The Flower Plantation

by Nora Anne Brown

  “What is it, Mzungu,” he said, making grunting sounds that were supposed to sound like me but didn't. “Say please and I'll give him back.” He laughed, knowing that I couldn't.

  Romeo whimpered quietly, and so did I. The fuel attendant's son tossed Romeo from one hand to the other as if he were a ball. The more terror I showed and the more I grunted to say something, the higher he threw him and let him fall.

  “Don't you want him, Mzungu? Don't you want to say please?” Rage boiled inside me and gagged the words I wanted to yell. “Mzungu can't talk. Mzungu can't talk,” he chanted and spat at the floor. A glob of spit clung to my shoe.

  I stood my ground and thought of a plan. We were sandwiched between the mud shops and a rickety wooden fence. There was nothing there except a discarded metal cooking pot filled with water. Its lid lay propped against the fence.

  I glanced at the pot a moment too long, causing the boy to look at it too. He picked up the lid and waved it like a shield, then tossed Romeo into the pan and closed the lid shut.

  Instinctively I ran to the pot and kicked it over. Romeo came tumbling out with the water, drenched and spluttering. Both the fuel attendant's son and I lunged towards him, but he was faster than me. He picked him up by the tail and held him like a dripping rag. Romeo yelped frantically.

  “What you do, Mzungu?” he sneered. “What you do?”

  Clutching nervously at my pockets, I felt the shape of my hundred-franc coin. Suddenly I knew what to do. I pulled out the coin and held it close enough for him to see, but far enough away so he couldn't snatch it. I allowed what sun there was to catch its shiny surface. It glinted. The fuel attendant's son eyed it eagerly and started towards me. But if he wanted my coin, he'd have to give me Romeo. He wasn't having both.

  At that moment I heard a pattering. Romeo, upside down, wet and shivering, was peeing on the boy's prize jacket. Furious, he dropped him on the ground, grabbed the coin from my hand and bolted past, knocking me against the wall. My mouth took the hit. Recovering myself I bent down to scoop up Romeo and noticed small splashes of blood on the ground. There among them was my tooth. I picked it up to examine it. I was surprised at the length of the root.

  Putting the tooth in my pocket I sat down in the dirt and held Romeo close. His heartbeat pounded in unison with mine. I began to tremble. Romeo did too. I rolled up my T-shirt to dry him off. We both cried. He scrabbled towards my chin, his scratchy little claws catching in my top. I pushed him back, but he tried again. His tongue was eager to lick the salty tears and blood that smeared my face.

  I wanted to say his name to comfort him, but when I leant in to try and whisper it in his ear I saw in the dark pools of his eyes the reflection of a tall figure looming above us. I turned my head to see who it was.

  The glare of sunlight, shining directly behind the figure, obscured the face. All I could see was round shoulders and the outline of a loaf in a carrier bag. And shoes – shiny, red shoes that made me relax a little.

  “Eh, Arthur,” said Fabrice, crouching down beside us. His dark, gentle face came close to mine, but not too close. His shoes creaked. “How are you?’ I showed him Romeo. “Eh,” he laughed, “un autre chien,” and tickled Romeo under his chin. “Il est gentil, n'est-ce pas?” I nodded my agreement, then clenched my teeth together to show Fabrice my tooth had come out. I grimaced like one of the gorillas I'd seen in Father's books.

  “Eh, félicitations!” said Fabrice, and I showed him my tooth, which he admired. “Bien. We go home?”

  I thought about Mother. She would be angry: I was strictly forbidden to leave the plantation alone. And I'd given away my birthday coin.

  Fabrice offered me his hand, but I didn't reach out.

  “It's OK, Arthur,” he said, interlocking his warm fingers with mine. “I no tell.”

  We walked back to the plantation hand in hand. I clasped Romeo to my chest and walked in the shadow of Fabrice's long legs, avoiding the stares of the passers-by and concentrating all my thoughts on Romeo. I tried as hard as I could not to think about the fuel attendant's son and my lost birthday coin. But then I remembered – when you try not to think about elephants, elephants are all you can think about.

  * * *

  Fabrice took me to the kitchen and sat me down. African Butterflies was on the table – a drop of blood splashed onto the first page. He gave me a cup of tea and a saucer of milk for Romeo, then put on the radio and called, “Celeste.”

  I circled the hole in my gum with my tongue: the flesh was raw and loose. My mouth no longer felt like my own.

  “OK, Arthur,” said Fabrice, who had begun to wash potatoes at the sink.

  Celeste hobbled into the kitchen. She looked at my dirty shorts and bloodstained T-shirt and sucked her teeth.

