Living by the Word

by Alice Walker

  The morning of the demonstration I dress in jeans, sneakers, sunglasses, and an old felt hat, and I carry with me a sweet-faced black doll with crisp, shiny hair. I’ve named her Windela after a newborn niece of the same name I have not yet seen, and because I want to symbolize the connection I feel to Winnie and Nelson Mandela and the common awareness that it is up to those of us who are adults to leave to all children a habitable planet.

  During the previous week I have felt afraid. I have hardly been able to smile at anyone. Though I have risked arrest many times, while a student demonstrator at Spelman College, in Liberty County, Georgia, and in Mississippi as a civil rights worker, I have been arrested only once before, during a demonstration against apartheid at UC, Berkeley. I felt a light-hearted joy throughout that action; as I sat with other demonstrators I could not suppress smiles and song. I concluded that what was different this time was that I would be placing myself in such vulnerable proximity to an enormous pile of evil and death blandly passed off to motorists, who can actually see the trains and bunkers from the highway, as bucolic countryside: cows graze placidly in the grass about the bunkers, giving them the aspect of odd kinds of barns.

  Still, as I filled my backpack with a toothbrush, aspirin, and fruit, I began to take heart, the image of the children, the trees, and the animals of the planet always before me. On arrival, we went immediately to the gate to be blocked. There were a few protesters, about a hundred, already there. Across a broad yellow line, soldiers dressed in helmets and camouflage fatigues stood spread-legged holding long riot sticks. Behind them stood a row of officers in khaki from the local sheriff’s department. Behind them another row of officers, presumably a SWAT team, in navy blue. The four of us walked up to face the soldiers, who were staring straight ahead. Between their row and that of the officers from the sheriff’s department stood a Catholic priest, a woman in her fifties, and two old people, a man and a woman. They were all white. It was then that I made an interesting observation: Aside from myself and two members of our affinity group, there were no other people of color there. The Army, represented by the soldiers standing in front of us, was much more integrated. Merde! I thought. What does it mean, that the forces of destruction are more integrated than the forces of peace?

  Almost at once a white car carrying an official of the base arrived at the gate. We turned to face it, not permitting it to go through. The driver consulted with an Army officer, and the car slowly pulled away. Another and another vehicle appeared. They were not admitted. Soon a woman drove up and said she needed to fill a prescription at the base; it was spontaneously agreed that she should be let through. Many of us walked behind her car to close the space behind her. Soon a man who said he had gout and was coming to see his doctor appeared. He was also let through. A woman next to me said that in anticipation of our blockade the weapons trains and trucks had been busy all night long.

  We were arrested because we went through the line of soldiers—all of them mere children and obviously poor (bad skin, crooked teeth, a certain ghetto street-corner patina)—and stood with the priest and the woman in her fifties, and the two old people. The old woman, Teresa, with a wondrously wrinkled face and bright white hair (a true crone), clasped me to her thin chest. The old man, Abraham (yes), half Jewish and half American Indian, looked fixedly into the crowd behind us and sang a frail but steady version of “Amen.” I felt very proud of our affinity group. Of Robert, who had joined this inner group first, of Paul, who had promptly followed, and of Belvie, who was now smiling and talking to Teresa as if they were old friends.

  A lot of things went through my mind as I was being handcuffed. Would they take my doll, whom I’d managed to stuff under one arm? No, they did not. Had my statements to the press truly reflected my feelings about weapons and war? I had been asked why I was risking arrest and I had said because I can’t stand knowing that the money I pay in taxes and that my own family needs—not to mention all the other poor and sick people in this country and world—pays for weapons and the policy that maims, kills, frightens, and horribly abuses babies, children, women, men, and the old. I don’t want to be a murderer, I had said.

  And once, as I was being lifted into the jail van, someone yelled, “What do you have to say now, as you go off to jail?” and I made a joke that was the truth: “I’m following my tax dollars,” I said.

