ontrast essay between these two stories Marriage Is a Private Affair and Everyday Use Marriage Is a Private Affair? "Have you written to your dad yet?...

Marriage Is a Private Affair and Everyday Use

Marriage Is a Private Affair?

"Have you written to your dad yet?" asked Nene1

one afternoon as she sat with Nnaemeka in her

room at 16 Kasanga Street, Lagos.

" No. I've been thinking about it. I think it's

better to tell him when I get home on leave!"

"But why? Your leave is such a long way off

yet—six whole weeks. He should be let into our

happiness now."

Nnaemeka was silent for a while, and then began ve

ry slowly as if he groped for his words: "I

wish I were sure it would be happiness to him."

"Of course it must," replied Nene, a

little surprised. "W

hy shouldn't it?"

"You have lived in Lagos all your life, and you know

very little about people in remote parts of

the country."

"That's what you always say. But I don't believe

anybody will be so unlik

e other people that

they will be unhappy when their

sons are engaged to marry."

"Yes. They are most unhappy if the engagement

is not arranged by them. In our case it's

worse—you are not even an Ibo."

This was said so seriously and so bluntly that

Nene could not find speech immediately. In the

cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a

person's tribe coul

d determine whom he married.

At last she said, "You don't really mean that he

will object to your marrying me simply on that

account? I had always thought you Ibos were

kindly disposed to other people."

"So we are. But when it comes to marriage, well,

it's not quite so simple. And this," he added,

"is not peculiar to the

Ibos. If your father were

alive and lived in the

heart of Ibibio-land he

would be exactly like my father."

"I don't know. But anyway, as your father is

so fond of you, I'm sure he will forgive you soon

enough. Come on then, be a good boy and send him a nice lovely letter . . ."

"It would not be wise to break

the news to him by writing. A le

tter will bring it upon him with a

shock. I'm quite sure about that."

"All right, honey, suit yourself

. You know your father."

As Nnaemeka walked home that evening he

turned over in his mind different ways of

overcoming his father's opposition, especially now th

at he had gone and found a girl for him. He

had thought of showing his letter

to Nene but decided on second t

houghts not to, at least for the

moment. He read it again when he got hom

e and couldn't help smiling to himself. He

remembered Ugoye quite well, an Amazon of a gi

rl who used to beat up all the boys, himself

included, on the way to the stream

, a complete dunce at school.

I have found a girl who will suit you admirabl

y—Ugoye Nweke, the eldest daughter of our

neighbor, Jacob Nweke. She has a proper Christian upbringing. When she stopped schooling

some years ago her father (a man of sound judgme

nt) sent her to live in the house of a pastor

where she has received all the training a wife

could need. Her Sunday school teacher has told

me that she reads her Bible ver

y fluently. I hope we shall begi

n negotiations when you come

home in December.

On the second evening of his re

turn from Lagos, Nnaemeka sat

with his father under a cassia

tree. This was the old man's retreat where he went

to read his Bible when the parching December

sun had set and a fresh, revivi

ng wind blew on the leaves.

"Father," began Nnaemeka suddenly, "I

have come to ask for forgiveness."

"Forgiveness? For what, my s

on?" he asked in amazement.

"It's about this marriage question."

"Which marriage question?"

"I can't—we must—I mean it is impossibl

e for me to marry Nweke's daughter."

"Impossible? Why?" asked his father.

"I don't love her."

"Nobody said you did. Why should you?" he asked.

"Marriage today is different . . ."

"Look here, my son," interrupted hi

s father, "nothing is different.

What one looks for in a wife

are a good character and a Christian background."

Nnaemeka saw there was no hope along the present line of argument.

"Moreover," he said, "I am engaged to marry a

nother girl who has all of

Ugoye's good qualities,

and who . . ."

His father did not believe his ears. "What did

you say?" he asked slowly

and disconcertingly.

"She is a good Christian," his son went on, "and

a teacher in a girls' school in Lagos."

"Teacher, did you say? If you consider that a qualif

ication for a good wife I should like to point

out to you, Emeka, that no Christian woman should te

ach. St. Paul in his lett

er to the Corinthians

says that women should keep silence." He rose

slowly from his seat and paced forward and

backward. This was his pet subject, and he c

ondemned vehemently those church leaders who

encouraged women to teach in their schools. Afte

r he had spent his emotion on a long homily he

at last came back to his son's enga

gement, in a seemingly milder tone.

"Whose daughter is she, anyway?"

"She is Nene Atang."

"What!" All the mildness was gone again. "Did y

ou say Neneataga, what does that mean?"

"Nene Atang from Calabar. She is the only girl

I can marry." This was a very rash reply and

Nnaemeka expected the storm to burst. But it di

d not. His father merely walked away into his

room. This was most unexpected

and perplexed Nnaemeka. His father's silence was infinitely

more menacing than a flood of threatening spe

ech. That night the old man did not eat.

When he sent for Nnaemeka a day later he app

lied all possible ways of dissuasion. But the young

man's heart was hardened, and his father

eventually gave him up as lost.

"I owe it to you, my son, as a dut

y to show you what is right

and what is wrong. Whoever put

this idea into your head might as

well have cut your throat. It is Satan's work." He waved his son

away.

"You will change your mind, Father, when you know Nene."

"I shall never see her," was the reply. From that

night the father scarcely spoke to his son. He did

not, however, cease hoping that he w

ould realize how serious was the

danger he was heading for.

Day and night he put h

im in his prayers.

