by Alice Walker
They sure did, I say.
And so many grandchildren, he say. Well. Twelve children, all busy multiplying. Just the family enough to fill the church.
Yeah, I say. That’s the truth.
How long you here for? he say.
Maybe a week, I say.
You know Harpo and Sofia baby girl real sick? he say.
Naw, I didn’t, I say. I point to Henrietta in the crowd. There she is over there, I say. She look just fine.
Yeah, she look fine, he say, but she got some kind of blood disease. Blood sort of clot up in her veins every once in a while, make her sick as a dog. I don’t think she gon make it, he say.
Great goodness of life, I say.
Yeah, he say. It hard for Sofia. She still have to try to prop up that white gal she raise. Now her mama dead. Her health not that good either. Plus, Henrietta a hard row to hoe whether she sick or well.
Oh, she a little mess, I say. Then I think back to one of Nettie’s letters bout the sicknesses children have where she at in Africa. Seem like to me she mention something bout blood clots. I try to remember what she say African peoples do, but I can’t. Talking to Mr. _____ such a surprise I can’t think of nothing. Not even nothing else to say.
Mr. _____ stand waiting for me to say something, looking off up to his house. Finally he say, Good evening, and walk away.
Sofia say after I left, Mr. _____ live like a pig. Shut up in the house so much it stunk. Wouldn’t let nobody in until finally Harpo force his way in. Clean the house, got food. Give his daddy a bath. Mr. ____ too weak to fight back. Plus, too far gone to care.
He couldn’t sleep, she say. At night he thought he heard bats outside the door. Other things rattling in the chimney. But the worse part was having to listen to his own heart. It did pretty well as long as there was daylight, but soon as night come, it went crazy. Beating so loud it shook the room. Sound like drums.
Harpo went up there plenty nights to sleep with him, say Sofia. Mr. _____ would be all cram up in a corner of the bed. Eyes clamp on different pieces of furniture, see if they move in his direction. You know how little he is, say Sofia. And how big and stout Harpo is. Well, one night I walked up to tell Harpo something—and the two of them was just laying there on the bed fast asleep. Harpo holding his daddy in his arms.
After that, I start to feel again for Harpo, Sofia say. And pretty soon us start work on our new house. She laugh. But did I say it been easy? If I did, God would make me cut my own switch.
What make him pull through? I ast.
Oh, she say, Harpo made him send you the rest of your sister’s letters. Right after that he start to improve. You know meanness kill, she say.
Amen
DEAREST CELIE,
By now I expected to be home. Looking into your face and saying Celie, is it really you? I try to picture what the years have brought you in the way of weight and wrinkles— or how you fix your hair. From a skinny, hard little something I’ve become quite plump. And some of my hair is gray!
But Samuel tells me he loves me plump and graying.
Does this surprise you?
We were married last Fall in England where we tried to get relief for the Olinka from the churches and the Missionary Society.
As long as they could, the Olinka ignored the road and the white builders who came. But eventually they had to notice them because one of the first things the builders did was tell the people they must be moved elsewhere. The builders wanted the village site as headquarters for the rubber plantation. It is the only spot for miles that has a steady supply of fresh water.
Protesting and driven, the Olinka, along with their missionaries, were placed on a barren stretch of land that has no water at all for six months of the year. During that time, they must buy water from the planters. During the rainy season there is a river and they are trying to dig holes in the nearby rocks to make cisterns. So far they collect water in discarded oil drums, which the builders brought.
But the most horrible thing to happen had to do with the roofleaf, which, as I must have written you, the people worship as a God and which they use to cover their huts. Well, on this barren strip of ground the planters erected workers’ barracks. One for men and one for women and children. But, because the Olinka swore they would never live in a dwelling not covered by their God, Roofleaf, the builders left these barracks uncovered. Then they proceeded to plow under the Olinka village and everything else for miles around. Including every last stalk of roofleaf.
