Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [252]
“Jes’ puttin’ on airs, tryin’ to act like dey’s rich white folks!” scoffed Miss Malizy, after she had given Kizzy Missis Lea’s instructions that the boy must come to the big house scrubbed thoroughly and with his clothes freshly washed, starched, and ironed. George was so excited about his new role, and about all the attention that was being paid to him—even by the massa and missis—that he could scarcely contain himself.
The guests were still in the big house when Miss Malizy slipped from the kitchen and ran to slave row, no longer able to keep from reporting to her anxiously awaiting audience. “Lemme tell y’all, dat young’un too much!” Then she described George waving the peacock plumes, “a-twistin’ his wrists an’ bendin’ hisself back an’ forth, puttin’ on mo’ airs dan massa an’ missis! An’ after dessert, massa was pourin’ de wine, when seem like de idea jes’ hit ’im, an’ he say, ‘Hey, boy, let’s hear some preachin’!’ An’ I declares I b’lieves dat young’un been practicin’! ’Cause quick as dat he ax massa for some book to be his Bible, an’ massa got ’im one. Lawd! Dat young’un jumped on missis’ prettiest ’broidered footstool! Chile, he lit up dat dinin’ room preachin’! Den ain’t nobody ax ’im, he commence to singin’ his head off. Dat was when I jes’ run out!” She fled back to the big house, leaving Kizzy, Sister Sarah, and Uncle Pompey wagging their heads and grinning in incredulous pride.
George had been such a success that Missis Lea began returning from her and the massa’s Sunday afternoon buggy rides telling Miss Malizy that previous dinner guests whom they had met always asked about George. After a while the usually withdrawn Missis Lea even began to express her own fondness for him, “an’ Lawd knows, she ain’t never liked no nigger!” exclaimed Miss Malizy. Gradually Missis Lea began finding chores for George to do in or around the big house, until by his eleventh year it seemed to Kizzy that he spent hardly half of his time out with them in the fields anymore.
And because waving his plumes at every dinner kept George in the dining room hearing the white people’s conversation, he began picking up more news than Miss Malizy had ever been able to with her having to keep running back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen. Soon after the dinner guests left, George would proudly tell all he had heard to the waiting ears in slave row. They were astonished to hear how one guest had said that “roun’ ’bout three thousan’ free niggers from lots o’ different places held a big meetin’ in dat Philadelphia. Dis white man say dem niggers sent some res’lution to dat Pres’dent Madison dat both slave an’ free niggers done helped build dis country, well as to help fight all its wars, an’ de Newnited States ain’t what it claim to be less’n niggers shares in all its blessin’s.” And George added, “Massa say any fool can see free niggers ought to be run out’n de country!”
George reported that during a later dinner “dem white folks was so mad dey turned red” in discussing recent news of huge slave revolts in the West Indies. “Lawd, y’all ought to o’ heared ’em gwine on in dere ’bout ship sailors tellin’ dat Wes’ Indian slave niggers is burnin’ crops an’ buildin’s, even beatin’ an’ choppin’ up an’ hangin’ white folks dat was dey massas!” After subsequent dinners, George reported that a new ten-mile-an-hour speed record had been achieved by a six-horse “Concord Coach” between Boston and New York City, including rest stops; that “a Massa Robert Fulton’s new paddle-wheel steamboat done crost some ’Lantic Ocean inside o’ twelve days!” Later, a dinner guest had described a show-boat sensation. “Bes’ I could git it, dey calls it ‘de minstrels’—soun’ like to me he say white mens blackin’ dey faces wid burnt corks an’ singin’ an’ dancin’ like niggers.” Another Sunday dinner’s conversation concerned Indians, George said. “One dem mens said de Cherokees is takin’ up sump’n like