"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

everyday use for your grandmama by Alice Walker 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 corners homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs buying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe she thinks her sister had 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 weekly 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 assured 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 pens on my dress a large orchid even though she had 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 nightgown 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 sledgehammer 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 d 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 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's been like this chin on chest eyes on ground feet and shuffle ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground dee is lighter than Maggie with a nicer hair and a fuller figure she's a woman now how sometimes I forget how long ago was it that the other house burned 1012 years sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me her hair smoking and a dress falling off her and 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 bored of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney why don't you do a dance around the ashes I 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 descended to Augusta to school she used to read to us without pity forcing words lies other folks habits whole lives upon us to 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 ways she read to shove us away at just a 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 since 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 16 she had a style of her own and knew what style was I never had an education myself after second grade the school closed down don't ask me why in 1927 call it 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 until I was hooked on the side and 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 10 they don't make shingle roofs anymore there are no real windows just some holes cutting 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 Wendy 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 he ever have any friends she had a few furtive boys and pink shirts hanging about on wash day 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 fault finding 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 and 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 d her feet were always neat looking as if God Himself 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 sucking her breath is what it sounds like like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your foot on the road d next address down to the ground in this hot weather address 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 dresses loose and flows and as she walks closer I like it I hear Maggie go again it is her sisters here it stands straight up like the wool on a sheep it is black as night and around the edges are too long pig tails that rope about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears what Sousa Tino she says coming on in that gliding way the dress makes her move the short stocky fellow with the head to his navel is all grinning and he follows up with assalamualaikum 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 D 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 hills through her sandals and goes back to the car out she peeps 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 in 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 I salon more like him 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 assalamo alaikom wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy but maybe he don't know how people shake hands anyhow he soon gives up on Maggie well I say D no mama she says not d-10 Li Wanaka c'mon Joe what happened to D I wanted to know she's dead wander o said I couldn't bear it any longer being named after people who oppress me you know as well as me you was named after your aunt dicey I said dicey is my sister she named Dee we called her Big D after Dee was born but who was she named after asked wanderer I guess after grandma Dee I said and who was she named after asked wanderer her mother I said and saw wanderer 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 I still I'm more like him there you are I heard Maggie say there I was not I said before dicey 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 wanderer sent I 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 one zero why shouldn't I ask if that's what you want us to call you we'll call you I know it might sound awkward at first said one zero I'll get used to it I said ream it out again well soon we got the name out of the way Ocelot more like him 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 I Salama like them 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 summer to her the men stayed up all night with rifles in their hands I walked a mile and a half just to see the site hakima barber said I accept some of the doctrines but farming and raising cattle is not my style they didn't tell me and I didn't ask whether wander o D 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 wanderer though went on through - chitlins and cornbread 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 hakima barber I never knew how lovely these benches are you can feel the rub 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 - or - uncle buddy widdle that - ask the barber the wanderer looked up at me undies first husband whittled the - said Maggie so low you almost couldn't hear his name was Henry but they called him stache Maggie's brain is like an elephant's wander Oh said laughing I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table she said sliding a plate over the churn and I'll think of something artistic to do with the dasher when she finished wrapping the dashing 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 - 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 D and stache had lived after dinner D wanderer went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling through it Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dish pan out came wanderer with two quilts they had been pieced by grandma D and then Big D 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 D had worn fifty and more years ago bits and pieces of Grandpa Gerald's 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 wanderer 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 D from some tops your grandma piece before she died no said wanderer 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 wander oh these are all pieces of dresses grandma used to wear she did all the stitching by hand imagine she held the quilt 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 d wanderer moved back just enough so that I couldn't reach the quilts they already belonged to her imagine she breathed it 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've been saving them for long enough with nobody using him I hope she will I didn't want to bring up how I had offered D wander Oh 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 d10 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 I 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 win in anything or having anything reserved for her I can remember grandma D without the quilts I looked at her hard she had filled her bottom lip with chuckleberry snuff and it gave her face a kind of dopey hangdog look it was grandma D and Big D 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 it 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 Wanderers hands and dump them into Maggie's lap Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open take one or two of the others a set to D but she turned without a word and went out to hakima 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 to 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 you

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Keywords: everyday, use, alice, walker, short, story, holt, rinehart, winston, elements, of, literature, ela, english, audiobook, audio, recording, fourth, course, every, day, classroom, class, freshman, freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, high, school, high school, teacher, student, students, blind, video, african, american, african-american, black, stories

Id: gFTgRPJSceU

Length: 25min 4sec (1504 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019