The Color Purple - Alice Walker [58]
Yeah, I say, but some things pleasant.
Right, say Shug, turning the page. Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Hufflemeyer are pleased to announce the wedding of their daughter June Sue. The Morrises of Endover Road are spearheading a social for the Episcopal church. Mrs. Herbert Edenfail was on a visit last week to the Adirondacks to see her ailing mother, the former Mrs. Geoffrey Hood.
All these faces look happy enough, say Shug. Big and beefy. Eyes clear and innocent, like they don’t know them other crooks on the front page. But they the same folks, she say.
But pretty soon, after cooking a big dinner and making a to-do about cleaning the house, Shug go back to work. That mean she never give a thought to what she eat. Never give a thought to where she sleep. She on the road somewhere for weeks at a time, come home with bleary eyes, rotten breath, overweight and sort of greasy. No place hardly to stop and really wash herself, especially her hair, on the road.
Let me go with you, I say. I can press your clothes, do your hair. It would be like old times, when you was singing at Harpo’s.
She say, Naw. She can act like she not bored in front of a audience of strangers, a lot of them white, but she wouldn’t have the nerve to try to act in front of me.
Besides, she say. You not my maid. I didn’t bring you to Memphis to be that. I brought you here to love you and help you get on your feet.
And now she off on the road for two weeks, and me and Grady and Squeak rattle round the house trying to get our stuff together. Squeak been going round to a lot of clubs and Grady been taking her. Plus he seem to be doing a little farming out back the house.
I sit in the dining room making pants after pants. I got pants now in every color and size under the sun. Since us started making pants down home, I ain’t been able to stop. I change the cloth, I change the print, I change the waist, I change the pocket. I change the hem, I change the fullness of the leg. I make so many pants Shug tease me. I didn’t know what I was starting, she say, laughing. Pants all over her chairs, hanging all in front of the china closet. Newspaper patterns and cloth all over the table and the floor. She come home, kiss me, step over all the mess. Say, before she leave again, How much money you think you need this week?
Then finally one day I made the perfect pair of pants. For my sugar, naturally. They soft dark blue jersey with teeny patches of red. But what make them so good is, they totally comfortable. Cause Shug eat a lot of junk on the road, and drink, her stomach bloat. So the pants can be let out without messing up the shape. Because she have to pack her stuff and fight wrinkles, these pants are soft, hardly wrinkle at all, and the little figures in the cloth always look perky and bright. And they full round the ankle so if she want to sing in ’em and wear ’em sort of like a long dress, she can. Plus, once Shug put them on, she knock your eyes out.
Miss Celie, she say. You is a wonder to behold.
I duck my head. She run round the house looking at herself in mirrors. No matter how she look, she look good.
You know how it is when you don’t have nothing to do, I say, when she brag to Grady and Squeak bout her pants. I sit here thinking bout how to make a living and before I know it I’m off on another pair pants.
By now Squeak see a pair she like. Oh, Miss Celie, she say. Can I try on those?
She put on a pair the color of sunset. Orangish with a little grayish fleck. She come back out looking just fine. Grady look at her like he could eat her up.
Shug finger the pieces of cloth I got hanging on everything. It all soft, flowing, rich and catch the light. This a far cry from that stiff army shit us started with, she say. You ought to make up a special pair