Read Online The Book of Night Women by Marlon James - Free Book Online Page B

think ’bout that. When a nigger can read, she can plan, if is even for just a minute. Make me tell you something else ’bout reading. You see this? Every time you open this you get free. Freeness up in here and nobody even have to know you get free but you.
    —If the massa find out, you dead.
    —If the massa supper spoil, you dead, what be the difference?
    —Me suppose to answer that?
    —It name question, me chile. White man is beast either way. Nothing you can change ’bout him. But you can change plenty ’bout you. Regard that a while. You not no fool and you not common. You remember that. One of these days you goin’ know what me talking ’bout.
    Lilith quiet for a while. The darkness telling her nothing.
    —What that book name?
    — Joseph Andrews . Henry Fielding write it. British man.
    —That don’t sound like nothing.
    —You just wait.
    So Homer commence teaching Lilith how to read. Lilith don’t know why her, but glad to have the new feeling rise in her when she see a letter shape into something when they in front of her. A cup was something that she could hold and pour tea into, but a cup was also a c-u-p and when she hold her hand steady she could write it plain for Homer to see. Homer nod her head and then show her s-a-u-c-e-r. Lilith begin to see how reading and writing work and how you can write a thing and give it to a nigger and nobody can hear what she say even if she could only write that t-h-e b-l-a-c-k c-a-t s-i-t o-n t-h-e m-a-t. Writing be silent talking and Lilith like to have something that nosy nigger can’t overhear. But more so every time Lilith learn a word the cellar seem not so dark. Or mayhaps it was she who didn’t seem so dark. Lilith don’t know, but she feel like she enter something or she goin’ somewhere that most other nigger couldn’t follow.
    And that Joseph Andrews. That rascal. Seems all that white man have to do is bide him time and keep him place and everywhere he trip he goin’ land right between white woman legs. Black woman hard to laugh, for she must keep it secret and quiet-like for all white man suspicious of negro mirth. Homer read the book and Lilith clutch her side and try to laugh quiet and get a pain that would make her cry if she still wasn’t laughing.
    ‘I am afraid,’ said Lady Booby , ‘he is a wild young Fellow.’ ‘That he is,’ said Slipslop , ‘and a wicked one too. To my knowledge he games, drinks, swears and fights eternally: besides, he is horribly indicted to Wenching.’ ‘Ay!’ said the Lady, ‘I never heard that of him.’ ‘O Madam!’ answered the other, ‘he is so lewd a Rascal, that if your Ladyship keeps him much longer, you will not have one Virgin in your House except myself. And yet I can’t conceive what the Wenches see in him, to be so foolishly fond as they are; in my Eyes, he is as ugly a Scarecrow as I ever upheld .’
    —That wild fellow sound like Robert Quinn, Lilith say.
    —Eehi? What news you have ’bout Robert Quinn?
    —My ears as good at night as yours, Homer.
    They both laugh.
    —How you come by book learning? You is just common nigger.
    —Nothing common ’bout me, chile. Or you neither.
    —How you come by book learning?
    —Jack Wilkins’ sister, she teach me. Lord God, that be a long time ago. Every time her governess teach her two word, she find me working the house and drag me away to teach me. She even beat me like how governess beat her. But she show me how word read and how word write and me soon start teach meself.
    —And the massa never know?
    —No massa live here them time. Only the overseer, Jack Wilkins’ papa. Him never care ’bout what him daughter do. You could have call him a good man, even. Good for a white man anyway. That girl was a wicked little bitch. But she teach me how perfume read, then how it write. P-e-r-f-u-m-e. And how one letter put next to another letter change how they sound like.
    —What happen to she?
    —Dead from consumption at her fifteen year. She