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| The color purple: Alice Walker: Chapter 9 |
But let me tell you about the ship! The
ship, called The Malaga, was three stories high! And we had rooms (called
cabins) with beds. Oh, Celie, to lie in a bed in the middle of the ocean! And
the ocean! Celie, more water than you can imagine in one place. It took us two
weeks to cross it! And then we were in England, which is a country full of
white people and some of them very lovely and with their own Anti-Slavery &
Missionary Society. The churches in England were also very eager to help us and
white men and women, who looked just like the ones at home, invited us to their
gatherings and into their homes for tea, and to talk about our work. “Tea” to
the English is a picnic indoors. Plenty of sandwiches and cookies and of course
hot tea. We all used identical cups and plates.
Our work began to seem somewhat clearer in
England because the English have been sending missionaries to Africa and India
and China and God knows where, for over a hundred years. And the things
they have brought back! We spent a morning in one of their museums and it was
packed with jewels, furniture, fur carpets, swords, clothing, and even tombs from
all the countries they have been to. From Africa, they have thousands of
vases, jars, masks, bowls, baskets, and statues—and they are all so beautiful it is
hard to imagine that the people who made them don’t still exist. And yet the
English assure us they do not. Although Africans once had a better civilization
than the Europeans (though of course, even the English do not say this: I get
this from reading a man named J. A. Rogers) for several centuries they have
fallen on hard times. “Hard times” is a phrase the English love to use, when
speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa’s “hard times” were
made harder by them. Millions and millions of Africans were captured and sold
into slavery—you and me, Celie! And whole cities were destroyed by slave-catching wars. Today the people of Africa—having murdered or sold into slavery
their strongest folks—are riddled by disease and sunk in spiritual and physical
confusion. They believe in the devil and worship the dead. Nor can they read or
write.
Why did they sell us? How could they have
done it? And why do we still love them? These were the thoughts I had as we
tramped through the chilly streets of London. I studied England on a map, so
neat and serene, and I became hopeful myself that much good for Africa
is possible, given hard work and the right frame of mind. And then we sailed
for Africa. Leaving Southampton, England on the 24th of July and arriving in
Monrovia, Liberia on the 12th of September. On the way, we stopped in Lisbon,
Portugal, and Dakar, Senegal.
Monrovia was the last place we were among
people we were somewhat used to since it is an African country that was
“founded” by ex-slaves from America who came back to Africa to live. Had any of
their parents or grandparents been sold from Monrovia, I
wondered, and what was their feeling, once sold as slaves, now coming back,
with close ties to the country that bought them, to rule.
Celie, I must stop now. The sun is not so
hot now and I must prepare for the afternoon classes and vesper service. I wish
you were with me, or I with you.
My love, Your sister, Nettie
It was the
funniest thing to stop over in Monrovia after my first glimpse of Africa, which
was Senegal. The capital of Senegal is Dakar and the people speak their
language, Senegalese I guess they would call it, and French. They are the
blackest people I have ever seen, Celie. They are black like the people we are
talking about when we say, “So and so is blacker than black, he’s blue-black.”
They are so black, Celie, they shine. Which is something else folks down home
like to say about real black folks. But Celie, try to imagine a city full of
these shining, blue-black people wearing brilliant blue robes with designs like
fancy quilt patterns. Tall, thin, with long necks and straight backs. Can you picture
it at all, Celie? Because I felt like I was seeing black for the first time.
And Celie, there is something magical about it. Because the black is so black
the eye is simply dazzled, and then there is the shining that seems to come,
really, from moonlight, it is so luminous, but their skin glows even in the
sun.
But I did not
like the Senegalese I met in the market. They were concerned only with their
sale of produce. If we did not buy, they looked through us as quickly as they
looked through the white French people who live there. Somehow I had not
expected to see any white people in Africa, but they are here in droves. And
not all are missionaries.