  My tax dollars. Really the crux of the matter. When will I have the courage not to pay them? I remember being audited by the IRS when my husband and I were in the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. I remember being audited here in California two years ago. It isn’t so much courage that I would need, as the patience to endure the grinding malice of bureaucratic harassment. (Meanwhile, my letter to my congressman about implementation of a peace tax—a peace tax would go to build hospitals, schools, houses, and to provide food for people—has not been answered.)

  My thoughts, while I was being frisked, fingerprinted, and photographed (I liked my mug shot) by very cordial men and women, some of whom admired my doll, turned to food. Of which, because I’d left my well-provisioned backpack in the car, I had none. As a vegetarian, which I’ve now been for a good three months, I get hungry frequently. I think about oranges, almonds, apples—and, yes, a well-cooked piece of chicken. As soon as I’m seated fairly comfortably in the holding area—a large gray “cattle car” from the Port Chicago explosion days—Sallie, the woman in her fifties, breaks out her stash of oranges, Swiss cheese, and Triscuits, and offers me some. I think about how hard it would be for me to engage in any kind of action now for justice and peace with the remains of murdered flesh in my body. I’m tempted to wonder about the cows who “gave” the “Swiss” cheese, but don’t. I eat it with gratitude.

  Apparently it is lunchtime for everyone. I look out the window of our cattle car and I see that the guards, the nurse, the people who checked us in (even the one black woman in a light-blue uniform, who asked for my autograph and said, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”), all are eating. Since this is California, they are eating thick whole-grain sandwiches fluffy with fillings, trailing juicy tomato slices, lettuce leaves, and sprouts. As we all munch, they outside and “free,” me inside and “captive,” I can’t help a feeling of tenderness for them: the need to eat connects us. Perhaps that is why they have taken these jobs.

  Though some of our demonstrators were brutalized by the police, we were not. In an effort to minimize the import of our action, the meaning of it, and to keep public anxiety about the close proximity of the nuclear weapons on the base as low as possible, they treated us, for the most part, courteously. In truth, many of them seemed bored, barely present in what they were doing. There are some demonstrators who feel it is best, as far as gaining publicity is concerned, to have at least some police brutality, but I am not one of those. The pictures of demonstrations that I like show the creativity as well as the determination of the crowd. I like costumes, slogans, effigies. I think if these things are true enough, the police can affirm them, too. The most encouraging demonstration picture I’ve seen recently is of a young Korean policeman, visor raised and shield lowered, smiling impishly at protesting students and giving them the victory sign. Of course, many policemen are brutal and take their position as guardians of the status quo seriously. Many of them are angry, because they feel they are poor and have to work while the demonstrators appear to be playing. I feel absolutely no anger toward the police just because they are police or toward the young men in the Army. The protection of evil must be the most self-destructive job of all.

  The next day, freed, my doll Windela and I address a crowd of a thousand demonstrators, two hundred of whom will later be arrested. Among other things, I read a poem about a poor Salvadoran woman whose father, husband, and sons have been killed and whose remaining small children are starving; nevertheless she is paying her taxes. Later, I stand holding Windela beside the knee-high, coiled line of razor-blade wire, on the other side of which are the same young black, white, brown,
and yellow recruits. They are, at the moment, receiving much shouted information from several huge Vietnam vets, so loud and intense they frighten me—“Why do you want to go fight their stupid war for them, huh?” “Here’s a body bag”—plop— “do you want to come back in one of those?” “I swore when I was in Nam that if I ever got out alive I’d never sit back and let kids like you go!” As I stand there, I suddenly feel a small stroking along my thigh. I look down into the large brown eyes of a small, gentle-faced olive-brown girl. She is playing shyly with Windela’s foot. I hand the doll to her, and she embraces it with joy. Beside her is her mother, holding an infant. She speaks to the little girl in Spanish. I ask the mother, who appears to be in her early twenties, where she is from. She tells me she is a refugee from El Salvador, that she lives in a refugee house in San Francisco. At some point in our halting conversation in her “leetle beet” of English and my truly tongue-tied smidgen of Spanish, I ask to hold the baby, a plump, six-month-old girl, who promptly yanks off one of my earrings and then, fortunately, has trouble finding her mouth. Her mother says she is looking for a job. Can I help her? I tell her I will try. But who will hire a young mother of two small children who speaks Spanish?

