Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [64]
The hut’s mud walls needed as many repairs as the thatching. But Kunta hardly noticed or cared, for this was his own private hut, and it was all the way across the village from his mother’s. He didn’t allow himself to show his satisfaction, of course, let alone to speak of it. Instead, he told Omoro only that he would make the repairs himself. Kunta could fix the walls, said Omoro, but he would like to finish the roof repairs he had already begun. Without another word, he turned and headed back to the thatch-grass field—leaving Kunta standing there, grateful for the everyday manner with which his father had begun their new relationship as men.
Kunta spent most of the afternoon covering every corner of Juffure, filling his eyes with the sight of all the dearly remembered faces, familiar huts and haunts—the village well, the schoolyard, the baobab and silk-cotton trees. He hadn’t realized how homesick he had been until he began to bask in the greetings of everyone he passed. He wished it was time for Lamin to return with the goats, and found himself missing one other very special person, even if she was a woman. Finally—not caring whether it was something a man should properly do—he headed for the small, weathered hut of old Nyo Boto.
“Grandmother!” he called at the door.
“Who is it?” came the reply in a high, cracked, irritable tone.
“Guess, Grandmother!” said Kunta, and he went inside the hut.
It took his eyes a few moments to see her better in the dim light. Squatting beside a bucket and plucking long fibers from a slab of baobab bark that she had been soaking with water from the bucket, she peered sharply at him for a while before speaking. “Kunta!”
“It’s so good to see you, Grandmother!” he exclaimed.
Nyo Boto returned to her plucking of the fibers. “Is your mother well?” she asked, and Kunta assured her that Binta was.
He was a little taken aback, for her manner was almost as if he hadn’t even been away anywhere, as if she hadn’t noticed that he had become a man.
“I thought of you often while I was away—each time I touched the saphie charm you put on my arm.”
She only grunted, not even looking up from her work.
He apologized for interrupting her and quickly left, deeply hurt and terribly confused. He wouldn’t understand until much later that her rebuff had hurt Nyo Boto even more than it did him; she had acted as she knew a woman must toward one who could no longer seek comfort at her skirts.
Still troubled, Kunta was walking slowly back toward his new hut when he heard a familiar commotion: bleating goats, barking dogs, and shouting boys. It was the second kafo returning from their afternoon’s work in the bush. Lamin would be among them. Kunta began to search their faces anxiously as the boys approached. Then Lamin saw him, shouted his name, and came dashing, wreathed in smiles. But he stopped short a few feet away when he saw his brother’s cool expression, and they stood looking at each other. It was finally Kunta who spoke.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Kunta.”
Then they looked at each other some more. Pride shone in Lamin’s eyes, but Kunta saw also the same hurt he had just felt in the hut of Nyo Boto, and uncertainty about just what to make of his new big brother. Kunta was thinking that the way they were both acting wasn’t as he would have had it be, but it was necessary that a man be regarded with a certain amount of respect, even by his own brother.
Lamin was the first to speak again: “Your two goats are both big with kids.” Kunta was delighted; that meant he would soon own four, maybe even five goats, if one of those nannies was big with twins. But he didn’t smile or act surprised. “That’s good news,” he said, with even less enthusiasm than he wanted to show. Not knowing what else to say, Lamin dashed away without another word, hollering for his wuolo dogs to reassemble his goats, which had begun to wander.
Binta’s face kept a set, tight expression as she assisted