Color Purple, The - Alice Walker [79]
What? he ast.
These Olinka people worship it. They say who knows, maybe it is kinfolks, but for sure it's the smartest, cleanest, slickest thing they ever seen.
These folks sure must have a heap of time just to sit and think, say. Mr.???.
Nettie say they real good at thinking, I say. But they think so much in terms of thousands of years they have a hard time girting themself through one.
So what they name Adam?
Something sound like Omatangu, I say. It mean a un-naked man somewhere near the first one God made that knowed what he was. A whole lot of the men that come before the first man was men, but none of 'em didn't know it. You know how long it take some mens to notice anything, I say.
Took me long enough to notice you such good company, he say. And he laugh.
He ain't Shug, but he begin to be somebody I can talk to.
And no matter how much the telegram said you must be drown, I still git letters from you.
Your sister,
Celie
After two and a half months Adam and Tashi returned! Adam overtook Tashi and her mother and some other members of our compound as they were nearing the village where the white woman missionary had lived, but Tashi would not hear of turning back, nor would Catherine, and so Adam accompanied them to the mbelesencampment.
Oh, be says, it is the most extraordinary place!
You know, Celie, in Africa there is a huge depression in the earth called the great rift valley, but it is on the other side of the continent from where we are. However, according to Adam, there is a "small" rift on our side, several thousand acres large and even deeper than the great rift, which covers millions of acres. It is a place set so deep into the earth that it can only really be seen, Adam thinks, from the air, and then it would seem just an overgrown canyon. Well, in this overgrown canyon are a thousand people from dozens of African tribes, and even one colored man? Adam swears? from Alabama! There are farms. There is a school. An infirmary. A temple. And there are male and female warriors who do indeed go on missions of sabotage against the white plantations.
But all this seemed more a marvel in the recounting than in the actual experiencing of it, if I am any judge of Adam and lashi.
Their minds seem to have been completely riveted on each other.
I wish you could have seen them as they staggered into the compound. Filthy as hogs, hair as wild as could be. Sleepy. Exhausted.
Smelly. God knows. But still arguing.
Just because I came back with you, don't think I am saying yes to marriage, says lashi.
Oh yes you are, says Adam, heatedly, but through ayawn. You promised your mother. / promised yourmother.,?
Nobody in America will like me, says lashi.
I will like you, says Adam.
Olivia ran and enfolded lashi in her arms. Ran about preparing food and a bath.
Last night, after lashi and Adam had slept most of the day, We had a family conference. We informed them that because so many of our people had gone to join the mbelesand the planters were beginning to bring in Moslem workers from the North, and because it was time for us to do so, we would be leaving for home in a matter of weeks.
Adam announced his desire to marry lashi. lashi announced her refusal to be married.
And then, in that honest, forthright way of hers, she gave her reasons. Paramount among them that, because of the scarification marks on her cheeks Americans would look down on her as a savage and shun her, and whatever children she and Adam might have.
That she had seen the magazines we receive from home and that it was very clear to her that black people did not truly admire blackskinned black people like herself, and especially did not admire blackskinned black women. They bleach their faces, she said. They fry their hair. They try to look naked.
Also, she continued, I fear Adam will be distracted by one of these naked looking women and desert me. Then I would