Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

Ugly name to inflict on a reasonably nice-looking little kid.

kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying. And now, finally …

And I began to realize why Kevin and I had fitted so easily into this time. We weren’t really in. We were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors. While we waited to go home, we humored the people around us by pretending to be like them. But we were poor actors. We never really got into our roles. We never forgot that we were acting.

“The ease. Us, the children … I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”

Or if I had to stay here, why couldn’t I just turn these two kids away, turn off my conscience, and be a coward, safe and comfortable?

She has to do something brave to get home. Something extremely bold and courageous

The pain was a friend. Pain had never been a friend to me before, but now it kept me still. It forced reality on me and kept me sane.

“I won’t bargain away my husband or my freedom!” “You don’t have either to bargain.” “Neither do you.”

In other words, he was sorry. He was always sorry. He would have been amazed, uncomprehending if I refused to forgive him. I remembered suddenly the way he used to talk to his mother. If he couldn’t get what he wanted from her gently, he stopped being gentle. Why not? She always forgave him.

coffle

Anyway, all that means we’re two halves of the same woman—at least in his crazy head.”

But then, slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships.

But then, it was part of the overseer’s job to be hated and feared while the master kept his hands clean.

“You’ll care. And you’ll help me. Else, you’d have to see yourself for the white nigger you are, and you couldn’t stand that.”

It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery.

The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have.

And it was a mistake. It was the breaking of an unspoken agreement between us—a very basic agreement—and he knew it.

“God, no! Far from it. If you had gotten to know her, you wouldn’t even suspect.”

“But … they’re being sold anyway.” “Not all of them. Good Lord, Kevin, their lives are hard enough.”

Kevin said after two weeks. He had just tried driving again, and when he came in, his hands were shaking. “Hell, half the time I wonder if you’re not eager to go back to Maryland anyway.”

Can’t help but notice his privilege

“You were turning into something I didn’t want to stay near.”

“Daddy always thought you were dangerous because you knew too many white ways, but you were black.

A slave was a slave. Anything could be done to her. And Rufus was Rufus—erratic, alternately generous and vicious. I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover. He had understood that once.

But I was still caught somehow, joined to the wall as though my arm were growing out of it—or growing into it.