The Color Purple (22 page)

Sometime I meet up with Mr. _____ visiting Henrietta. He dream up his own little sneaky recipes. For instance, one time he hid the yams in peanut butter. Us sit by the fire with Harpo and Sofia and play a hand or two of bid whist, while Suzie Q and Henrietta listen to the radio. Sometime he drive me home in his car. He still live in the same little house. He been there so long, it look just like him. Two straight chairs always on the porch, turned against the wall. Porch railings with flower cans on them. He keep it painted now though. Fresh and white. And guess what he collect just cause he like them? He collect shells. All kinds of shells. Tarrapin, snail and all kinds of shells from the sea.

Matter of fact, that’s how he got me up to the house again. He was telling Sofia bout some new shell he had that made a loud sea sound when you put it to your ear. Us went up to see it. It was big and heavy and speckled like a chicken and sure enough, seem like you could hear the waves or something crashing against your ear. None of us ever seen the ocean, but Mr. _____ learn about it from books. He order shells from books too, and they all over the place.

He don’t say that much about them while you looking, but he hold each one like it just arrive.

Shug one time had a seashell, he say. Long time ago, when us first met. Big white thing look like a fan. She still love shells? he ast.

Naw, I say. She love elephants now.

He wait a little while, put all the shells back in place. Then he ast me, You like any special thing?

I love birds, I say.

You know, he say, you use to remind me of a bird. Way back when you first come to live with me. You was so skinny, Lord, he say. And the least little thing happen, you looked about to fly away.

You saw that, I say.

I saw it, he said, just too big a fool to let myself care.

Well, I say, us lived through it.

We still man and wife, you know, he say.

Naw, I say, we never was.

You know, he say, you look real good since you been up in Memphis.

Yeah, I say, Shug take good care of me.

How you make your living up there? he say.

Making pants, I say.

He say, I notice everybody in the family just about wearing pants you made. But you mean you turned it into a business?

That’s right, I say. But I really started it right here in your house to keep from killing you.

He look down at the floor.

Shug help me make the first pair I ever did, I say. And then, like a fool, I start to cry.

He say, Celie, tell me the truth. You don’t like me cause I’m a man?

I blow my nose. Take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss ’em, as far as I’m concern, frogs is what they stay.

I see, he say.

By the time I got back home I was feeling so bad I couldn’t do nothing but sleep. I tried to work on some new pants I’m trying to make for pregnant women, but just the thought of anybody gitting pregnant make me want to cry.

Your Sister, Celie

DEAR NETTIE,

The only piece of mail Mr. _____ ever put directly in my hand is a telegram that come from the United States Department of Defense. It say the ship you and the children and your husband left Africa in was sunk by German mines off the coast of someplace call Gibralta. They think you all drowned. Plus, the same day, all the letters I wrote to you over the years come back unopen.

I sit here in this big house by myself trying to sew, but what good is sewing gon do? What good is anything? Being alive begin to seem like a awful strain.

Your Sister, Celie

DEAREST CELIE,

Tashi and her mother have run away. They have gone to join the
mbeles.
Samuel and the children and I were discussing it just yesterday, and we realized we do not even know for sure the
mbeles
exist. All we know is that they are said to live deep in the forest, that they welcome runaways, and that they harass the white man’s plantations and plan his destruction—or at least for his removal from their continent.

Adam and Olivia are heartbroken because they love Tashi and miss her, and because no one who has gone to join the
mbeles
ever returned. We try to keep them busy around the compound and because there is so much sickness from malaria this season there is plenty for them to do. In plowing under the Olinka’s yam crop and substituting canned and powdered goods, the planters destroyed what makes them resistant to malaria. Of course they did not know this, they only wanted to take the land for rubber, but the Olinka have been eating yams to prevent malaria and to control chronic blood disease for thousands and thousands of years. Left without a sufficient supply of yams, the people—what’s left of them—are sickening and dying at an alarming rate.

