Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice Walker [61]
Though not a priest, I am a man of God, even now. I could not bear a life lived without belief. But this I know: There is for human beings no greater hell to fear than the one on earth.
TASHI-EVELYN-MRS. JOHNSON
I CONFESSED because I grew weary of the trial. Sick of sitting next to my attorney. He was always so dapper; so impeccably dressed. Smelling of Aramis. Loving the sound of his own mouth. The opposing attorney annoyed me as well.
I am old enough to be your grandmother, I thought, watching him prance and preen; and you stand there arguing for my death. In truth, it made me pity him, and see him as a fool.
I said to my attorney, in a moment when he was not twirling with a beringed finger one of his greasy curls, Let me take the stand. Though he was against my doing so, I took it anyway. As soon as I was seated, even before the Bible was brought, I said loud and clear so there could be no mistake: I did it.
How did you do it, Mrs. Johnson? asked the judge nearest me.
That, I said, is none of your damn business.
But do you think my confession stopped the trial?
No, it did not. For days afterward they were still talking about finding my razors in the ashes of M’Lissa’s house, and speculating on the gory ways I chose to mutilate and dispose of her. Their imaginations, I found, were even sicker than my own.
PART TWENTY-ONE
TASHI-EVELYN
IT IS FROM MBATI that I learn the African does not call his or her house a “hut.”
“Hut,” she says, is Dutch for “cottage,” and Africans are not Dutch.
I am this child’s mother. Otherwise she would not have appeared so vividly, a radiant flower of infinite freshness, in my life.
In the evenings she reads aloud passages from books for us to puzzle over or enjoy. Tonight she reads from the book of a white colonialist author who has lived all her life off the labor of Africans but failed to perceive them as human beings. “Black people are natural,” she writes, “they possess the secret of joy, which is why they can survive the suffering and humiliation inflicted upon them.”
Mbati stares at me blankly. I return her look.
But what is it? I ask. This secret of joy of which she writes. You are Black, so am I. It is of us then that she speaks. But we do not know. Or, I say, admiring her beauty, perhaps you do know.
Mbati laughs. Well, she says, we are women. We must find out! Especially since she also claims to understand the code of “birth, copulation and death” by which we live!
Oh, I say. These settler cannibals. Why don’t they just steal our land, mine our gold, chop down our forests, pollute our rivers, enslave us to work on their farms, fuck us, devour our flesh and leave us alone? Why must they also write about how much joy we possess?
Mbati has never asked whether I murdered M’Lissa. She doesn’t seem to care.
I am miserably flawed, I say to her as she is leaving, after she has promised not to let me die before she has discovered and presented to my eyes the definitive secret of joy.
Yes, Mother, she says simply, embracing me. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.
That reminds me, I say. I have a gift for you.
Oh? she says.
I have kept the little sacred figure of Nyanda—I have named her, choosing a word that floated up while I held her in my hands—carefully wrapped in my most beautiful scarf. The one of deep blue with gold stars scattered over it, like the body of Nut, goddess of Africa, and the night sky. I take it from my pocket, where I have been keeping it since I learned I would be executed, and place it in Mbati’s hands.
This is for my granddaughter, I say.
Your little doll! she says, touched. You know, she says, unwrapping it, it looks like you.
No, I say, I could never have that look of confidence. Of pride. Of peace. Neither of us can have it, because self-possession will always be impossible for us to claim. But perhaps your daughter…
I never intended to have a child, she says. The world is entirely too treacherous. This tiny figure, she says, kissing its beaming face, against all of