BEAUTY 589

SHA Itis a bright summer day in 1947. Myfather, a fat, funny man
with beautiful eyes and a subversive wit, is trying to decide
Beauty: When the Other Dancer which ofhis eight children he will take with him to the county
fair. My mother, of course, will not go. She is knocked out from
Is the Self
getting mostof us ready: I hold my neck stiff against the pres-
sure of her knuckles as she hastily completes the braiding and
the ribboning of my hair.
ALICE WALKER Myfatheris the driverfor the rich old white lady up theroad.
Her nameis Miss Mey. She ownsall the land for miles around, as
well as the house in which welive. All I remember aboutheris
that she once offered to pay my motherthirty-five cents for clean-
ing her house, raking up piles of her magnolia leaves, and wash-
ing her family’ clothes, and that my mother—she of no money,
eight children, and a chronic earache—refused it. But I do not
Alice Walker is an African American novelist, poet, and essayist think of this in 1947. | am two-and-a-half years old. 1 wantto go
best known for her 1982 novel The Color Purple, for which she everywhere my daddy goes. Iam excited at the prospectof riding
won the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Born in in a car. Someone has told me fairs are fun. That there is room in
1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker attended Spelman College in the car for only three of us doesn’t faze me at all. Whirling hap-
Atlanta, Georgia, and holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College pily in my starchy frock, showingoff my biscuit-polished patent-
in Yonkers, New York. After college, she became active in the leather shoes and lavender socks, tossing my head in a way that
civil rights movement, rising to prominence in the black feminist makes my ribbons bounce, | stand, hands on hips, before my
movement. In The Color Purple, Walker deals with the themes of father. “Take me, Daddy,” I say with assurance, “I’m theprettiest!”
racism, sexism, and poverty featured in much of her work. This Later, it does not surprise me to find myself in Miss Meys
selection, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self,” was first shiny black car, sharing the back seat with the other lucky ones.
published in her 1983 essay collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Does not surprise me that | thoroughly enjoy the fair. At home
Gardens: Womanist Prose. In this essay, Walker details a child- that night I tell the unlucky onesall I can remember about the
hood accident and the impact it had on her self-image through- merry-go-round, the man whoeats live chickens, and the teddy
out much ofher life. bears, until they say: that’s enough, baby Alice. Shut up now,
and go to sleep.

It is Easter Sunday, 1950. I am dressed in a green, flocked,

scalloped-hem dress (handmade by my adoring sister, Ruth)

BB
590 ALICE WALKER BEAUTY 591

that has its own smoothsatin petticoat and tiny hot-pink roses girl, | do not get a gun. Instantly I am relegated to the position
tucked into each scallop. My shoes, new T-strap patent leath- of Indian. Now there appears a great distance between us. They
er, again highly biscuit-polished. I am six years old and have shoot and shootat everything with their new guns. | try to keep
learned one ofthe longest Easter speechesto be heard thatday, up with my bow andarrows.
totally unlike the speech I said when I was two: “Easterlilies / One day while I am standing on top of our makeshift
pure and white / blossom in / the morninglight.” WhenI rise “garage”—pieces oftin nailed across some poles—holding my
to give my speech I do so on a great waveof love and pride and bow and arrow and looking out toward thefields, I feel an in-
expectation. People in the church stop rustling their new crin- credible blow in myright eye. I look down justin time to see
olines. They seem to hold their breath. I can tell they admire my brother lowerhis gun.
mydress, but it is my spirit, bordering on sassiness (womanish- Both brothers rush to myside. Myeye stings, and I coverit 10

