by Nancy Farmer
“Once upon a time there was a couple with many cattle, but only one son. Their neighbors became jealous, so they hired a witch to put a curse on them.”
Baba Joseph frowned, not entirely pleased with a tale about a witch.
“The parents became very sick,” Nhamo went on hastily. “Just before they died, they told the boy to sell all the cows and move far away. But first he was to kill the black bull and travel inside its skin.
“The boy was mystified by the commandment. Still, he obeyed his parents. He killed the black bull, took out its intestines, and moved himself and his belongings into its belly. At once the bull began to walk! ‘Eh! Eh! What a strange thing!’ cried the boy.”
Baba Joseph was definitely uneasy about pagan magic, but he was too interested in the story to object.
Nhamo continued. “The bull walked and walked. It went through forests and swam rivers with the boy inside. Finally, it reached the court of a king. ‘O great king, may I stay with you?’ the boy said from inside the bull’s belly.
“The king was frightened. ‘Get out of here, you demon!’ he shouted. ‘Whoever heard of a bull talking?’
“The boy went on to an old woman’s hut. ‘Respected grandmother, may I stay with you?’ he asked.
“‘What luck! A beautiful black bull!’ she cried. ‘You can stay with my cows as long as you like.’
“Every morning the bull led the cows to pasture. The boy came out of the bull’s belly and played on a flute to pass the time. When he played, the rain fell over the old woman’s fields, even though everyone else was having a drought. Mealies and pumpkins grew everywhere. Her cows all gave birth to calves, and their udders were so full of milk the old woman didn’t know where to put it all.
“The people around began to notice how prosperous the old woman had become. Their children spied on the pasture and saw the boy come out of the black bull’s belly every day. ‘When he plays, the rain falls,’ they told their astonished parents. The parents went at once to tell the king.
“The king sent his soldiers to take the bull away, but it tossed them on its horns. ‘You turned me away when I asked,’ it bellowed. ‘Now your fields can turn to ashes for all I care!’
“When the people saw this, they threw out the old king and put the boy in his place. He became very powerful and eventually had many wives and children. He built a fine new house for the old woman. But the boy’s father called the black bull away to the spirit world. Ever since, when a parent dies, a cow or bull is given the person’s name and sacrificed when the spirit is brought home again.”
Baba Joseph sighed. “You tell a fine story, Nhamo,” he said. “But you haven’t learned the truth yet. All those old beliefs are wrong. Only Jesus matters, and our future in heaven.”
Nhamo said nothing. She had her own private opinions. Who had protected her on Lake Cabora Bassa? Who taught her to swim and to use boats? As much as she wanted Baba Joseph’s approval, she couldn’t ignore the evidence of her own eyes. Crocodile Guts, the njuzu, and Mother had been with her when she most needed them, and she couldn’t turn her back on them now.
At the thought of Mother, Nhamo’s spirit sank again. Baba Joseph, perhaps noticing, set her to work feeding a young calf that was learning to do without its mother’s milk.
36
Nhamo was returning from the lucerne fields. She had been gathering food for the guinea pigs, but had been distracted by a black wasp that was running around a patch of cleared land. Dr. Masuku had widened her knowledge of insects. Now they were not merely something to be swatted. They had families and illnesses just like people.
The black wasp dashed up to a twig and flipped it over. It dislodged a pebble, scattered dry grass, and scurried along a fallen fence post. All at once it jumped back with its wings raised. A huge spider stepped out from under a leaf the wasp had disturbed. It was a baboon spider with long, shiny fangs! Nhamo dropped her bundle of lucerne.
But the wasp didn’t flee. It plunged straight into battle, and the spider reared back with its fangs exposed. Faster than Nhamo could see, the insect was in and out of biting range. Its stinger dealt a blow to the spider’s head. Very soon the spider began to stagger as though it were drunk. The wasp landed squarely on it now, almost embracing it with its black legs as it delivered another sting to the belly.
Nhamo was thrilled. This was every bit as exciting as a lion kill without posing any danger to her. What courage the wasp had to tackle something so much bigger! When the baboon spider was nearly dead—its legs quivered slightly—the wasp flew off. Nhamo wondered why it didn’t stay to feast on its fallen enemy. She wanted to ask Dr. Masuku, but her spirit still burned with anger toward the treacherous Matabele woman.
