You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down_ Stories - Alice Walker [0]
Alice Walker
This book is dedicated to my contemporaries
I thank my sister Ruth for the stories she tells.
I thank Bessie Head, Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Wa Thiong’o Ngugi, Okot p’Bitek and Ousmane Sembene for the stories they write.
I thank Gloria Steinem, Joanne Edgar and Suzanne Braun Levine of Ms. magazine, who greeted each of the many stories Ms. published from this collection with sisterly welcome and enthusiasm.
I thank Ma Rainey, Bessie (A Good Man Is Hard to Find) Smith, Mamie Smith and Perry (You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down) Bradford, among others of their generation, for insisting on the value and beauty of the authentic.
Contents
Nineteen Fifty-Five
How Did I Get Away with Killing One of the Biggest Lawyers in the State? It Was Easy.
Elethia
The Lover
Petunias
Coming Apart
Fame
The Abortion
Porn
Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells
Laurel
A Letter of the Times, or Should This Sado-Masochism Be Saved?
A Sudden Trip Home in the Spring
Source
A Biography of Alice Walker
It is harder to kill something that is spiritually alive than it is to bring the dead back to life.
—Hermann Hesse
Nineteen Fifty-Five
1955
The car is a brandnew red Thunderbird convertible, and it’s passed the house more than once. It slows down real slow now, and stops at the curb. An older gentleman dressed like a Baptist deacon gets out on the side near the house, and a young fellow who looks about sixteen gets out on the driver’s side. They are white, and I wonder what in the world they doing in this neighborhood.
Well, I say to J. T., put your shirt on, anyway, and let me clean these glasses offa the table.
We had been watching the ballgame on TV. I wasn’t actually watching, I was sort of daydreaming, with my foots up in J. T.’s lap.
I seen ’em coming on up the walk, brisk, like they coming to sell something, and then they rung the bell, and J. T. declined to put on a shirt but instead disappeared into the bedroom where the other television is. I turned down the one in the living room; I figured I’d be rid of these two double quick and J. T. could come back out again.
Are you Gracie Mae Still? asked the old guy, when I opened the door and put my hand on the lock inside the screen.
And I don’t need to buy a thing, said I.
What makes you think we’re sellin’? he asks, in that hearty Southern way that makes my eyeballs ache.
Well, one way or another and they’re inside the house and the first thing the young fellow does is raise the TV a couple of decibels. He’s about five feet nine, sort of womanish looking, with real dark white skin and a red pouting mouth. His hair is black and curly and he looks like a Loosianna Creole.
About one of your songs, says the deacon. He is maybe sixty, with white hair and beard, white silk shirt, black linen suit, black tie and black shoes. His cold gray eyes look like they’re sweating.
One of my songs?
Traynor here just loves your songs. Don’t you, Traynor? He nudges Traynor with his elbow. Traynor blinks, says something I can’t catch in a pitch I don’t register.
The boy learned to sing and dance livin’ round you people out in the country. Practically cut his teeth on you.
Traynor looks up at me and bites his thumbnail.
I laugh.
Well, one way or another they leave with my agreement that they can record one of my songs. The deacon writes me a check for five hundred dollars, the boy grunts his awareness of the transaction, and I am laughing all over myself by the time I rejoin J. T.
Just as I am snuggling down beside him though I hear the front door bell going off again.
Forgit his hat? asks J. T.
I hope not, I say.
The deacon stands there leaning on the door frame and once again I’m thinking of those sweaty-looking eyeballs of his. I wonder if sweat makes your eyeballs pink because his are sure pink. Pink and gray and it strikes me that nobody I’d care to know is behind them.
I forgot one little thing, he says pleasantly. I forgot to tell you Traynor and I would like to buy up all of those records you made of the song.