"Alsha"

Dear Readers:  "Alsha' is a character that joined the club in 2007.  There are three Book Woman Club book marks that with stories about Alsha that were bought between 2007 and 2008.  If you own a Book Woman Club book mark with a fragment of her story, now you can fill in the blanks.  Here's where her story begins, and time will tell where it ends!  Enjoy!

     The Book Woman Club was beginning their review of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.  Miss Adella was hosting the meeting and Alsha shifted her body, uncomfortable, sitting on a hard dinning room chair in the circle of woman.  The seat was made of hard wood and badly needed a cushion.  She looked around at the older women in the room, all of them seated comfortably on sofa's and stuffed chairs in Miss Adella's living room.  Alsha had arrived late and did not get her pick of seating.  She sat in the last available chair, next to her friend Nia.  Her arrival time probably wouldn't have changed her comfort.  Most of the younger women in the book club were seated on chairs as unbending as Alsha's.  Besides, Alsha knew that she would have willingly given up padded seating to an elder, without being asked.  She remembered an old African proverb.  Something about the duty of the Children was to take care of the Elders.  And...some of these older women still had the talent to intimidate you with the cut of an eye!  These elders practiced "the look", an important tool of rule used by the "old school".  One did not dare challenge "the look"!  It shamed you into compliance and ordered your behavior with fear.  Alsha shifted again, first catching the eye of Nia and then Khadi-jah.  They nodded to one-another, Khadija rolling her eyes and Nia winking.  They passed silent sympathy, each recognizing the discomfort of the other and acknowledged, with resignation, that their behinds would ache for a week!
      Alsha was late because she had been in heavy debate with herself.  She wasn't going to come to this Book Woman Club meeting.  In fact, Alsha had been debating on skipping several meetings, ever since the club had decided to review The Bluest Eye.   She loved Toni Morrison's writing, and had read most of her novels.  She had cried through Beloved and Song of Solomon.  She had stayed up all night to read Sula, her favorite of Morrison's books, in one sitting.  She had found Tar Baby more difficult to get through, reading the opening chapter twice.  She had read Love and Jazz.  Paradise and A Mercy.  She had even read two of Toni Morrison's non-fiction works; Playing in the Dark and Race-ing Justice.  But Alsha had avoided reading
The Bluest Eye.  Over the years, Alsha had picked the book up off the shelf at Barnes and Noble several times.  Had read the jacket notes and the back page reviews.  Had fingered the paperback edition and had measured the weight of the hardback edition in her hands.  And then Alsha had put the The Bluest Eye back on the stores shelf.  She just couldn't bring herself to buy it; to read it.  She couldn't bring herself to turn the pages of this book about a little girl who wished for blue eyes.  It was just too painful.
     Lorrie was opening the review of The Bluest Eye after, as was the privilege of the member hosting the meeting, Miss Adella read aloud from a passage in the book.  Lorrie had a Doctorate in Literature and was the only published member of the Book Woman Club.   The members of The Book Woman Club enjoyed Lorrie's expertise and counted on her to get the discussion going.  "In the novel, Pecola wanting blue eyes is a commentary on the notion that the white social beauty standard, having blue eyes, makes you beautiful and that beauty makes you privilege to happiness.  Pecola is described as ugly.  Her family is ugly.  Where they live is ugly.  Her world is ugly.  If she has blue eyes Pecola believes that she will be seen by others as beautiful.  If she has blue eyes, Pecola will be able to see the world as beautiful."  Rose-ann continued tugging at the theme of the inside-outside point of view from Pecola's blue eyes.  "The "eye" is an important symbol in this novel.  The eye is symbolic for Pecola's perspective on life.  Her "point of view".  Eyes can symbolize enlightenment or blindness.  The truth or a distortion of the truth.  This is the reality of the un-reality of Pecola's eyes.  When Pecola believes that her eyes are blue, bluer than the bluest eyes, she is insane.  Pecola's insanity reflects the insanity of America's white standard of beauty and how it is so destructive to our black children."  Bessie Davis Hudson answering comment faded into the background of Alsha's troubled thoughts.
     Alsha's shifted again in the hard chair as her discomfort grew.  The discomfort of her body and the discomfort of her thoughts began to overwhelm her.  Her eyes began to blink, faster and faster, as she fought back tears.  How could Pecola every think that blue eyes could ever bring her happiness?  Alsha focused on the back of her ebony black hands.  They floated in the water of her tears, her skin swimming as she held her hands still.  Nia, who was sitting next to her, covered Alsha's hand with her blue-black ones.  Alsha looked up, her face a mirror of pain as she tried to focus on Nia's dark brown eyes with her royal blue ones.