Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [10]
I could not believe I’d found her so easily. But soon we were cozily sipping coffee in her tiny doll’s house near the train station, a house that had been left her by her grandmother, and she was telling me about her career as a teacher. In her surroundings I felt it was I who clashed.
But you did not come all this way to hear about French high school students, she said, passing me a dainty slice of cake.
You seem troubled, no? What is the use?
It was a minor slip, charming, and made me laugh. It was just how I felt.
You live alone here, and no one bothers you? I said.
She shrugged.
And no one cares that you are not married and that you make your own living?
Mais non, she said. Women are no longer chattel, she sniffed. Even if it is only very recently that Frenchwomen got the vote. Now, she said, frowning, we get to vote for one man after another.
I smiled sadly.
I wanted so much to ask her about her sex life. When, whether, to whom she made love. How the act of lovemaking felt to her. Whether she knew and practiced the ways to make love without making babies.
I asked instead about her church. Whether she was still active in it. Whether it still sent youth groups to Africa.
Well, to tell the truth, she said, I have lost the faith. I look and look in this religion of mine and I am nowhere in it. When I was younger I thought the church was there because it helped everybody enlarge their spirit, but really, people around here appear to be more meanspirited than ever.
She stopped suddenly.
Don’t get me started. What happened was I could not reconcile the word “obedience” that the bride says in the church wedding with any kind of spiritual or physical expansion for myself. I felt tricked by that word.
I thought of my father and of Mama Nettie. Had “obey” been a word used in their marriage ceremony? And would Mama Nettie “obey” my father? I knew them well enough to know they’d strive to please each other; they already did so. Neither he nor she would have the last word. But why did the word exist, in a ceremony between equals and loved ones? Well, obviously because the woman, who was required to obey, was not considered equal.
I thought of Tashi. Each time we made love, she’d wanted me as much as I’d wanted her. She had engineered most of our meetings. Whenever we held each other she was breathless in anticipation. Once, she claimed her heart nearly stopped. Such pleasure as ours was difficult for us to believe. Was it a pleasure of which others knew? we often asked ourselves. The faces of our elders in the village bore no hint of it.
PART TWO
TASHI
CAN YOU BEAR TO KNOW what I have lost? I scream this at the judges, in their stupid white wigs. And at the lawyers—my own and the one hired to prosecute me. They are both young, dapper African men who would not look out of place in London, Paris or New York. I scream it at the curious onlookers for whom my trial is entertainment. But most of all, I scream it at my family: Adam, Olivia, Benny.
No one responds to my question. The prosecuting attorney suppresses a smile because I have lost control. The judges rap their pencils on their tea trays.
But on the morning of the twelfth of October last did you not make a point of buying several razors at the shop near the Ombere bus station?
Once upon a time there was a man with a very long and tough beard… I began without thinking. Stopping only when it dawned on me that the entire courtroom had burst into laughter. Even Olivia, when I cast a glance at her, was smiling. Oh, Tashi, her look seemed to say, even here, on trial for your life, you are still making things up!
If you would be so kind as to answer the question, says the dapper young attorney, and not attempt to indulge and distract the court with your fantasy life.
My fantasy life. Without it I’m afraid to