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Everyday Use for your grandmama
Alice Walker
I will wait for
her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean
and wavy yester day
afternoon. A yard
like this is more comfortable than most people
know. It is not just a yard. It is
like
an extended living room. When the hard clay is
swept clean as a floor and the fine sand
around the edges lined with tiny,
irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and
look up into the
elm tree and wait for
the breezes that never come inside the house.
Maggie will be nervous until after her
sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners,
homely and
ashamed of the burn scars
down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a
mixture of envy and
awe. She thinks her
sister has held life always in the palm of one
hand, that
world never learned to say
to her.
You've
no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who
has
surprise, by her own mother and
father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A
Pleasant surprise,
of course: What
would they do if parent and child came on the show
only to curse out and insult
each
other?) On TV mother and child embrace and smile
into each other's face. Sometimes the
mother and father weep, the child wraps
them in her arms and leans across the table to
tell how
she would not have made it
without their help. I have seen these programs.
Sometimes I
dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly
brought together on a TV
program of
this sort. Out of a cark and soft-seated limousine
I am ushered into a bright room filled
with many people. There I meet a
smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who
shakes my
hand and tells me what a fine
girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is
embracing me with
tear s in her eyes.
She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though
she has told me once that she
thinks or
chides are tacky flowers.
In real life I am a large, big-boned
woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter
I
wear flannel nightgowns to bed and
overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a
hog as
mercilessly as a man. My fat
keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside
all day, breaking
ice to get water for
washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open
tire minutes after it comes
steaming
from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf
straight in the brain between the eyes
with a sledge hammer and had the meat
hung up to chill be-fore nightfall. But of course
all this
does not show on television. I
am the way my daughter would want me to be: a
hundred pounds
lighter, my skin like an
uncooked barley pan-cake. My hair glistens in the
hot bright lights. Johnny
Car
–
son has much to do to keep
up with my quick and witty tongue.
But that is a mistake. I
know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a
Johnson with a quick
tongue? Who can
even imagine me looking a strange white man in the
eye? It seems to me I have
talked to
them always with one toot raised in flight, with
my head turned in whichever way is
farthest from them. Dee, though. She
would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation
was no part
of her nature.
pink skirt and
red blouse for me to know she's there, almost
hidden by the door.
Have
you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run
over by some careless person rich
enough to own a car, sidle up to
someone who is ignorant enough to be kind of him?
That is the
way my Maggie walks. She
has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground,
feet in shuffle, ever
since the fire
that burned the other house to the ground.
Dee is lighter
than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure.
She's a woman now, though
sometimes I
forget. How long ago was it that the other house
burned? Ten, twelve years?
Sometimes I
can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms
sticking to me, her hair smoking and
her dress falling off her in little
black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched
open, blazed open
by the flames
reflect-ed in them. And Dee. I see her standing
off under the sweet gum tree she
used
to dig gum out of; a look at concentration on her
face as she watched the last dingy gray
board of the house tall in toward the
red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a dance
around the
ashes? I'd wanted to ask
her. She had hated the house that much.
I used to think
she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we
raised the money, the church
and me, to
send her to Augusta to school. She used to read to
us without pity, forcing words, lies,
other folks' habits, whole lives upon
us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath
her voice. She
washed us in a river of
make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we
didn't necessarily
need to know.
Pressed us to her with the serious way she read,
to shove us away at just the
moment,
like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.
Dee wanted nice
things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her
graduation from high school;
black
pumps to match a green suit she'd made from an old
suit somebody gave me. She was
determined to stare down any disaster
in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for
minutes at a
time. Often I fought off
the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a
style of her own' and
knew what style
was.
I never
had an education myself. After second grade the
school was closed down. Don't ask
me
why. in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than
they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me.
She stumbles along good-naturedly but
can't see well. She knows she is not bright. Like
good
looks and money, quickness passed
her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy
teeth in
an earnest face) and then I'll
be free to sit here and I guess just sing church
songs to myself.
Although I never was a
good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was
always better at a man's job.
1 used to
love to milk till I was hooked in the side in '49.
Cows are soothing and slow and don't
bother you, unless you try to milk them
the wrong way.