There are bunches of them in Monrovia, too. And the president, whose last name is Tubman, has some in his cabinet. He also has a lot of white-looking colored men in his cabinet. On our second evening in Monrovia, we had tea at the presidential palace. It looks very much like the American white house (where our president lives) Samuel says. The president talked a good bit about his efforts trying to develop the country and about his problems with the natives, who don’t want to work to help build the country up. It was the first time I’d heard a black man use that word. I knew that to white people all colored people are natives. But he cleared his throat and said he only meant “native” to Liberia. I did not see any of these “natives” in his cabinet. And none of the cabinet members’ wives could pass for natives. Compared to them in their silks and pearls, Corrine and I were barely dressed, let alone dressed for the occasion. But I think the women we saw at the palace spend a lot of their time dressing. Still, they look dissatisfied. Not like the cheery schoolteachers, we saw only by chance, as they herded their classes down to the beach for a swim.
Before we left
we visited one of the large cocoa plantations they have. Nothing but cocoa
trees as far as the eye can see. And whole villages were built right in the middle
of the fields. We watched the weary families come home from work, still
carrying their cocoa seed buckets in their hands (these double as lunch buckets
the next day), and sometimes— if they are women—their children on their backs.
As tired as they are, they sing! Celie. Just like we do at home. Why do tired
people sing? I asked Corrine. Too tired to do anything else, she said. Besides,
they don’t own the cocoa fields, Celie, even President Tubman doesn’t own them.
People in a place called Holland to do. The people who make Dutch chocolate.
And some overseers make sure the people work hard, who live in stone houses in
the corners of the fields.
Again I must
go. Everyone is in bed and I am writing by lamplight. But the light is
attracting so many bugs I am being eaten alive. I have bites everywhere,
including my scalp and the bottoms of my feet.
But—
Did I mention
my first sight of the African coast? Something struck in me, in my soul, Celie,
like a large bell, and I just vibrated. Corrine and Samuel felt the same. And
we kneeled right on deck and gave thanks to God for letting us see the land for
which our mothers and fathers cried—and lived and died—to see again.
Oh, Celie!
Will I ever be able to tell you all?
I dare not
ask, I know. But leave it all to God.
Your
everloving sister, Nettie
What with
being shocked, crying and blowing my nose, and trying to puzzle out words we
don’t know, it took a long time to readjust the first two or three letters. By
the time we got up to where she was good and settled in Africa, Mr. and
Grady come home.
Can you
handle it? ask Shug.
How I’m
gon keep from killing him, I say.
Don’t
kill, she said. Nettie is coming home before long. Don’t make her have to look
at you like we look at Sofia. But it is so hard, I say, while Shug empties her
suitcase and puts the letters inside.
Hard to be
Christ too, say Shug. But he manages. Remember that. Thou Shalt Not Kill, He
said. And probably wanted to add on to that, Starting with me. He knew the
fools he was dealing with.
But Mr., not
Christ. I’m not Christ, I say.
You somebody
to Nettie, she says. And she is pissed if you change on her while she is on her
way home. We hear Grady and Mr. in the kitchen. Dishes rattling,
safe door open and shut.
Now, I
think I feel better if I kill him, I say. I feel sickish. Numb, now.
Now you
won’t. Nobody feels better about killing anything. They think something is
all. That is better than nothing.
Celie, she
says, Nettie is not the only one you got to worry bout. Say what, I ask.
Me, Celie,
think about me a little bit. Miss Celie, if you kill Albert, Grady be all I got
left. I can’t even stand the thought of that.
I laugh,
thinking bout Grady’s big tools.
Make
Albert let me sleep with you from now on, while you are here, I say. And somehow or
other, she does.
We sleep
like sisters, me and Shug. Much as I still want to be with her, much as I love
to look, my titties stay soft, and my little button never rises. Now I know I’m
dead. But she says, Naw, just being mad, grief, wanting to kill somebody will
make you feel this way. Nothing to worry about. Titties gonna perk up, and buttons
gonna rise again.
I love to
hug up, period, she says. Snuggle. Don’t need anything else right now. Yeah, I
say. Hugging is good. Snuggle. All of it’s good.
