Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

Pain was pain.

I was on my back when I came to and there was a white face floating just above me. For a wild moment, I thought it was Kevin, thought I was home. I said his name eagerly. “It’s me, Dana.” Rufus’s voice. I was still in hell.

The threat stunned me. He meant it. He’d send me back out. I stood staring at him, not with anger now, but with surprise—and fear.

“I guess I just had to make somebody pay.

Rufus felt Dana was responsible for his father's death.

“Go read a book or something. Don’t do any more work today.” “Read a book?” “Do whatever you want to.” In other words, he was sorry. He was always sorry.

I couldn’t remember her being that way with anyone but Rufus before. Slave children hadn’t interested her unless her husband had fathered them. Then her interest had been negative.

I never learned to like sleeping on the floor of her room, but she wouldn’t permit the trundle bed to be brought in. She honestly didn’t see that it was any hardship for me to sleep on the floor. Niggers always slept on the floor.

But just for a while, I wanted to be my own master. Before I forgot what it felt like.

A white man went by on horseback leading two dozen black men chained two by two. Chained. They wore handcuffs and iron collars with chains connecting the collars to a central chain that ran between the two lines. Behind the men walked several women roped together neck to neck. A coffle—slaves for sale.

“I was beginning to feel like a traitor,” I said. “Guilty for saving him.

I always seem to forgive him for what he does to me. I can’t hate him the way I should until I see him doing things to other people.” I shook my head. “I guess I can see why there are those here who think I’m more white than black.”

she repeated the face-rubbing gesture, and he nodded. “She means it doesn’t come off, Dana,” he said quietly. “The black. She means the devil with people who say you’re anything but what you are.”

Being with her at such times was like being alone. And being alone was just what I needed.

Dana feelings while caring for Margaret Weylin

“Do you know what would happen to the people here if I died?” I nodded. “What bothers me,” I said, “is what’s going to happen to them if you live.”

Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time. This confused me because I felt just about the same mixture of emotions for him myself. I had thought my feelings were complicated because he and I had such a strange relationship. But then, slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships.

overseer drew simple, unconflicting emotions of hatred and fear when he appeared briefly. But then, it was part of the overseer’s job to be hated and feared while the master kept his hands clean.

I made a noise and Rufus looked up at me. I thought he looked almost ashamed for a moment. He put the boy down quickly and shooed him away. “Nothing but questions,” Rufus complained to me. “Enjoy it, Rufe. At least he’s not out setting fire to the stable or trying to drown himself.” He couldn’t quite keep from laughing.

“You’re still thinking about running?” “Wouldn’t you be if you didn’t have another way to get free?”

“If you go on talking to me the way you do, I won’t care what he does to you.” She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she smiled. “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.”

Rufus never called my bluff. Alice did it automatically—and because I was bluffing, she got away with it. I got up and walked away from her. Behind me, I thought I heard her laugh.

It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work.

The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have. Another man said educating slaves was illegal.

they’re not the only ones who have to do things they don’t like to stay alive and whole.

“There isn’t any safe way to almost kill yourself. I was afraid of the sleeping pills. I took them with me because I wanted to be able to die if … if I wanted to die.

I found myself laughing, almost crying. I put my head on his shoulder and wondered whether a little time in some sort of mental institution would be worse than several months of slavery. I doubted it.

Wow! What a statement to make. I cannot imagine the pain, stress, embrassement, humiliation blacks endured during slavery.

their lives are hard enough.” “What about your life?” “It’s better than anything most of them will ever know.”

that I didn’t have their endurance. I still don’t. Some of them will go on struggling to survive, no matter what. I’m not like that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I went over and sat beside her. “I think she did it to herself. Hung herself. I just took her down.” “He did it!” she hissed. “Even if he didn’t put the rope on her, he drove her to it. He sold her babies!”

what are you going to do for your son and your daughter?” He looked at me helplessly. “Two certificates of freedom,” I said. “You owe them that, at least. You’ve deprived them of their mother.”

“Two certificates of freedom, Rufe, all legal. Raise them free. That’s the least you can do.”

They buried her. There was a big dinner afterward. My relatives at home had dinners after funerals too. I had never thought about how far back the custom might go.

“There’re worse things than being dead,”

I wondered whether he thought making a will was foolish at his age—or maybe it was freeing more slaves that he thought was foolish.

He believed I would kill him to free his slaves. Strangely, the idea had not occurred to me. My suggestion had been innocent. But he might have a point. Eventually, it would have occurred to me.

“Daddy always thought you were dangerous because you knew too many white ways, but you were black. Too black, he said. The kind of black who watches and thinks and makes trouble.

Tom Weylin's way of saying Dana was a smart black person.

I knew about loneliness. I found my thoughts going back to the time I had gone home without Kevin—the loneliness, the fear, sometimes the hopelessness I had felt then.

it would be so hard to raise the knife, drive it into the flesh I had saved so many times. So hard to kill …

A slave was a slave. Anything could be done to her.