Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [28]
There was a jaunty tone she sometimes took, at the most unlikely points. She used it now.
You can tell me, she said, with the look of a conspirator.
But I was stuck. Our Leader had died for us. For our independence. For our freedom. What could I possibly say about my insignificant life in the face of that reality? I could feel a boulder, twin to the one that suppressed the truth of Dura’s murder, begin closing my throat. I felt a lie beginning to form. A lie that said the boulder was not a rock but rock candy. Then I remembered Mzee. You yourselves are your last hope, he’d said. Did I believe this, or not?
I cleared my throat, and began.
He was Jesus Christ to us, you know? I said, after the lengthy silence.
Raye looked at me expectantly.
If Jesus Christ has died for you, how can you find fault with anything else he did?
Some people fault him for claiming to die for them, said Raye. But we’ll let that pass. Better to declare him perfect and be done, she added.
But what if he’d told you to do something that destroyed you? Something that was wrong?
Impossible, said Raye. He was perfect, remember.
But then she smiled impishly, and I saw the trap of such reasoning and also the joke in what she said. However, my jaws were too tight to smile.
I began again. Even from prison we received our instructions, I said. Good instructions. Sensible; correct. From Our Leader. That we must remember who we were. That we must fight the white oppressors without ceasing; without, even, the contemplation of ceasing; for they would surely still be around during our children’s and our children’s children’s time. That we must take back our land. That we must reclaim the descendants of those of our people sold into slavery throughout the world (Our Leader was particularly strong on this issue, almost alone among African leaders); that we must return to the purity of our own culture and traditions. That we must not neglect our ancient customs.
There was another silence, as I played with the black plastic-looking elephant hair bracelets I wore on my wrist.
We thought him a god, really, I said finally, sighing. To have suffered so much…We knew they had tortured him, we could even imagine how, based on the mutilated bodies sometimes returned to relatives from the prison. We knew he’d spent years in solitary and been driven nearly out of his mind. But he had not broken. Nor had he forgotten us.
In every hut, even when I was a little girl, there was a small picture of him wrapped in plastic and carefully hidden in a special place among the rafters. His eyes were laughing! Such wise, gay eyes. They seemed to speak. Whenever we received a message we took down the picture, and while going over the message and learning it by heart we would gaze at it. We loved him. We believed everything he said. We thought he knew best… about everything.
The missionaries had made a big campaign against what they called the scarring of our faces with the Olinka tribal markings. But Our Leader had these same markings, and was obviously proud of them; and so it was difficult to hear the missionaries’ objections, or to care about the missionaries themselves. Though we gave them our mumbled prayers and conversions, with which they seemed so easily, like mothers of docile children, satisfied.
Raye was leaning forward in her chair. As I spoke, I became aware I had covered both my cheeks with my fingers. I had also crossed my legs. I took my hands down and placed them in the folds of my dress. A light blue dress with aquamarine dots, it reminded me of the sea, and of tears.
As for the thing that was done to me… or for me, I said. And stopped. Because Raye had raised her eyebrows, quizzically.
The initiation…
Still she looked at me in the same questioning way.
The female initiation, I said. Into womanhood.
Oh? she said. But looked still as if she didn’t understand.
Circumcision, I whispered.
Pardon? she said, in a normal tone of voice that seemed loud in the quiet room.
I felt as if I had handed