Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [38]
No, I suspected nothing, she is saying, when I float back into myself, sitting on the hard chair next to my attorney.
They were old friends. Mother Lissa knew her. She was happy to see her. In fact, I’d never seen her so excited. They needed to talk. Time alone. Mother Lissa insisted.
And so you left your post. Left Mother Lissa’s bedside. Even left the house, the attorney says accusingly.
My daughter drops her head. But quickly looks up again. There is that healthy, impish twinkle in her eyes she sometimes gets.
She turns her face to the judges. Your Honors, she says, firmly, I left the vicinity.
They all ignore this spark of life. This simple authenticity. This beauty.
Objection, says the other attorney. (I can no longer really tell them apart; the only way I recognize which attorney is mine is by noticing which of them sits next to me, and by the way he smells: his cologne is a scent popular in America.) The defendant’s fiendish behavior is not something which, in advance, the witness could have known.
Did you suspect anything? prods the attorney.
The child looks pained. I feel sorry for her. How could they imagine any of this is her fault? It was I who shooed Mbati from her post; I who told M’Lissa: Mama Lissa, give the girl a break. Your other daughter has come from America just to look after you! Since this coming back to care for the elderly was such a strong characteristic of the ancient traditions, how could she refuse?
Oh, M’Lissa had said, it is too much happiness. Too much! To see the daughter of Nafa, here, right beside my bed. Oh, surely I shall die of it!
I thought it an odd thing to say.
How did the defendant appear to you? the prosecuting attorney asks.
There is a long pause. Motherly, Mbati replies.
The young man is surprised. What, his look implies, this demon, motherly!
Yes, Mbati continues in a definite voice. I lost my own mother when I was an infant, and yet never believed she died. When Mrs. Johnson showed up at the door—
Childhood memories are quite irrelevant to this court, says the attorney, cutting her off. Though surely the humane response would have been to let her finish; even if one felt quite unable to ask the question: How did your mother die? It is a taboo question, in Olinka. One never asked for fear of the answer.
Mbati subsides into silence, but looks me in the face and holds my gaze. I see she has not condemned me.
EVELYN
MY HEART GOES OUT to Adam, physically stout, emotionally frail; perspiration beading on his upper lip. It is hard to believe this grayhaired and graybearded old man is my husband, and has been my dearest friend for over fifty years. And was my lover.
He looks condemned, simply to be present in the jammed court. He stares up disconsolately at the recently oiled, slowly whirring ceiling fans, or out the open windows, awaiting the thrust and parry of the attorneys’ questions.
I remember when his body was slender and firm, and how I used to kiss from nipple to nipple across the smooth expanse of his beautiful chest.
He is saying I am a tortured woman. Someone whose whole life was destroyed by the enactment of a ritual upon my body which I had not been equipped to understand.
As soon as he utters the word “ritual” there is a furor in the court. Male voices, and female voices, calling for Adam’s silence. Shut up, shut up, you disgraceful American! the voices cry. This is our business you would put into the streets! We cannot publicly discuss this taboo.
Adam looks weary. About to weep.
Mother Lissa was a monument! the voices hiss. Your wife has murdered a monument. The Grandmother of the race!
I feel the furies, the shrieking voices, wrap their coils around my neck. But rather than allowing myself to choke, I become a part