After nearly unbearable weeks in the hot sun, we were awakened one morning by the sound of a large truck pulling into the compound. It was loaded with sheets of corrugated tin.
Celie, we had to pay for the tin. Which exhausted what meager savings the Olinka had, and nearly wiped out the money Samuel and I had managed to put by for the education of the children once we return home. Which we have planned to do each year since Corrine died, only to find ourselves more and more involved in the Olinka’s problems. Nothing could be uglier than corrugated tin, Celie. And as they struggled to put up roofs of this cold, hard, glittery, ugly metal the women raised a deafening ululation of sorrow that echoed off the cavern walls for miles around. It was on this day that the Olinka acknowledged at least temporary defeat.
Though the Olinka no longer ask anything of us, beyond teaching their children—because they can see how powerless we and our God are—Samuel and I decided we must do something about this latest outrage, even as many of the people to whom we felt close ran away to join the mbeles or forest people, who live deep in the jungle, refusing to work for whites or be ruled by them.
So off we went, with the children, to England.
It was an incredible voyage, Celie, not only because we had almost forgot about the rest of the world, and such things as ships and coal fires and streetlights and oatmeal, but because on the ship with us was the white woman missionary whom we’d heard about years ago. She was now retired from missionary work and going back to England to live. She was traveling with a little African boy whom she introduced as her grandchild!
Of course it was impossible to ignore the presence of an aging white woman accompanied by a small black child. The ship was in a tither. Each day she and the child walked about the deck alone, groups of white people falling into silence as they passed.
She is a jaunty, stringy, blue-eyed woman, with hair the color of silver and dry grass. A short chin, and when she speaks she seems to be gargling.
I’m pushing on for sixty-five, she told us, when we found ourselves sharing a table for dinner one night. Been in the tropics most of my life. But, she said, a big war is coming. Bigger than the one they were starting when I left. It’ll go hard on England, but I expect we’ll survive. I missed the other war, she said. I mean to be present for this one.
Samuel and I had never really thought about war.
Why, she said, the signs are all over Africa. India too, I expect. First there’s a road built to where you keep your goods. Then your trees are hauled off to make ships and captain’s furniture. Then your land is planted with something you can’t eat. Then you’re forced to work it. That’s happening all over Africa, she said. Burma too, I expect.
But Harold here and I decided to get out. Didn’t we Harry? she said, giving the little boy a biscuit. The child said nothing, just chewed his biscuit thoughtfully. Adam and Olivia soon took him off to explore the lifeboats.
Doris’ story—the woman’s name is Doris Baines—is an interesting one. But I won’t bore you with it as we eventually became bored.
She was born to great wealth in England. Her father was Lord Somebody or Other. They were forever giving or attending parties that were no fun. Besides, she wanted to write books. Her family was against it. Totally. They hoped she’d marry.
Me marry! she hooted. (Really, she has the oddest ideas.)
They did everything to convince me, she said. You can’t imagine. I never saw so many milkfed young men in all my life as when I was nineteen and twe
nty. Each one more boring than the last. Can anything be more boring than an upper-class Englishman? she said. They remind one of bloody mushrooms.
Well, she rattled on, through endless dinners, because the captain assigned us permanently to the same table. It seems the notion of becoming a missionary struck her one evening she was getting ready for yet another tedious date, and lay in the tub thinking a convent would be better than the castle in which she lived. She could think, she could write. She could be her own boss. But wait. As a nun she would not be her own boss. God would be boss. The virgin mother. The mother superior. Etc. Etc. Ah, but a missionary! Far off in the wilds of India, alone! It seemed like bliss.
And so she cultivated a pious interest in heathens. Fooled her parents. Fooled the Missionary Society, who were so taken with her quick command of languages they sent her to Africa (worst luck!) where she began writing novels about everything under the sun.
My pen name is Jared Hunt, she said. In England and even in America, I’m a run-away success. Rich, famous. An eccentric recluse who spends most of his time shooting wild game.
