The Color Purple - Alice Walker [68]
She kissed me and her father good night. Adam soon came in to do the same.
Mama Nettie, he said, sitting on the bed next to me, how do you know when you really love someone?
Sometimes you don’t know, I said.
He is a beautiful young man, Celie. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a deep, thoughtful voice. Did I tell you he writes verses? And loves to sing? He’s a son to make you proud.
Your loving sister, Nettie
P.S. Your brother Samuel sends his love as well.
DEAREST CELIE,
When we returned home everyone seemed happy to see us. When we told them our appeal to the church and the Missionary Society failed, they were disappointed. They literally wiped the smiles off their faces along with the sweat, and returned, dejected, to their barracks. We went on to our building, a combination church, house and school, and began to unpack our things.
The children... I realize I shouldn’t call them children, they’re grown, went in search of Tashi; an hour later they returned dumbfounded. They discovered no sign of her. Catherine, her mother, is planting rubber trees some distance from the compound, they were told. But no one had seen Tashi all day.
Olivia was very disappointed. Adam was trying to appear unconcerned, but I noticed he was absentmindedly biting the skin around his nails.
After two days it became clear that Tashi was deliberately hiding. Her friends said while we were away she’d undergone both the facial scarification ceremony and the rite of female initiation. Adam went quite gray at this news. Olivia merely stricken and more concerned than ever to find her.
It was not until Sunday that we saw Tashi. She’d lost a considerable amount of weight, and seemed listless, dull-eyed and tired. Her face was still swollen from half a dozen small, neat incisions high on each cheek. When she put out her hand to Adam he refused to take it. He just looked at her scars, turned on his heel and left.
She and Olivia hugged. But it was a quiet, heavy embrace. Nothing like the boisterous, giggling behavior I expect from them.
Tashi is, unfortunately, ashamed of these scars on her face, and now hardly ever raises her head. They must be painful too because they look irritated and red.
But this is what the villagers are doing to the young women and even the men. Carving their identification as a people into their children’s faces. But the children think of scarification as backward, something from their grandparents’ generation, and often resist. So the carving is done by force, under the most appalling conditions. We provide antiseptics and cotton and a place for the children to cry and nurse their wounds.
Each day Adam presses us to leave for home. He can no longer bear living as we do. There aren’t even any trees near us, just giant boulders and smaller rocks. And more and more of his companions are running away. The real reason, of course, is he can no longer bear his conflicting feelings about Tashi, who is beginning, I think, to appreciate the magnitude of her mistake.
Samuel and I are truly happy, Celie. And so grateful to God that we are! We still keep a school for the littlest children; those eight and over are already workers in the fields. In order to pay rent for the barracks, taxes on the land, and to buy water and wood and food, everyone must work. So, we teach the young ones, babysit the babies, look after the old and sick, and attend birthing mothers. Our days are fuller than ever, our sojourn in England already a dream. But all things look brighter because I have a loving soul to share them with.
Your sister, Nettie
DEAREST NETTIE,
The man us knowed as Pa is dead.
How come you still call him Pa? Shug ast me the other day.
But, too late to call him Alphonso. I never even remember Ma calling him by his name. She always said, Your Pa. I reckon to make us believe it better. Anyhow, his little wife, Daisy, call me up on the telephone in the middle of the night.
Miss Celie, she say, I got bad news. Alphonso dead.
Who? I ast.
Alphonso, she say. Your stepdaddy.
How he die? I ast. I think of killing, being hit by