A Girl Named Disaster

by Nancy Farmer

  “Murenga was rewarded for his patriotism by being made manager of the mines. He had two sons, called Proud and Industry.”

  Nhamo straightened up. Here at last was information about Father.

  “I think you’ve noticed Murenga’s weakness where alcohol is concerned.”

  Nhamo was confused. She was unwilling to criticize her grandfather, but what was she to do when her great-grandfather wanted her opinion?

  “Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked. How could anyone in that house not hear the shouting and fighting? Murenga is an alcoholic. So, unfortunately, was Proud.”

  A breeze blew between the hills and bent the grass before it in long waves. An impala buck stepped onto the path far below, turned its head to observe the humans, and led a group of females across to the stream.

  “Proud was a good boy,” said the old man, his eyes soft. “He could have been such a fine man, but he started drinking when he was no older than you. I think he used to empty Murenga’s bottles after he passed out. Your father always had such big plans! He was going to own the Big Chief Mine; he was going to run for Parliament. The sky was the limit. And then he met your mother.”

  Nhamo was jolted out of her reverie. “You knew about Mother?”

  “I met her. She was just a little schoolgirl, but very, very beautiful. Proud should have been ashamed of himself. Did you know she was pregnant before they got married?”

  “I—I—wasn’t even sure they got married,” Nhamo admitted.

  “There was a terrible family row. Murenga refused to give his permission. I did, of course, but at that time I was only an ignorant old peasant. Murenga was in his I-love-whites phase. The Catholics at Nyanga married your parents.”

  Nhamo sighed with relief.

  “I suppose Proud lied to the priest—neither of your parents was Catholic—or perhaps the priest felt sorry for your mother. He insisted that Proud get an official wedding license from the government, to make sure the marriage was legal. I still have it.

  “Your parents traveled to your mother’s village in Mozambique. The next thing we knew, Proud was back, and we got a letter asking for cattle to pay for a murder. It was like someone had tossed a beehive through the window. You wouldn’t believe the fights!”

  I might, thought Nhamo, remembering the noises that came from Jongwe Senior’s room.

  “Murenga disinherited his son. Proud announced he was going to earn his own fortune. He came here.” The nganga gestured at the hill. “He was always full of great plans. He was going to dig the deepest, longest tunnels anyone had ever seen. And so he did. They collapsed one day with him at the very heart of the mountain.”

  Nhamo gasped. That jumble of rocks and timber—it was her father’s grave! “Didn’t…anyone dig him out?” she said.

  “We tried, but the tunnels went in all directions. No one had any idea where he was when the accident happened. Finally, we conducted the funeral ceremonies here. Murenga wanted it that way, but I always wondered whether Proud’s spirit was happy with the arrangement.”

  Nhamo was so overcome with a mixture of emotions, she began to cry. She was glad her parents had been married, but shamed that Mother hadn’t been welcomed by the Jongwes. She was horrified to be sitting next to Father’s grave—and yet relieved to know what had happened to him. She lay on the grass and gave herself up to weeping. The old man handed her a handkerchief when she was finished.

  “I think we should go down now. I’m feeling tired,” he said.

  “Oh! Of course!” Nhamo was instantly concerned about her frail great-grandfather. She and Garikayi helped him back to the meadow. The sun had slipped low in the sky. The valley was filling up with green shadows.

  “Let’s have more tea, little Disaster,” said the old man. “I have one last piece of information for you.”

  The ever resourceful Garikayi started a fire and boiled tea with water from the stream. He laced it with sweetened condensed milk. Nhamo thought she had never drunk anything so delicious. In a strange way it tasted exactly like the tea she used to prepare for Mother in the ruined village.

  “I think there were two spirit leopards involved with your life, Nhamo,” the nganga said suddenly. “Goré Mtoko’s totem was the leopard. So is ours.”

  “I thought ours was the lion.” Nhamo was appalled. If two people with the same totem married, it was incest.