Nnaemeka, for his own part, was very deeply aff

ected by his father's grief. But he kept hoping

that it would pass away. If it had occurred to him

that never in the history of his people had a

man married a woman who spoke a

different tongue, he might have been less optimistic. "It has

never been heard," was the verdict of an old

man speaking a few weeks later. In that short

sentence he spoke for all of his people. This

man had come with others to commiserate with

Okeke when news went round about his son's beha

vior. By that time the son had gone back to

Lagos.

"It has never been heard," said the old man again with a sad shake of his head.

"What did Our Lord say?" asked another gentleman.

"Sons shall rise against their Fathers; it is

there in the Holy Book."

"It is the beginning of th

e end," said another.

The discussion thus tending to become theo

logical, Madubogwu, a highl

y practical man, brought

it down once more to th

e ordinary level.

"Have you thought of consulting a

native doctor about your son?" he asked Nnaemeka's father.

"He isn't sick," was the reply.

"What is he then? The boy's mind is diseased

and only a good herbalist can bring him back to

his right senses. The medicine he requires is

Amalile

, the same that women apply with success to

recapture their husbands' straying affection."

"Madubogwu is right," said another gentle

man. "This thing calls for medicine."

"I shall not call in a native doc

tor." Nnaemeka's father was known

to be obstinately ahead of his

more superstitious neighbors in these matters.

"I will not be another Mrs. Ochuba. If my son

wants to kill himself let him do it with his ow

n hands. It is not for me to help him."

"But it was her fault," said Ma

dubogwu. "She ought to have gone to

an honest herbalist. She was

a clever woman, nevertheless."

"She was a wicked murderess," said Jonathan, w

ho rarely argued with his neighbors because, he

often said, they were incapable of reasoning. "T

he medicine was prepared for her husband, it was

his name they called in its preparation, and I am su

re it would have been

perfectly beneficial to

him. It was wicked to put it into the herbal

ist's food, and say you were

only trying it out."

Six months later, Nnaemeka was showing his

young wife a short letter from his father:

It amazes me that you could be so unfeeling

as to send me your wedding picture. I would have

sent it back. But on further t

hought I decided just to cut off

your wife and se

nd it back to you

because I have nothing to do with her. How I wi

sh that I had nothing to do with you either.

When Nene read through this letter and looked at

the mutilated picture her ey

es filled with tears,

and she began to sob.

"Don't cry, my darling," said her husband. "He

is essentially good-natured and will one day look

more kindly on our marriage."

But years passed and that one day did not come.

For eight years, Okeke would have nothing to

do with his son, Nnaemeka. Only three times

(when Nnaemeka asked to come home and sp

end his leave) did he

write to him.

"I can't have you in my house," he replied on one

occasion. "It can be of no

interest to me where

or how you spend your leave—or yo

ur life, for that matter."

The prejudice against Nnaemeka's marriage was not

confined to his little village. In Lagos,

especially among his people who worked there, it

showed itself in a different way. Their women,

when they met at their village meeting, were no

t hostile to Nene. Rather, they paid her such

excessive deference as to make her feel she wa

s not one of them. But as time went on, Nene

gradually broke through some of this prejudi

ce and even began to make friends among them.

Slowly and grudgingly they began to admit that

she kept her home much

better than most of

them.

The story eventually got to the lit

tle village in the hear

t of the Ibo country that Nnaemeka and his

young wife were a most happy couple. But his fath

er was one of the few people in the village

who knew nothing about this. He always displaye

d so much temper whenever his son's name

was mentioned that everyone avoided it in his pr

esence. By a tremendous effort of will he had

succeeded in pushing his son to the back of his mi

nd. The strain had nearly killed him but he had

persevered, and won.

Then one day he received a letter from Nene, a

nd in spite of himself he began to glance through

it perfunctorily until all

of a sudden the expression on his f

ace changed and he began to read

more carefully.

. . . Our two sons, from the day they learnt that

they have a grandfather, have insisted on being

taken to him. I find it impossible

to tell them that you will not se

e them. I implore you to allow

Nnaemeka to bring them home for a short time dur

ing his leave next mont

h. I shall remain here

in Lagos . . .

The old man at once felt the resolution he

had built up over so many years falling in. He was

telling himself that he must not gi

ve in. He tried to steel his heart

against all emotional appeals. It

was a reenactment of that other struggle. He

leaned against a window

and looked out. The sky

was overcast with heavy black clouds and a high

wind began to blow, filling the air with dust

and dry leaves. It was one of t

hose rare occasions when even Nature takes a hand in a human

fight. Very soon it began to rain, the first rain in

the year. It came down in large sharp drops and

was accompanied by the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season. Okeke was trying

hard not to think of his two grandsons. But he

knew he was now fighting a losing battle. He tried

to hum a favorite hymn but the pattering of larg

e raindrops on the roof broke up the tune. His

mind immediately returned to the children. Ho

w could he shut his door

against them? By a

curious mental process he imagined them standing, sad and forsaken, under the harsh angry

weather—shut out from his house.

That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and

a vague fear that he mi

ght die without making it

up to them.

Everyday Use

Text:for your grandmama

I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday 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 comers, homely and ashamed of the bum 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 faces. 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 dark 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 tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids 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 fire 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 before 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 pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Carson 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 foot 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 to 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 reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you 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 my 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. I 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 shutters 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 ff 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 foot 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 yellows 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 Dicie," 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 didn't ask.

"You must belong to those beef-cattle peoples down the road," I said. They said "Asalamalakim" 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 everything 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 elephant's," Wangero said, laughing. "I can use the chum top as a centerpiece for the alcove table," she said, sliding a plate over the chum, "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. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarfelrs 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?" I 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 Wangero. "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 saving 'era 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 if 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 understand?" I wanted to know.

"Your heritage," she said. And then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said, "You ought to try to make something 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 smile, 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.