Roots: The Saga of an American Family

by Alex Haley

  She sat and watched the sweat pour from him onto the dirt floor in rivulets. With a corner of her apron, Bell dabbed at the sweat that trickled into his closed eyes, and finally he lay entirely limp. Only when she felt the chest cloths and found them barely warm did she remove them. Then, wiping his chest clean of all traces of the poultice, she covered him with the quilts and left.

  When he next awakened, Kunta was too weak even to move his body, which felt about to suffocate under the heavy quilts. But—without any gratitude—he knew that his fever was broken.

  He lay wondering where that woman had learned to do what she had done. It was like Binta’s medicines from his childhood, the herbs of Allah’s earth passed down from the ancestors. And Kunta’s mind played back to him, as well, the black woman’s secretive manner, making him realize that it had not been toubob medicine. Not only was he sure that the toubob were unaware of it, he knew that the toubob should never know of it. And Kunta found himself studying the black woman’s face in his mind. What was it the toubob had called her? “Bell.”

  With reluctance, after a while, Kunta decided that more than any other tribe, the woman resembled his own. He tried to picture her in Juffure, pounding her breakfast couscous, paddling her dugout canoe through the bolong, bringing in the sheaves of the rice harvest balanced on her head. But then Kunta reviled himself for the ridiculousness of thinking of his village in any connection with these pagan, heathen black ones here in the toubob’s land.

  Kunta’s pains had become less constant now, and less intense; it hurt now mostly when he tried to strain against the bonds in his desperate achings to move around. But the flies tormented him badly, buzzing around his bandaged foot, or what was left of it, and now and then he would jerk that leg a little to make the flies swarm up awhile before returning.

  Kunta began to wonder where he was. Not only was this not his own hut, but he could also tell from the sounds outside, and the voices of black people walking by, that he had been taken to some new farm. Lying there, he could smell their cooking and hear their early-night talking and singing and praying, and the horn blowing in the morning.

  And each day the tall toubob came into the hut, always making Kunta’s foot hurt as he changed the bandage. But when Bell came three times daily—she brought food and water, along with a smile and a warm hand on his forehead. He had to remind himself that these blacks were no better than the toubob. This black and this toubob may not mean him any harm—though it was too soon to be sure—but it was the black Samson who had beaten him almost to death, and it was toubob who had lashed him and shot him and cut his foot off. The more he gained in strength, the deeper grew his rage at having to lie there helpless, unable even to move anywhere, when for all of his seventeen rains he had been able to run, bound, and climb anywhere he wanted to. It was monstrous beyond understanding or endurance.

  When the tall toubob untied Kunta’s wrists from the short stakes that had held them at his sides, Kunta spent the next few hours trying futilely to raise his arms; they were too heavy. Grimly, bitterly, relentlessly, he began forcing usefulness back into his arms by flexing his fingers over and over, then making fists—until finally he could raise his arms. Next he began struggling to pull himself up on his elbows, and once he succeeded, he spent hours braced thus staring down at the bandaging over his stump. It seemed as big as a “punkin,” though it was less bloody than the previous bandagings he had glimpsed as the toubob took them off. But when he tried now to raise the knee of that same leg, he found that he couldn’t yet bear the pain.

  He took out his fury and his humiliation on Bell when she came to visit him the next time, snarling at her in Mandinka and banging down the tin cup after he drank. Only later did he realize that it was the first time since he arrived in toubob’s land that he had spoken to anyone else aloud. It made him even more furious to recall that her eyes had seemed warm despite his show of anger.

  One day, after Kunta had been there for nearly three weeks, the toubob motioned for him to sit up as he began to unwrap the bandaging. As it came nearer to the foot, Kunta saw the cloth stickily discolored with a thick, yellowish matter. Then he had to clamp his jaws as the toubob removed the final cloth—and Kunta’s senses reeled when he saw the swollen heel half of his foot covered with a hideous thick, brownish scab. Kunta almost screamed. Sprinkling something over the wound, the toubob applied only a light, loose bandaging over it, then picked up his black bag and hurriedly left.

