Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [51]
TASHI
AND YET, I SAID, hardening myself against the sight of M’Lissa’s heaving chest, expecting tears, you saw her over and over again, hundreds, thousands of times. It was she who screamed before your knife.
M’Lissa sniffled. I have never cried after that, she said. I knew in the moment when the pain was greatest, when it reached a crescendo, as when a loud metal drum is struck with a corresponding metal stick, that there is no God known to man who cares about children or about women. And that the God of woman is autonomy.
Cry, I said. Perhaps it will ease you.
But I could see that, even now, she could not feel her pain enough to cry. She was like someone beaten into insensibility. Bitter, but otherwise emotionally inert.
Why did they make us do it? she asked. I never really knew. And the women, even today, after giving birth, they come back to the tsunga to be resewn, tighter than before. Because if it is loose he won’t receive enough pleasure.
But you taught them this, I said. It is what you told me. Remember? The uncircumcised woman is loose, you said, like a shoe that all, no matter what their size, might wear. This is unseemly, you said. Unclean. A proper woman must be cut and sewn to fit only her husband, whose pleasure depends on an opening it might take months, even years, to enlarge. Men love and enjoy the struggle, you said. For the woman…But you never said anything about the woman, did you, M’Lissa? About the pleasure she might have. Or the suffering.
I am weeping now, myself. For myself. For Adam. For our son. For the daughter I was forced to abort.
There is caesarean section, you know, the aborting doctor had said. But I knew I could not bear being held down and cut open. The thought of it had sent me reeling off into the shadows of my mind; where I’d hidden out for months. I watched from a lofty distance as Adam packed for his twice-yearly visits to Paris, to be with Lisette and his other son; I watched Benny struggle with all his might to be close to me, to melt into my body, to inhale my scent; and I was like a crow, flapping my wings unceasingly in my own head, cawing mutely across an empty sky. And I wore black, and black and black.
If I look at M’Lissa I know I will leap up and strangle her. Fortunately I am unable to move. I look down at my feet. Feet that hesitate before any nonflat surface: stairs, hills. Feet that do not automatically or nimbly leap over puddles or step gracefully onto curbs.
Perhaps an hour passes. I think M’Lissa has fallen asleep. I glance at the bed and am startled by how small she looks. She seems to have shrunk. I glance at her face. It is alert, watchful. But not because of me. She seems to have forgotten me.
I finally see her, she says, astonished. Self-absorbed.
Who? I ask. You finally see who?
She makes a slight dismissive motion with her hand, warning me not to interrupt.
The child who went into the initiation hut, she says. You know I left her there bleeding on the floor, and I came out. She was crying. She felt so betrayed. By everyone. They’d severely beaten her mother as well, and she blamed herself for this. M’Lissa sighed. I couldn’t think about her anymore. I would have died. So I walked away, limped away, and just left her there. M’Lissa paused. Her voice when she continues is a whisper, amazed. She is still crying. She’s been crying since I left. No wonder I haven’t been able to. She has been crying all our tears.
M’LISSA
I HAVE BEEN STRONG. This is what I tell the tourists who come to see me, and the young mothers and the old mothers and everybody who comes. It is what they tell me back: the president and the politicians and the visitors from the churches and the schools. Strong and brave. Dragging my half-body wherever half a body was needed. In service to tradition, to what makes us a people. In service to the country and what makes us who we are. But who are we but torturers of children?
PART SEVENTEEN
TASHI
CROWDED INTO the small white chapel on the top