ness), they secretly applaud. with my hand. “If you tell,” they say, “we will get a whipping.
“That girl’ a little mess,” they whisper to each other, pleased. You don’t want that to happen, do you?” I do not. “Here is a
Naturally I say my speech without stammeror pause, unlike piece of wire,” says the older brother, picking it up from the
those whostutter, stammer, or, worst of all, forget. This is be- roof, “say you stepped on one endof it and the other flew up
fore the word “beautiful” exists in people’s vocabulary, but “Oh, and hit you.” The pain is beginningto start. “Yes,” I say. “Yes,
isn’t she the cutest thing!” frequently floats my way. “And got I will say that is what happened.”If I do notsay this is what
so muchsense!” they gratefully add . . . for which thoughtful happened, I know mybrothers will find ways to make me
addition I thank them to this day. wish I had. But now I will say anything that gets me to my
mother.
It was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended. Confronted by our parents we stick to the lie agreed upon.
Lam eightyears old and a tomboy. I have a cowboyhat, cow- They place me on a bench on the porch and I close myleft
boy hoots, checkered shirt and pants,all red. My playmatesare eye while they examine theright. There is a tree growing from
my brothers, two and four years older than I. Their colors are underneath the porch that climbs past the railing to the roof.
black and green,the only difference in the way weare dressed. It is the last thing my right eye sees. I watch asits trunk, its
On Saturday nights we all go to the picture show, even my branches, and then its leaves are blotted out by the rising
mother; Westerns are her favorite kind of movie. Back home, blood.
“on the ranch,” we pretend we are Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, I am in shock. First there is intense fever, which my father
Lash LaRue (we've even named one of our dogs Lash LaRue); tries to break using lily leaves bound around my head. Then
we chase each other for hoursrustling cattle, being outlaws, de- there are chills: my mother tries to get me to eat soup. Eventu-
livering damsels from distress. Then my parents decide to buy ally, I do not know how, myparents learn what has happened.
my brothers guns. These are not “real” guns. They shoot“BBs,” A week after the “accident” they take me to see a doctor. “Why
copperpellets my brothers say will kill birds. Because I am a did you wait so long to come?” he asks, looking into my eye
592 ALICE WALKER BEAUTY 593

and shaking his head. “Eyes are sympathetic,” he says. “If one is My brother, the one who created the story about the wire,
blind, the other will likely becomeblind too.” comes to my rescue. But then brags so much about “protecting”
This commentof the doctor's terrifies me. Butit is really how me, I becomesick.
I look that bothers me most. Where the BB pellet struck there is After months of torture at the school, my parents decide to
a glob of whitish scar tissue, a hideouscataract, on my eye. Now send me back to our old community, to my old school. I live
when I stare at people—a favorite pastime, up to now—they with my grandparents and the teacher they board. But there
will stare back. Not at the “cute”little girl, but at her scar. Forsix is no room for Phoebe, my cat. By the time my grandparents
years I do notstare at anyone, because | do not raise my head. decide there is room, and I ask for my cat, she cannot be found.
Miss Yarborough, the boarding teacher, takes me under her
Yearslater, in the throes of a mid-life crisis, | ask my mother and wing, and begins to teach me to play the piano. But soon she
sister whether 1 changed after the “accident.” “No,” they say, marries an African—a “prince,” she says—and is whisked away
puzzled. “What do you mean?” to his continent.
Whatdo I mean? At my old school there is at least one teacher who loves
I am eight, and, for the first time, doing poorly in school, me. She is the teacher who “knew me before I was born”
where I have been something of a whiz since I was four. We and bought myfirst baby clothes. It is she who makes life
have just moved to the place where the “accident” occurred. bearable. It is her presence thatfinally helps me turn on the
We do not know any of the people around us becausethis is a one child at the school who continually calls me “one-eyed
different county. The only time 1 see the friends I knew is when bitch.” One day I simply grab him by his coat and beat him
we go back to our old church. The new schoolis the former until I am satisfied. It is my teacher who tells me my mother
state penitentiary. It is a large stone building, cold and drafty, is ill.
crammed to overflowing with boisterous, ill-disciplined chil-
dren. Onthe thirdfloor there is a hugecircular imprint of some My motheris lying in bed in the middle of the day, something 25

partition that has been torn out. I have never seen. She is in too much pain to speak. She has an
“What used to be here?” I ask a sullen girl next to me on our abscess in her ear. I stand looking down onher, knowing thatif
way past it to lunch. she dies, I cannot live. She is being treated with warm oils and
“The electric chair,” says she. hot bricks held against her cheek. Finally a doctor comes. But
At night I have nightmares abouttheelectric chair, and about I must go back to my grandparents’ house. The weeks pass but
all the people reputedly “fried” in it. | am afraid of the school, 1am hardly awareofit. All I know is that my mother mightdie,
where all the students seem to be budding criminals. my father is not so jolly, my brothersstill have their guns, and
“What's the matter with your eye?” they ask,critically. 20 I am the one sent away from home.
When I don’t answer (I cannot decide whether it was an “You did not change,” they say.
“accident” or not), they shove me, insist on a fight. Did I imagine the anguish of neverlooking up?
594 ALICE WALKER BEAUTY 595

