Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

The possibility of meeting a white adult here frightened me, more than the possibility of street violence ever had at home.

At one point, this last cowardice even brought me something useful. A name for whites who rode through the night in the ante bellum South, breaking in doors and beating and otherwise torturing black people. Patrols. Groups of young whites who ostensibly maintained order among the slaves. Patrols. Forerunners of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Then … Rufus’s fear of death calls me to him, and my own fear of death sends me home.”

He was like me—a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying.

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.”

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

Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense.

I felt sweat on my face mingling with silent tears of frustration and anger. My back had already begun to ache dully, and I felt dully ashamed. Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.

“I already know all I ever want to find out about being a slave,” I told him. “I’d rather be shot than go back in there.”