Everyday Use for Your Grandmama (Alice Walker)
2009-09-12 17:01阅读：
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 'no' is a word the world never learned to say to her.
You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has 'made
it' is confronted, as a 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.
'How do I look, Mama?' Maggie says, showing just enough of her
thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know
she's there, almost hidden by the door.
'Come out into the yard,' I say.
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 'choose' to live, she will manage to
come see us. But she will never bring her friends. Maggie 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 school. Nervous 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. 'Come back here,' I say. And she stops
and tries to dig a well in the sand with her toe.
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.
'Uhnnnh,' is what it sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling
end of a snake just in front of your toot on the road.
'Uhnnnh.'
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 'Uhnnnh' again. It is her sister's
hair. It stands straight up like the wool on a sheep. It is black
as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about
like small lizards disappearing behind her ears.
'Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!' she says, coming on in that gliding way the
dress makes her move. The short stocky fellow with the hair to his
navel is all grinning and he follows up with 'Asalamalakim, my
mother and sister!' He moves to hug Maggie but she falls back,
right up against the back of my chair. I feel her trembling there
and when I look up I see the perspiration falling off her
chin.
'Don't get up,' says Dee. Since I am stout it takes something of
a push. You can see me 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.
'Well,' I say. 'Dee.'
'No, Mama,' she says. 'Not 'Dee', Wangero Leewanika
Kemanjo!'
'What happened to 'Dee'?' I wanted to know.
'She's dead,' Wangero said. 'I couldn't bear it any longer, being
named after the people who oppress me.'
'You know as well as me you was named after your aunt Dicle,' I
said. Dicie is my sister. She named Dee. We called her 'Big Dee'
after Dee was born.
'But who was she named after?' asked Wangero.
'I guess after Grandma Dee,' I said.
'And who was she named after?' asked Wangero.
'Her mother,' I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. 'That's
about as far back as I can trace it,' I said.
Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the
Civil War through the branches.
'Well,' said Asalamalakim, 'there you are.'
'Uhnnnh,' I heard Maggie say.
'There I was not,' I said, before 'Dicie' cropped up in our
family, so why should I try to trace 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.
'How do you pronounce this name?' I asked.
'You don't have to call me by it if you don't want to,' said
Wangero.
'Why shouldn't I?' I asked. 'If that's what you want us to call
you, we'll call you. '
'I know it might sound awkward at first,' said Wangero.
'I'll get used to it,' I said. 'Ream it out again.'
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.
'You must belong to those beet-cattle peoples down the road,' I
said. They said 'Asalamalakirn' when they met you too, but they
didn't Shake hands. Always too busy feeding the 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, 'I accept some of their doctrines, but
farming and raising cattle is not my style.' (They didn't tell me,
and I didn't ask, whether Wangero (Dee) had really gone and 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.
'Oh, Mama!' she cried. Then turned to Hakim-a-barber. 'I never
knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,'
she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench.
Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee's butter
dish. 'That's it!' she said. 'I knew there was something I wanted
to ask you if I could have.' She jumped up from 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.
'This churn top is what I need,' she said. 'Didn't Uncle Buddy
whittle it out of a tree you all used to have?'
'Yes,' I said.
'Uh huh, ' she said happily. 'And I want the dasher,too.'
'Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?' asked the barber.
Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.
'Aunt Dee's first husband whittled the dash,' said Maggie so low
you almost couldn't hear her. 'His name was Henry, but they called
him Stash.'
'Maggie's brain is like an elephants,' Wanglero said, laughing.
'I can use the churn top as a center piece for the alcove
table,”she said, sliding a plate over the churn, 'and I'll think of
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 make
butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a
lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk
into the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that
grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.
After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my
bed and started rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen
over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been
pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the
quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the
Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both
of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more
years ago. Bit sand pieces of Grandpa Jarrell's Paisley shirts. And
one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox,
that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the
Civil War.
'Mama,' Wangero said sweet as a bird. 'Can I have these old
quilts?'
I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the
kitchen door slammed.
'Why don't you take one or two of the others?” 1 asked. 'These
old things was just done by me and Big Dee from some tops your
grandma pieced before she died.'
'No,' said Wangero. 'I don't want those. They are stitched around
the borders by machine.'
'That'll make them last better,' I said.
'That's not the point,' said Wanglero. 'These are all pieces of
dresses Grandma used to wear. She did all this stitching by hand.
Imagine!' She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking
them.
'Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old
clothes her mother handed down to her,” I said, moving up to touch
the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved back just enough so that I couldn't
reach the quilts. They already belonged to her. 'Imagine!' she
breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.
'The truth is,' I said, 'I promised to give them quilts to
Maggie, for when she marries John Thomas.'
She gasped like a bee had stung her.
'Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!' she said. 'She'd probably
be backward enough to put them to everyday use.'
'I reckon she would,' I said. 'God knows I been savage ’em for
long enough with nobody using 'em. I hope she will! ” I didn't want
to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went
away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out
of style.
'But they're priceless!' she was saying now, furiously, for she
has a temper. 'Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years
they'd be in rags. Less than that!' 'She can always make some
more,” I said. 'Maggie knows how to quilt. '
Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. 'You just will not
understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts!'
'Well,' I said,, stumped. 'What would you do with them?'
'Hang them,' she said. As it that was the only thing you could do
with quilts.
Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the
sound her feet made as they scraped over each other.
'She can have them, Mama,” she said like somebody used to never
winning anything, or having anything reserved for her. 'I can
'member Grandma Dee without the quilts.'
I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with
checkerberry snuff and it gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog
look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt
herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the folds
of her skirt. She looked at her sister with something like fear but
she wasn't mad at her. This was Maggie's portion. This was the way
she knew God to work.
When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my
head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I'm in
church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout.
I did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then
dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss
Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap. Maggie just sat
there on my bed with her mouth open.
'Take one or two of the others,' I said to Dee.
But she turned without a word and went out to
Hakim-a-barber.
'You just don't understand,' she said, as Maggie and I came out
to the car.
'What don't I under stand?' I wanted to know.
'Your heritage,' she said. And then she turned to Maggie, kissed
her, and said, 'You ought to try to make some-thing of yourself,
too, Maggie. It's really a new day for us. But from the way you and
Mama still live you'd never know it.'
She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of
her nose and her chin.
Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real mile, not
scared. After we watched the car dust settle I asked Maggie to
bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just
enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed.
