by Alice Walker
Shug say, under her breath, Is this him?
I say, Yeah.
What shock Shug and shock me too is how young he look. He look older than the child he with, even if she is dress up like a woman, but he look young for somebody to be anybody that got grown children and nearly grown grandchildren. But then I remember, he not my daddy, just my children daddy.
What your mama do, ast Shug, rob the cradle?
But he not so young.
I brought Celie, say Shug. Your daughter Celie. She wanted to visit you. Got some questions to ast.
He seem to think back a second. Celie? he say. Like, Who Celie? Then he say, Yall git out and come up on the porch. Daisy, he say to the little woman with him, go tell Hetty to hold dinner. She squeeze his arm, reach up and kiss him on the jaw. He turn his head and watch her go up the walk, up the steps, and through the front door. He follow us up the steps, up on the porch, help us pull out rocking chairs, then say, Now, what yall want?
The children here? I ast.
What children? he say. Then he laugh. Oh, they gone with they mama. She up and left me, you know. Went back to her folks. Yeah, he say, you would remember May Ellen.
Why she leave? I ast.
He laugh some more. Got too old for me, I reckon.
Then the little woman come back out and sit on the armrest of his chair. He talk to us and fondle her arm.
This Daisy, he say. My new wife.
Why, say Shug, you don’t look more than fifteen.
I ain’t, say Daisy.
I’m surprise your people let you marry.
She shrug, look at Pa. They work for him, she say. Live on his land.
I’m her people now, he say.
I feels so sick I almost gag. Nettie in Africa, I say. A missionary. She wrote me that you ain’t our real Pa.
Well, he say. So now you know.
Daisy look at me with pity all over her face. It just like him to keep that from you, she say. He told me how he brought up two little girls that wasn’t even his, she say. I don’t think I really believed it, till now.
Naw, he never told them, say Shug.
What a old sweetie pie, say Daisy, kissing him on top the head. He fondle and fondle her arm. Look at me and grin.
Your daddy didn’t know how to git along, he say. Whitefolks lynch him. Too sad a story to tell pitiful little growing girls, he say. Any man would have done what I done.
Maybe not, say Shug.
He look at her, then look at me. He can tell she know. But what do he care?
Take me, he say, I know how they is. The key to all of ’em is money. The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give ’em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass. So what I did was just right off offer to give ’em money. Before I planted a seed, I made sure this one and that one knowed one seed out of three was planted for him. Before I ground a grain of wheat, the same thing. And when I opened up your daddy’s old store in town, I bought me my own white boy to run it. And what make it so good, he say, I bought him with whitefolks’ money.
Ask the busy man your questions, Celie, say Shug. I think his dinner getting cold.
Where my daddy buried, I ast. That all I really want to know.
Next to your mammy, he say.
Any marker, I ast.
He look at me like I’m crazy. Lynched people don’t git no marker, he say. Like this something everybody know.
Mama got one? I ast.
He say, Naw.
The birds sing just as sweet when us leave as when us come. Then, look like as soon as us turn back on the main road, they stop. By the time us got to the cemetery, the sky gray.
Us look for Ma and Pa. Hope for some scrap of wood that say something. But us don’t find nothing but weeds and cockleburrs and paper flowers fading on some of the graves. Shug pick up a old horseshoe somebody horse lose. Us took that old horseshoe and us turned round and round together until we were dizzy enough to fall out, and where us would have fell us stuck the horseshoe in the ground.
Shug say, Us each other’s peoples now, and kiss me.
DEAR CELIE,
I woke up this morning bound to tell Corrine and Samuel everything. I went over to their hut and pulled up a stool next to Corrine’s bed. She’s so weak by now that all she can do is look unfriendly—and I could tell I wasn’t welcome.
I said, Corrine, I’m here to tell you and Samuel the truth.
She said, Samuel already told me. If the children yours, why didn’t you just say so?
Samuel said, Now, honey.
She said, Don’t Now Honey me. Nettie swore on the bible to tell me the truth. To tell God the truth, and she lied.
Corrine, I said, I didn’t lie. I sort of turned my back more on Samuel and whispered: You saw my stomach, I said.
What do I know about pregnancy, she said. I never experienced it myself. For all I know, women may be able to rub out all the signs.
They can’t rub out stretch marks, I said. Stretch marks go right into the skin, and a woman’s stomach stretches enough so that it keeps a little pot, like all the women have here.
She turned her face to the wall.
Corrine, I said, I’m the children’s aunt. Their mother is my older sister, Celie.
Then I told them the whole story. Only Corrine was still not convinced.
