The Color Purple - Alice Walker [50]
They can’t rub out stretch marks, I said. Stretch marks go right into the skin, and a woman’s stomach stretches enough so that it keeps a little pot, like all the women have here.
She turned her face to the wall.
Corrine, I said, I’m the children’s aunt. Their mother is my older sister, Celie.
Then I told them the whole story. Only Corrine was still not convinced.
You and Samuel telling so many lies, who can believe anything you say? she asked.
You’ve got to believe Nettie, said Samuel. Though the part about you and Pa was a real shock to him.
Then I remembered what you told me about seeing Corrine and Samuel and Olivia in town, when she was buying cloth to make her and Olivia dresses, and how you sent me to her because she was the only woman you’d ever seen with money. I tried to make Corrine remember that day, but she couldn’t.
She gets weaker and weaker, and unless she can believe us and start to feel something for her children, I fear we will lose her.
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.
Pray for us,
Nettie
DEAREST CELIE,
Every day for the past week I’ve been trying to get Corrine to remember meeting you in town. I know if she can just recall your face, she will believe Olivia (if not Adam) is your child. They think Olivia looks like me, but that is only because I look like you. Olivia has your face and eyes, exactly. It amazes me that Corrine didn’t see the resemblance.
Remember the main street of town? I asked. Remember the hitching post in front of Finley’s dry goods store? Remember how the store smelled like peanut shells?
She says she remembers all this, but no men speaking to her.
Then I remember her quilts. The Olinka men make beautiful quilts which are full of animals and birds and people. And as soon as Corrine saw them, she began to make a quilt that alternated one square of appliqued figures with one nine-patch block, using the clothes the children had outgrown, and some of her old dresses.
I went to her trunk and started hauling out quilts.
Don’t touch my things, said Corrine. I’m not gone yet.
I held up first one and then another to the light, trying to find the first one I remembered her making. And trying to remember, at the same time, the dresses she and Olivia were wearing the first months I lived with them.
Aha, I said, when I found what I was looking for, and laid the quilt across the bed.
Do you remember buying this cloth? I asked, pointing to a flowered square. And what about this checkered bird?
She traced the patterns with her finger, and slowly her eyes filled with tears.
She was so much like Olivia! she said. I was afraid she’d want her back. So I forgot her as soon as I could. All I let myself think about was how the clerk treated me! I was acting like somebody because I was Samuel’s wife, and a Spelman Seminary graduate, and he treated me like any ordinary nigger. Oh, my feelings were hurt! And I was mad! And that’s what I thought about, even told Samuel about, on the way home. Not about your sister—what was her name?—Celie? Nothing about her.
She began to cry in earnest. Me and Samuel holding her hands.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I said. My sister was glad to see Olivia with you. Glad to see her alive. She thought both her children were dead.
Poor thing! said Samuel. And we sat there talking a little and holding on to each other until Corrine fell off to sleep.
But, Celie, in the middle of the night she woke up, turned to Samuel and said: I believe. And died anyway.
Your Sister in Sorrow, Nettie
DEAREST CELIE,
Just when I think I’ve learned to live with the heat, the constant dampness, even steaminess of my clothes, the swampiness under my arms and between my legs, my friend comes. And cramps and aches and pains—but I must still keep going as if nothing is happening, or be an embarrassment to Samuel, the children and myself. Not to mention the villagers, who think women who have their friends should not even be seen.
Right