Alice Walker

I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That’s how come I know trees fear man.

I say it cause you do what I can’t.

What that? she say.

Fight. I say.

. He don’t want a wife, he want a dog.

First time somebody made something and name it after me.

It got to the place where everytime I saw him coming with the scissors and the comb and the stool, I start to cry.

Why you want to know so much bout Nettie? I ast.

Cause she the only one you ever love, she say, sides me.

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

Only the sky above us do we hold in common. I look at it often as if, somehow, reflected from its immensities, I will one day find myself gazing into your eyes.

All my life I never care what people thought bout nothing I did, I say. But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don’t think. Just sit up there glorying in being deef, I reckon.

How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is gitting cursed?