You and Samuel telling so many lies, who can believe anything you say? she asked.
You’ve got to believe Nettie, said Samuel. Though the part about you and Pa was a real shock to him.
Then I remembered what you told me about seeing Corrine and Samuel and Olivia in town, when she was buying cloth to make her and Olivia dresses, and how you sent me to her because she was the only woman you’d ever seen with money. I tried to make Corrine remember that day, but she couldn’t.
She gets weaker and weaker, and unless she can believe us and start to feel something for her children, I fear we will lose her.
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.
Pray for us,
Nettie
DEAREST CELIE,
Every day for the past week I’ve been trying to get Corrine to remember meeting you in town. I know if she can just recall your face, she will believe Olivia (if not Adam) is your child. They think Olivia looks like me, but that is only because I look like you. Olivia has your face and eyes, exactly. It amazes me that Corrine didn’t see the resemblance.
Remember the main street of town? I asked. Remember the hitching post in front of Finley’s dry goods store? Remember how the store smelled like peanut shells?
She says she remembers all this, but no men speaking to her.
Then I remember her quilts. The Olinka men make beautiful quilts which are full of animals and birds and people. And as soon as Corrine saw them, she began to make a quilt that alternated one square of appliqued figures with one nine-patch block, using the clothes the children had outgrown, and some of her old dresses.
I went to her trunk and started hauling out quilts.
Don’t touch my things, said Corrine. I’m not gone yet.
I held up first one and then another to the light, trying to find the first one I remembered her making. And trying to remember, at the same time, the dresses she and Olivia were wearing the first months I lived with them.
Aha, I said, when I found what I was looking for, and laid the quilt across the bed.
Do you remember buying this cloth? I asked, pointing to a flowered square. And what about this checkered bird?
She traced the patterns with her finger, and slowly her eyes filled with tears.
She was so much like Olivia! she said. I was afraid she’d want her back. So I forgot her as soon as I could. All I let myself think about was how the clerk treated me! I was acting like somebody because I was Samuel’s wife, and a Spelman Seminary graduate, and he treated me lik
e any ordinary nigger. Oh, my feelings were hurt! And I was mad! And that’s what I thought about, even told Samuel about, on the way home. Not about your sister—what was her name?—Celie? Nothing about her.
She began to cry in earnest. Me and Samuel holding her hands.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I said. My sister was glad to see Olivia with you. Glad to see her alive. She thought both her children were dead.
Poor thing! said Samuel. And we sat there talking a little and holding on to each other until Corrine fell off to sleep.
But, Celie, in the middle of the night she woke up, turned to Samuel and said: I believe. And died anyway.
Your Sister in Sorrow, Nettie
DEAREST CELIE,
Just when I think I’ve learned to live with the heat, the constant dampness, even steaminess of my clothes, the swampiness under my arms and between my legs, my friend comes. And cramps and aches and pains—but I must still keep going as if nothing is happening, or be an embarrassment to Samuel, the children and myself. Not to mention the villagers, who think women who have their friends should not even be seen.
Right after her mother’s death, Olivia got her friend; she and Tashi tend to each other is my guess. Nothing is said to me, in any event, and I don’t know how to bring the subject up. Which feels wrong to me; but if you talk to an Olinka girl about her private parts, her mother and father will be annoyed, and it is very important to Olivia not to be looked upon as an outsider. Although the one ritual they do have to celebrate womanhood is so bloody and painful, I forbid Olivia to even think about it.
Do you remember how scared I was when it first happened to me? I thought I had cut myself. But thank God you were there to tell me I was all right.
We buried Corrine in the Olinka way, wrapped in barkcloth under a large tree. All of her sweet ways went with her. All of her education and a heart intent on doing good. She taught me so much! I know I will miss her always. The children were stunned by their mother’s death. They knew she was very sick, but death is not something they think about in relation to their parents or themselves. It was a strange little procession. All of us in our white robes and with our faces painted white. Samuel is like someone lost. I don’t believe they’ve spent a night apart since their marriage.
And how are you? dear Sister. The years have come and gone without a single word from you. Only the sky above us do we hold in common. I look at it often as if, somehow, reflected from its immensities, I will one day find myself gazing into your eyes. Your dear, large, clean and beautiful eyes. Oh, Celie! My life here is nothing but work, work, work, and worry. What girlhood I might have had passed me by. And I have nothing of my own. No man, no children, no close friend, except for Samuel. But I do have children, Adam and Olivia. And I do have friends, Tashi and Catherine. I even have a family—this village, which has fallen on such hard times.
