Color Purple Collection Page 12

  The stranger who married the widow was someone Samuel had run with long before he found Christ. When the man showed up at Samuel’s house with first Olivia and then Adam, Samuel felt not only unable to refuse the children, but as if God had answered his and Corrine’s prayers.

  He never told Corrine about the man or about the children’s “mother” because he hadn’t wanted any sadness to cloud her happiness.

  But then, out of nowhere, I appeared. He put two and two together, remembered that his old running buddy had always been a scamp, and took me in without any questions. Which, to tell the truth, had always puzzled me, but I put it down to Christian charity. Corrine had asked me once whether I was running away from home. But I explained I was a big girl now, my family back home very large and poor, and it was time for me to get out and earn my own living.

  Tears had soaked my blouse when Samuel finished telling me all this. I couldn’t begin, then, to tell him the truth. But Celie, I can tell you. And I pray with all my heart that you will get this letter, if none of the others.

  Pa is not our pa!

  Your devoted Sister, Nettie

  DEAR GOD,

  That’s it, say Shug. Pack your stuff. You coming back to Tennessee with me.

  But I feels daze.

  My daddy lynch. My mama crazy. All my little half-brothers and sisters no kin to me. My children not my sister and brother. Pa not pa.

  You must be sleep.

  DEAR NETTIE,

  For the first time in my life I wanted to see Pa. So me and Shug dress up in our new blue flower pants that match and big floppy Easter hats that match too, cept her roses red, mine yellow, and us clam in the Packard and glide over there. They put in paved roads all up and down the county now and twenty miles go like nothing.

  I saw Pa once since I left home. One day me and Mr. _____ was loading up the wagon at the feed store. Pa was with May Ellen and she was trying to fix her stocking. She was bent down over her leg and twisting the stocking into a knot above her knee, and he was standing over her tap-tap-tapping on the gravel with his cane. Look like he was thinking bout hitting her with it.

  Mr. _____ went up to them all friendly, with his hand stuck out, but I kept loading the wagon and looking at the patterns on the sacks. I never thought I’d ever want to see him again.

  Well, it was a bright Spring day, sort of chill at first, like it be round Easter, and the first thing us notice soon as we turn into the lane is how green everything is, like even though the ground everywhere else not warmed up good, Pa’s land is warm and ready to go. Then all along the road there’s Easter lilies and jonquils and daffodils and all kinds of little early wildflowers. Then us notice all the birds singing they little cans off, all up and down the hedge, that itself is putting out little yellow flowers smell like Virginia creeper. It all so different from the rest of the country us drive through, it make us real quiet. I know this sound funny, Nettie, but even the sun seemed to stand a little longer over our heads.

  Well, say Shug, all this is pretty enough. You never said how pretty it was.

  It wasn’t this pretty, I say. Every Easter time it used to flood, and all us children had colds. Anyhow, I say, us stuck close to the house, and it sure ain’t so hot.

  That ain’t so hot? she ast, as we swung up a long curving hill I didn’t remember, right up to a big yellow two story house with green shutters and a steep green shingle roof.

  I laughed. Us must have took the wrong turn, I say. This some white person’s house.

  It was so pretty though that us stop the car and just set looking at it.

  What kind of trees all them flowering? ast Shug.

  I don’t know, I say. Look like peach, plum, apple, maybe cherry. But whatever they is, they sure pretty.

  All round the house, all in back of it, nothing but blooming trees. Then more lilies and jonquils and roses clamming over everything. And all the time the little birds from all over the rest of the county sit up in these trees just going to town.

  Finally, after us look at it awhile, I say, it so quiet, nobody home, I guess.

  Naw, say Shug, probably in church. A nice bright Sunday like this.

  Us better leave then, I say, before whoever it is lives here gits back. But just as I say that I notice my eye is staying on a fig tree it recognize, and us hear a car turning up the drive. Who should be in the car but Pa and some young girl look like his child.

