Color Purple, The - Alice Walker [71]
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 .260
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 girting pregnant make me want to cry.
Your sister,
Celie
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 called Gi-bralta. 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
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 mbelesexist. 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 mbelesever 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