  I leave the doll with her daughter, Sandra, last seen sitting on the ground, oblivious to the demonstrators, the arrests, the police, and the Army all around her, “being a mother.” And yes, that is what motherhood more and more is like in this world. I am glad I have acted. Glad I am here, if only for her. She is the future. I want some of the best of me, of us, of this day, to go there with her.

  September 1, 1987

  Today Belvie called to tell me the news about Brian Willson. He was blocking the tracks at the Concord Naval Weapons Station, along with several others, and the train ran over him, injuring his head and left ankle, and severing his right leg below the knee. He had been in a peace circle earlier in the morning with our friend Dan, whom I called immediately. Dan told me that in fact, in addition to the head injuries, which he thought very grave, and the severed right leg, Brian’s left foot and ankle had been crushed, so that leg, too, below the knee, was amputated. As he talks, I feel a flush of futility that this could happen, although we’ve all realized it could, and, already thinking of what Brian’s life will be like without the use of his legs, I can barely absorb the information Dan is giving me. Apparently the train speeded up when the demonstrators were spotted. Moments before the attack, Brian, who was preparing for a forty-day fast and sit-in on the tracks, and who had been married eight days before, had said he was willing to give his life to the struggle for peace.

  Brian. White, middle-aged, wonderfully warm and expressive brown eyes (lots of light), brown hair, with some gray, a mottled beard. A really lovely and intelligent smile (how would he smile now?)—and great legs.

  We met at the planning of the original blockade of the weapons station, and I had liked him right away. A week later we were together, with hundreds of others, blockading the gates. Only later did I learn he’d been an Air Force officer during the Vietnam War, in intelligence, no less. I could see how sick he was of war, and of the lies that protect war. He spoke very quietly but with a knowledge of what we were up against, so often missing in those who wage peace. He had the aura of someone who had seen and had enough.

  I remember him telling us that if the death trains got through our blockade and over our bodies, killing or maiming us, we should realize that when their weapons reached their destinations, in Nicaragua or El Salvador, this would also be the fate of the people there. We are not more than they, he said; they are not less than we. The weapons on the trains would maim and kill children, women, and men, he said. To which I mentally added animals, trees, rivers, families, communities, cultures, friendship, love—and our own self-respect.

  Whoever you are

  whatever you are

  start with that,

  whether salt

  of the earth

  or only

  white sugar.

  THE UNIVERSE RESPONDS:

  OR, HOW I LEARNED WE CAN HAVE PEACE ON EARTH

  To some people who read the following there will seem to be something special or perhaps strange about me. I have sometimes felt this way myself. To others, however, what I am about to write will appear obvious. I think our response to “strangeness” or “specialness” depends on where we are born, where we are raised, how much idle time we have had to watch trees (long enough at least to notice there is not an ugly one among them) swaying in the wind. Or to watch rivers, rainstorms, or the sea.

  A few years ago, I wrote an essay called “Everything Is a Human Being,” which explores to some extent the Native American view that all of creation is of one substance and therefore deserving of the same respect. I described the death of a snake that I caused and wrote of my remorse. I wrote the piece to celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I read it first to a large group of college students in California. I also read it other places, so that by summer (I had written it in winter) it had been read three or four times, and because I cannot bear to repeat myself very much, I put it away.

