The Color Purple - Alice Walker [65]
Come, come, he said.
We behave as brother and sister to each other, said Samuel.
The bishop smirked. Yes, he did.
I felt my face go hot.
Well, there was more of this, but why burden you with it? You know what some people are, and the bishop was one of them. Samuel and I left without even a word about the Olinka’s problems.
Samuel was so angry, I was frightened. He said the only thing for us to do, if we wanted to remain in Africa, was join the mbeles and encourage all the Olinka to do the same.
But suppose they do not want to go? I asked. Many of them are too old to move back into the forest. Many are sick. The women have small babies. And then there are the youngsters who want bicycles and British clothes. Mirrors and shiny cooking pots. They want to work for the white people in order to have these things.
Things! he said, in disgust. Bloody things!
Well, we have a month here anyway, I said, let’s make the most of it.
Because we had spent so much of our money on tin roofs and the voyage over, it had to be a poor man’s month in England. But it was a very good time for us. We began to feel ourselves a family, without Corrine. And people meeting us on the street never failed (if they spoke to us at all) to express the sentiment that the children looked just like the two of us. The children began to accept this as natural, and began going out to view the sights that interested them, alone. Leaving their father and me to our quieter, more sedate pleasures, one of which was simple conversation.
Samuel, of course, was born in the North, in New York, and grew up and was educated there. He met Corrine through his aunt who had been a missionary, along with Corrine’s aunt, in the Belgian Congo. Samuel frequently accompanied his aunt Althea to Atlanta, where Corrine’s aunt Theodosia lived.
These two ladies had been through marvelous things together, said Samuel, laughing. They’d been attacked by lions, stampeded by elephants, flooded out by rains, made war on by “natives.” The tales they told were simply incredible. There they sat on a heavily antimacassared horsehair sofa, two prim and proper ladies in ruffles and lace, telling these stupendous stories over tea.
Corrine and I as teenagers used to attempt to stylize these tales into comics. We called them such things as THREE MONTHS IN A HAMMOCK, or SORE HIPS OF THE DARK CONTINENT. Or, A MAP OF AFRICA: A GUIDE TO NATIVE INDIFFERENCE TO THE HOLY WORD.
We made fun of them, but we were riveted on their adventures, and on the ladies’ telling of them. They were so staid looking. So proper. You really couldn’t imagine them actually building—with their own hands—a school in the bush. Or battling reptiles. Or unfriendly Africans who thought, since they were wearing dresses with things that looked like wings behind, they should be able to fly.
Bush? Corrine would snicker to me or me to her. And just the sound of the word would send us off into quiet hysteria, while we calmly sipped our tea. Because of course they didn’t realize they were being funny, and to us they were, very. And of course the prevailing popular view of Africans at that time contributed to our feeling of amusement. Not only were Africans savages, they were bumbling, inept savages, rather like their bumbling, inept brethren at home. But we carefully, not to say studiously, avoided this very apparent connection.
Corrine’s mother was a dedicated housewife and mother who disliked her more adventurous sister. But she never prevented Corrine from visiting. And when Corrine was old enough, she sent her to Spelman Seminary where Aunt Theodosia had gone. This was a very interesting place. It was started by two white missionaries from New England who used to wear identical dresses. Started in a church basement, it soon moved up to Army barracks. Eventually these two ladies were able to get large sums of money from some of the richest men in America, and so the place grew. Buildings, trees. Girls were taught everything: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, sewing, cleaning, cooking. But more than anything else,