  He git out on his side, then go round to open the door for her. She dress to kill in a pink suit, big pink hat and pink shoes, a little pink purse hanging on her arm. They look at our license tag and then come up to the car. She put her hand through his arm.

  Morning, he says, when he gits up to Shug’s window.

  Morning, she says slow, and I can tell he not what she expect.

  Anything I can do for you? He ain’t notice me and probably wouldn’t even if he looked at me.

  Shug say, under her breath, Is this him?

  I say, Yeah.

  What shock Shug and shock me too is how young he look. He look older than the child he with, even if she is dress up like a woman, but he look young for somebody to be anybody that got grown children and nearly grown grandchildren. But then I remember, he not my daddy, just my children daddy.

  What your mama do, ast Shug, rob the cradle?

  But he not so young.

  I brought Celie, say Shug. Your daughter Celie. She wanted to visit you. Got some questions to ast.

  He seem to think back a second. Celie? he say. Like, Who Celie? Then he say, Yall git out and come up on the porch. Daisy, he say to the little woman with him, go tell Hetty to hold dinner. She squeeze his arm, reach up and kiss him on the jaw. He turn his head and watch her go up the walk, up the steps, and through the front door. He follow us up the steps, up on the porch, help us pull out rocking chairs, then say, Now, what yall want?

  The children here? I ast.

  What children? he say. Then he laugh. Oh, they gone with they mama. She up and left me, you know. Went back to her folks. Yeah, he say, you would remember May Ellen.

  Why she leave? I ast.

  He laugh some more. Got too old for me, I reckon.

  Then the little woman come back out and sit on the armrest of his chair. He talk to us and fondle her arm.

  This Daisy, he say. My new wife.

  Why, say Shug, you don’t look more than fifteen.

  I ain’t, say Daisy.

  I’m surprise your people let you marry.

  She shrug, look at Pa. They work for him, she say. Live on his land.

  I’m her people now, he say.

  I feels so sick I almost gag. Nettie in Africa, I say. A missionary. She wrote me that you ain’t our real Pa.

  Well, he say. So now you know.

  Daisy look at me with pity all over her face. It just like him to keep that from you, she say. He told me how he brought up two little girls that wasn’t even his, she say. I don’t think I really believed it, till now.

  Naw, he never told them, say Shug.

  What a old sweetie pie, say Daisy, kissing him on top the head. He fondle and fondle her arm. Look at me and grin.

  Your daddy didn’t know how to git along, he say. Whitefolks lynch him. Too sad a story to tell pitiful little growing girls, he say. Any man would have done what I done.

  Maybe not, say Shug.

  He look at her, then look at me. He can tell she know. But what do he care?

  Take me, he say, I know how they is. The key to all of ’em is money. The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give ’em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass. So what I did was just right off offer to give ’em money. Before I planted a seed, I made sure this one and that one knowed one seed out of three was planted for him. Before I ground a grain of wheat, the same thing. And when I opened up your daddy’s old store in town, I bought me my own white boy to run it. And
what make it so good, he say, I bought him with whitefolks’ money.

  Ask the busy man your questions, Celie, say Shug. I think his dinner getting cold.

  Where my daddy buried, I ast. That all I really want to know.

  Next to your mammy, he say.

  Any marker, I ast.

  He look at me like I’m crazy. Lynched people don’t git no marker, he say. Like this something everybody know.

  Mama got one? I ast.

  He say, Naw.

  The birds sing just as sweet when us leave as when us come. Then, look like as soon as us turn back on the main road, they stop. By the time us got to the cemetery, the sky gray.

  Us look for Ma and Pa. Hope for some scrap of wood that say something. But us don’t find nothing but weeds and cockleburrs and paper flowers fading on some of the graves. Shug pick up a old horseshoe somebody horse lose. Us took that old horseshoe and us turned round and round together until we were dizzy enough to fall out, and where us would have fell us stuck the horseshoe in the ground.

