by Alice Walker
The people prayed to their gods and waited impatiently for the seasons to change. As soon as the rain stopped they rushed to the old rootleaf beds and tried to find the old roots. But of the endless numbers that had always grown there, only a few dozen remained. It was five years before the roofleaf became plentiful again. During those five years many more in the village died. Many left, never to return. Many were eaten by animals. Many, many were sick. The chief was given all his storebought utensils and forced to walk away from the village forever. His wives were given to other men.
On the day when all the huts had roofs again from the rootleaf, the villagers celebrated by singing and dancing and telling the story of the rootleaf. The rootleaf became the thing they worship.
Looking over the heads of the children at the end of this table, I saw coming slowly towards us, a large brown spiky thing as big as a room, with a dozen legs walking slowly and carefully under it. When it reached our canopy, it was presented to us. It was our roof.
As it approached, the people bowed down.
The white missionary before you would not let us have this ceremony, said Joseph. But the Olinka like it very much. We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?
So there we sat, Celie, face to face with the Olinka God. And Celie, I was so tired and sleepy and full of chicken and groundnut stew, my ears ringing with song, that all that Joseph said made perfect sense to me.
I wonder what you will make of all this?
I send my love,
Your sister,
Nettie
It has been a long time since I had time to write. But always, no matter what I'm doing, I am writing to you. Deaf Celie, I say in my head in the middle of Vespers, the middle of the night, while cooking, Dear, dear Celie. And I imagine that you really do get my letters and that you are writing me back: Dear Nettie, this is what life is like for me.
We are up at five o'clock for a light breakfast of millet porridge and fruit, and the morning classes. We teach the children English, reading, writing, history, geography, arithmetic and the stories of the bible. At eleven o'clock we break for lunch and household duties. From one until four it is too hot to move, though some of the mothers sit behind their huts and sew. At four o'clock we teach the older children and at night we are available for adults. Some of the older children are used to coming to the mission school, but the smaller ones are not. Their mothers sometimes drag them here, screaming and kicking. They are all boys. Olivia is the only girl.
The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated .161 When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something.
What can she become? I asked.
Why, she said, the mother of his children.
But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.
You are not much, she said. The missionary's drudge.
It is true that I work harder here than I ever dreamed I could work, and that I sweep out the school and tidy up after service, but I don't feel like a drudge. I was surprised that this woman, whose Christian name is Catherine, saw me in this light.
She has a little girl, Tashi, who plays with Olivia after school. Adam is the only boy who will speak to Olivia at school. They are not mean to her, it is just? what is it? Because she is where they are doing "boys' things," they do not see her. But never fear, Celie, Olivia has your stubbornness and clearsightedness, and she is smarter than all of them, including Adam, put together.
Why can't Tashi come to school? she asked me. When I told her the Olinka don't believe in educating girls she said, quick as a flash, They're like white people at home who don't want colored people to learn.
Oh, she's sharp, Celie. At the end of the day, when Tashi can get away from all the chores her mother assigns her, she and Olivia secret themselves in my hut and everything Olivia has learned she shares with Tashi. To Olivia right now Tashi alone is Africa.
The Africa she came beaming across the ocean hoping to find. Everything else is difficult for her.
The insects, for instance. For some reason, all of her bites turn into deep, runny sores, and she has a lot of trouble sleeping at night because the noises from the forest frighten her. It is taking a long time for her to become used to the food, which is nourishing but, for the most part, indifferently prepared.
The women of the village take turns cooking for us, and some are cleaner and more conscientious than others. Olivia gets sick from the food prepared by any of the chiefs wives. Samuel thinks it may be the water they use, which comes from a separate spring that runs clear even in the dry season. But the rest of us have no ill effects. It is as if Olivia fears the food from these wives because they all look so unhappy and work so hard. Whenever they see her they talk about the day when she will become their littlest sister/wife. It is just a joke, and they like her, but I wish they wouldn't say it. Even though they are unhappy and work like donkeys they still think it is an honor to be the chiefs wife. He walks around all day holding his belly up and talking and drinking palm wine with the healer.
Why do they say I will be a wife of the chief? asks Olivia.
That is as high as they can think, I tell her.
He is fat and shiny with huge perfect teeth. She thinks she has nightmares about him.
You will grow up to be a strong Christian woman, I tell-her. Someone who helps her people to advance. You will be a teacher or a nurse. You will travel. You will know many people greater than the chief.
Will Tashi? she wants to know.
Yes, I tell her, Tashi too.
Corrine said to me this morning, Nettie, to stop any kind of confusion in the minds of these people, I think we should call one another brother and sister, all the 164 time. Some of them can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that you are not Samuel's other wife. I don't like it, she said.
Almost since the day we arrived I've noticed a change in Corrine. She isn't sick. She works as hard as ever. She is still sweet and good-natured. But sometimes I sense her spirit is being tested and that something inher is not at rest.
