Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [248]
Kizzy burst into sobs. Ignoring her entirely, Sister Sarah carefully rearranged her objects, then stirred and stirred again, much longer than before, until Kizzy regained some control and her weeping had diminished. Through misty eyes, she stared in awe as the wand trembled and quivered. Then Sister Sarah began a mumbling that was barely audible: “Look like jes’ ain’t dis chile’s good-luck time ... onlies’ man she gwine ever love ... he had a mighty hard road ... an’ he love her, too ... but de sperrits done tol’ ’im it’s de bes’ to know de truth ... an’ to give up jes’ even hopin’.... ”
Kizzy sprang upright, shrieking, this time highly agitating Sister Sarah. “Shhhhh! Shhhhh! Shhhhh! Don’t ’sturb de sperrits, daughter! SHHHHH! SHHHHH! SHHHHH!” But Kizzy continued to scream, bolting outside and across into her own cabin and slamming her door, as Uncle Pompey’s cabin door jerked open and the faces of Massa and Missis Lea, Miss Malizy, and George appeared abruptly at windows of the big house and its kitchen. Kizzy was thrashing and wailing on her cornshuck mattress when George came bursting in. “Mammy! Mammy! What de matter?” Her face tear-streaked and contorted, she screamed hysterically at him, “SHUT UP!”
CHAPTER 87
By George’s third year, he had begun to demonstrate a determination to “help” the slave-row grown-ups. “Lawd, tryin’ to carry some water for me, an’ can’t hardly lif’ up de bucket!” Miss Malizy said laughing. And another time: “Dog if he ain’t toted a stick at a time ’til he fill up my woodbox; den he raked de ashes out’n de fireplace!” Proud as Kizzy was, she took pains not to repeat Miss Malizy’s praises to George, whom she felt was giving her headaches enough already.
“How come I ain’t black like you is, Mammy?” he asked one night when they were alone in the cabin, and gulping, Kizzy said, “Peoples jes’ born what color dey is, dat’s all.” But not many nights passed before he raised the subject again. “Mammy, who my pappy was? Why ain’t I never seed ’im? Where he at?” Kizzy affected a threatening tone: “Jes’ shut yo’ mouth up!” But hours later, she lay awake beside him, still seeing his hurt, confused expression, and the next morning delivering him to Miss Malizy, she apologized in a lame way. “I jes’ gits frazzled, you ax me so many questions.”
But she knew that something better than that had to be told to her highly alert, inquisitive son, something that he both could understand and would accept. “He tall, an’ black as de night, an’ didn’t hardly never smile,” she offered finally. “He b’longst to you same as me, ’cept you calls him Gran’pappy!” George seemed interested and curious to hear more. Telling him that his gran’pappy had come on a ship from Africa “to a place my mammy said dey calls ’Naplis,’” she said that a brother of her Massa Waller had brought him to a plantation in Spotsylvania County, but he tried to escape. Uncertain how to soften the next part of the story, she decided to make it brief: “—an’ when he kept on runnin’ ’way, dey chopped off half his foot.”
A grimace twisted George’s small face. “How come dey done dat, Mammy?”
“He near ’bout kilt some nigger catchers.”
“Catchin’ niggers fo’ what?”
“Well, niggers dat had runned ’way.”
“What dey was runnin’ from?”
“From dey white massas.”
“What de white massas done to ’em?”
In frustration, she shrilled, “Heish yo’ mouf! Git on ’way from me, worryin’ me to death!”
But George never was silenced for long, any more than his appetite to know more of his African gran’pappy ever was fully satisfied. “Where ’bouts is dat Africa, Mammy?” ... “Any l’il boys in dat Africa?”... “What my gran’pappy’s name was again?”
Even beyond what she had hoped, George seemed to be building up his own image of his gran’pappy, and—to the limits of her endurance—Kizzy tried to help it along with tales from her own rich store of memories. “Boy, I wish you could o’ heared