The Color Purple (20 page)

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 T
HREE
MONTHS
IN A
H
AMMOCK
, or S
ORE
H
IPS OF THE
D
ARK
C
ONTINENT
. Or, A M
AP OF
A
FRICA
: A
GUIDE TO
N
ATIVE
I
NDIFFERENCE TO THE
H
OLY
W
ORD
.

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
C
HRIST.
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.

Even Corrine thought this, he said. And yet, I always felt her Indianness. She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.

It did not seem hard for Samuel to talk about Corrine while we were in England. It wasn’t hard for me to listen.

It all seems so improbable, he said. Here I am, an aging man whose dreams of helping people have been just that, dreams. How Corrine and I as children would have laughed at ourselves.
TWENTY YEARS A FOOL OF THE WEST, OR MOUTH AND ROOFLEAF DISEASE: A TREATISE ON THE FUTILITY OF THE TROPICS
. Etc. Etc. We failed so utterly, he said. We became as comical as Althea and Theodosia. I think her awareness of this fueled Corrine’s sickness. She was far more intuitive than I. Her gift for understanding people much greater. She used to say the Olinka resented us, but I wouldn’t see it. But they do, you know.

No, I said, it isn’t resentment, exactly. It really is indifference. Sometimes I feel our position is like that of flies on an elephant’s hide.

I remember once, before Corrine and I were married, Samuel continued, Aunt Theodosia had one of her at-homes. She had them every Thursday. She’d invited a lot of “serious young people” as she called them, and one of them was a young Harvard scholar named Edward. DuBoyce was his last name, I think. Anyhow, Aunt Theodosia was going on about her African adventures, leading up to the time King Leopold of Belgium presented her with a medal. Well Edward, or perhaps his name was Bill, was a very impatient sort. You saw it in his eyes, you could see it in the way he moved his body. He was never still. As Aunt Theodosia got closer to the part about her surprise and joy over receiving this medal—which validated her service as an exemplary missionary in the King’s colony—DuBoyce’s foot began to pat the floor rapidly and uncontrollably. Corrine and I looked at each other in alarm. Clearly this man had heard this tale before and was not prepared to endure it a second time.

Madame, he said, when Aunt Theodosia finished her story and flashed her famous medal around the room, do you realize King Leopold cut the hands off workers who, in the opinion of his plantation overseers, did not fulfill their rubber quota? Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot who worked to death and brutalized and eventually exterminated thousands and thousands of African peoples.

Well, said Samuel, silence struck the gathering like a blight. Poor Aunt Theodosia! There’s something in all of us that wants a medal for what we have done. That wants to be appreciated. And Africans certainly don’t deal in medals. They hardly seem to care whether missionaries exist.

Don’t be bitter, I said.

How can I not? he said.

The Africans never asked us to come, you know. There’s no use blaming them if we feel unwelcome.

It’s worse than unwelcome, said Samuel. The Africans don’t even see us. They don’t even recognize us as the brothers and sisters they sold.

Oh, Samuel, I said. Don’t.

But you know, he had started to cry. Oh Nettie, he said. That’s the heart of it, don’t you see. We love them. We try every way we can to show that love. But they reject us. They never even listen to how we’ve suffered. And if they listen they say stupid things. Why don’t you speak our language? they ask. Why can’t you remember the old ways? Why aren’t you happy in America, if everyone there drives motorcars?

Celie, it seemed as good a time as any to put my arms around him. Which I did. And words long buried in my heart crept to my lips. I stroked his dear head and face and I called him darling and dear. And I’m afraid, dear, dear Celie, that concern and passion soon ran away with us.

I hope when you receive this news of your sister’s forward behavior you will not be shocked or inclined to judge me harshly. Especially when I tell you what a total joy it was. I was transported by ecstasy in Samuel’s arms.

You may have guessed that I loved him all along; but I did not know it. Oh, I loved him as a brother and respected him as a friend, but Celie, I love him bodily,
as a man
! I love his walk, his size, his shape, his smell, the kinkiness of his hair. I love the very texture of his palms. The pink of his inner lip. I love his big nose. I love his brows. I love his feet. And I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.

The children saw the change in us immediately. I’m afraid, my dear, we were radiant.

We love each other dearly, Samuel told them, with his arm around me. We intend to marry.

But before we do, I said, I must tell you something about my life and about Corrine and about someone else. And it was then I told them about you, Celie. And about their mother Corrine’s love of them. And about being their aunt.

But where is this other woman, your sister? asked Olivia.

I explained your marriage to Mr. _____ as best I could.

Adam was instantly alarmed. He is a very sensitive soul who hears what isn’t said as clearly as what is.

We will go back to America soon, said Samuel to reassure him, and see about her.

The children stood up with us in a simple church ceremony in London. And it was that night, after the wedding dinner, when we were all getting ready for bed, that Olivia told me what has been troubling her brother. He is missing Tashi.

But he’s also very angry with her, she said, because when we left, she was planning to scar her face.

I didn’t know this. One of the things we thought we’d helped stop was the scarring or cutting of tribal marks on the faces of young women.

It is a way the Olinka can show they still have their own ways, said Olivia, even though the white man has taken everything else. Tashi didn’t want to do it, but to make her people feel better, she’s resigned. She’s going to have the female initiation ceremony too, she said.

Oh, no, I said. That’s so dangerous. Suppose she becomes infected?

I know, said Olivia. I told her nobody in America or Europe cuts off pieces of themselves. And anyway, she would have had it when she was eleven, if she was going to have it She’s too old for it now.

Well, some men are circumcized, I said, but that’s just the removal of a bit of skin.

Tashi was happy that the initiation ceremony isn’t done in Europe or America, said Olivia. That makes it even more valuable to her.

I see, I said.

She and Adam had an awful fight. Not like any they’ve had before. He wasn’t teasing her or chasing her around the village or trying to tie roofleaf twigs in her hair. He was mad enough to strike her.

Well, it’s a good thing he didn’t, I said. Tashi would have jammed his head through her rug loom.

I’ll be glad when we get back home, said Olivia. Adam isn’t the only one who misses Tashi.

She kissed me and her father good night. Adam soon came in to do the same.

Mama Nettie, he said, sitting on the bed next to me, how do you know when you really love someone?

Sometimes you don’t know, I said.

He is a beautiful young man, Celie. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a deep, thoughtful voice. Did I tell you he writes verses? And loves to sing? He’s a son to make you proud.