Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

“Do I look like someone you can come home to from where you may be going?” “I need you here to come home to. I’ve already learned that.” He gave me a long thoughtful look. “Just keep coming home,” he said finally. “I need you here too.”

But if he survived here, it would be because he managed to tolerate the life here. He wouldn’t have to take part in it, but he would have to keep quiet about it. 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 kill him outright or mark him somehow. I didn’t like either possibility.

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.”

I said nothing. I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman—to her misfortune. 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 wouldn’t bother her. It would be like hurting a baby.” Later it would be like hurting a woman. I suspected that wouldn’t bother him at all.

Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.

For a moment, we stood wasting time, staring at each other. We couldn’t help it—I couldn’t anyway. New lines and all, he was so damned beautiful.

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.