“Please” said Fonso tugging on the mothers hand
“Naw” said the mother as if in a half drunken haze “I ain’t gonna. Can’t you see I’m already half dead, an all of these children.”
The sun eventually left its post and sank into the horizon; the group had also left the scene returning to the house from which they descended earlier that afternoon.
A week later the mother had left the house, she went to Macon to visit her sister’s doctor. In her place as the woman of the house, in charge of preparing the meals, the cleaning and looking after the younger children she left the eldest child her fourteen year old daughter Celie, who intended to do just that but Fonso, or Pa as he was known to Celie, had other ideas.
“You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t” he told her
She didn’t reply. She didn’t know what it was her ‘mammy’ wouldn’t do. She was silent as he raped her, some times because he choked her and said,
“You better shut up and git use to it” but what could she say any way she knew not what was happening to her, she was too innocent, too young to know.
When her mother returned her condition was no better, her illness was to be her end, but now at least he treated her better than before, the same could not be said for Celie.
Two years later the mother died, screaming and cursing, cursing her daughter Celie’s actions. Celie was pregnant and could not keep up with her mothers demanding ways as well as the children’s needs. Fonso sat by the mother crying,
“Don’t leave me” he’d say to her “don’t go”
Eventually she found the time between her fits to ask Celie about the first child,
“Whose is it?” she asked
“God’s” replied Celie she didn’t know what else to say, she didn’t understand it. The birth was a big a surprise to her as any one else. She did know that he had taken it though, taken it while she was asleep and killed it in the woods.
Nobody came to the mother, she just got sicker until finally she died. She died screaming and cursing.