Now the engineers have come to inspect the territory. Two white men came yesterday and spent a couple of hours strolling about the village, mainly looking at the wells. Such is the innate politeness of the Olinka that they rushed about preparing food for them, though precious little is left, since many of the gardens that flourish at this time of the year have been destroyed. And the white men sat eating as if the food was beneath notice.
It is understood by the Olinka that nothing good is likely to come from the same persons who destroyed their houses, but custom dies hard. I did not speak to the men myself, but Samuel did. He said their talk was all of workers, kilometers of land, rainfall, seedlings, machinery, and whatnot. One seemed totally indifferent to the people around him—simply eating and then smoking and staring off into the distance—and the other, somewhat younger, appeared to be enthusiastic about learning the language. Before, he says, it dies out.
I did not enjoy watching Samuel speaking to either of them. The one who hung on every word, or the one who looked through Samuel’s head.
Samuel gave me all of Corrine’s clothes, and I need them, though none of our clothing is suitable in this climate. This is true even of the clothing the Africans wear. They used to wear very little, but the ladies of England introduced the Mother Hubbard, a long, cumbersome, ill-fitting dress, completely shapeless, that inevitably gets dragged in the fire, causing burns aplenty. I have never been able to bring myself to wear one of these dresses, which all seem to have been made with giants in mind, so I was glad to have Corrine’s things. At the same time, I dreaded putting them on. I remembered her saying we should stop wearing each other’s clothes. And the memory pained me.
Are you sure Sister Corrine would want this? I asked Samuel.
Yes, Sister Nettie, he said. Try not to hold her fears against her. At the end she understood, and believed. And forgave—whatever there was to forgive.
I should have said something sooner, I said.
He asked me to tell him about you, and the words poured out like water. I was dying to tell someone about us. I told him about my letters to you every Christmas and Easter, and about how much it would have meant to us if he had gone to see you after I left. He was sorry he hesitated to become involved.
If only I’d understood then what I know now! he said.
But how could he? There is so much we don’t understand. And so much unhappiness comes because of that.
love and Merry Christmas
to you,
Your sister, Nettie
DEAR NETTIE,
I don’t write to God no more. I write to you.
What happen to God? ast Shug.
Who that? I say.
She look at me serious.
Big a devil as you is, I say, you not worried bout no God, surely.
She say, Wait a minute. Hold on just a minute here. Just because I don’t harass it like some peoples us know don’t mean I ain’t got religion.
What God do for me? I ast.
She say, Celie! Like she shock. He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death.
Yeah, I say, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown.
She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you.
Let ’im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.
She talk and she talk, trying to budge me way from blasphemy. But I blaspheme much as I want to.
All my life I never care what people thought bout nothing I did, I say. But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don’t think. Just sit up there glorying in being deef, I reckon. But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.
I is a sinner, say Shug. Cause I was born. I don’t deny it. But once you find out what’s out there waiting for us, what else can you be?
Sinners have more good times, I say.
You know why? she ast.
Cause you ain’t all the time worrying bout God, I say.
Naw, that ain’t it, she say. Us worry bout God a lot. But once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like.
You telling me God love you, and you ain’t never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?
But if God love me, Celie, I don’t have to do all that. Unless I want to. There’s a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes.
Like what? I ast.
Oh, she say. I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time.
Well, this sound like blasphemy sure nuff.
She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to s
hare God, not find God.
Some folks didn’t have him to share, I said. They the ones didn’t speak to me while I was there struggling with my big belly and Mr. children.
Right, she say.
Then she say: Tell me what your God look like, Celie.
Aw naw, I say. I’m too shame. Nobody ever ast me this before, so I’m sort of took by surprise. Besides, when I think about it, it don’t seem quite right. But it all I got. I decide to stick up for him, just to see what Shug say.
Okay, I say. He big and old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white robes and go barefooted.
Blue eyes? she ast.
Sort of bluish-gray. Cool. Big though. White lashes. I say.
She laugh.
Why you laugh? I ast. I don’t think it so funny. What you expect him to look like, Mr. _____ ?
That wouldn’t be no improvement, she say. Then she tell me this old white man is the same God she used to see when she prayed. If you wait to find God in church, Celie, she say, that’s who is bound to show up, cause that’s where he live.
How come? I ast.
Cause that’s the one that’s in the white folks’ white bible.
Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do with it.
How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is gitting cursed?
I never thought bout that.
Nettie say somewhere in the bible it say Jesus’ hair was like lamb’s wool, I say.
Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he’d have to have it conked before anybody paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair kinky.
That’s the truth, I say.
Ain’t no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad cause he don’t seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say? Ask Sofia, she say.