That's fine, I said. I'm glad you brought it up.
And don't let the children call you Mama Nettie, she said, even hi play.
This bothered me a little, but I didn't say anything. The children do call me Mama Nettie sometimes because I do a good bit of fussing over them. But I never try to take Corrine's place.
And another thing, she said. I think we ought to try not to borrow each other's clothes.
Well, she never borrowed anything of mine because I don't have much. But I'm all the time borrowing something of hers.
You feeling yourself? I asked her.
She said yes.
I wish you could see my hut, Celie. I loveit. Unlike our school, which is square, and unlike our church, which doesn't have walls? at least during the dry season? my hut is round, walled, with a round roofleaf roof. It is twenty steps across the middle and fits me to a T. Over the mud walls I have hung Olinka platters and mats and pieces of tribal cloth. The Olinka are known for their beautiful cotton fabric which they handweave and dye with berries, clay, indigo and tree bark. Then there is my paraffin camp stove in the center, and my camp bed to one side, covered with mosquito netting so that it almost looks tike the bed of a bride.
Then I have a small writing table where I write to you, a lamp, and a stool. Some wonderful rush mats on the floor. It is all colorful and warm and homey. My only desire for it now is a window!
None of the village huts have windows, and when I spoke of a window to the women they laughed heartily. The rainy season makes the thought of a window ridiculous, apparently .8ut I am determined to have one, even if a flood collects daily on my floor.
I would give anything for a picture of you, Celie. In my trunk I have pictures donated to us by the missionary societies in England and America. Pictures of Christ, the Apostles, Mary, the Crucifixion. Speke, Livingstone, St
anley, Schweitzer. Maybe one day I'll put them up, but once, when I held them up to my fabric and mat covered walls they made me feel very small and unhappy, so I took them down. Even the picture of Christ which generally looks good anywhere looks peculiar here. We of course have all of these pictures hung in the school and many of Christ behind the altar at the church.. That is enough, I think, though Samuel and Corrine have pictures and relics (crosses) in their hut as well.
Your sister,
Nettie
Tashi's mother and father were just here. They are upset because she spends so much time with Olivia. She is changing, becoming quiet and too thoughtful, they say. She is becoming someone else; her face is beginning to show the spirit of one of her aunts who was sold to the trader because she no longer fit into village life. This aunt refused to marry the man chosen for her. Refused to bow to the chief. Did nothing but lay up, crack cola nuts between her teeth and giggle.
They want to know what Olivia and Tashi do in my hut when all the other little girls are busy helping their mothers.
Is Tashi lazy at home? I asked.
The father looked at the mother. She said, No, on the contrary, Tashi works harder than most girls her age. And is quicker to finish her work. But it is only because she wishes to spend her afternoons with Olivia. She learns everything I teach her as if she already knows it, said the mother, but this knowledge does not really enter her soul.
The mother seemed puzzled and afraid.
The father, angry.
I thought: Aha. Tashi knows she is learning a way of life she will never live. But I did not say this.
The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.
Our women are respected here, said the father. We would never let them tramp the world as American women do. There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew. Do not be offended, Sister Nettie, but our people pity women such as you who are cast out, we know not from where, into a world unknown to you, where you must struggle all alone, for yourself.
So I am an object of pity and contempt, I thought, to men and women alike.
Furthermore, said Tashi's father, we are not simpletons. We understand that there are places in the world where women live differently from the way our women do, but we do not approve of this different way for our children.
But life is changing, even in Olinka, I said. We are here.
He spat on the ground. What are you? Three grown-ups and two children. In the rainy season some of you will probably die. You people do not last long in our climate. If you do not die, you will be weakened by illness. Oh, yes. We have seen it all before. You Christians come here, try hard to change us, get sick and go back to England, or wherever you come from. Only the trader on the coast remains, and even he is not the same white man, year in and year out. We know because we send him women.
Tashi is very intelligent, I said. She could be a teacher. A nurse. She could help the people in the village.
There is no place here for a woman to do those things, he said.
Then we should leave, I said. Sister Corrine and I.
No, no, he said.
Teach only the boys? I asked.
Yes, he said, as if my question was agreement.
There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions.
They don't even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground. The women also do not "look in a man's face" as they say. To "look in a man's face" is a brazen thing to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees. And what can I say to this? Again, it is our own behavior around Pa.
Next time Tashi appears at your gate, you will send her straight home, her father said. Then he smiled. Your Olivia can visit her, and learn what women are for.
I smiled also. Olivia must learn to take her education about life where she can find it, I thought. His offer will make a splendid opportunity.
Good-bye until the next time, dear Celie, from a pitiful, cast-out woman who may perish during the rainy season.