  “Ours is both the lion and the leopard. That happens sometimes when two powerful clans combine. Our praise name is Gurundoro, the people who wear the ndoro, the symbol of royalty. The Mtokos, by the way, are very remote relatives with different praise names, so you can relax. The marriage wouldn’t have been incest, although it would certainly have been evil. My understanding is this: Goré Mtoko’s spirit killed your mother and, I believe, caused your father’s mine shaft to collapse. At that time Goré’s revenge was complete.

  “But your father’s spirit was unsatisfied. He knew he had a child who must be brought to her true family. Proud told your mother his totem was the lion because it made him feel powerful, but he was really more like a leopard. A leopard hunts alone in the shadows. He doesn’t face his enemies openly. I think your father’s first appearance to you was by the stream.”

  “It might have been a trick of the light,” Nhamo couldn’t help saying.

  “Yes, but why did you insist on telling everyone about it? He appeared again in the banana grove the night before Vatete got sick, and he left his print on her grave. He was driving you away from your mother’s village.”

  “But the leopard on the island—”

  “Tell me, did it ever harm you?”

  “No,” Nhamo admitted.

  “From what you told me, it provided you with meat when you most needed it, and killed the baboon that was a danger to you. At the same time, it frightened you off the island. Otherwise, you might have spent the rest of your life there.”

  Nhamo clasped her hands. That was certainly true.

  “Proud appeared to me in a dream recently, asking me to bring you here. I think he wanted you to understand what he had done.”

  All the way home, Nhamo was sunk in thought. She barely noticed the hills give way to the dusty plain, or the lights of Mtoroshanga as they approached. The nganga rapped on the door of Jongwe Senior’s room as soon as they returned.

  Jongwe Senior was slumped in an easy chair with a cutglass decanter on a table beside him. His wife crocheted a blanket on the opposite side of the room. She must do that all day, thought Nhamo. The house is full of those crocheted blankets.

  “I’ve come for the picture,” said the nganga. Murenga stared at his father with red-rimmed eyes. He seemed not to have heard, but his wife put aside her crochet hook. The air in the room was full of the sweet, cloying smell of whiskey, and every corner was heaped with mementos of trips to England and South Africa.

  Murenga’s wife cleared away some porcelain statues of white girls in long frilly skirts. She folded up a lace tablecloth. From a tea chest underneath, she removed a portrait of a man in a suit and a woman in a long, white dress.

  The nganga took the photograph without a word and led Nhamo from the room. “Phew! I need fresh air after that,” said the old man, seating himself by the open dining-room window. The cool smell of lawn sprinklers drifted inside. “They rented the clothes.” He tapped the portrait. “That’s what Catholics wear when they get married.”

  Nhamo was afraid to look. She had imagined her parents’ appearance for so long, she didn’t want the image destroyed. But she finally had to open her eyes and acknowledge them. They were so young! Mother wore a gauzy white cloth over her hair and held a bunch of flowers trimmed with ribbons. Father was cheerfully at ease in the whiteman clothes, while Mother seemed embarrassed. They were both extremely handsome people. “She looks like Masvita,” murmured Nhamo.

  “Masvita? Oh, your first cousin. That’s not surprising,” said the old man. “You’re in the picture, too, little Disaster.”

  “I am?�
�

  “Right here.” The nganga pointed at Mother’s stomach, and laughed at Nhamo’s discomfort. “This picture belongs to you. I’ll give you the wedding license tomorrow. It proves you really are a Jongwe, although sometimes I think that’s not such a wonderful thing.”

  Both Nhamo and the old man winced as the first sounds of fighting erupted from Jongwe Senior’s room.

  * * *

  *Tateguru: Great-grandfather.

  42

  Efifi looked exactly the same as Dr. van Heerden’s Land Rover roared through the gate. Nhamo sighed with relief. She was so used to losing things, she was afraid Efifi had vanished. She ran to find Baba Joseph as the doctor unloaded supplies. Then she ran to the hospital to find Sister Gladys.

  It was wonderful to be back! No matter how she tried, she couldn’t really please the Jongwes, except for her great-grandfather. In subtle ways they made her feel like an intruder, and she suspected they always would. Efifi felt like home. She raced eagerly from place to place to assure herself everything was all right. The bottles were lined up on the same shelves in the hospital; the pumpkins were heaped in the corner of the cookhouse where they belonged. Even the same crows perched on the fence near the livestock pens.

