Color Purple, The - Alice Walker [56]
Every lick you bit me you will suffer twice, I say. Then I say, You better stop talking because all I'm telling you ain't coming just from me. Look like when I open my mouth the air rush in and shape words.
Shit, he say. I should have lock you up. Just let you out to work.
The jail you plan for me is the one in which you will rot, I say.
Shug come over to where us talking. She take one look at my face and say Celie! Then she turn to Mr.???. Stop Albert, she say. Don't say no more. You just going to make it harder on yourself.
I'll fix her wagon! say Mr.???, and spring toward me.
A dust devil flew up on the porch between us, fill my mouth with dirt. The dirt say, Anything you do to me, already done to you.
Then I feel Snug shake me. Celie, she say. And I come to myself.
I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.
Amen, say Snug. Amen, amen.
So what is it like in Memphis? Shug's house is big and pink and look sort of like a barn. Cept where you would put hay, she got bedrooms and toilets and a big ballroom where she and her band sometime work. She got plenty grounds round the house and a bunch of monuments and a fountain out front. She got statues of folks I never heard of and never hope to see. She got a whole bunch of elephants and turtles everywhere. Some big, some little, some in the fountain, some up under the trees. T\irtles and elephants.
And all over her house. Curtains got elephants, bedspreads got turtles.
Shug give me a big back bedroom overlook the backyard and the bushes down by the creek.
I know you use to morning sun, she say.
Her room right cross from mine, in the shade. She work late, sleep late, git up late. No turtles or elephants on her bedroom furniture, but a few statues spread out round the room. She sleep in silks and satins, even her sheets. And her bed round!
I wanted to build me a round house, say Shug, but everybody act like that's backward. You can't put windows in a round house, they say. But I made me up some plans, anyway. One of these days... she say, showing me the papers.
It a big round pink house, look sort of like some kind of fruit. It got windows and doors and a lot of trees round it.
What it made of? I ast.
Mud, she say. But I wouldn't mind concrete. I figure you could make the molds for each section, pour the concrete in, let it get hard, knock off the mold, glue the parts together somehow and you'd have your house.
Well, I like this one you got, I say. That one look a little small.
It ain't bad, say Shug. But I just feel funny living hi a square. If I was square, then I could take it better, she say.
Us talk bout houses a lot. How they built, what kind of wood people use. Talk about how to make the outside around your house something you can use. I sit down on the bed and start to draw a kind of wood skirt around her concrete house. You can sit on this, I say, when you get tired of being in the house.
Yeah, she say, and let's put awning over it. She took the pencil and put the wood skirt in the shade.
Flower boxes go here, she say, drawing some.
And geraniums in them, I say, drawing some.
And a few stone elephants right here, she say.
And a turtle or two right here.
And how us know you live here too? she ast.
Ducks! Isay.
By the time us finish our house look like it can swim or fly.
Nobody cook like Shug when she cook. She get up early in the morning and go to market .216 Buy only stuff that's fresh. Then she come home and sit on the back step humming and shelling peas or cleaning collards or fish or whatever she bought. Then she git all her pots going at once and turn on the radio. By one o'clock everything ready and she call us to the table. Ham and greens and chicken and cornbread. Chitlins and blackeyed peas and souse. Pickled okra and watermelon rind. Caramel cake and blackberry pie.
Us eat and eat, and drink a little sweet wine and beer too.
Then Shug and me go fall out in her room to listen to music till all that food have a chance to settle. It cool and dark in her room. Her