  For the next two days, Bell repeated what the toubob had done, speaking softly as Kunta cringed and turned away. When the toubob returned on the third day, Kunta’s heart leaped when he saw him carrying two stout straight sticks with forked tops; Kunta had seen hurt people walk with them in Juffure. Bracing the stout forks under his arms, the toubob showed him how to hobble about swinging his right foot clear of the ground.

  Kunta refused to move until they both left. Then he struggled to pull himself upright, leaning against the wall of the hut until he could endure the throbbing of his leg without falling down. Sweat was coursing down his face before he had maneuvered the forks of the sticks underneath his armpits. Giddy, wavering, never moving far from the wall for support, he managed a few awkward, hopping forward swings of his body, the bandaged stump threatening his balance with every movement.

  When Bell brought his breakfast the next morning, Kunta’s glance caught the quick pleasure on her face at the marks made by the ends of the forked sticks in the hard dirt floor. Kunta frowned at her, angry at himself for not remembering to wipe away those marks. He refused to touch the food until the woman left, but then he ate it quickly, knowing that he wanted its strength now. Within a few days, he was hobbling freely about within the hut.

  CHAPTER 51

  In many ways, this toubob farm was very different from the last one, Kunta began to discover the first time he was able to get to the hut’s doorway on his crutches and stand looking around outside. The black people’s low cabins were all neatly whitewashed, and they seemed to be in far better condition, as was the one that he was in. It contained a small, bare table, a wall shelf on which were a tin plate, a drinking gourd, a “spoon,” and those toubob eating utensils for which Kunta had finally learned the names: a “fork” and a “knife”; he thought it stupid for them to let him have such things within his reach. And his sleeping mat on the floor had a thicker stuffing of cornshucks. Some of the huts he saw nearby even had small garden plots behind them, and the one closest to the toubob’s big house had a colorful, circular flower patch growing in front of it. From where he stood in the doorway, Kunta could see anyone walking in any direction, and whenever he did, he would quickly crutch back inside and remain there for some time before venturing back to the doorway.

  Kunta’s nose located the outhouse. Each day, he held back his urges until he knew that most of them were out at their tasks in the fields, and then—carefully making sure that no one was nearby—he would go crutching quickly across the short distance to make use of the place, and then get safely back.

  It was a couple of weeks before Kunta began to make brief ventures beyond that nearby hut, and the hut of slave row’s cooking woman, who wasn’t Bell, he was surprised to discover. As soon as he was well enough to get around, Bell had stopped bringing him his meals—or even visiting. He wondered what had become of her—until one day, as he was standing in his doorway, he caught sight of her coming out the back door of the big house. But either she didn’t see him or she pretended not to, as she walked right past him on her way to the outhouse. So she was just like the others after all; he had known it all along. Less often, Kunta caught glimpses of the tall toubob, who was usually getting into a black-covered buggy that would then go hurrying away, with its two horses being driven by a black who sat on a seat up front.

  After a few more days, Kunta began to stay outside his hut even when the field workers returned in the evening, shambling along in a tired group. Remembering the other farm he had been on, he wondered why these bl
ack ones weren’t being followed by some toubob with a whip on a horse. They passed close by Kunta—without seeming to pay him any attention at all—and disappeared into their huts. But within a few moments most of them were back outside again going about their chores. The men did things around the barn, the women milked cows and fed chickens. And the children lugged buckets of water and as much firewood as their arms could carry; they were obviously unaware that twice as much could be carried if they would bundle the wood and balance it, or the water buckets, on their heads.

  As the days passed, he began to see that although these black ones lived better than those on the previous toubob farm, they seemed to have no more realization than the others that they were a lost tribe, that any kind of respect or appreciation for themselves had been squeezed out of them so thoroughly that they seemed to feel that their lives were as they should be. All they seemed to be concerned about was not getting beaten, having enough to eat and somewhere to sleep. There weren’t many nights that Kunta finally managed to fall asleep before lying awake burning with fury at the misery of his people. But they didn’t even seem to know that they were miserable. So what business was it of his if these people seemed to be satisfied with their pathetic lot? He lay feeling as if a little more of him was dying every day, that while any will to live was left to him, he should try to escape yet again, whatever the odds or the consequences. What good was he anymore—alive or dead? In the twelve moons since he was snatched from Juffure—how much older than his rains he had become.