  That summer “my” land in the country crawled with snakes. There was always the large resident snake, whom my mother named “Susie,” crawling about in the area that marks the entrance to my studio. But there were also lots of others wherever we looked. A black-and-white king snake appeared underneath the shower stall in the garden. A striped red-and-black one, very pretty, appeared near the pond. It now revealed the little hole in the ground in which it lived by lying half in and half out of it as it basked in the sun. Garden snakes crawled up and down the roads and paths. One day, leaving my house with a box of books in his arms, my companion literally tripped over one of these.

  We spoke to all these snakes in friendly voices. They went their way. We went ours. After about a two-week bloom of snakes, we seemed to have our usual number: just Susie and a couple of her children.

  A few years later, I wrote an essay about a horse called Blue. It was about how humans treat horses and other animals; how hard it is for us to see them as the suffering, fully conscious, enslaved beings they are. It also marked the beginning of my effort to become non-meat-eating (fairly successful). After reading this essay in public only once, this is what happened. A white horse came and settled herself on the land. (Her owner, a neighbor, soon came to move her.) The two horses on the ranch across the road began to run up to their fence whenever I passed, leaning over it and making what sounded to my ears like joyful noises. They had never done this before (I checked with the human beings I lived with to be sure of this), and after a few more times of greeting me as if I’d done something especially nice for them, they stopped. Now when I pass they look at me with the same reserve they did before. But there is still a spark of recognition.

  What to make of this?

  What I have noticed in my small world is that if I praise the wild flowers growing on the hill in front of my house, the following year they double in profusion and brilliance. If I admire the squirrel that swings from branch to branch outside my window, pretty soon I have three or four squirrels to admire. If I look into the eyes of a raccoon that has awakened me by noisily rummaging through the garbage at night, and acknowledge that it looks maddeningly like a mischievous person—paws on hips, masked eyes, a certain impudent stance, as it looks back at me—I soon have a family of raccoons living in a tree a few yards off my deck. (From this tree they easily forage in the orchard at night and eat, or at least take bites out of, all the apples. Which is not fun. But that is another story.)

  And then, too, there are the deer, who know they need never, ever fear me.

  In white-directed movies about the Indians of the Old West, you sometimes see the “Indians” doing a rain dance, a means of praying for rain. The message delivered by the moviemaker is that such dancing and praying is ridiculous, that either it will rain or it will not. All white men know this. The Indians are backward and stupid and wasting their tim
e. But there is also that last page or so in the story of Black Elk, in which his anthropologist/friend John Neihardt goes with him on a last visit to the Badlands to pray atop Harney Peak, a place sacred to the Sioux in the Black Hills. It is a cloudless day, but the ancient Black Elk hopes that the Great Spirit, as in the real “old” days, will acknowledge his prayer for the good of his people by sending at least a few drops of rain. As he prays, in his old, tired voice, mostly of his love of the Universe and his failure to be perfect, a small cloud indeed forms. It rains, just enough to say “Yes.” Then the sky clears. Even today there is the belief among many indigenous holy people that when a person of goodness dies, the Universe acknowledges the spirit’s departure by sending storms and rain.

  The truth is, in the country, where I live much of the time, I am virtually overrun by birds and animals—raccoons, snakes, deer, horses (occasionally). During a recent court trial at which a neighbor and I both happened to find ourselves, her opening words of greeting included the information that two wild pigs she’d somehow captured had broken out and were, she feared, holed up somewhere on my land.

  But at least, I thought, my house in the city is safe.

  But no.

  One night after dinner, as some friends were leaving my house, I opened my front door, only to have a large black dog walk gratefully inside. It had obviously been waiting quietly on the stoop. It came into the hallway, sniffed my hands, and prepared to make itself at home, exactly as if it had lived in my house all its life. There was no nervousness whatsoever about being an intruder. No, no, I said, out you go! It did not want to go, but my friends and I persuaded it. It settled itself at the door and there it stayed, barking reproachfully until I went to bed. Very late that night I heard its owners calling it. George! they called. George! Here, George! They were cursing and laughing. Drunk. George made no response.