Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

almost frightening anger. Her husband dead, three children sold, the fourth defective, and her having to thank God for the defect. She had reason for more than anger. How amazing that Weylin had sold her children and still kept her to cook his meals. How amazing that he was still alive.

“I could survive here, though, if I had to. I mean if …” “Kevin, no ifs. Please.” “I only mean I wouldn’t be in the danger you would be in.”

he’d be in another kind of danger. A place like this would endanger him in a way I didn’t want to talk to him about. If he was stranded here for years, some part of this place would rub off on him. No large part, I knew. But if he survived here, it would be because he managed to tolerate the life here.

Free speech and press hadn’t done too well in the ante bellum South. Kevin wouldn’t do too well either. The place, the time would either ...

for once Rufus’s bad luck is our good luck.

I’m here. And I’m supposed to be a slave. What’s a slave for, but to work?

I have to make a place for myself here. That means work. I think everyone here, black and white, will resent me if I don’t work. And I need friends. I need all the friends I can make here,

He was already pretty sure you could read and write. That’s one reason he seemed so suspicious and mistrustful. Educated slaves aren’t popular around here.”

It isn’t the money that I care about, or even having a roof over my head. I think we can survive here together no matter what. But I don’t think I have much chance of surviving here alone.

it’s common in this time for the master’s children to be on nearly equal terms with the slaves. But maturity is supposed to put both in their ‘places.’”

if trying means taking small risks and putting up with small humiliations now so that I can survive later, I’ll do it.”

I’m not sure you could scare me enough. I trust you.”

I fell in love with Kevin all over again. Here was the perfect excuse for me to spend a lot of time with the boy.

“I like the way you read. It’s almost like being there watching everything happen.”

“Why doesn’t she like you? Did you do something to her?” “Not likely! After all, what would happen to me if I did something to her?”

At home, a person who hesitated over his birthdate was probably about to lie. As I spoke though, I realized that here, a person might hesitate over his birthdate simply because he didn’t know it.

I was careful. As the days passed, I got into the habit of being careful. I played the slave, minded my manners probably more than I had to because I wasn’t sure what I could get away with.

It occurred to me that she was a little afraid of me. I was an unknown, after all—an unpredictable new slave. And maybe I was a little too silent.

Margaret Weylin still rushed everywhere. She had little or nothing to do. Slaves kept her house clean, did much of her sewing, all her cooking and washing. Carrie even helped her put her clothes on and take them off. So Margaret supervised—ordered people to do work they were already doing, criticized their slowness and laziness even when they were quick and industrious,

I finished my work in the library, wondering all the while whether Margaret had gone to her husband about me. Her husband, I feared.

I liked to listen to them talk sometimes and fight my way through their accents to find out more about how they survived lives of slavery. Without knowing it, they prepared me to survive.

“Don’t argue with white folks,” he had said. “Don’t tell them ‘no.’ Don’t let them see you mad. Just say ‘yes, sir.’ Then go ’head and do what you want to do.

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 slaves worked up a sweat and the whites sweated without working.

“They don’t have to understand. Even the games they play are preparing them for their future—and that future will come whether they understand it or not.”

you don’t have to beat people to treat them brutally.”

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

I thought I would die on the ground there with a mouth full of dirt and blood and a white man cursing and lecturing as he beat me. By then, I almost wanted to die. Anything to stop the pain.

even people who loved me could demand more of me than I could give—and expect their demands to be met simply because I owed them.

“I think my aunt accepts the idea of my marrying you because any children we have will be light. Lighter than I am, anyway. She always said I was a little too ‘highly visible.’”

She doesn’t care much for white people, but she prefers light-skinned blacks.

they have a couple of apartment houses over in Pasadena—small places, but nice. The last thing my uncle said to me was that he’d rather will them to his church than leave them to me and see them fall into white hands.

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.

The knife had come back with me because I happened to be wearing it in a makeshift leather sheath at my ankle. I didn’t know whether to be glad or not that I hadn’t had a chance to use it against Weylin. I might have killed him. I had been angry enough, frightened enough, humiliated enough to try.

A lifetime of conditioning could be overcome, but not easily.

A slave had no rights, and certainly no excuse for striking a white man.

If Rufus could turn so quickly on a life-long friend, how long would it take him to turn on me?

There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one.

“It won’t make any difference whether I tell or not. Isaac’s a runaway. They’ll have to answer for that, no matter what.” “Then your silence won’t matter.” “Except to give them the start you want them to have.”

“I said we were dangerous to each other. That’s more a reminder than a threat.”

Whatever it was, he’s seen it before—that time at the river—and he didn’t believe it then, either. But he’ll listen to you. He might even be a little afraid of you.” “That’s better than the other way around.

I stood still for a moment between the fields and the house and reminded myself that I was in a hostile place.

I rubbed my back, touched the several long scabs to remind myself that I could not afford to make mistakes.

No slave marriage was legally binding.

If I tell you to do something, and he doesn’t like it, he’ll come to me about it. He won’t whip you for following my orders. He’s a fair man.” I looked at him, startled. “I said fair,” he repeated. “Not likable.”

His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.

I might not be able to stop Daddy if he decided to sell you.” “Sell me! He doesn’t own me. Not even by the law here. He doesn’t have any papers saying he owns me.” “Dana, don’t talk stupid!”

“That book wasn’t even written until a century after slavery was abolished.” “Then why the hell are they still complaining about it?”

a white man named J. D. B. DeBow claiming that slavery is good because, among other things, it gives poor whites someone to look down on. That’s history. It happened whether it offends you or not.

I couldn’t do anything to change history. Yet, if history could be changed, this book in the hands of a white man—even a sympathetic white man—might be the thing to change it.