By the Light of My Father's Smile

by Alice Walker

  That is how it is, said Manuelito. That is one way you know that your love was fulfilled. There is no need to think about the loved one anymore. You were with her when she died, no?

  Oh yes, I said. I never left her side. She died in my arms. After she died, I said, I kissed her body good-bye. She died of a horrible cancer, I said; her body was in bad shape. It did not matter. It had held her spirit; but I also continued to love it just because it belonged to her. I belonged to her. I was a mess myself.

  And she loved you?

  Yes, I said, I know that she did.

  The Mundo have a saying that any real love completes itself. The way that you tell a love is not real is that it is always unfinished. It is just sort of hanging there, maybe throughout your whole life, this ache, this longing.

  And why is that? I asked him.

  It is because when you truly love someone you wish them no suffering, although they must suffer, just in the course of life. You are always reaching out to them, to heal them. They instinctively do the same for you.

  It was like that with us, yes, I said.

  Manuelito seemed to smirk. We know, he said.

  What? I asked.

  Did you ever wonder why we bothered with you, Señor? We knew right away that you were a man whose voice was separated from his mind. We needed the protection your presence gave our village, but there had been priests before and we had completely shut them out. You were the only one permitted to stay with us for so long.

  I would like to know, I said to Manuelito.

  It is because you were always making love to your wife.

  If I had had a jaw it would have dropped.

  Manuelito chuckled.

  You rotten little bastards! I said.

  No, no, Señor Robinson, it was not the children who were spying on you! What have I been telling you about the Mundo way of life?

  Who, then? I asked.

  Naturally, said Manuelito, it was the elders.

  The elders? I said. Those old men?

  And women. Yes, said Manuelito. You will remember that the elders thought no one was finer than Mad Dog Magdalena. Well, the elder who gave her that name died while you were still in the village. She witnessed your beating of Magdalena. We learned how you had hurt her because our elder told us about it in dreams. But before that, as part of her job as a guardian of the village, she kept watch over you, and told us how it was with you and Señora Robinson. Before her, it was another elder. The Mundo always have elders who keep eyes on the priest. Experience has taught us that these elders should be women, because as women they are less likely to identify with the priests, which we call being sucked into the black cloth.

  But this is preposterous! I said.

  Manuelito laughed. Some of the people they sent to us would not touch a woman. They did not like a woman’s long hair; they did not like her laughter or her breasts; they did not like her smell. We knew those men would lead us straight off the face of the earth.

  But you loved woman, he continued. At least, you loved Señora Robinson. You seemed to know that it is when making love that we make life. Alas, you became confused about this when your own daughter followed in your footsteps. Yes, he said, Magdalena knew just what you knew. She discovered this, I am proud to say, with me.

  Will you ever forgive me? I asked Manuelito, because I could see it was the only question worthy of our apparently limited amount of time.

  There was that slight ripple in the air that meant he took me into his arms. We will have a ceremony, Señor, very soon. Things will turn out well, I am sure.

  Sucked into

  the Black Cloth

  Manuelito did not have to tell me what had happened to me. Why I had gone to study his people and ended up knowing nothing, apparently, about them. I had been sucked into the black cloth.

  You know, I said to him, that is such an apt description!

  ¿Qué? he asked.

  Being sucked into the black cloth. I was trained to be an anthropologist. I was an atheist. More accurately, an agnostic. How was I to pretend to know whether God existed, and in what form? And yet, once I took the church’s money to come and study you, and once I agreed to “do what I could” toward your salvation in exchange for the church’s help, it was as if I had died to myself. I was “sponsored” by something I didn’t believe in. I thought I could live that way. What a fool!

  If Señora Robinson had left you, you would have died, yes, said Manuelito.

  I knew that, I said to Manuelito. You have no idea how I begged her to stay.

  We had an idea, he said, smiling.

  Sometimes I did not know why she stayed, I said. We both knew there was this growing, gaping hole in me. A void, where there was no belief. As I preached rectitude and chastity to the young women of your village, who never exhibited anything else, at least not in my presence, it became more and more necessary to crack down on Magdalena, who seemed wild by comparison.

  You were stuck in your own lie, Señor. That is why your voice, to us, held not one note of conviction. That is why the Story you were telling left us so cold.

  But your people seemed to grasp it! I said. The damnedest thing. I never felt I truly had the hang of it, even after all those years. But you all seemed perfectly willing to believe I’d brought the Truth, to kneel and accept the wafer, to go along.

  What could we do, Señor? The Mundo everywhere are facing extinction. If there is no one studying us, we are not seen as valuable to the world. The ladinos come and capture us, force us to work in the forests and the mines. Rape our daughters and sisters and mothers. Even when we live in caves, high up in the mountains, they have found us.

  I think the hollowness, the emptiness in me is what killed my wife, I said.

  She was a woman of much life, said Manuelito. Magdalena was like her in that way.

