By the Light of My Father's Smile

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Book: Read By the Light of My Father's Smile for Free Online
Authors: Alice Walker
After all, I never wore red trousers.
    I prayed over it. Spare the rod, spoil the child. One says that and swallows down one’s immediate protest. Stifles the voice that hates the rod. Would never, on its own, have even thought about the rod. There was something in me, I found, that followed ideas, beliefs, edicts, that had been put into practice, into motion, before I was born. And this “something” was like an internalized voice, a voice that drowned out my own. Beside which, indeed, my own voice began to seem feeble. Submissive. And when I allowed myself to think about that submission I thought of myself as having been spiritually neutered. And thought, as well, of the way Langley, Magdalena, and even the all-accepting Susannah sometimes looked at me. In dismay and disappointment. Daddy, the girls seemed to ask, where is your own spark? Langley seemed resigned to the fact that it was missing.
    How long it took me to realize it was the
me
ness of me that was missing! That next to the men of the Mundo village, even before we could comfortably converse with them, I was a shadow. It wasn’t, as I used to think, that I wore the long black coat and black hat and trousers that marked my occupation as shepherd ofsouls, no. In some odd way I was, the self of me, canceled out. I was a man mouthing words that sparkled, but going through the motions of my own life.
    Except, in our most private life, with Langley. There was grounding in her presence. In her arms. Grounding especially in her laughter, the naked shedding of roles that was her sleep. I loved even to hear her snore, though to awaken and see me peering at her as she did so embarrassed her. Then she would grab a pillow and jam it over her head. And I would tug it off, and tussle with her. Her warm naked body the fire of life. Her breath the breathing of life. And when she was sick and weary and weak, and when she cried in frustration or when she was angry enough at me to throw chairs—then it seemed to me I loved her so much I was in danger of forgetting the voice inside my head, forgetting even the voice I began to recognize as “God’s.”
    We had agreed, even before we were married, that we would never lay a hand on our child. We believed in correction, which we thought could be accomplished by reason and consistency; we did not believe in corporal punishment. This had been of such importance to us that we had discussed it thoroughly, over years, until Langley felt it was safe for her to bear a child. By beating her eldest daughter, to the point of actually drawing blood, caused by the disks on the accursed belt I used, I had betrayed her completely.
    We were beaten in slavery!
she screamed, weeping as if her heart would break.
    She cried every night and would not let me enter the big bedroom with the gauze curtains that blew limply in the muggy summer heat. And each night, as soon as the girls were asleep, I made my way there, to her door. On my knees, outside the locked door, I pleaded.
    Only forgive me, I said. I do not expect, or deserve, anything more.
    Please do not cry, I said. Crying now, myself. I am not worth one tear that falls from your beautiful eyes.
    Don’t break any more of your precious treasures, I said. As a crystal vase we’d kept in storage while in Mexico—a vase she loved—crashed against the door.
    Everything in me wanted to break down the door, pin her flailing arms to her sides, drag her to the bed, lick away every tear, drink from her flowing body, and pour my whole being into hers. But I, my heart breaking, could not rise from my knees. She had seen me turn into a monster; how could I ever expect her to forget? I fell asleep there, growing cramped and chilled as the night wore on.
    In the morning, her face wrinkled as a crone’s and tear-stained, she opened the door, sniffed at me as if I were disagreeable garbage, and stepped gingerly around my cold, ashen, and yellowing feet.

    This nightly

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