Well now, she continued, several evenings later, you don’t think I paid much attention to the heathen? I saw nothing wrong with them as they were. And they seemed to like me well enough. I was actually able to help them a good deal. I was a writer, after all, and I wrote reams of paper in their behalf: about their culture, their behavior, their needs, that sort of thing. You’d be surprised how good writing matters when you’re going after money. I learned to speak their language faultlessly, and to throw off the missionary snoopers back at headquarters I wrote entire reports in it. I tapped the family vaults for close on to a million pounds before I got anything from the missionary societies or rich old family friends. I built a hospital, a grammar school. A college. A swimming pool—the one luxury I permitted myself, since swimming in the river one is subject to attack by leeches.
You wouldn’t believe the peace! she said, at breakfast, halfway to England. Within a year everything as far as me and the heathen were concerned ran like clockwork. I told them right off that their souls were no concern of mine, that I wanted to write books and not be disturbed. For this pleasure I was prepared to pay. Rather handsomely.
In a burst of appreciation one day, I’m afraid the chief— not knowing what else to do, no doubt—presented me with a couple of wives. I don’t think it was commonly believed I was a woman. There seemed some question in their minds just what I was. Anyhow. I educated the two young girls as best I could. Sent them to England, of course, to learn medicine and agriculture. Welcomed them home when they returned, gave them away in marriage to two young chaps who were always about the place, and began the happiest period of my life as the grandmother of their children. I must say, she beamed, I’ve turned out to be fab-o as a grandmama. I learned it from the Akweans. They never spank their children. Never lock them away in another part of the hut. They do a bit of bloody cutting around puberty. But Harry’s mother the doctor is going to change all that. Isn’t she Harold?
Anyway, she said. When I get to England I’ll put a stop to their bloody encroachments. I’ll tell them what to do with their bloody road and their bloody rubber plantations and their bloody sunburned but still bloody boring English planters and engineers. I am a very wealthy woman, and I own the village of Akwee.
We listened to most of this in more or less respectful silence. The children were very taken with young Harold, though he never said a word in our presence. He seemed fond of his grandmother and used to her, but her verbosity produced in him a kind of soberly observant speechlessness.
He’s quite different with us though, said Adam, who is really a great lover of children, and could get through to any child given half an hour. Adam makes jokes, he sings, he clowns and knows games. And he has the sunniest smile, most of the time—and great healthy African teeth.
As I write about his sunny smile I realize he’s been unusually glum during this trip. Interested and excited, but not really sunny, except when he’s with young Harold.
I will have to ask Olivia what’s wrong. She is thrilled at the thought of going back to England. Her mother used to tell her about the thatched cottages of the English and how they reminded her of the roofleaf huts of the Olinka. They are square, though, she’d say. More like our church and school than like our homes, which Olivia thought very strange.
When we reached England, Samuel and I presented the Olinka’s grievances to the bishop of the English branch of our church, a youngish man wearing spectacles who sat thumbing through a stack of Samuel’s yearly reports. Instead of even mentioning the Olinka the bishop wanted to know how long it had been since Corrine’s death, and why, as soon as she died, I had not returned to America.
I really did not understand what he was driving at.
Appearances, Miss ____, he said. Appearances. What must the natives think?
About what? I asked.
Come, come, he said.
We behave as brother and sister to each other, said Samuel.
The bishop smirked. Yes, he did.
I felt my face go hot.
Well, there was more of this, but why burden you with it? You know what some people are, and the bishop was one of them. Samuel and I left without even a word about the Olinka’s problems.
Samuel was so angry, I was frightened. He said the only thing for us to do, if we wanted to remain in Africa, was join the mbeles and encourage all the Olinka to do the same.
But suppose they do not want to go? I asked. Many of them are too old to move back into the forest. Many are sick. The women have small babies. And then there are the youngsters who want bicycles and British clothes. Mirrors and shiny cooking pots. They want to work for the white people in order to have these things.