  I think she kept looking deep into me, as deep as she could peer, down beyond my “handsomeness,” down beyond my sex appeal. Down beyond my begging and clinging. And one day, as she looked, I believe she saw it was as she had feared. That inside I was abyss.

  You are weeping, Señor, said Manuelito softly. This is not a necessary activity for the dead.

  And then, I said, sniffling, the cancer that swallowed her saw its chance. It pounced. No one could protect her from what she knew. She had spent her life with a man without a center, without belief.

  No, no, said Manuelito. A man distracted from his belief. His belief in woman. In the woman he made love to, the woman-to-be who was his own child.

  Magdalena was always singing, I said. We were now watching workmen remove the doorframe from her door and wheel in a large cart. Several large men nudged and prodded and pushed her body toward the edge of the bed.

  Where do you suppose she’ll meet her mother? I asked Manuelito.

  By the river, he answered promptly. The Mundo believe that is where all children, when they die, meet their mothers.

  The River

  She was sitting on a flat stone in the shade of a red boulder. There was a riverbed, but it was dry.

  I have been waiting for you, Magdalena, she said quietly. I want to cross this thing, but the song I need is missing from my notes.

  Your notebook itself is missing, I said to her.

  She laughed. It is quite a surprise to find yourself so completely without the old props, she said. I sit here hour after hour, as I did in the old days, going over my notes, just as I did then. Except they don’t exist. Any more than I do.

  It dawned on me then what my task was: it was to teach her the song of vado, crossing over. That meant my other task would no doubt involve my father, and, I hoped, Manuelito.

  I stopped myself in mid-thought. Did the dead have hope?

  My life was ruined, I said to my mother, because you did not stand up for me.

  Oh, darling, she said, how can you say that?

  I can say it because it is true, I said. But don’t worry, I will teach you the Mundo initiation song. In spite o
f everything, I said, looking at the dry riverbed, I want you to cross.

  I don’t know, she said, frowning, and peering across the river. There doesn’t seem to be anything in particular on the other side.

  No, I said, there’s not.

  Then why cross? she asked.

  The Mundo would say “because.”

  Because?

  Yes, because you have reached the edge of this side. What else is there to do but to cross?

  But one side is like another.

  That is true.

  It doesn’t make a great deal of sense, if you ask me.

  Still, you would like to cross, would you not?

  Yes, I would.

  Why?

  My mother thought for a long time. She was a pretty, shadowy woman, her eyebrows very dark in her pale, wasted face. I watched light begin to dawn.

  Oh, she said.

  Yes? I queried.

  Crossing is the point, she said. Crossing is life. Being on one side or the other of the river is beside the point.

  That is what it means to accept being alive, yes, I said. That is what the Mundo believe.

  Your father loved me with all the heart that he had, said my mother.

  It was not large, I said.

  It was a frightened heart, she said. His people were enslaved people who in fact became slaves. You do not become free again by wishing it.

  Why didn’t you leave him? I asked. If you had left him there is a chance his heart might have grown.

  I was too used to him, she said. It was really very good between us, Maggie, especially before you and your sister were born. We bonded on so many levels! However, taking the church’s money under false pretexts, well, it was the one big lie that, as the Mundo would say, definitely unraveled our world!

  I laughed. My mother seemed almost merry. A sign of the genuinely loved, no matter how small the heart loving them. I died eating chocolate cake and hating you, I said. I was eager to die. I thought that if I died I could at least have it out with you. Now, I said, none of that seems to matter.

  If it doesn’t matter, she said pertly, give us a kiss.

  A kiss between the dead is a breeze. Umm, my mother said, a gentle dust devil, embracing me.

  Anyone Can See

  That the Sky Is Naked

  VADO

  Anyone can see that the sky is naked

  and if the sky is naked

  the earth must be

  naked too.

  While we were waiting for Magdalena, Manuelito, who never referred to her as June, began to teach me the Mundo initiation song. As I practiced singing, I could see he was sometimes amused by my efforts.

  What is wrong? I asked. Am I not doing it right?

  There is no right or wrong way to sing, Señor. To be really human is to fully understand this. However, the way that you sneak up on the words and attempt to capture them reminds me of the way ladinos sing. They like to perfect things, even singing! Once perfected, of course, singing loses its thrill.

  What does it mean to say:

  From far across the water your destiny

  comes swimming to your soul

  and in the branches of the nearest tree

  lives the first cousin of your hair.

  Ah, said Manuelito, this is a question I also asked the elders. It is a verse that I loved but at the same time it was difficult for me to grasp.

  It is about the way you are always moving toward your fate, in life. Like a fish that leaves home a free being and ends up that same day fastened on the end of a line. Someone’s tasty dinner in spite of its dreams. As for the rest, the Mundo believe the trees are close relatives, and that the wind itself is a relative and is always caressing its kin, as it were.

  Anyone can see that woman is the mother

  of the oldest man on earth

  is it not then a prayer

  to bow before her?

  Anyone can see that man is the father

  of the oldest woman on earth

  is it not then a prayer

  to bow before him?

