The Color Purple - Alice Walker [48]
I saw Pa once since I left home. One day me and Mr. _____ was loading up the wagon at the feed store. Pa was with May Ellen and she was trying to fix her stocking. She was bent down over her leg and twisting the stocking into a knot above her knee, and he was standing over her tap-tap-tapping on the gravel with his cane. Look like he was thinking bout hitting her with it.
Mr. _____ went up to them all friendly, with his hand stuck out, but I kept loading the wagon and looking at the patterns on the sacks. I never thought I’d ever want to see him again.
Well, it was a bright Spring day, sort of chill at first, like it be round Easter, and the first thing us notice soon as we turn into the lane is how green everything is, like even though the ground everywhere else not warmed up good, Pa’s land is warm and ready to go. Then all along the road there’s Easter lilies and jonquils and daffodils and all kinds of little early wildflowers. Then us notice all the birds singing they little cans off, all up and down the hedge, that itself is putting out little yellow flowers smell like Virginia creeper. It all so different from the rest of the country us drive through, it make us real quiet. I know this sound funny, Nettie, but even the sun seemed to stand a little longer over our heads.
Well, say Shug, all this is pretty enough. You never said how pretty it was.
It wasn’t this pretty, I say. Every Easter time it used to flood, and all us children had colds. Anyhow, I say, us stuck close to the house, and it sure ain’t so hot.
That ain’t so hot? she ast, as we swung up a long curving hill I didn’t remember, right up to a big yellow two story house with green shutters and a steep green shingle roof.
I laughed. Us must have took the wrong turn, I say. This some white person’s house.
It was so pretty though that us stop the car and just set looking at it.
What kind of trees all them flowering? ast Shug.
I don’t know, I say. Look like peach, plum, apple, maybe cherry. But whatever they is, they sure pretty.
All round the house, all in back of it, nothing but blooming trees. Then more lilies and jonquils and roses clamming over everything. And all the time the little birds from all over the rest of the county sit up in these trees just going to town.
Finally, after us look at it awhile, I say, it so quiet, nobody home, I guess.
Naw, say Shug, probably in church. A nice bright Sunday like this.
Us better leave then, I say, before whoever it is lives here gits back. But just as I say that I notice my eye is staying on a fig tree it recognize, and us hear a car turning up the drive. Who should be in the car but Pa and some young girl look like his child.
He git out on his side, then go round to open the door for her. She dress to kill in a pink suit, big pink hat and pink shoes, a little pink purse hanging on her arm. They look at our license tag and then come up to the car. She put her hand through his arm.
Morning, he says, when he gits up to Shug’s window.
Morning, she says slow, and I can tell he not what she expect.
Anything I can do for you? He ain’t notice me and probably wouldn’t even if he looked at me.
Shug say, under her breath, Is this him?
I say, Yeah.
What shock Shug and shock me too is how young he look. He look older than the child he with, even if she is dress up like a woman, but he look young for somebody to be anybody that got grown children and nearly grown grandchildren. But then I remember, he not my daddy, just my children daddy.
What your mama do, ast Shug, rob the cradle?
But he not so young.
I brought Celie, say Shug. Your daughter Celie. She wanted to visit you. Got some questions to ast.
He seem to think back a second.Celie?. he say. Like, Who Celie? Then he say, Yall git