She says,
Times like this, lull, we ought to do something different. Like what? I asked.
Well, she
says, looking me up and down, let’s make you some pants. What do I need pants
for? I say. I ain’t no man.
Don’t get
uppity, she says. But you don’t have a dress to do anything for you. You are not
made like no dress pattern, either. I don’t know, I say. Mr. not
going to let his wife wear pants.
Why not?
say Shug. You do all the work around here. It’s scandalous, the way you look out
there plowing in a dress. How you keep from falling over it or getting the plow
caught in it is beyond me.
Yeah? I
say.
Yeah. And
another thing, I used to put on Albert’s pants when we were courting. And he
one time put on my dress. No, he didn’t.
Yes, he
did. He use to be a lot of fun. Not like now. But he loved to see me in pants.
It was like a red flag to a bull. Ugh, I say. I could just picture it, and I
didn’t like it one bit.
Well, you
know how they are, say Shug. What is gon make ’em out of, I say.
We have to
get our hands on somebody’s army uniform, says Shug. For practice. That is good
strong material and free. Jack, I say. Odessa’s husband.
Okay, she
says. And every day we going to read Nettie’s letters and sew. A needle and not
a razor in my hand, I think.
She
doesn’t say anything else, just comes over to me and hugs me.
Now I know
Nettie is alive I begin to strut a little bit.
Think, When
she comes home we leave here. She and me and our two children. What do they look
like, I wonder. But it's hard to think bout them. I feel shame. More than love,
to tell the truth. Anyway, are they all right here? Got good sense and all?
Shug says children got by incest turn into dunces. Incest is part of the devil’s
plan.
But I think
bout Nettie.
It’s hot,
here, Celie, she writes. Hotter than in July. Hotter than in August and July. Hot
like cooking dinner on a big stove in a little kitchen in August and July. Hot.
Dear Celie,
We were met at the ship by an African from the village we were settling in. His Christian name is Joseph. He is short and fat, with hands that seem not to have any bones in them. When he shook my hand it felt like something soft and damp was falling and I almost caught it. He speaks a little English, what they call pidgin English. It is very different from the way we speak English but somehow familiar. He helped us unload our things from the ship into the boats that came out to get us. These boats are dugout canoes, like the Indians had, the ones you see in pictures. With all our belongings we filled three of them, and a fourth one carried our medical and teaching supplies
Once in the
boat, we were entertained by the songs of our boatmen as they tried to out-paddle
each other to the shore. They paid very little attention to us or our cargo.
When we reached the shore they didn’t bother to help us alight from the boat
and set some of our supplies right down in the water. As soon as they had
browbeaten poor Samuel out of a tip that Joseph said was too big, they were off
hallooing another group of people who were waiting at the edge of the water to
be taken to the ship.
The port is
pretty but too shallow for large ships to use. So there is a good business for
the boatmen, during the season the ships come by. These boatmen were all
considerably larger and more muscular than Joseph, though all of them,
including Joseph, is a deep chocolate brown. Not black, like the Senegalese.
And Celie, they all have the strongest, cleanest, whitest teeth! I was thinking
about teeth a lot on the voyage over because I had toothache nearly the entire
time. You know how rotten my back teeth are. And in England, I was struck by
the English people’s teeth. So crooked, usually, and blackish with decay. I
wondered if it was the English water. But the Africans’ teeth remind me of
horses’ teeth, they are so fully formed, straight, and strong.
The port’s
“town” is the size of the hardware store in town. Inside there are stalls
filled with cloth, hurricane lamps and oil, mosquito netting, camp bedding,
hammocks, axes, and hoes and machetes, and other tools. The whole place is run
by a white man, but some of the stalls that sell produce are rented out to
Africans. Joseph showed us things we needed to buy. A large iron pot for
boiling water and our clothes, and a zinc basin. Mosquito netting. Nails. Hammer
and saw and pick-ax. Oil and lamps.