  But Manuelito, I said, there are some who believe in parthenogenesis. That woman originally did not need man in order to give birth. That she could create life within herself without his help. And furthermore, there are those who believe that for a million years or so this is what she did.

  We did not know her at that time, said Manuelito. If we had, our Story would tell us about her. We know woman and man as equals. Differently beautiful, as the elders would say.

  And this stanza, I said:

  Entering this life one is kissed

  in all five of the places

  that let in the light.

  Leaving one is also

  kissed.

  It is simple, Señor, he said. When a child is born it is kissed by both its parents in five places: its ears are kissed, its eyes, its nose, its mouth and the place where life begins. When someone dies, those who intimately love her or him will also kiss these same places.

  When one prepares to make love

  for the first time

  mother arrives singing

  father is there

  sweetgrass and

  feathers are brought

  eggs are eaten

  one is kissed in all five

  places

  the sweet breasts

  are thanked

  one is sent to the loved one

  blessed.

  I was beginning to get the tune. Slow and dreamy. Tremulous. There seemed to be a vibration in the body this song stirred up. As I sang I felt myself quite moved.

  It is this stanza that gave us the most trouble with the priests, said Manuelito.

  But it is very beautiful, I said, like all the others.

  Yes, he said, but have you really listened to what it is telling you? We explained to them that at the ceremony of joining lovers together we burned sweetgrass to cleanse ourselves and our surroundings. That we used feathers to spread the smoke all around. That eggs were eaten in the hope that the union would be fertile, not just in children, but in ideas, creativity, bountifulness for the tribe. All these things they said they understood. However, they did not appreciate the idea of a mother and father touching the breasts and kissing the vulva and phallus of their grown children, even to bless them. We explained that the kissing was respectful, the lightest touch. But they did not care. Because we practiced this, they raided our villages, hacked off our heads with machetes, enslaved us to work in the gold and silver mines. Burned our children alive.

  For some reason this struck me as comically vile.

  Why do you smile, Señor? asked Manuelito.

  Because it is so stupid. In our culture you can watch men and women sucking on each other all day long on television.

  But it was out of this tradition of hypocrisy that you came to us, Señor.

  My thoughts turned to my daughter Susannah. When she was little, it was always difficult to know what things frightened her; she was composed, unflappable, even as a child. Stolid in her aura of calm, if thoughtful, repose. However, what frightened her more than anything else that I knew of during her childhood was the discovery one day that the Nuer people, in the unmapped wilds of southwest Ethiopia, forced the women to wear disks the size of dinner plates in their bottom lips. Langley had visited this tribe and brought back photographs.

  But, Mommy, Susannah had said, wide-eyed, how can the women talk with those things in their lips? How can they eat?

  Langley explained that the women only had to wear them in the presence of the men, and that yes, eating was a problem. From the men’s perspective, however, the women’s condition assured that the women could barely speak in the men’s presence, so heavy was the ceramic disk, and this ensured their silence; also, the women could not eat as fast as the men. Which meant the men ate most of the food.

  Susannah had had nightmares for weeks after seeing the photographs. She would stand in front of the mirror stretching her own bottom lip.
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  What are you doing? I asked her one day.

  Pulling on her lip she said: But I can only stretch it this far. If I stretch it further, it hurts.

  Lips are like rubber bands, I said. She gave me a look of horror. That is what the dentist once said to me, I added hastily. But actually, the way it is done is simple: first a small disk is put into the hole that has been cut in the lip, then a bit later, a larger one, then a larger and larger one, until you get to the dinner-plate size.

  And you call that simple, she had said, with a look of grown-up dismay. She was equally disturbed by the sight of women who were forced to wear heavy iron collars around their necks with what appeared to be an iron penis sticking out in front.

  How much does that thing weigh? she asked Langley.

  Ten pounds or so, said her mother. About as much as this bag of rice.

  Susannah looked stricken.

  Why don’t the women revolt? asked Magdalena.

  By now they are the enforcers, said Langley, sighing. They have no memory or record of a time when they did not wear disks and did not wear iron collars with penises on them.

  God, I said, it’s pretty damn blatant.

  All three of my girls turned to look coolly at me.

  Yes, said my wife. While I was there I stayed with missionaries who deplored everything about the tribe. Except these practices. They thought that since the women were the enforcers they had originally dreamed them up and were not oppressed by them. Besides, they said it was these symbols of tribal culture—the disks, the iron collar—that made the tribe unique. I said, But the lips and the necks of the women are raw and infected. And because the collars can never be taken off, their necks are never washed. They shrugged and said they passed out cotton swabs, and gallons of alcohol. The men, as I understood it, frequently attempted to drink the alcohol, with horrific results.

  It was wonderful being married to my wife. I had the feeling that nothing of importance ever escaped her interest; that she was as open as a sea anemone to the prickling realities of the world. She was alive in her thoughts and her passions in a way that I had ceased to be.