Things! he said, in disgust. Bloody things!
Well, we have a month here anyway, I said, let’s make the most of it.
Because we had spent so much of our money on tin roofs and the voyage over, it had to be a poor man’s month in England. But it was a very good time for us. We began to feel ourselves a family, without Corrine. And people meeting us on the street never failed (if they spoke to us at all) to express the sentiment that the children looked just like the two of us. The children began to accept this as natural, and began going out to view the sights that interested them, alone. Leaving their father and me to our quieter, more sedate pleasures, one of which was simple conversation.
Samuel, of course, was born in the North, in New York, and grew up and was educated there. He met Corrine through his aunt who had been a missionary, along with Corrine’s aunt, in the Belgian Congo. Samuel frequently accompanied his aunt Althea to Atlanta, where Corrine’s aunt Theodosia lived.
These two ladies had been through marvelous things together, said Samuel, laughing. They’d been attacked by lions, stampeded by elephants, flooded out by rains, made war on by “natives.” The tales they told were simply incredible. There they sat on a heavily antimacassared horsehair sofa, two prim and proper ladies in ruffles and lace, telling these stupendous stories over tea.
Corrine and I as teenagers used to attempt to stylize these tales into comics. We called them such things as THREE MONTHS IN A HAMMOCK, or SORE HIPS OF THE DARK CONTINENT. Or, A MAP OF AFRICA: A GUIDE TO NATIVE INDIFFERENCE TO THE HOLY WORD.
We made fun of them, but we were riveted on their adventures, and on the ladies’ telling of them. They were so staid looking. So proper. You really couldn’t imagine them actually building—with their own hands—a school in the bush. Or battling reptiles. Or unfriendly Africans who thought, since they were wearing dresses with things that looked like wings behind, they should be able to fly.
Bush? Corrine would snicker to me or me to her. And just the sound of the word would send us off into quiet hysteria, while we calmly sipped our tea. Because of course they didn’t realize they were being funny, and to us they were, very. And of course the prevailing popular view of Africans at that time contributed to our
feeling of amusement. Not only were Africans savages, they were bumbling, inept savages, rather like their bumbling, inept brethren at home. But we carefully, not to say studiously, avoided this very apparent connection.
Corrine’s mother was a dedicated housewife and mother who disliked her more adventurous sister. But she never prevented Corrine from visiting. And when Corrine was old enough, she sent her to Spelman Seminary where Aunt Theodosia had gone. This was a very interesting place. It was started by two white missionaries from New England who used to wear identical dresses. Started in a church basement, it soon moved up to Army barracks. Eventually these two ladies were able to get large sums of money from some of the richest men in America, and so the place grew. Buildings, trees. Girls were taught everything: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, sewing, cleaning, cooking. But more than anything else, they were taught to serve God and the colored community. Their official motto was OUR WHOLE SCHOOL FOR CHRIST. But I always thought their unofficial motto should have been OUR COMMUNITY COVERS THE WORLD, because no sooner had a young woman got through Spelman Seminary than she began to put her hand to whatever work she could do for her people, anywhere in the world. It was truly astonishing. These very polite and proper young women, some of them never having set foot outside their own small country towns, except to come to the Seminary, thought nothing of packing up for India, Africa, the Orient. Or for Philadelphia or New York.
Sixty years or so before the founding of the school, the Cherokee Indians who lived in Georgia were forced to leave their homes and walk, through the snow, to resettlement camps in Oklahoma. A third of them died on the way. But many of them refused to leave Georgia. They hid out as colored people and eventually blended with us. Many of these mixed-race people were at Spelman. Some remembered who they actually were, but most did not. If they thought about it at all (and it became harder to think about Indians because there were none around) they thought they were yellow or reddish brown and wavy haired because of white ancestors, not Indian.