Read Online Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alice Walker
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never have imagined, on so old a person, such wild, abundant, glorious hair. It gave her the curious look of some ancient creature, which, even at rest, is about to spring.
He had the unaccountable sensation that she was his true grandmother, and that his actual grandmother, who dyed her white hair blond in order to enhance a distant resemblance to Patricia Nixon, was an imposter. This puzzled Suwelo, who, in the abstraction of his thoughts, had been staring fixedly at Miss Lissie’s reggae singer’s locks since she started talking and wondering how many there were.
“Exactly one hundred and thirteen,” she said, as if he’d spoken, before continuing her story.
“It is not, then, the very ancient past that I was conversant with as a child, even as a baby, but with the recent past of up to a few thousand years ago. I have always been a black woman. I say that without, I hope, any arrogance or undue pride, for I know this was just luck. And I speak of it as luck because of the struggle others have trying to discover who they are and what they should be doing and finding it difficult to know because of all the different and differing voices they are required to listen to. I have a friend in this lifetime who reminds me of myself, someone who has always been, in every lifetime, a black woman. Every word she speaks reveals this experience and is based on the ancient logic of her existence as who she is, and when she tries to manufacture the voices of others that were not there in her ancient being you hear it immediately in her voice. It becomes the voice of an almost disembodied person, though her words remain incisive, lucid, brilliantly skilled. But then, whenever she is free to speak as herself, everything has jagged edges, and listening to her is like hard walking with pebbles in your shoes. And you feel that if she judged you she would be very harsh. But underneath the armor of her voice and her skin there is this gentle person. But how many years have gone into creating the gentleness!
“I was never a gentle person. Maybe in the lifetimes I don’t recall, but in all the ones I do recall I was a fighter, someone who started trouble. Someone who was easily bored by other people and was offended if they tried to present their feeble point of view. For most people, as you know, remember nothing of other lifetimes, and no matter how old they get they never remember any better. They honestly think that when they were born their brain was a clean slate. I’ve actually heard this said! That babies have no memories; that they are empty of knowledge and experience; that, in fact, there is no one there. This is insane. Of course, the memories that they have appear to babies as dreams indecipherable to themselves because they are no longer in those contexts, and because babies lack the ability to speak any language, not simply the languages they spoke before. Of all the periods in one’s life, babyhood is the most pitiful and the most confusing. There you are, without anyone you know, surrounded by giants you may never have imagined existed. They are blowing their objectionable breath on you, oiling your skin with God knows what strange mixture, giving you food to eat that, in an earlier lifetime, might have been taboo. It is hideous! And as you lie there looking about, you summon just enough intelligence to understand this is the next classroom, these people are the next lesson you will be required to learn. Oh, the horror of it! That is the real reason babies sleep so much. Imagine where and to whom so many of them are born. They sleep to avoid the shock of the cruel thing that’s been done to them and to avoid the inevitable feeling of utter helplessness.
“I did not like my parents at all. My mother was rather clumsy and obviously untutored; she seemed to speak not only in a language I’d never spoken, but in a language newly invented. She spoke of ‘taters’ and ‘rotgut,’ ‘hog killin’ and ‘sugar
He had the unaccountable sensation that she was his true grandmother, and that his actual grandmother, who dyed her white hair blond in order to enhance a distant resemblance to Patricia Nixon, was an imposter. This puzzled Suwelo, who, in the abstraction of his thoughts, had been staring fixedly at Miss Lissie’s reggae singer’s locks since she started talking and wondering how many there were.
“Exactly one hundred and thirteen,” she said, as if he’d spoken, before continuing her story.
“It is not, then, the very ancient past that I was conversant with as a child, even as a baby, but with the recent past of up to a few thousand years ago. I have always been a black woman. I say that without, I hope, any arrogance or undue pride, for I know this was just luck. And I speak of it as luck because of the struggle others have trying to discover who they are and what they should be doing and finding it difficult to know because of all the different and differing voices they are required to listen to. I have a friend in this lifetime who reminds me of myself, someone who has always been, in every lifetime, a black woman. Every word she speaks reveals this experience and is based on the ancient logic of her existence as who she is, and when she tries to manufacture the voices of others that were not there in her ancient being you hear it immediately in her voice. It becomes the voice of an almost disembodied person, though her words remain incisive, lucid, brilliantly skilled. But then, whenever she is free to speak as herself, everything has jagged edges, and listening to her is like hard walking with pebbles in your shoes. And you feel that if she judged you she would be very harsh. But underneath the armor of her voice and her skin there is this gentle person. But how many years have gone into creating the gentleness!
“I was never a gentle person. Maybe in the lifetimes I don’t recall, but in all the ones I do recall I was a fighter, someone who started trouble. Someone who was easily bored by other people and was offended if they tried to present their feeble point of view. For most people, as you know, remember nothing of other lifetimes, and no matter how old they get they never remember any better. They honestly think that when they were born their brain was a clean slate. I’ve actually heard this said! That babies have no memories; that they are empty of knowledge and experience; that, in fact, there is no one there. This is insane. Of course, the memories that they have appear to babies as dreams indecipherable to themselves because they are no longer in those contexts, and because babies lack the ability to speak any language, not simply the languages they spoke before. Of all the periods in one’s life, babyhood is the most pitiful and the most confusing. There you are, without anyone you know, surrounded by giants you may never have imagined existed. They are blowing their objectionable breath on you, oiling your skin with God knows what strange mixture, giving you food to eat that, in an earlier lifetime, might have been taboo. It is hideous! And as you lie there looking about, you summon just enough intelligence to understand this is the next classroom, these people are the next lesson you will be required to learn. Oh, the horror of it! That is the real reason babies sleep so much. Imagine where and to whom so many of them are born. They sleep to avoid the shock of the cruel thing that’s been done to them and to avoid the inevitable feeling of utter helplessness.
“I did not like my parents at all. My mother was rather clumsy and obviously untutored; she seemed to speak not only in a language I’d never spoken, but in a language newly invented. She spoke of ‘taters’ and ‘rotgut,’ ‘hog killin’ and ‘sugar
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