Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [54]
How did you?
I could still see Saint Saartjie in her even though she couldn’t see Her in herself. I felt like I was doing something to help all the Saartjies in the world. Lalika thought for a moment. Maybe it’s because I had a grandmother once. One time when I was very small, I remember I was living with a very old lady and they told me she was my grandmother. And even though she was old and sick and soon died she seemed to give me a strong shot of something.
Love? asked Rick.
People didn’t talk about love so much. I guess I would call what she gave me a real strong hit of being thereness.
Presence? asked Kate.
Yeah. As long as she was around there was no such thing as being alone.
We lived in the whitest possible town while I was growing up, said Rick. With an English name to fit ours. In fact, it was a little bit of England, even eighteenth-century England, right on the coast of North America. Black people were not even welcome there to work.
Well, Kate said teasingly, you did your part. You dyed your hair red.
It just seemed to go with the landscape, said Rick. And with my mother’s carefully chosen and maintained ash-blond locks. It wasn’t supposed to be red, of course, but like so many things I got it wrong.
How did you find out? asked Lalika.
A predictable story, he said: Having gone to lily-white schools practically from birth, in which Jews, black people, and Italians were not present, at least not as themselves, I lucked out and went off to a college that had everybody. My roommate was a black guy. When I brought him home for a weekend I realized my parents were far too nice to him. So nice he would have had to be crazy ever to go back.
What niceness was this? asked Kate.
The totally phony kind, said Rick. The kind that said you’re such a different expression of life we will suffocate you with our overreaching acceptance.
I didn’t understand it. But then I started to date a woman of color. And they freaked. They started to tell me stuff about black people I’d never heard before. They seemed to know an awful lot about the drugs they used. And the crimes they committed while on them. They warned me not to go into their neighborhoods. This was shocking. I had no idea either of them knew anything about black neighborhoods.
And then I met one of my uncles who had not changed his name. I moved in with him, after running off from home. Under prodding and after teasing me about my hair, which was where I’ve always carried on any rebellion I felt, he said enough to start me to think. He introduced me to another uncle, and to cousins I didn’t know I had. Selling drugs to oppressed people was our family business, for generations. My family had sold the stuff for years, before they owned the hotels and restaurants, office buildings and elected officials, that I was familiar with. I started to understand why my hair would always be dark at the roots. Just as the Kennedys would always have those Joseph Kennedy teeth. I started to understand why to myself and often to other people I have felt invisible.
After the Last Circle
After the last circle, Missy proclaimed a breakthrough. During the first sessions, Armando and Cosmi had spent considerable time with her. Patiently encouraging her to get out of the way of herself. It was clear to Kate, sitting across the room from Missy, that she had every intention of being healed, but lacked the courage to let it happen. Her body grew as tight as a ripe tomato, and every orifice seemed closed: eyes, mouth, ears. She crossed her legs and became rigid. Nothing is coming into me, she seemed to say, and nothing is going out.
The more Armando sang—songs so lovely they made Kate weep—and the more Cosmi played his reed flute, the more Missy dug in her heels. Once in a while tears would leak from beneath her lashes and that would be enough encouragement for Armando and Cosmi to hover over her minutes longer.
Armando had told them all many times: It is hard to believe, but there is something inside