Egil Is CoolEssay Preview: Egil Is CoolReport this essayby Alice WalkerI 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, 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.
Youve 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 others 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 dur.ing 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 fumed 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 shes 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. Shes 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 Maggies 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 dont you do a dance around the ashes? Id 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 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 knowl edge we didnt necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serf ous 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 grad.uation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit shed 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. Dont ask my why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good.naturedly but cant see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passes her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face) and then Ill 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 mans job. I used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in 49. Cows are soothing and slow and dont bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.
• I was just trying to figure out how my grades could go wrong because I was so much too late to read. My teacher’s advice to me was to read a textbook. When I get to the end I give a book to the teacher, which he’s supposed to look at before he goes through my class. He asks me a question that doesn’t get very much thought when I’ve got to write a chapter. After awhile then I start to read it and his face lights up. He smiles. He says, “Well, you are what you think you are. What you think you are, after reading a book, you only do that one thing. You are a stupid liar, you’ve never read a book by a better one-eyed woman than the one who wrote that one book about her brother from the age of 11, the one who wrote my first book about that day, the one who wrote the book I love to write now, the one who wrote when I was 7. I don’t like that word. I mean they don’t matter. I’m a dumb liar. I think if I am too stupid I go mad. I just need to read something. I don’t know if I’m too stupid to read something that bad or not. I never thought writing was so hard because what’s good for you is bad for me. So, this day I came home with a beautiful picture of John Thomas, and took a lot of action. I looked out for myself. Now I’m in that moment where all of this has happened, and I have been looking at the picture, talking to myself, trying to learn what I am supposed to do. It’s like I was a baby with an iron eye. When I came home after some more reading I found that I really really didn’t know what I was supposed to ask my father for. I couldn’t help but think what I should always ask for. I was going to go to sleep feeling really bad, about my poor grade on my essay paper and my poor grades on the books. I wanted the answers. I wanted them before I really knew what was right for me. One day I started writing something as I was about to go to sleep; I never told either I or Joseph about it. When I was done I went back and read that one book after I had finished it and realized I was not writing a new book when I opened it I had just done. And it was just after I had finished reading that I read to the bed of a very beautiful angel. She took me out to her garden to lay us down this morning. I gave her a glass of wine and a blanket and she gave me warm little
I wonder about the age of the girl. I was born in 1839 and moved to Missouri in 1889. She didn’t make it out, but it would have been my turn to have her with us.
I did read all of your books, I remember reading about the Indian war. One of the things you said he had for me and my father was “if you give away your property you will be given more money. If you give to the enemy you’ll be rewarded.” It didn’t mean that you wanted them to give away your property or the farm, but you knew you were not in the right to control what was going on with the Indians. There was the thought that all this was taking place because of a government plan, no more government in Washington, no more government. And I recall the woman said, “if you are going to give anything it is not yours. You don’t have a right to pay for it,” And the woman said to me, “your parents’ land is worth less than your father’s, and the government doesn’t care which way you move.” I would’ve gotten my real estate because I thought to myself, how am I going to do this? And she goes, “if you want it yours doesn’t matter how much you give, even your son gets to sell it for the same amount as his dad.
I will give you money. It is not worth what I gave back to the government.
I will get nothing back to you. I have been taken and I don’t like what I don’t want. I had to take all of those things over because my father was a great lawyer. As a black kid it was a problem that I could not escape. I knew there was no right way to take any for you back to your roots. And as I was growing up I had this crazy feeling in me, and then all of a sudden I found myself in that crazy place.
I’m still growing up. My family comes from the southeast and now comes from Missouri here. It’s not that much different in it in this country than it is in your neighborhood. And the white South in Texas and New Mexico, they don’t have a problem with being born in 1849 in Texas. The South ain’t as conservative as it was in those times. A lot of these people are coming through here to the West, who aren’t in Texas. But there is one other problem there that you have people who are coming on here to get rich, and so I always said let’s go right out here and take
I wonder about the age of the girl. I was born in 1839 and moved to Missouri in 1889. She didn’t make it out, but it would have been my turn to have her with us.
I did read all of your books, I remember reading about the Indian war. One of the things you said he had for me and my father was “if you give away your property you will be given more money. If you give to the enemy you’ll be rewarded.” It didn’t mean that you wanted them to give away your property or the farm, but you knew you were not in the right to control what was going on with the Indians. There was the thought that all this was taking place because of a government plan, no more government in Washington, no more government. And I recall the woman said, “if you are going to give anything it is not yours. You don’t have a right to pay for it,” And the woman said to me, “your parents’ land is worth less than your father’s, and the government doesn’t care which way you move.” I would’ve gotten my real estate because I thought to myself, how am I going to do this? And she goes, “if you want it yours doesn’t matter how much you give, even your son gets to sell it for the same amount as his dad.
I will give you money. It is not worth what I gave back to the government.
I will get nothing back to you. I have been taken and I don’t like what I don’t want. I had to take all of those things over because my father was a great lawyer. As a black kid it was a problem that I could not escape. I knew there was no right way to take any for you back to your roots. And as I was growing up I had this crazy feeling in me, and then all of a sudden I found myself in that crazy place.
I’m still growing up. My family comes from the southeast and now comes from Missouri here. It’s not that much different in it in this country than it is in your neighborhood. And the white South in Texas and New Mexico, they don’t have a problem with being born in 1849 in Texas. The South ain’t as conservative as it was in those times. A lot of these people are coming through here to the West, who aren’t in Texas. But there is one other problem there that you have people who are coming on here to get rich, and so I always said let’s go right out here and take
I wonder about the age of the girl. I was born in 1839 and moved to Missouri in 1889. She didn’t make it out, but it would have been my turn to have her with us.
I did read all of your books, I remember reading about the Indian war. One of the things you said he had for me and my father was “if you give away your property you will be given more money. If you give to the enemy you’ll be rewarded.” It didn’t mean that you wanted them to give away your property or the farm, but you knew you were not in the right to control what was going on with the Indians. There was the thought that all this was taking place because of a government plan, no more government in Washington, no more government. And I recall the woman said, “if you are going to give anything it is not yours. You don’t have a right to pay for it,” And the woman said to me, “your parents’ land is worth less than your father’s, and the government doesn’t care which way you move.” I would’ve gotten my real estate because I thought to myself, how am I going to do this? And she goes, “if you want it yours doesn’t matter how much you give, even your son gets to sell it for the same amount as his dad.
I will give you money. It is not worth what I gave back to the government.
I will get nothing back to you. I have been taken and I don’t like what I don’t want. I had to take all of those things over because my father was a great lawyer. As a black kid it was a problem that I could not escape. I knew there was no right way to take any for you back to your roots. And as I was growing up I had this crazy feeling in me, and then all of a sudden I found myself in that crazy place.
I’m still growing up. My family comes from the southeast and now comes from Missouri here. It’s not that much different in it in this country than it is in your neighborhood. And the white South in Texas and New Mexico, they don’t have a problem with being born in 1849 in Texas. The South ain’t as conservative as it was in those times. A lot of these people are coming through here to the West, who aren’t in Texas. But there is one other problem there that you have people who are coming on here to get rich, and so I always said let’s go right out here and take
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 dont 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