Nhamo gathered up the lucerne and trotted off to the village. People had left their work and were moving toward the main road. She soon saw what had attracted them: Dr. van Heerden’s Land Rover was being unloaded of its treasures. Dr. Masuku had a stack of magazines, Sister Gladys carried a box of disposable syringes, and the staff cook had his arms full of sugar bags. Dr. van Heerden was wiping his face with a red-checkered handkerchief.
“The blerry* flies were after me, I can tell you,” he exclaimed. “They thought I was lunch and dinner rolled into one.” He opened the door of the Land Rover. “Come out, Bliksem! You’ve got some tasty jackals to find!”
Out of the door bounded a huge black dog exactly like the beasts that had attacked Nhamo on her first night in Zimbabwe! She dropped the lucerne again, but she didn’t drop the knife she had used to cut it. The world seemed to disappear. She saw only the huge black animal leaping around its white master.
“Look, meisie-kind,* I brought you a playmate,” said the whiteman. He pointed at her. The beast started for Nhamo with its red tongue lolling out of its mouth.
She stood perfectly still. She would not run any more than the wasp had fled from the spider. Of course not, whispered Long Teats. Only cowards run from their enemies.
“Nhamo! Don’t!” shouted the Matabele woman.
The dog was almost upon her now, but something in her face checked its gait. It swerved to one side. Nhamo struck out, raising a red streak along its ribs. The dog howled fearfully. “It’s too late to make friends now,” she snarled as she turned to pursue it.
“Stop it!” bellowed the whiteman. He threw himself between her and the dog. “Voetsek! Go away!” He gathered up the animal in one hairy arm and thrust the other before him to ward Nhamo off. He backed off hurriedly, with the whimpering animal clutched to his chest.
She paused just an instant. Baba Joseph said you should forgive your enemies. Forgive your enemies, indeed! I say kill them all as quickly as possible, cried Long Teats. Nhamo threw back her head and howled. Then she hurled herself at the whiteman and buried the knife up to the hilt in his arm.
She felt herself being dragged back from behind. Her wrist was wrenched so hard she could hear the bones snap. The Matabele woman grasped her from the front, holding her in a tight embrace, and the spirit of Long Teats suddenly fled into the blinding sunlight.
“Mother! Mother!” screamed Nhamo, and fainted.
She clung to Mother through the long afternoon, becoming hysterical if the woman had to leave for a few minutes. She told her everything she had kept hidden for fear of being sent away. She told about the ngozi and the escaped marriage. She told about the cholera epidemic and the muvuki. She told about the panga. “I thought it was a gift from the dead Portuguese. Really I did!” She told about being possessed by Long Teats and killing the black dog. “No one will want me now. I’ve turned into a witch,” she sobbed. She talked until her voice gave out and still she clung to Mother and wept if the woman showed any sign of leaving.
Finally, when the sky grew dark, Sister Gladys gave her an injection to make her sleep and to lessen the pain of the broken wrist.
In the morning, Nhamo stared at the white walls of the hospital and refused to speak at all. Mother and Dr. van Heerden sat by her bed. His
arm was bandaged and he was still angry about the injury to Bliksem. “He’ll never trust a child again,” he said. “Poor old fellow. He was only trying to play.”
“Did you find her father?” asked Mother.
“I found his family. They weren’t anxious to talk to me. They didn’t trust white people.”
“At least they didn’t try to kill you,” Mother said.
“I think she should go off to them at once.”
“That’s probably best.”
Nhamo listened numbly. Her father’s family wouldn’t want her either when they learned she was a witch.
“Is she insane?” Dr. van Heerden asked for the second time since Nhamo had arrived at Efifi.
“How could she not be? All those experiences…,” Mother said in a sorrowful voice.
“I expect her relatives will know how to deal with it.”
“And I expect better things of you!”
Mother and Dr. van Heerden turned to stare open-mouthed at Baba Joseph, who was dressed in his Sabbath white. He brandished his sacred staff with the crook on top.