To tell you the truth, I fear for our own health, and especially for the children. But Samuel feels we will probably be all right, having had bouts with malaria during the first years we were here.

And how are you, dearest sister? Nearly thirty years have passed without a word between us. For all I know you may be dead. As the time nears for us to come home, Adam and Olivia ask endless questions about you, few of which I can answer. Sometimes I tell them Tashi reminds me of you. And, because there is no one finer to them than Tashi, they glow with delight. But will you still have Tashi’s honest and open spirit, I wonder, when we see you again? Or will years of childbearing and abuse from Mr. _____ have destroyed it? These are thoughts I don’t pursue with the children, only with my beloved companion, Samuel, who advises me not to worry, to trust in God, and to have faith in the sturdiness of my sister’s soul.

God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone—a roofleaf or Christ—but we don’t. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.

When we return to America we must have long talks about this, Celie. And perhaps Samuel and I will found a new church in our community that has no idols in it whatsoever, in which each person’s spirit is encouraged to seek God directly, his belief that this is possible strengthened by us as people who also believe. There is little to do here for entertainment, as you can imagine. We read the papers and magazines from home, play any number of African games with the children. Rehearse the African children in parts of Shakespeare’s plays—Adam was always very good as Hamlet giving his To be or Not to Be soliloquy. Corrine had firm notions of what the children should be taught and saw to it that every good work advertised in the papers became part of their library. They know many things, and I think will not find American society such a shock, except for the hatred of black people, which is also very clear in all the news. But I worry about their very African independence of opinion and outspokenness, also extreme self-centeredness. And we will be poor, Celie, and it will be years no doubt before we even own a home. How will they manage the hostility towards them, having grown up here? When I think of them in America I see them as much younger than they appear here. Much more naive. The worst we have had to endure here is indifference and a certain understandable shallowness in our personal relationships—excluding our relationship with Catherine and Tashi. After all, the Olinka know we can leave, they must stay. And, of course, none of this has to do with color. And—

Dearest Celie,

Last night I stopped writing because Olivia came in to tell me Adam is missing. He can only have gone after Tashi.

Pray for his safety,

Your sister, Nettie

DEAREST NETTIE,

Sometimes I think Shug never love me. I stand looking at my naked self in the looking glass. What would she love? I ast myself. My hair is short and kinky because I don’t straighten it anymore. Once Shug say she love it no need to. My skin dark. My nose just a nose. My lips just lips. My body just any woman’s body going through the changes of age. Nothing special here for nobody to love. No honey colored curly hair, no cuteness. Nothing young and fresh. My heart must be young and fresh though, it feel like it blooming blood.

I talk to myself a lot, standing in front the mirror. Celie, I say, happiness was just a trick in your case. Just cause you never had any before Shug, you thought it was time to have some, and that it was gon last. Even thought you had the trees with you. The whole earth. The stars. But look at you. When Shug left, happiness desert.

Every once in a while I git a postcard from Shug. Her and Germaine in New York, in California. Gone to see Mary Agnes and Grady in Panama.

Mr. _____ seem to be the only one understand my feeling.

I know you hate me for keeping you from Nettie, he say. And now she dead.

But I don’t hate him, Nettie. And I don’t believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I’ll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will be. Sometime when I git tired of talking to myself I talk to you. I even try to reach our children.

Mr. _____ still can’t believe I have children. Where you git children from? he ast.

My stepdaddy, I say.

You mean he knowed he was the one damage you all along? he ast.

I say, Yeah.

Mr. _____ shake his head.

After all the evil he done I know you wonder why I don’t hate him. I don’t hate him for two reasons. One, he love Shug. And two, Shug use to love him. Plus, look like he trying to make something out of himself. I don’t mean just that he work and he clean up after himself and he appreciate some of the things God was playful enough to make. I mean when you talk to him now he really listen, and one time, out of nowhere in the conversation us was having, he said Celie, I’m satisfied this the first time I ever lived on Earth as a natural man. It feel like a new experience.