  Shug say, Us each other’s peoples now, and kiss me.

  DEAR CELIE,

  I woke up this morning bound to tell Corrine and Samuel everything. I went over to their hut and pulled up a stool next to Corrine’s bed. She’s so weak by now that all she can do is look unfriendly—and I could tell I wasn’t welcome.

  I said, Corrine, I’m here to tell you and Samuel the truth.

  She said, Samuel already told me. If the children yours, why didn’t you just say so?

  Samuel said, Now, honey.

  She said, Don’t Now Honey me. Nettie swore on the bible to tell me the truth. To tell God the truth, and she lied.

  Corrine, I said, I didn’t lie. I sort of turned my back more on Samuel and whispered: You saw my stomach, I said.

  What do I know about pregnancy, she said. I never experienced it myself. For all I know, women may be able to rub out all the signs.

  They can’t rub out stretch marks, I said. Stretch marks go right into the skin, and a woman’s stomach stretches enough so that it keeps a little pot, like all the women have here.

  She turned her face to the wall.

  Corrine, I said, I’m the children’s aunt. Their mother is my older sister, Celie.

  Then I told them the whole story. Only Corrine was still not convinced.

  You and Samuel telling so many lies, who can believe anything you say? she asked.

  You’ve got to believe Nettie, said Samuel. Though the part about you and Pa was a real shock to him.

  Then I remembered what you told me about seeing Corrine and Samuel and Olivia in town, when she was buying cloth to make her and Olivia dresses, and how you sent me to her because she was the only woman you’d ever seen with money. I tried to make Corrine remember that day, but she couldn’t.

  She gets weaker and weaker, and unless she can believe us and start to feel something for her children, I fear we will lose her.

  Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

  Pray for us,

  Nettie

  DEAREST CELIE,

  Every day for the past week I’ve been trying to get Corrine to remember meeting you in town. I know if she can just recall your face, she will believe Olivia (if not Adam) is your child. They think Olivia looks like me, but that is only because I look like you. Olivia has your face and eyes, exactly. It amazes me that Corrine didn’t see the resemblance.

  Remember the main street of town? I asked. Remember the hitching post in front of Finley’s dry goods store? Remember how the store smelled like peanut shells?

  She says she remembers all this, but no men speaking to her.

  Then I remember her quilts. The Olinka men make beautiful quilts which are full of animals and birds and people. And as soon as Corrine saw them, she began to make a quilt that alternated one square of appliqued figures with one nine-patch block, using the clothes the children had outgrown, and some of her old dresses.

  I went to her trunk and started hauling out quilts.

  Don’t touch my things, said Corrine. I’m not gone yet.

  I held up first one and then another to the light, trying to find the first one I remembered her making. And trying to remember, at the same time, the dresses she and Olivia were wearing the first months I lived with them.

  Aha, I said, when I found what I was looking for, and laid the quilt across the bed.

  Do you remember buying this cloth? I asked, pointing to a flowered square. And what about this checkered bird?

  She traced the patterns with her finger, and slowly her eyes filled with tears.

  She was so much like Olivia! she said. I was afraid she’d want her back. So I forgot her as soon as I could. All I let myself think about was how the clerk treated me! I was acting like somebody because I was Samuel’s wife, and a Spelman Seminary graduate, and he treated me like any ordinary nigger. Oh, my feelings were hurt! And I was mad! And that’s what I thought about, even told Samuel about, on the way home. Not about your sister—what was her name?—Celie? Nothing about her.

  She began to cry in earnest. Me and Samuel holding her hands.

  Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I said. My sister was glad to see Olivia with you. Glad to see her alive. She thought both her children were dead.

  Poor thing! said Samuel. And we sat there talking a little and holding on to each other until Corrine fell off to sleep.

  But, Celie, in the middle of the night she woke up, turned to Samuel and said: I believe. And died anyway.