  It didn’t help matters any that no one seemed to have found any kind of useful work for Kunta to do, though he was getting around ably enough on his crutches. He managed to convey the impression that he was occupied sufficiently by himself and that he had no need or desire to associate with anybody. But Kunta sensed that the other blacks didn’t trust him any more than he trusted them. Alone in the nights, though, he was so lonely and depressed, spending hours staring up into the darkness, that he felt as if he were falling in upon himself. It was like a sickness spreading within him. He was amazed and ashamed to realize that he felt the need for love.

  Kunta happened to be outside one day when the toubob’s buggy rolled into the yard with the black driver’s seat shared by a man of sasso borro color. When the toubob got out and went into the big house, the buggy came on nearer the huts and stopped again. Kunta saw the driver grasp the brown one under his arms to help him descend, for one of his hands seemed to be encased in what looked like hardened white mud. Kunta had no idea what it was, but it seemed likely that the hand was injured in some way. Reaching back into the buggy with his good hand, the brown one took out an oddly shaped dark box and then followed the driver down the row of huts to the one at the end that Kunta knew was empty.

  Kunta was so filled with curiosity that in the morning he made it his business to hobble down to that hut. He hadn’t expected to find the brown one seated just inside his doorway. They simply looked at each other. The man’s face and eyes were expressionless. And so was his voice when he said, “What you want?” Kunta had no idea what he was saying. “You one a dem African niggers.” Kunta recognized that word he’d heard so often, but not the rest. He just stood there. “Well, git on, den!” Kunta heard the sharpness, sensed the dismissal. He all but stumbled, wheeling around, and went crutching in angry embarrassment back on up to his own hut.

  He grew so furious every time he thought about that brown one that he wished he knew enough of the toubob tongue to go and shout, “At least I’m black, not brown like you!” From that day on, Kunta wouldn’t look in the direction of that hut whenever he was outside. But he couldn’t quell his curiosity about the fact that after each evening’s meal, most of the other blacks hastened to gather at that last hut. And, listening intently from within his own doorway, Kunta could hear the voice of the brown one talking almost steadily. Sometimes the others burst into laughter, and at intervals he could hear them barraging him with questions. Who or what was he, Kunta ached to know.

  In midafternoon about two weeks later, the brown one chanced to be emerging from the privy at the very moment Kunta was approaching it. The brown one’s bulky white arm covering was gone, and his hands were plaiting two cornshucks as the furious Kunta rapidly crutched on past. Sitting inside, Kunta’s head whirled with the insults he wished he could have expressed. When he came back outside, the brown one was calmly standing there, his matter-of-fact expression as if nothing had ever happened between them. Still twisting and plaiting cornshucks between his fingers, he beckoned with his head for Kunta to follow him.

  It was so totally unexpected—and disarming—that Kunta found himself following the brown one back to his cabin without a word. Obediently, Kunta sat down on the stool the brown one pointed to and watched as his host seated himself on the other stool, still plaiting. Kunta wondered if he knew that he was plaiting much the same as Africans did.