Sofia and Harpo always try to set me up with some man. They know I love Shug but they think womens love just by accident, anybody handy likely to do. Everytime I go to Harpo’s some little policy salesman git all up in my face. Mr. _____ have to come to the rescue. He tell the man, This lady my wife. The man vanish out the door.

Us sit, have a cold drink. Talk about our days together with Shug. Talk about the time she come home sick. The little crooked song she use to sing. All our fine evenings down at Harpo’s.

You was even sewing good way back then, he say. I remember the nice little dresses Shug always wear.

Yeah, I say. Shug could wear a dress.

Remember the night Sofia knock Mary Agnes toofs out? he ast.

Who could forgit it? I say.

Us don’t say nothing bout Sofia’s troubles. Us still cant laugh at that. Plus, Sofia still have trouble with that family. Well, trouble with Miss Eleanor Jane.

You just don’t know, say Sofia, what that girl done put me through. You know how she use to bother me all the time when she had problems at home? Well finally she start bothering me when anything good happen. Soon as she snag that man she married she come running to me. Oh, Sofia, she say, you just have to meet Stanley Earl. And before I can say anything, Stanley Earl is in the middle of my front room.

How you, Sofia, he say, grinning and sticking out his hand. Miss Eleanor Jane done told me so much about you.

I wonder if she told him they made me sleep up under their house, say Sofia. But I don’t ask. I try to be polite, act pleasant. Henrietta turn the radio up loud in the back room. I have to almost holler to make myself understood. They stand round looking at the children’s pictures on the wall and saying how good my boys look in they army uniforms.

Where they fighting? Stanley Earl want to know.

They in the service right here in Georgia, I say. But pretty soon they be bound for overseas.

He ast me do I know which part they be station in? France, Germany or the Pacific.

I don’t know where none of that is so I say, Naw. He say he want to fight but got to stay home and run his daddy’s cotton gin.

Army got to wear clothes, he say, if they fighting in Europe. Too bad they not fighting in Africa. He laugh. Miss Eleanor Jane smile. Henrietta turn the dial as high as it can go. Got on some real sorry whitefolks music sound like I don’t know what. Stanley Earl snap his fingers and try to tap one of his good size foots. He got a long head go straight up and hair cut so short it look fuzzy. His eyes real bright blue and never hardly blink. Good God, I think.

Sofia raise me, practically, say Miss Eleanor Jane. Don’t know what we would have done without her.

Well, say Stanley Earl, everybody round here raise by colored. That’s how come we turn out so well. He wink at me, say, Well Sugar Pie, to Miss Eleanor Jane, time for us to mosey along.

She leap up like somebody stuck her with a pin. How Henrietta doing? she ast. Then she whisper, I brought her something with yams so well hid she won’t never suspect. She run out to the car and come back with a tuna casserole.

Well, say Sofia, one thing you have to say for Miss Eleanor Jane, her dishes almost always fool Henrietta. And that mean a lots to me. Of course I never tell Henrietta where they come from. If I did, out the window they would go. Else she’d vomit, like it made her sick.

But finally, the end come to Sofia and Miss Eleanor Jane, I think. And it wasn’t nothing to do with Henrietta, who hate Miss Eleanor Jane’s guts. It was Miss Eleanor Jane herself and that baby she went and had. Every time Sofia turned round Miss Eleanor Jane was shoving Reynolds Stanley Earl in her face. He a little fat white something without much hair, look like he headed for the Navy.

Ain’t little Reynolds sweet? say Miss Eleanor Jane, to Sofia. Daddy just love him, she say. Love having a grandchild name for him and look so much like him, too.

Sofia don’t say nothing, stand there ironing some of Susie Q and Henrietta’s clothes.

And so smart, say Eleanor Jane. Daddy say he never saw a smarter baby. Stanley Earl’s mama say he smarter than Stanley Earl was when he was this age.

Sofia still don’t say nothing.