You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down_ Stories - Alice Walker [43]
So it was just sex between us, after all, I thought.
(To be fair, I was engaged to a young man in the Peace Corps. I didn’t mind if it was just sex, since by that time our mutual lust had reached a state, almost, of mysticism.)
Laurel, however, was tormented.
(I never told him about my engagement. As far as I was concerned, it remained to be seen whether my engagement was relevant to my relationships with others. I thought not, but realized I was still quite young.)
That night, Laurel wrung his hands, pulled his strangely cut hair and cried, as we brazenly walked out along Atlanta’s dangerous, cracker-infested streets.
I cried because he did, and because in some odd way it relieved my lust. Besides, I enjoyed watching myself pretend to suffer.… Such moments of emotional dishonesty are always paid for, however, and that I did not know this at the time attests to my willingness to believe our relationship would not live past the moment itself.
And yet.
There was one letter from him to me after I’d settled in a small Georgia town (a) to picket the jailhouse where a local schoolteacher was under arrest for picketing the jailhouse where a local parent was under arrest for picketing the jailhouse where a local child was under arrest for picketing…and (b) to register voters.
He wrote that he missed me.
I missed him. He was the principal other actor in all my fantasies. I wrote him that I was off to Africa, but would continue to write. I gave him the address of my school, to which he could send letters.
Once in Africa, my fiancé (who was conveniently in the next country from mine and free to visit) and I completed a breakup that had been coming for our entire two-year period of engagement. He told me, among other things, that it was not uncommon for Peace Corps men to sleep with ten-year-old African girls. At that age, you see, they were still attractive. I wrote about that aspect of the Peace Corps’ activities to Laurel, as if I’d heard about it from a stranger.
Laurel, I felt, would never take advantage of a ten-year-old child. And I loved him for it.
Loving him, I was not prepared for the absence of letters from him, back at my school. Three months after my return I still had heard nothing. Out of depression over this and the distraction schoolwork provided, I was a practicing celibate. Only rarely did I feel lustful, and then of course I always thought of Laurel, as of a great opportunity, much missed. I thought of his musical speech and his scent of apples and May wine with varying degrees of regret and tenderness. However, our week of passion—magical, memorable, but far too brief—gradually assumed a less than central place even in my most sanguine recollections.
In late November, six months after Laurel and I met, I received a letter from his wife.
My first thought, when I saw the envelope, was: She has the same last name as his. It was the first time their marriage was real for me. I was also frightened that she wrote to accuse me of disturbing her peace. Why else would a wife write?
She wrote that on July fourth of the previous summer (six weeks after Laurel and I met) Laurel had had an automobile accident. He was driving his van, delivering copies of First Rebel. He had either fallen asleep at the wheel or been run off the road by local rebels of the other kind. He had sustained a broken leg, a fractured back, and a severely damaged brain. He had been in a coma for the past four months. Nothing could rouse him. She had found my letter in his pocket. Perhaps I would come see him?
(I was never to meet Laurel’s wife, but I admired this gesture then, and I admire it now.)
It was a small Catholic hospital in Laurel’s hometown. In the entryway a bloody, gruesome, ugly Christ the color of a rutabaga stood larger than life. Nuns dressed in black and