  Only she had changed. She had stylish new clothes, pink plastic sandals, and almost-emerald earrings in her newly pierced ears. One thing worried her, though: She no longer knew how to address Dr. Masuku.

  Nhamo couldn’t call her Mother anymore, now that she knew what Mother had looked like. And yet it seemed unfriendly to go back to “Dr. Masuku.” She hesitated at the door of the lab.

  “Nhamo!” cried Dr. Masuku in a delighted voice. “Oh, my! You really are a woman now. Turn around. The Jongwes didn’t pinch pennies on that cloth. And those earrings! You look beautiful!”

  “Grandmother made me the dress,” said Nhamo shyly. “She took time off from crocheting blankets.”

  “You told me about those wretched blankets.”

  Nhamo had written letters to Dr. Masuku in her clumsy, uneven scrawl. She started them “Dear Mother,” although it made her uncomfortable to do so. This summer she would learn to type and would throw away pencils forever.

  “I finally got a message from Mozambique,” Dr. Masuku said. “I thought it was better for you to read it in person.” She took out a piece of yellowed paper that had been folded and refolded. It had obviously been carried in someone’s pocket for a long time. The writing was just as crabbed as Nhamo’s.

  “Dir Neese,” it began. It took a moment for Nhamo to realize it meant “Dear Niece.” The letter was from Uncle Kufa. It confirmed what she already knew, that Ambuya had died. Aunt Chipo was devastated (“veri veri sad”), but she was cheered up when Masvita had a baby boy. Masvita had married a man from Vatete’s village and was pregnant again.

  Two children! Nhamo’s eyes became distant as she calculated. They must have married her cousin off the minute her hair grew back. She remembered the fever dream she had after the scorpion sting. Masvita had sacrificed herself in the lake with Princess Senwa “because it was the custom,” but Grandmother had held her, Nhamo, back. “Ambuya didn’t want me to be like Masvita,” she murmured.

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” Dr. Masuku agreed.

  “I ought to visit them.”

  “I’d wait awhile. They might still be worried about ngozis.”

  Nhamo thought about living in the village again. She would have to spend her days pounding mealies and hauling water. She wouldn’t have any books. Most of her fellow students hated studying, but Nhamo loved it—except for the writing. Well, as Ambuya said, even the best bowl of porridge has a few weevils in it.

  “Dr. van Heerden and I need to talk to you,” said Dr. Masuku. They went off to find the Afrikaner in the barn, supervising the birth of a calf. Baba Joseph was watching the procedure critically.

  “I don’t think you should have given her medicine to hurry it along,” he said.

  “She’s weak from the blerry flies. I suppose you’ll want to baptize the baby,” Dr. van Heerden said, soaping his hands as he prepared to deliver the calf.

  “Vapostori don’t baptize animals. I can pray for your soul, however.”

  “Thanks, oupa,” said the doctor. He wrestled the calf from its weakened mother. Nhamo’s eyes grew wide as she watched the new life slide into the world. Animals had one spirit from Mother Earth, but people had an extra one from Mwari. She wasn’t sure why you had to pray for it.

  “I wondered where you’d got to,” boomed the Afrikaner as he plunged his hands into a bucket to clean them.

  Dr. van Heerden, Dr. Masuku, and Nhamo sat outside the cookhouse in the shade of a bougainvillea vine. The cook had provided a box of arrowroot cookies to go along with the tea.

  “I’ve had this weighed,” Dr. van Heerden said, tossing the bag with Grandmother’s gold nuggets into Nhamo’s lap. Her throat constricted as she looked at it. The red cloth was almost black with dirt, but it was the only surviving link to her life in the village.

  “Your granny provided for you better than she realized. She had to sell her gold at a tiny fraction of the real price and probably didn’t know what it was worth in the outside world. There’s almost three ounces here. That’s worth over four thousand dollars.”*

  Nhamo, who had recently been granted an allowance of fifty cents a week, could only stare at him.

  “We think,” said Dr. Masuku gently, “you should open a bank account in your name. We think it should be secret from the Jongwes.”

  Now Nhamo stared at her.