“You think of throwing this child away as though she were a dead guinea pig! You plan to cast her immortal soul into eternal fire! Woe be unto you, you whited sepulchers! You speak with the voices of angels, and yet have not charity. You drive the little ones away when Jesus gathered them to his arms. Shame on you, you hypocrites! This child is possessed of a demon, and I will not rest until I have cast it out! I swear this before Mwari and his angels!” With that, Baba Joseph whirled around and strode from the room like a man of thirty.
For a moment Mother and Dr. van Heerden were too stunned to speak. “I think I’ve been sent to stand in the corner,” the Afrikaner murmured at last.
“You and me both,” said Mother in a subdued voice.
They listened thoughtfully to Baba Joseph’s voice in the distance. He was exhorting someone to throw away a cigarette.
“Maybe we have been too hasty about getting rid of the Wild Child,” said Dr. van Heerden after a while.
“Perhaps we have.” Mother smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt.
They looked at Nhamo, who gazed back at them full of remorse and sorrow, but also with the faintest beginning of hope.
* * *
*blerry: Bloody (a mild swear word).
*meisie-kind: Girl child, kid.
37
She’s going to look awful,” said Mother as Sister Gladys shaved Nhamo’s head. It was several weeks later and Nhamo’s wrist had nearly healed, but she still had it bound tightly in a bandage.
“Demons get tangled in the hair,” Baba Joseph explained. “That’s why Vapostori men shave their heads.”
“Why not the beards?”
“What an idea! The longer the beard, the holier the prophet.”
Sister Gladys rolled her eyes.
Nhamo hadn’t looked into a mirror since the day she thought she resembled a wall spider with a burr on top. Now the burr was gone. She didn’t think it was going to improve her looks.
“Are you sure it’s safe out there?” Mother said. “Karoyi Mountain is infested with hyenas.”
“Nothing in this life is safe,” replied Baba Joseph tranquilly.
“I can send a guard along with a gun.”
“No outsider is permitted. Mwari will look after us.”
Mother’s expression showed she felt this was unlikely. “I think this is a mistake, but if Nhamo believes it…”
And Nhamo wanted to believe it with all her heart. Baba Joseph and the other Vapostori prophets were going to conduct an exorcism ceremony on Karoyi Mountain. Karoyi meant “little witch” and it had a reputation for being a gathering place of evil, although Dr. van Heerden said that was because of the hyenas that lived there.
Baba Joseph’s eyes shone as he talked about how he was going to send Long Teats back to her smelly den in Mozambique. While he was at it, he might as well clean up the other witches who might be lurking on Karoyi Mountain.
“Don’t overdo it, Baba,” Mother said gently. “You aren’t as young as you used to be.”
Sister Gladys swept Nhamo’s hair into a pile. It looked like a dead animal sprawled on the floor. Nhamo was given a white dress and a scarf for her naked scalp. She would be allowed to wear sandals until they neared the exorcism site. The Vapostori never wore shoes for their ceremonies because the ground where they prayed to Mwari was sacred. “Please don’t make Nhamo carry anything heavy,” the nurse instructed Baba Joseph.
The sky was black when they started out. Mother hung a flashlight on a leather thong around Nhamo’s neck. “Don’t use up the batteries,” Mother warned as Nhamo delightedly clicked it on and off. The prophets, ghostly in their white robes, carried blazing torches. They had different symbols embroidered on their robes to indicate their rank within the church. Their bald heads shone in the flickering light. They walked off along a forest path with Nhamo in their midst.
She saw Mother and Sister Gladys standing in the doorway of the hospital as they moved away from the comforting lights of Efifi. Dr. van Heerden was in his house. He had not entirely forgiven Nhamo, but he had promised to keep the generator going until she returned.
On and on they went through the eerie sounds of night. An owl hooted softly as they passed its tree. Bush babies chattered. Water trickled in streams left over from the rains. Nhamo turned her flashlight on only when she couldn’t see by the light of the torches. Once she aimed it into the forest and caught a pair of red eyes staring back. She didn’t do that again.
The path gradually began to rise. It threaded between boulders and past baobab trees with their roots firmly tapped into pockets of water in the soil. Soon they left the baobabs behind. They came to drier soil with strangler figs splitting the rocks. They passed close to a solitary mukonde tree, which raised many pale, leafless branches against the dark sky. They were careful not to touch it, for the sap was poison.