Your loving sister,
Nettie
At first there was the faintest sound of movement in the forest. A kind of low humming. Then there was chopping and the sound of dragging. Then a scent, some days, of smoke. But now, after two months, during which I or the children or Corrine has been sick, all we hear is chopping and scraping and dragging. And every day we smell smoke.
Today one of the boys in my afternoon class burst out, as he entered, The road approaches! The road approaches! He had been hunting hi the forest with his father and seen it.
Every day now the villagers gather at the edge of the village near the cassava fields, and watch the building of the road. And watching them, some on their stools and some squatted down on their haunches, all chewing cola nuts and making patterns in the dirt, I feel a great surge of love for them. For they do not approach the roadbuilders empty-handedly. Oh, no. Each day since they saw the road's approach they have been stuffing the roadbuilders with goat meat, millet mush, baked yam and cassava, cola nuts and palm wine. Each day is like a picnic, and I believe many friendships have been made, although the roadbuilders are from a different tribe some distance to the North and nearer the coast, and their language is somewhat different. I don't understand it, anyway, though the people of Olinka seem to. But they are clever people about most things, and understand new things very quickly.
It is hard to believe we've been here five years. Time moves slowly, but passes quickly. Adam and Olivia are nearly as tall as me and doing very well in all their studies. Adam has a special aptitude for figures and it worries Samuel that soon he will have nothing more to teach him in this field, having exhausted his own knowledge.
When we were in England we met missionaries who sent their children back home when it was no longer possible to teach them in the bush. But it is hard to imagine life here without the children. They love the open feeling of the village, and love living hi huts. They are excited by the hunting expertise of the men and the self-sufficiency of the women in raising their crops. No matter how down I may be, and sometimes I get very down indeed, a hug from Olivia or Adam completely restores me to the level of functioning, if nothing else. Their mother and I are not as close as we once were, but I feel more like then- aunt than ever. And the three of us look more and more alike every day.
About a month ago, Corrine asked me not to invite Samuel to my hut unless she were present. She said it gave the villagers the wrong idea. This was a real blow to me because I treasure his company. Since Corrine almost never visits me herself I will have hardly anybody to talk to, just in friendship. But the children still come and sometimes spend the night when their parents want to be alone. I love those times. We roast groundnuts on my stove, sit on the floor and study maps of all the countries in the world. Sometimes Tashi comes over and tells stories that are popular among the Olinka children. I am encouraging her and Olivia to write them down in Olinka and English.
It will be good practice for-them. Olivia feels that, compared to Tashi, she has no good stories to tell. One day she started in on an "Uncle Remus" tale only to discover Tashi had the original version of it! Her little face just fell. But then we got into a discussion of how Tashi's people's stories got to America, which fascinated Tashi. She cried when Olivia told how her grandmother had been treated as a slave.
No one else hi this village wants to hear about slavery, however. They acknowledge no responsibility whatsoever. This is one thing about them that I definitely do not like.
We lost Tashi's father during the last rainy season. He. fell ill with malaria and nothing the healer concocted saved him. He refused to take the medicine we use for it, or to let Samuel visit nun at all. It was my first Olinka funeral. The women paint their faces white and wear white shroudlike garments and cry in a high keeningvoice. They wrapped the body hi barkcloth and buried it und
er a big tree in the forest. Tashi was heartbroken. All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could. But the death brought her and her mother closer together, and now Catherine feels like one of us. By one of us Imean me and the children and sometimes Samuel. She is still in mourning and sticking close to her hut, but she says she will not marry again (since she already has five boy children she can now do whatever she wants. She has become an honorary man) and when I went to visit her she made-it very clear that Tashi must continue to learn. She is the most industrious of all Tashi's father's widows, and her fields are praised for their cleanliness, productivity and general attractiveness. Perhaps I can help her with her work. It is in work that the women get to know and care about each other. It was through work that Catherine became friends with her husband's other wives.
This friendship among women is something Samuel often talks about. Because the women share a husband but the husband does not share their friendships, it makes Samuel uneasy. It isconfusing, I suppose. And it is Samuel's duty as a Christian minister to preach the bible's directive of one husband and one wife. Samuel is confused because to him, since the women are friends and will do anything for one another? not always, but more often than anyone from America would expect? and since they giggle and gossip and nurse each other's children, then they must be happy with things as they are. But many of the women rarely spend time with their husbands. Some of them were promised to old or middle-aged men at birth. Their hVes always center around work and their children and other women (since a woman cannot really have a man for a friend without the worst kind of ostracism and gossip). They indulge their husbands, if anything. You should just see how they make admiration over them. Praise their smallest accomplishments. Stuff them with palm wine and sweets. No wonder the men are often childish. And a grown child is a dangerous thing, especially since, among the Olinka, the husband has life and death power over the wife. If he accuses one of his wives of witchcraft or infidelity, she can be killed.