I have deliberately turned my back on
the house. It is three rooms, just like the one
that
burned, except the roof is tin:
they don't make shingle roofs any more. There are
no real windows,
just some holes cut in
the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not
round and not square, with
rawhide
holding the shutter s up on the outside. This
house is in a pasture, too, like the other one.
No doubt when Dee sees it she will want
to tear it down. She wrote me once that no matter
where
we
and I thought about
this and Maggie asked me, Mama, when did Dee ever
have any friends?
She had a few. Furtive boys in pink
shirts hanging about on washday after s
girls who never laughed. Impressed with
her they worshiped the well-turned phrase, the
cute shape,
the scalding humor that
erupted like bubbles in lye. She read to them.
When she was
courting Jimmy T she didn't have much time to pay
to us, but turned all her
faultfinding
power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl
from a family of ignorant flashy
people. She hardly had time to
recompose herself.
When she comes I will meet -- but there
they are!
Maggie attempts to make a
dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I
stay her with my hand.
It is hard to see them
clearly through the strong sun. But even the first
glimpse of leg out of
the car tells me
it is Dee. Her feet were always neat-looking, as
it God himself had shaped them
with a
certain style. From the other side of the car
comes a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his
head a foot long and hanging from his
chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suck in
her breath.
your toot on the
road.
Dee
next.A dress down to the ground, in this hot
weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes.
There are yel-lows and oranges enough
to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my
whole face
warming from the heat waves
it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging
down to her shoulders.
Bracelets
dangling and making noises when she moves her arm
up to shake the folds of the dress
out
of her armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and
as she walks closer, I like it. I hear Maggie go
night and around the edges
are two long pigtails that rope about like small
lizards disappearing
behind her ears.
short stocky fellow with the
hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows
up with
my mother and
sister!
my chair. I feel her trembling
there and when I look up I see the perspiration
falling off her chin.
trying to move a second or
two before I make it. She turns, showing white
heels through her
sandals, and goes
back to the car. Out she peeks next with a
Polaroid. She stoops down quickly
and
lines up picture after picture of me sitting there
in front of the house with Maggie cowering
behind me. She never takes a shot
without making sure the house is included. When a
cow comes
nibbling around the edge of
the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the
house. Then she puts
the Polaroid in
the back seat of the car, and comes up and kisses
me on the forehead.
Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through
motions with Maggie's hand. Maggie's hand is as
limp as a fish, and probably as cold,
despite the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it
back. It looks
like Asalamalakim wants
to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe
he don't know how
people shake hands.
Anyhow, he soon gives up on Maggie.
oppress me.
She named Dee.
We called her
trace it,
Though, in fact, I probably
could have carried it back beyond the Civil War
through the
branches.
it that far back?
He just stood there
grinning, looking down on me like somebody
inspecting a Model A car.
Every once in
a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my
head.
Well, soon we got the name out of the
way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and
three times as hard. After I tripped
over it two or three times he told me to just call
him
Hakim-a-barber. I wanted to ask him
was he a barber, but I didn't really think he was,
so I don't
ask.
cattle, fixing
the fences, putting up salt-lick shelters,
throwing down hay. When the white folks
poisoned some of the herd the men
stayed up all night with rifles in their hands. I
walked a mile
and a half just to see
the sight.
Hakim-a-barber said,
my
style.
married him.)
We sat down to eat and
right away he said he didn't eat collards and pork
was unclean.
Wangero, though, went on
through the chitlins and corn bread, the greens
and every-thing else.
She talked a blue
streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything
delighted her. Even the fact that we
still used the benches her daddy made
for the table when we couldn't afford to buy
chairs.
benches are. You can feel
the rump prints,
the bench. Then she
gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee's
butter dish.
she said.
the
table and went over in the corner where the churn
stood, the milk in it clabber by now. She
looked at the churn and looked at it.
used
to have?
Dee
(Wangero) looked up at me.
her.
center piece for the alcove
table,”she said, sliding a plate over the churn,
something artistic to do with the
dasher.
When she
finished wrapping the dasher the handle stuck out.
I took it for a moment in my
hands. You
didn't even have to look close to see where hands
pushing the dasher up and down to