Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [25]
I had the most sought-after midwife in France—my competent and funny aunt Marie-Therese, whose radical idea it was that childbirth above all should feel sexy. I listened to nothing but gospel music during my pregnancy, a music quite new to me, and to France, and “It’s a High Way to Heaven” (“…nothing can walk up there, but the pure in heart…”) was playing on the stereo during the birth; the warmth of the singers’ voices a perfect accompaniment to the lively fire in the fireplace. My vulva oiled and massaged to keep my hips open and my vagina fluid, I was orgasmic at the end. Petit Pierre practically slid into the world at the height of my amazement, smiling serenely even before he opened his eyes.
My aunt placed him on my stomach the moment she lifted him from between my legs, waiting to sever the umbilical cord until he could breathe on his own; and so, our heartbeats continued together as they had while he was in my womb. Seeing his sleek tan body and wet curly hair, I missed Adam. But, sighing with completion, I soon sank into the pleasure of the miracle I felt I and the universe alone had made.
He felt shut out, he said, when he was finally free to come to us. Because he was not there.
But why? I asked. You knew when he was to be born.
So did Evelyn, he said.
PART SIX
TASHI-EVELYN
IT IS HOT INSIDE THE COURTROOM. The ceiling fans, as they turn, sound like hoarse throats trying to clear themselves. The louvered windows are open fully to admit any semblance of breeze. I am dressed in cool white cotton from head to foot; Olivia shops for me in the tourist boutiques. Still, I feel perspiration beading at the center of my back, then slipping down in quicksilver rivulets to rest in an already sodden waistband.
It has been a morning spent listening to the words of those who saw me on my journey. The man who sold me the razors, a squat, rheumy-eyed fellow who admits he overcharged me because I was a foreigner. Although I spoke Olinka he could tell I was American by my dress, he said. Next, a woman who sold me an orange, as I was getting into the bus at Ombere station. She was old and toothless. Her rags obviously smelled, for both attorneys kept their distance as she sweated and drooled a bit there in the witness stand. It was a young woman, however, whose words appeared to nail me. She was thin and dark, with curious light pink, almost white lipsticked lips and painted nails. She explained, in English, with a word or two of Olinka sprinkled through it, that she was proprietress of the paper shop, hard by the square where one caught the bus. She remembered me because I had come into the shop looking for and then asking her to find for me sheets of thick white paper on which to print signs.
However, I’d changed my mind about wanting the white paper, she said, as soon as she brought some out to me.
No, she said I had said. White is not the culprit this time. Bring me out paper of the colors of our flag.
There was a sort of collective gasp in the courtroom when she said this. I felt even more eyes boring holes in the back of my neck. The judges surreptitiously scratched the natural kinky hair at the edges of their straight brush wigs.
And is this the paper, miss, that the defendant bought?
The prosecuting attorney stands before the young woman in the dock, the vivid red, yellow and blue paper held out in front of him.
There was a time the colors alone made me weep with pride. Now I look at them as dispassionately as if they were Crayolas in a child’s coloring box.
Surprisingly, there are a few older people near the back of the courtroom who, on seeing the colors—for which they, as young