  “Both your grandmother and mother were trapped by poverty. You can be free. That’s why Ambuya gave you the gold.”

  “But why can’t I tell the Jongwes—”

  “Right now the old nganga rules the roost,” said Dr. van Heerden. “When he dies, you can bet that Long Fingernails won’t rest until you’re out of the house.”

  “Tell me, does anyone there really care about your happiness? Aside from sewing you dresses to relieve the boredom of crocheting blankets,” said Dr. Masuku.

  “No,” Nhamo admitted.

  “Right now you’re a doll for them to dress up. People get tired of dolls. You’re far too intelligent to be turned into a family drudge or forced into a bad marriage. Women are never free until they can control their own money.”

  “And during the summers when you work here, your salary will go into the account,” added Dr. van Heerden.

  It was all happening too fast. Nhamo could only agree blindly and hope for the best. She felt uncomfortable about hiding the bank account from the Jongwes, but she had no illusions about Mrs. Edina Jongwe. Someday the woman might casually say, “You can beat her if you like” to a stranger, and then introduce him as her future husband.

  “You know, you haven’t once called me Mother since you returned,” said Dr. Masuku. “Or used my name.”

  Nhamo hung her head.

  “Ach, it just came to me: She hasn’t called me Daddy in donkey’s years,” said Dr. van Heerden, stirring three spoonfuls of sugar into a fresh cup of tea.

  Dr. Masuku pursed her lips in irritation. “I’ll admit I was relieved about Mother, Nhamo, but you really ought to think of something. I won’t accept ‘Hey, you!’”

  “I’m sorry.” Nhamo’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, dear. You look like I just hit you! Why don’t you call me Aunt Everjoice? I’ll be your vatete and tell you all the secrets of womanhood.”

  “Like how to get the lipstick to stay inside the little lines,” Dr. van Heerden said. Dr. Masuku swatted him with a magazine from a pile by the cookhouse.

  Nhamo’s eyes suddenly focused on the cover.

  “Oh! Oh! It’s the picture! It’s Mother,” she cried. She jumped to her feet. Startled, Dr. Masuku held out the magazine. Nhamo grabbed it and smoothed it out on the table. The back cover showed a woman wearing a white apron and a flowered dress. She was spreading white bread with margarine. Nearby stood a little girl with h
air gathered in two fat puffs over her ears, and Nhamo knew the bread and margarine were for the little girl. She looked up.

  The picture didn’t look anything like Dr. Masuku.

  “That’s a margarine advertisement,” exclaimed the woman. “Good grief! You were communicating with the spirit of Stork margarine all those years.”

  “Sh-she doesn’t 1-look like you,” hiccuped Nhamo. “H-how could I have made such a stupid m-mistake?”

  “Don’t cry.” Dr. Masuku hugged her tightly. “We always suspected you imprinted on me. It’s not surprising after all you went through.”

  “What’s imprinting?”

  “When certain birds break out of the egg, they think the first thing they see is their mother. They follow it everywhere.”

  “Even if it’s a jackal?”

  “So they say. I don’t think a bird with a jackal mother lasts very long,” Dr. van Heerden remarked.

  Dr. Masuku hesitated before she spoke again. “In one sense, you died after leaving the village, Nhamo. If the spirit world exists, you certainly went through it, and when I found you in the underground chamber, it was as though I brought you back to life. I was the first thing you saw after you broke out of the egg.”

  Nhamo looked from the magazine to the two doctors and back again. This was an idea she would have to think about for a long time. “The picture doesn’t even look like my real mother,” she said sadly.

  “No, but wait…” Dr. Masuku held up the picture. “This is fantastic.” She marched Nhamo over to the hospital and made her look into the full-length mirror.

  Nhamo had steadfastly refused to do this since the horrifying moment when she saw the wall spider with the burr stuck on top. She had to see bits of herself, of course, to attach earrings and so forth, but she had avoided putting the bits together.

  Now she gazed in amazement at her image. She was taller and had a womanly figure. Her hair shone with good health, and her eyes no longer stared back from hollows. She wore a flowered dress and pink plastic shoes. The almost-emeralds glittered in her ears.