Grace Webb’s Reviews > The Poisonwood Bible > Status Update

The citizens of my homeland regarded my husband and children as primitives, or freaks. On the streets, from a distance, they’d scowl at us, thinking we were merely the scourge they already knew and loathed—the mixed-race couple, with mongrel children as advertisement of our sins. Drawing nearer they would always stare at Anatole as contempt gave way to bald shock. His warrior’s face with its expertly carved lines speaks its elegance in a language as foreign to them as Lingala. That book was closed. Even my mother’s friends, who really did try, asked me nothing of Anatole’s background or talents—only, in hushed tones when he left the room, “What happened to his face?”

Anatole claimed the stares didn't bother him. He'd already spent so much of his life as an outsider. But I couldn't stand the conde-scension. Anatole is an exquisitely beautiful and accomplished man in his own country, to those who appreciate intellect and honor. I already spent a whole childhood thinking I'd wrecked the life of my twin sister, dragged after me into the light. I can't drag a husband and sons into a life where their beauty will blossom and wither in darkness.

I might be envious of Adah now, with no attachments to tear her heart out. She doesn't need children climbing up her legs or a husband kissing her forehead. Without all that, she's safe. And Rachel, with the emotional complexities of a salt shaker. Now there's a life.
Sometimes I remember our hope chests and want to laugh, for how prophetic they were. Rachel fiercely putting in overtime, foreshadowing a marital track record distinguished for quantity if not qual-ity. Ruth May exempt for all time. My own tablecloth, undertaken reluctantly but in the long run drawing out my most dedicated efforts. And Adah, crocheting black borders on napkins and tossing them to the wind.

"Be kind to yourself," he says softly in my ear, and I ask him, How is that possible? I rock back and forth on my chair like a baby, craving so many impossible things: justice, forgiveness, redemption.

I crave to stop bearing all the wounds of this place on my own narrow body. But I also want to be a person who stays, who goes on feeling anguish where anguish is due. I want to belong somewhere, damn it. To scrub the hundred years' war off this white skin till there's nothing left and I can walk out among my neighbors wearing raw sinew and bone, like they do.

Most of all, my white skin craves to be touched and held by the one man on earth I know has forgiven me for it.