Color Purple, The - Alice Walker [48]
Shug say, under her breath, Is this him?
I say, Yeah.
What shock Shug and shock me too is how young he look. He look older than the child he with, even if she is dress up like a woman, but he look young for somebody to be anybody that got grown children and nearly grown grandchildren. But then I remember, he not my daddy, just my children daddy.
What your mama do, ast Shug, rob the cradle?
But he not so young.
I brought Celie, say Shug. Your daughter Celie. She wanted to visit you. Got some questions to ast.
He seem to think back a second. Celie? he say. Like, Who Celie? Then he say, Yall git out and come up on the porch. Daisy, he say to the little woman with him, go tell Hetty to hold dinner. She squeeze his arm, reach up and kiss him on the jaw. He turn his head and watch her go up the walk, up the steps, and through the front door. He follow us up the steps, up on the porch, help us pull out rocking chairs, then say, Now, what yall want?
The children here? I ast.
What children? he say. Then he laugh. Oh, they gone with they mama. She up and left me, you know. Went back to her folks. Yeah, he say, you would remember May Ellen.
Why she leave? I ast.
He laugh some more. Got too old for me, I reckon.
Then the little woman come back out and sit on the armrest of his chair. He talk to us and fondle her arm.
This Daisy, he say. My new wife.
Why, say Shug, you don't look more than fifteen.
I ain't, say Daisy.
I'm surprise your people let you marry.
She shrug, look at Pa. They work for him, she say. Live on his land.
I'm her people now, he say.
I feels so sick I almost gag. Nettie in Africa, I say. A missionary. She wrote me that you ain't our real Pa.
Well, he say. So now you know.
Daisy look at me with pity all over her face. It just like him to keep that from you, she say. He told me how he brought up two little girls that wasn't even his, she say. I don't think I really believed it, till now.
Naw, he never told them, say Shug.
What a old sweetie pie, say Daisy, kissing him on top the head. He fondle and fondle her arm. Look at me and grin.
Your daddy didn't know how to git along, he say. Whitefolks lynch him. Too sad a story to tell pitiful little growing girls, he say. Any man would have done what I done.
Maybe not, say Shug.
He look at her, then look at me. He can tell she know. But what do he care?
Take me, he say, I know how they is. The key to all of 'em is money. The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give 'em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass. So what I did was just right off offer to give 'em money. Before I planted a seed, I made sure this one and that one knowed one seed out of three was planted for him. Before I ground a grain of wheat, the same thing. And when I opened up your daddy's old store in town, I bought me my own white boy to run it. And what make it so good, he say, I bought him with whitefolks' money.
Ask the busy man your questions, Celie, say Shug. I think his dinner getting cold.
Where my daddy buried, I ast. That all I really want to know.
Next to your mammy, he say.
Any marker, I ast.
He look at me like I'm crazy. Lynched people don't git no marker, he say. Like this something everybody know.
Mama got one? I ast.
He say, Naw.
The birds sing just as sweet when us leave as when us come. Then, look like as soon as us turn back on the main road, they stop.
By the time us got to the cemetery, the sky gray.
Us look for Ma and Pa. Hope for some scrap of wood that say something. But us don't find nothing but weeds and cockleburrs and paper flowers fading on some of the graves. Shug pick up a old horseshoe somebody horse lose. Us took that old horseshoe and us turned round and round together until we were dizzy enough to fall out, and where us would have fell us stuck the horseshoe in the ground. Shug say, Us each other's peoples now, and kiss me.
I woke up this morning bound to tell Corrine and Samuel everything. I went over