  After a while more of reflective silence, the brown one began speaking: “I been hearin’ ’bout you so mad. You lucky dey ain’t kilt you. Dey could of, an’ been inside de law. Jes’ like when dat white man broke my hand ’cause I got tired of fiddlin’. Law say anybody catch you ’scapin’ can kill you and no punishment for him. Dat law gits read out again eve’y six months in white folks’ churches. Looka here, don’t start me on white folks’ laws. Startin’ up a new settlement, dey firs’ builds a courthouse, fo’ passin’ more laws; nex’ build-in’s a church to prove dey’s Christians. I b’lieve all dat Virginia’s House of Burgess do is pass more laws ’gainst niggers. It’s a law niggers can’t carry no gun, even no stick that look like a club. Law say twenty lashes you get caught widdout a travelin’ pass, ten lashes if’n you looks white folks in dey eyes, thirty lashes if’n you raises your hand ’gainst a white Christian. Law say no nigger preachin’ lessen a white man dere to listen; law say can’t be no nigger funeral if dey think it’s a meetin’. Law say cut your ear off if’n white folks swear you lied, both ears if dey claim you lied twice. Law say you kill anybody white, you hang; kill ’nother nigger, you jes’ gits whipped. Law say reward a Indian catchin’ a ’scaped nigger wid all de tobacco dat Indian can carry. Law ’gainst teachin’ any nigger to read or write, or givin’ any nigger any book. Dey’s even a law ’gainst niggers beatin’ any drums—any dat African stuff.”

  Kunta sensed that the brown one knew he couldn’t understand, but that he both liked to talk and feel that Kunta’s listening might somehow bring him at least closer to comprehension. Looking at the brown one’s face as he spoke, and listening to his tone, Kunta felt he almost could understand. And it made him want to both laugh and cry that someone was actually talking to him as one human being to another.

  “’Bout your foot, looka here, it ain’t jes’ foots and arms but dicks an’ nuts gits cut off. I seen plenty ruined niggers like dat still workin’. Seen niggers beat till meat cut off dey bones. Nigger women’s full of baby gits beat layin’ face down over a hole dug for dey bellies. Niggers gits scraped raw, den covered with turpentine or salt, den rubbed wid straw. Niggers caught talkin’ ’bout revolt made to dance on hot embers ’til dey falls. Ain’t hardly nothin’ ain’t done to niggers, an’ if dey die ’cause of it, ain’t no crime long as dey’s owned by whoever done it, or had it done. Dat’s de law. An’ if you thinks dat’s bad, you ought to hear what folks tell gits did to dem niggers dat some slaveboats sells crost the water on dem West Indies sugar plantations.”

  Kunta was still there listening—and trying to understand—when a first-kafo-sized boy came in with the brown one’s evening meal. When he saw Kunta there, he dashed out and soon returned with a covered plate for him, too. Kunta and the brown one wordlessly ate together, and then Kunta abruptly rose to leave, knowing that the others would soon be coming to the hut, but the brown one’s gesture signaled Kunta to stay.

  As the others began arriving a few minutes later, none were able to mask their surprise at seeing Kunta there—particularly Bell, who was one of the last to show up
. Like most of the rest, she simply nodded—but with the trace of a smile, it seemed to Kunta. In the gathering darkness, the brown one proceeded to hold forth for the group as he had done for Kunta, who guessed that he was telling them some kind of stories. Kunta could tell when a story ended, for abruptly they would all laugh—or ask questions. Now and then Kunta recognized some of the words that had become familiar to his ears.

  When he went back to his own hut, Kunta was in a turmoil of emotion about mingling with these black ones. Sleepless late that night, his mind still tumbling with conflicts, he recalled something Omoro had said once when Kunta had refused to let go of a choice mango after Lamin begged for a bite: “When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand, nor can your hand pick up anything.”

  But he also knew that his father would be in the fullest of agreement with him that, no matter what, he must never become anything like these black people. Yet each night, he felt strangely drawn to go among them at the hut of the brown one. He resisted the temptation, but almost every afternoon now, Kunta would hobble over to visit with the brown one when he was alone.

  “Git my fingers back to workin’ right to fiddle again,” he said while weaving his cornshucks one day. “Any kin’ of luck, dis massa here go ’head an’ buy me an’ hire me out. I done fiddled all over Virginia, make good money for him an’ me both. Ain’t much I ain’t seen an’ done, even if’n you don’t know what I’m talkin” bout. White folks says all Africans knows is livin’ in grass huts an’ runnin’’roun’ killin’ an’ eatin’ one ’nother.”