At last they arrived at the bare knoll of the mountain with only the stars for cover. Baba Joseph told Nhamo to remove her sandals. “Ow!” said Nhamo, stepping on a thorn. Once her feet had been like balls of baked clay, but Sister Gladys had made her work on them with a pumice stone. “Ow,” Nhamo cried again, trying not to notice the pain.
“Be quiet,” Baba Joseph said sternly.
The prophets must have gathered wood earlier because a great heap was already present at the center of the bare knoll. They thrust their torches into it. Soon it was blazing high into the sky. Nhamo wondered whether Mother could see it from Efifi.
At first the ceremony was exactly like the service on Saturday. The men sang “Kwese, kwese” to invite the angels to come down. “I imagine they’ll need a lot of angels tonight,” Nhamo said to herself. She took no part in the proceedings. The Vapostori sang and prayed until the flames died down to coals. Then they behaved very strangely indeed.
The men knocked the embers into a long, glowing line and began to walk over them as though it were a path. Nhamo stifled a scream. They not only walked, they rolled on them and placed hot coals in their mouths. No one seemed to get burned. Even the robes didn’t catch fire.
After Baba Joseph had crossed over, he shook his staff and shouted. “I have heard! I have heard the word of God, alleluia! He said, ‘You witches come out. You make your feet to go. You take your ugly toes somewhere else.’ Ehe! I have heard it! The waters of the earth have witnessed it! Falaula he! God has said it! We don’t want you anymore! Zifokola hau!”
Nhamo didn’t know what all the words meant, but there was no mistaking the power that filled Baba Joseph. If she had been a witch, she would have leaped straight off the mountain.
The other prophets joined in, praying, cursing, prophesying together with a kind of weird music. After a while Nhamo realized they weren’t the only ones making it. From all around on the dark hillside came the voices of hyenas. They had observed the intruders in their country. They didn’t like it.
“I call on you, Long Teats!�
� bellowed Baba Joseph. “I say, Come here like the mangy dog you are! Come and see your power destroyed! Mezu-kano-eh!” The old man laid the panga on the hot coals. Nhamo hadn’t seen it since she arrived at Efifi. A breeze caused the fire to leap again. The wooden handle burned to ashes.
On the edge of the hill, at the very rim of the light, was an enormous hyena with red-shining eyes.
“Eh! You have crawled out of your pile of dung! You have come to witness the superior power of Jesus!” Baba Joseph laid his hand on Nhamo’s head. She wasn’t expecting it and flinched.
“I will send you to hell along with damned Satan!” The panga burned in the fire with a sickening, metallic smell.
You miserable worm, came Long Teats’s voice from the dark. You’re no match for me. I’ll burst your lungs between my teeth like old rotten bladders.
Nhamo hugged herself so tightly, her arms turned numb.
“You’re stupid, like all witches,” taunted Baba Joseph. He took out a bottle of holy water from a pack he had carried up the mountain. Nhamo had seen holy water blessed after the Sabbath ceremony. It was used to cure illnesses. “Watch this!” the old man commanded. He poured the liquid on the panga. It hissed up in a furious steam—and the metal snapped!
Aauu, wailed Long Teats. The hyena seemed to have shrunk. It was only a cane rat watching the fire with glittering black eyes.
“I command you to bring me the ngozi. I have words to say to him as well.”
The form of the cane rat wavered. Its eyes became dull. There is no ngozi, sighed Long Teats.
“Don’t give me your damned lies! I want Goré Mtoko!”
There is no ngozi. The cane rat came apart in shreds of air. It was only a blackjack weed at the side of a rock.
“Alleluia! Alleluia!” sang the Vapostori as they circled the broken panga. “Mwari save Africa!” they sang. They were beside themselves with joy. But Baba Joseph wasn’t finished. He began striding up and down again, praying and prophesying, with his words sometimes shifting to an unknown, yet strangely powerful, tongue. Nhamo was sure it was the language of the angels. She was weeping with relief. She felt clean and free again. She was as happy as she had been when Masvita’s face lost the deathly gray pallor of cholera.