I am twelve. Whenrelatives cometo visit I hide in my room. It is now thirty years since the “accident.” A beautiful jour-
My cousin Brenda, just my age, whose father works in the nalist comes to visit and to interview me. She is going to write
post office and whose mother is a nurse, comesto find me. a cover story for her magazine that focuses on mylatest book.
“Hello,” she says. And then she asks, looking at my recent “Decide how you wantto look on the cover,” she says. “Glam-
school picture, which I did not want taken, and on which the orous, or whatever.”
“glob,” as 1 think of it, is clearly visible, “You still cant see out Never mind “glamorous,” it is the “whatever” that I hear. 35

of that eye?” Suddenly all I can think of is whether I will get enough sleep
“No,” I say, and flop back on the bed over my book. 30 the night before the photographysession: If I don’t, my eye will
That night, as I do almost every night, I abuse myeye. I rant be tired and wander,as blind eyes will.
and rave at it, in front of the mirror. I plead withit to clear up At night in bed with my lover I think up reasons why
before morning. I tell it 1 hate and despise it. 1 do not pray for I should not appear on the cover of a magazine. “My meanest
sight. I pray for beauty. critics will say I’ve sold out,” I say. “My family will now realize
“You did not change,”theysay. I write scandalous books.”
“But whats the real reason you don’t wantto do this?”heasks.
I am fourteen and baby-sitting for my brother Bill, who lives “Becausein all probability,” I say in a rush, “my eye won't be
in Boston. He is my favorite brother and there is a strong bond straight.”
between us. Understanding myfeelings of shame and ugliness “It will be straight enough,” he says. Then, “Besides,
he and his wife take me to a local hospital, where the “glob” I thought you’d made your peace with that.”
is removed by a doctor named O. Henry. Thereis still a small And I suddenly rememberthat I have. 40

bluish crater where the scar tissue was, but the ugly white stuff I remember:
is gone. Almost immediately I become a different person from I am talking to my brother Jimmy, asking if he remembers
the girl who does not raise her head. Or so 1 think. Now that anything unusual aboutthe day I was shot. He does not know
I've raised my head 1 win the boyfriend of my dreams. Now that I consider that day the last time myfather, with his sweet home
I’ve raised my head I have plenty offriends. Now thatI’ve raised remedy ofcoollily leaves, chose me, and that I suffered and raged
my head classwork comes from mylips as faultlessly as Easter inside becauseofthis. “Well,” he says, “all I rememberis standing
speeches did, and I leave high school as valedictorian, most by the side of the highway with Daddy, tryingto flag down car.
popular student, and queen, hardly believing my luck.Ironically, A white man stopped, but when Daddy said he needed some-
the girl who was voted most beautiful in ourclass (and was) was body to takehislittle girl to the doctor, he droveoff.”
later shot twice through the chest by a male companion, using I remember:
a “real” gun, while she was pregnant. But that’s anotherstory in I am in the desertfor thefirst time. I fall totally in love with
itself. Oris it? it. 1am so overwhelmedbyits beauty, I confront for the first
“You did not change,” they say. time, consciously, the meaning of the doctors words years
596 ALICE WALKER BEAUTY 597

ago: “Eyes are sympathetic. If one is blind, the otherwill likely But mostly, I rememberthis: 45

