Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [61]
It is an odd protest, someone ventured.
It is not a protest, said Aunty Pearlua. It is a strategy. A strategy for survival.
I’ve smoked since I was this high, someone else said.
Beer is my water, said another.
Our bodies are all we have, said Aunty Pearlua. Over our bodies we can have some control. We can make of our bodies exactly what it is our young people need to see. Health and well-being. Freedom.
Yolo cleared his throat.
Real men can’t stop drinking, he said, sarcastically, under his breath.
Jerry looked at him sorrowfully. On this island that’s pretty close to the truth, bradda, he said. We can’t stop smoking or fucking around or beating our wives and kids either.
Marshall’s brother, who everyone called Poi, was weeping; the sadness of his younger brother’s death had hung over him all evening.
Finally he said: It’s a good dream, Aunty, but it’s too late. The shit comes into the islands by the boatload. Every fucking day. We can’t stop that by not smoking.
And how do the cigarettes get here? asked Aunty Pearlua coolly. You know how, they get here by that same drug-dealing boat.
Yolo was not the only one who had not expected this turn of events. There was a new energy in the circle, the energy of “if only.” If only we had thought to try this, oh, maybe a century or two ago; if only we’d known about addiction when we were planting sugarcane and poisoning the weeds around it with arsenic before sending snow-white sugar out to enslave the world. If only Lili’uokalani had made her people promise to eat poi and taro leaves forever and not get hooked on white bread and processed cheese. If only the buck didn’t stop here.
Our diet is a disgrace, said Aunty Pearlua. She snorted. Now, I admit I’m big, like a lot of these other big Hawaiians you see around here, but there’s no reason for me to be this big. Except all the junk that now goes into this body. She made a face. All the white bread and mayonnaise. The beer. The smoke. All the pig and pasta salad.
That’s our culture, though, someone said, respectfully.
No, it isn’t, said Aunty Pearlua. Health is our culture; anything that interferes with it is our bondage. She grunted, and scratched her chin where the stubble was beginning to itch. I have Native American friends who are trying to talk their people off of fry bread, she said. It’s killing them. All that worthless “enriched” white flour and grease. But they say, Oh, no, if you take away fry bread Indians don’t have no culture. Such trash, she finished, and adjusted her lei.
It was at that point that an elderly woman with long silver hair and walking with a cane was seen entering the yard.
Aunty Pearlua got up from the circle to meet her. The two of them embraced, the elderly woman placed a lei made of green leaves around Aunty Pearlua’s neck, and Aunty Pearlua kissed her on both cheeks. They returned to the circle hand in hand. Though everyone else sat on the ground, a chair was brought for Aunty Alma.
She’s real old, huh? asked Alma. My namesake?
Old and gorgeous, said Yolo, who had immediately wanted to paint her. She was small, plump, and brown, with large dark eyes. Her silver hair was thick and full and the breeze from the ocean lifted it gently as it blew. Her skin was very good, very youthful, and there was a radiance about her that captivated everyone. She was dressed in a long green dress that made her seem part of the ocean that had walked up on the shore. Her hair seemed part of the moon.
Between us, she said to the circle, my sister Aunty Pearlua and I have kept something real about our culture alive. She has taught generations of Hawaiian women the true hula, the dance of the traditions and of the soul; and I have worked to teach cleanliness of the earth temple, the human body.