“Dog!” Missy Anne exclaimed. “You hear me? Don’t forget, DO-G! You got to learn all the letters good, then we’ll do some more about how they make words.”
After the girls left the cabin, Kunta lay thinking hard. He couldn’t help feeling some pride in Kizzy’s learning ability. On another hand, he couldn’t stomach that it was toubob things her head was being stuffed with. It maybe explained why lately she had seemed to show less interest in their conversations about Africa. It might be too late, but he wondeied if he should reconsider his decision not to teach her how to read in Arabic. But then he thought that would be as foolish as encouraging her to continue her lessons with Missy Anne. Suppose Massa Waller were to discover that Kizzy could read—in any language! That would be a good way to end the white girl’s “schoolteaching,” and yet better, it might even end their relationship. But the trouble was that Kunta couldn’t be sure the massa would let the matter stop at that. So Kizzy’s “school” continued at least two or three times weekly, until Missy Anne had to return to her own daily studies—about the time that Kunta, now adequately recovered, returned to relieve the happy fiddler of driving the massa in his buggy.
But even after Missy Anne was gone, night after night, as Bell sewed or knitted and Kunta rocked in his chair before the fireplace, Kizzy would sit bent over the table, her pencil almost touching her cheek, carefully copying words from a book Missy Anne had given her or from a torn piece of one of the massa’s discarded newspapers. Sitting with his back to them, Kunta sometimes would hear Kizzy involve Bell, although Kizzy knew of her mother’s ability to read and write a bit herself.
“Naw, dat’s a A, Mammy,” Kizzy might explain, “an’ dat’s a O. It ain’t nothin’ but a l’il circle.”
In time, she began to move on to words, just as Missy Anne did with her. “Dat’s ‘dog,’ an’ dat’s ‘cat’ ... an’ dat dere’s ‘Kizzy’ ... an’ dis here’s yo’ name, B-E-L-L. How you like dat? You write it now.” And Bell would made a great pretense of struggling with the pencil as she scrawled it out, deliberately making some mistakes so that Kizzy would have a chance to correct her. “You does like I shows you, Mammy, you can write good as me,” said Kizzy, proud of having something to teach her mother for a change.
One night a few weeks later, after Kizzy had fallen asleep at the table after hours