become blind too.” I realize I have dashed about the world lam twenty-seven, and my baby daughteris almost three. Since
madly, lookingat this, lookingat that, storing up images against the birth I have worried abouther discovery that her mother’s eyes
the fading of the light. But I might have missed seeing the desert! are different from other people's. Will she be embarrassed?I think.
The shock of that possibility—and gratitude for over twenty What will she say? Every day she watches a television program
five years of sight—sends meliterally to my knees. Poem after called “Big Blue Marble.” It begins with a picture of the earth asit
poem comes—whichis perhaps how poetspray. appears from the moon. It is bluish, a little battered-looking, but
full of light, with whitish clouds swirling around it. Every time I
see it | weep with love, as if it is a picture of Grandma's house. One
ON SIGHT day when I am putting Rebecca down for her nap, she suddenly
I am so thankful I have seen focuses on my eye. Something inside me cringes, gets ready to try
The Desert to protect myself. All children are cruel about physicaldifferences,
And the creatures in the desert 1 know from experience, and that they don’t always meanto beis
Andthe desert Itself. another matter. I assume Rebecca will be the same.
But no-o-o-o. She studies my face intently as we stand, her
The desert has its own moon inside and meoutside her crib. She even holds my face mater-
WhichI have seen nally between her dimpledlittle hands. Then, looking every bit
With my own eye. as serious and lawyerlike as her father, she says, as if it may just
There is no flag onit. possibly have slipped my attention: “Mommy, there’s a world
in your eye.” (As in, “Don’t be alarmed, or do anything crazy.”)
Trees of the desert have arms And then, gently, but with great interest: “Mommy, where did
All of which are always up you get that world in your eye?”
That is because the moonis up For the most part, the pain left then. (So what, if my brothers
The sun is up grew up to buy even more powerful pellet guns for their sons
Also the sky and to carry real guns themselves. So what, if a young “More-
The stars house man”once nearlyfell off the steps of Trevor Arnett Library
Clouds because he thought my eyes were blue.) Crying and laughing |
None withflags. ran to the bathroom, while Rebecca mumbled and sangherself to
sleep. Yes indeed, | realized, looking into the mirror. There was a
If there were flags, 1 doubt world in my eye. And I saw thatit was possible to loveit: that in
the trees would point. fact, for all it had taught me of shameand anger andinnervision,
Would you? I did love it. Even to see it drifting out of orbit in boredom, or
598 ALICE WALKER BEAUTY 599

rolling up outof fatigue, not to mention floating back at atten- . Walker makes deliberate use of her age throughout the
tion in excitement(bearing witness, a friend hascalled it), deeply essay as an organizing strategy, but to what end? Examine
suitable to my personality, and even characteristic of me. her use ofthis strategy and explain how it relates to the
That night I dream I am dancing to Stevie Wonders song subject of identity as she explores it here. Cite the text as
“Always” (the name of the songis really “As,” but I hear it as needed to supportand illustrate your ideas.
“Always”). As I dance, whirling and joyous, happier than I’ve Develop an argument about what Walker is saying about
childhood experiences and how they shape our identity and
ever been in mylife, another bright-faced dancer joins me. We
relationships with others when weare adults. Include in your
dance and kiss each other and hold each other throughthe night.
treatment a discussion of those techniques Walker uses to
The other dancer has obviously come through all right, as I persuade readers(and herself?) of this position.
have done. Sheis beautiful, whole, and free. And sheis also me.
Explain the meaning ofthe title based on what Walker says
in the essay, especially at the end. Be sureto clarity and
support your ideas with details from the text.
NAVIGATING THE WATERS: Reading Closely
1. How does Walker see and describe herself up until the age of
eight (in paragraphs 1-6)? Cite specific passages for support.
SHARING THE DISCOVERIES: Discussion and Writing
2. How doesher self-identity change as she describes it it
In addition to discussing her appearance before and after
paragraphs 13-15? Cite the text as needed to support your
“the accident,” as she refers to it, Walker considers her
response.
appearance and her own feelings about it at different
3. When does her identity change next, transforming her
stagesof her life. What do you think she is saying about our
“almost immediately... into a different person from the girl
relationship with and feelings towards our appearance as we
who would not raise her head”? Describe the event and its
age? What are your own thoughts about this based on your
effect on her, citing the text for support.
experiences, those of people you know,or characters you
4. What causes Walker to feel “happier than [she'd] ever been”
have read about in novels?
and see herself as “beautiful, whole, and free” by the end of
Examine all the different elements that make up our identity
her essay? Describe the event and its effect on her, citing the
by first making a list of them all, then considering which of
text for support.
these factors matter most to the world in general, which
are most important to your own identity, and which apply to
Walker based on what she writes.
EXPLORING THE DEPTHS: Rhetorical Strategies and Structures . Walker suggests we allow our identity to be determined or
1. How does Walker use the phrase “You did not change” defined by members of our family, our friends, school mates,
throughout the essay to examine her identity and its spouses and partners, our children, and ourselves. Discuss
evolution in her own mind and others’? Cite the text as this idea in her essay and as it applies to one or more works
needed to supportand illustrate your ideas. from this unit on identity.