  Your Sister in Sorrow, Nettie

  DEAREST CELIE,

  Just when I think I’ve learned to live with the heat, the constant dampness, even steaminess of my clothes, the swampiness under my arms and between my legs, my friend comes. And cramps and aches and pains—but I must still keep going as if nothing is happening, or be an embarrassment to Samuel, the children and myself. Not to mention the villagers, who think women who have their friends should not even be seen.

  Right after her mother’s death, Olivia got her friend; she and Tashi tend to each other is my guess. Nothing is said to me, in any event, and I don’t know how to bring the subject up. Which feels wrong to me; but if you talk to an Olinka girl about her private parts, her mother and father will be annoyed, and it is very important to Olivia not to be looked upon as an outsider. Although the one ritual they do have to celebrate womanhood is so bloody and painful, I forbid Olivia to even think about it.

  Do you remember how scared I was when it first happened to me? I thought I had cut myself. But thank God you were there to tell me I was all right.

  We buried Corrine in the Olinka way, wrapped in barkcloth under a large tree. All of her sweet ways went with her. All of her education and a heart intent on doing good. She taught me so much! I know I will miss her always. The children were stunned by their mother’s death. They knew she was very sick, but death is not something they think about in relation to their parents or themselves. It was a strange little procession. All of us in our white robes and with our faces painted white. Samuel is like someone lost. I don’t believe they’ve spent a night apart since their marriage.

  And how are you? dear Sister. The years have come and gone without a single word from you. Only the sky above us do we hold in common. I look at it often as if, somehow, reflected from its immensities, I will one day find myself gazing into your eyes. Your dear, large, clean and beautiful eyes. Oh, Celie! My life here is nothing but work, work, work, and worry. What girlhood I might have had passed me by. And I have nothing of my own. No man, no children, no close friend, except for Samuel. But I do have children, Adam and Olivia. And I do have friends, Tashi and Catherine. I even have a family—this village, which has fallen on such hard times.

  Now the engineers have come to inspect the territory. Two white men came yesterday and spent a couple of hours strolling about the village, mainly looking at the wells. Such is the innate politeness of the Olinka that they rushed about preparing
food for them, though precious little is left, since many of the gardens that flourish at this time of the year have been destroyed. And the white men sat eating as if the food was beneath notice.

  It is understood by the Olinka that nothing good is likely to come from the same persons who destroyed their houses, but custom dies hard. I did not speak to the men myself, but Samuel did. He said their talk was all of workers, kilometers of land, rainfall, seedlings, machinery, and whatnot. One seemed totally indifferent to the people around him—simply eating and then smoking and staring off into the distance—and the other, somewhat younger, appeared to be enthusiastic about learning the language. Before, he says, it dies out.

  I did not enjoy watching Samuel speaking to either of them. The one who hung on every word, or the one who looked through Samuel’s head.

  Samuel gave me all of Corrine’s clothes, and I need them, though none of our clothing is suitable in this climate. This is true even of the clothing the Africans wear. They used to wear very little, but the ladies of England introduced the Mother Hubbard, a long, cumbersome, ill-fitting dress, completely shapeless, that inevitably gets dragged in the fire, causing burns aplenty. I have never been able to bring myself to wear one of these dresses, which all seem to have been made with giants in mind, so I was glad to have Corrine’s things. At the same time, I dreaded putting them on. I remembered her saying we should stop wearing each other’s clothes. And the memory pained me.

  Are you sure Sister Corrine would want this? I asked Samuel.

  Yes, Sister Nettie, he said. Try not to hold her fears against her. At the end she understood, and believed. And forgave—whatever there was to forgive.

  I should have said something sooner, I said.

  He asked me to tell him about you, and the words poured out like water. I was dying to tell someone about us. I told him about my letters to you every Christmas and Easter, and about how much it would have meant to us if he had gone to see you after I left. He was sorry he hesitated to become involved.

  If only I’d understood then what I know now! he said.