Since there
was nowhere to sleep in the port, Joseph hired some porters from among the
young men loafing around the trading post and we left right away for Olinka,
some four days march through the bush. Jungle, to you. Or maybe not. Do you
know what a jungle is? Well. Trees and trees and then more trees on top of
that. And big. They are so big they look like they were built. And vines. And
ferns. And little animals. Frogs. Snakes too, according to Joseph. But thank
God we did not see any of these, only humpbacked lizards as big as your arm
which the people here catch and eat.
They love meat. All the people in this village. Sometimes if you can’t get them to do anything any other way, you start to mention meat, either a little piece extra you just happen to have, or maybe, if you want them to do something big, you talk about a barbecue. Yes, a barbecue. They remind me of folks at home
Well, we got
here. And I thought I would never get the kinks out of my hips from being
carried in a hammock the whole way. Everybody in the village crowded around us.
Coming out of little round huts with something that I thought was straw on top
of them but is a kind of leaf that grows everywhere. They pick it and dry it
and lay it so it overlaps to make the roof rainproof. This part is women’s
work. Menfolks drive the stakes for the hut and sometimes help build the walls
with mud and rock from the streams.
You never saw
such curious faces as the village folks surrounded us with. At first, they just
looked. Then one or two of the women touched my and Corrine’s dresses. My dress
was so dirty around the hem from dragging on the ground for three nights of
cooking around a campfire that I was ashamed of myself. But then I took a look
at the dresses they were wearing. Most looked like they’d been drug across the
yard by the pigs. And they don’t fit. So then they moved up a little bit—nobody
saying a word yet—and touched our hair. Then looked down at our shoes. We
looked at Joseph. Then he told us they were acting this way because the
missionaries before us were white people, and vice versa. The men had been to
the port, some of them, and had seen the white merchant, so they knew white men
could be something else too. But the women had never been to the port and the
only white person they’d seen was the missionary they had buried a
year ago.
Samuel asked
if they’d ever seen the white woman missionary twenty miles farther on, and he
said no. Twenty miles through the jungle is a very long trip. The men might
hunt up to ten miles around the village, but the women stayed close to their
huts and fields.
Then one of
the women asked a question. We looked at Joseph. He said the woman wanted to
know if the children belonged to me or Corrine or both of us. Joseph said they
belonged to Corrine. The woman looked us both over and said something else. We
looked at Joseph. He said the woman said they both looked like me. We all
laughed politely
.
Then another
woman had a question. She wanted to know if I was also Samuel’s wife.
Joseph said
no, that I was a missionary just like Samuel and Corrine. Then someone said
they never suspected missionaries could have children. Then another said he
never dreamed missionaries could be black.
Then someone
said, That the new missionaries would be black and two of them women were
exactly what he had dreamed, and just last night, too.
By now there
was a lot of commotion. Little heads began to pop from behind mothers’ skirts
and over big sisters’ shoulders. And we were sort of swept along among the
villagers, about three hundred of them, to a place without walls but with a
leaf roof, where we all sat down on the ground, men in front, women, and
children behind. Then there was loud whispering among some very old men who
looked like the church elders back home—with their baggy trousers and shiny,
ill-fitting coats—Did black missionaries drink palm wine?
Corrine looked
at Samuel and Samuel looked at Corrine. But I and the children were already
drinking it because someone had already put the little brown clay glasses in
our hands and we were too nervous not to start sipping.
We got there
around four o’clock and sat under the leaf canopy until nine. We had our first
meal there, a chicken and groundnut (peanut) stew which we ate with our
fingers. But mostly we listened to songs and watched dances that raised lots of
dust.
But then there came a great storm during the rainy season that destroyed all the roofs on all the huts in the village, and the people discovered to their dismay that there was no longer any roof leak to be found. Where roof leaf had flourished from time’s beginning, there was cassava. Millet. Groundnuts.
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 roof leaf 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 roof leaf 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 roof leak, the villagers celebrated
by singing and dancing and telling the story of the roof leak. The roof leak
became the thing they worshiped.
Looking over
the heads of the children at the end of this tale, I saw coming slowly towards
us, a significant 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 roof leak is not Jesus Christ, but in its
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
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