Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [244]
Kizzy cleaned herself off and then lay back down, unsure which outrage to be most furious about. She had thought earlier of either “Kunta” or “Kinte” as ideal names, though uncertain of what the massa’s reaction might be to their uncommon sounds. But she dared not risk igniting his temper with any objection to the name he’d chosen. She thought with a new horror of what her African pappy would think of it, knowing what importance he attached to names. Kizzy remembered how her pappy had told her that in his homeland, the naming of sons was the most important thing of all, “ ’cause de sons becomes dey families’ mens!”
She lay thinking of how she had never understood why her pappy had always felt so bitter against the world of white people—“toubob” was his word for them. She thought of Bell’s saying to her, “You’s so lucky it scare me, chile, ’cause you don’ really know what bein’ a nigger is, an’ I hopes to de good Lawd you don’ never have to fin’ out.” Well, she had found out—and there seemed no limit to the anguish whites were capable of wreaking upon black people. But the worst thing they did, Kunta had said, was to keep them ignorant of who they are, to keep them from being fully human.
“De reason yo’ pappy took holt of my feelin’s from de firs’,” her mammy had told her, “was he de proudest black man I ever seed!” Before she fell asleep, Kizzy decided that however base her baby’s origins, however light his color, whatever name the massa forced upon him, she would never regard him as other than the grandson of an African.
CHAPTER 86
Since Uncle Pompey had never said much beyond “How do?” to Kizzy when he saw her in the mornings, she was surprised and deeply touched when she arrived in the field with her baby on her first day back at work. Uncle Pompey approached her shyly and, touching the brim of his sweat-stained straw hat, pointed toward the trees at the edge of the field. “Figgered you could put de baby under dere,” he said. Not sure what he meant, Kizzy squinted and saw something beneath one of the trees. Her eyes were soon glistening with tears, for when she walked over to it, she saw that it was a little lean-to, its top thatched with freshly cut long grass, thick-stemmed weeds, and green leaves.
Gratefully Kizzy spread her clean crocus sack upon the sheltered leafy cushion and laid the baby on it. He cried briefly, but with her comforting sounds and pats, soon he was gurgling and inspecting his fingers. Rejoining her two companions, who were working in the tobacco, she said, “Sho’ ’preciates dat, Uncle Pompey.” He grunted and chopped faster, trying to conceal his embarrassment. At intervals Kizzy would hurry over and check on her baby, and about every three hours, when it began crying, she would sit down and let it nurse at one of her breasts, which were taut with milk.
“Yo’ baby jes’ perkin’ us all up, ’cause sho’ ain’t nothin’ else roun’ here to pay no ’tention,” Sister Sarah said a few days later, addressing Kizzy but casting a sly eye at Uncle Pompey, whose return look was as if at some persistent mosquito. By now, when each workday ended with the setting sun, Sister Sarah insisted on carrying the baby as Kizzy took their two hoes for the tired trudge back to slave row, which was nothing more than four small boxlike, one-win-dowed cabins near a large chinquapin tree. Usually, the early darkness would have fallen by the time Kizzy hurriedly lighted sticks in her small fireplace to cook something from her remaining rations, which were issued each Saturday morning by Massa Lea. Eating quickly, she would lie down on her cornshuck mattress, playing with George but not nursing him until hunger made him start bawling. Then, encouraging him to drink to his fullest, she would hold him over her shoulder, rubbing his back to help him burp, and then she would play with him again. She kept them both awake as late as she could, wanting the baby to sleep as long as possible before he would awaken for his next night feeding.