You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down_ Stories - Alice Walker [60]
Source called out sharply. There was a flurry of movement in the kitchen, and his other two daughters came and stood next to the one who had remained beside the bed.
“Nobody’s anything,” he repeated. The daughter began to write down his words. Through her rather bedraggled sari it was clear she was pregnant.
“I used to live in Africa, in Uganda,” continued Source, “and the Africans wanted to be black black black. They were always saying it: black black black. But that is because Africans are backward people. You see? Indians do not go about saying, ‘We are brown brown brown,’ or the Chinese, ‘yellow yellow yellow.’”
“No,” said Irene, “they say they are Chinese Chinese Chinese and Indian Indian Indian.”
However, it was out of line to speak while Source spoke. He continued as if she had not interrupted.
“Africans are strange creatures. I will tell you a story that really happened in Africa. An African…”
It was such an ancient racist joke, Irene had not heard it since she was a small child. “The African” in it as stupid, lazy, backward and unmotivated to improve as any colonialist could wish. Tranquility, Peace and Calm and even the baby—whose vicariously stoned response to the world was a look of slack wonder—giggled.
“Where are you going?” asked Tranquility, as Irene rose.
“I’ll meet you on the street,” Irene said.
On the way back, Peace and Calm talked disjointedly of ego and humility and how they now, since knowing Source, had none of the former and lots of the latter. It was hinted that Irene might likewise be improved.
“Is the pregnant daughter married?” she asked coldly.
“Why should she be?” asked Calm.
“She has Source,” sniffed Peace.
Which was precisely what Irene feared, but she decided against pursuing it.
“Who supports Source?” she asked.
“We all do,” they said proudly. “Source is too precious to waste his life working.”
A moment later, Tranquility said, “He’s a teacher, like you. Teaching is his work.”
“I’m sorry,” said Anastasia next day. “But we have decided you have to go.”
“What?” asked Irene.
“You disapprove of us.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Listen,” said Anastasia. “I’ve finally got my life together, and it’s all thanks to Source. I understand I am nothing. That is what Source was testing you to see. You still think you are Somebody. That you matter. That Africans matter. They don’t,” she said. “And if they are nothing—if nobody’s anything—it is impossible to humiliate them.”
“But he’s a racist; he treats his daughters like slaves.”
“He is above all that. You don’t understand. Right. But see, if nobody’s anything, everyone is equal. That’s clear enough, isn’t it?”
“Clear enough, but impossible.”
“Before I had my breakdown I didn’t understand either. I wanted to be Kathleen Cleaver. I met her once at a party in New York before she was Kathleen Cleaver. She had long, straight, light-colored hair, like mine, just like mine, and she sat in a corner all evening without saying a word. Not one. Men did all the talking. Months later, she changed. Suddenly she was doing the talking because the men were dead or in jail. She cursed a lot, she dressed in boots and sunglasses and black clothes and posed for photographers holding a gun. I did all that. I even found a revolutionary black man to live with who beat me—and thought nothing of forbidding me to talk to what he considered ‘strangers,’ even though they were my friends.
“My parents came from Arkansas and got me. They had me locked away in a ‘rest’ home. It was a long time before I could see their point of view.
“When I was a child I wanted to change things. When the sit-ins started I wanted to join. I wanted to integrate schools and lunch counters. But I was so fair, and I’d never even seen my own hair unstraightened; mother started having it straightened when I was three, for God’s sake.… But my color wasn’t the problem. Oh God, I’m so bored with color being the problem. It was my undeveloped comprehension of the world. My parents already had the Truth, which is why they love Source so much, as much as I do. They knew nobody’s anything,