  “What happen?” she asked. Celeste had a deep, resonating voice that had a calming effect. She only ever spoke in the present tense, which I thought was funny even then.

  “His tooth,” said Fabrice. I liked it when Fabrice answered for me; he did it a lot.

  Celeste took a look and broke into her wide, gummy grin.

  “Big boy now,” she laughed, placing her hands on her wide hips. She disappeared, returning a few minutes later with a red T-shirt and brown shorts – my Saturday clothes. I twisted my lips and rubbed my knuckles some more.

  “OK, Arthur,” repeated Fabrice. “It's OK.”

  Celeste took me to the bathroom and gently mopped my mouth, making me rinse and spit. That done, I undressed and put on my fresh clothes, which felt wrong on a Friday: there was nothing brown or red about Fridays – nothing at all. I took three deep breaths to stop my chest from bursting. Celeste fished my tooth out of my pocket, handed it to me and blotted the bloodstains on my clothes with cold water.

  I went to my bedroom to check on the butterfly eggs, which looked darker than they'd been that morning. Wanting to fetch my bug kit to study them more closely, I ran to the back lobby, where Celeste was already scrubbing my shorts. She laughed as I climbed eagerly onto a stool to take my kit down from the shelf.

  Running straight back to my bedroom I unscrewed the lid of the jam jar, prised out the leaf with the eggs and placed it on the window sill, where I could see it perfectly in the bright light. Kneeling down on the window seat, where Romeo had fallen asleep, I held the magnifying glass to my eye. I moved it backward and forward until I found the right focus on the eggs. The caterpillars had started to hatch.

  Two pairs of front legs emerged from the eggs. They hauled and stretched their long bodies like Joseph wriggling out of his sleeping bag. Their transparent, black-and-orange bodies were like sticky jelly sweets. I wondered what they would taste like.

  I stared at the tiny creatures until the midday sun was long gone from my window and Romeo had woken up. Their hairy little bodies darkened as they started devouring their egg casings, just as it was described in African Butterflies. That was their first meal. I drew a picture of the caterpillars in my book, next to the one I'd done of the eggs.

  Slipping the leaf and its new occupants back into the jar, I thought I'd need something bigger for them to live in. Something better, I decided – something without ragged edges like the punctured holes of the jam-pot lid. As I got up to find a new container, a figure moved in front of my window.

  I hunkered down. Only my forehead could have been visible at the window. I scanned the garden. My eyes roamed from the lane to the buddleia bush, from the five front steps to the orange-coloured road. Monty was with Mother, Romeo with me. What I'd seen had been too small to be one of the gardeners, too big to be the house cat. I looked harder but saw nothing. When I eventually stood up, a figure scarpered out of the hydrangea and ran straight into the buddleia.

  I threw myself away from the window and up against the wall. The fuel attendant's son, I thought, terrified he'd come back for Romeo.

  After a very long time, and when I was certain he must be gone, I inched towards the window again. As my body twisted into the afternoon light, I coul
d see the figure still hiding in the bush. My eyes scanned the shoeless feet and bare legs that looked like twigs. It wasn't the fuel attendant's son – he had been wearing long trousers.

  Given that they were hiding in a buddleia, I reasoned, they couldn't be all that scary. I stepped in front of the window and saw the face of a girl, peering wide-eyed from within the bush. On seeing me, she took a step back and hid among the flowers.

  7

  The girl in the buddleia bush was troubling. I sat on the bed, held the jar of caterpillars in one hand and tickled Romeo's ear with the other. Had it not been for the girl in the bush I would have been quite content. But she worried me: her presence made me question whether even with Romeo and my newly hatched caterpillars there was still something missing in my life.

  To calm myself I stared into the jam pot and remembered I needed something bigger and better for my new friends to live in. I'd need a container, a lid without ragged edges, some sticks and food. Caterpillars, I had learnt from African Butterflies, are very picky eaters. They will starve to death before eating the wrong thing. I left my bedroom and went to the pantry to see what I could find.

  “Fabrice told me about your tooth,” said Mother as I rummaged about looking for something to fill with sticks and leaves. She held my chin and had a good look inside my mouth. “Where is it?” I produced it from my pocket.

  “Your first tooth,” she said. I was surprised to see two big tears burst from her eyes, which she wiped away before taking a deep breath and placing the tooth in her own pocket. “And what are you doing?” I pointed to the jar that I'd placed on the table. She gave a funny little smile and shook her head. “Just don't make a mess, whatever it is.” Then she disappeared with Monty following behind her. My tooth had distracted Mother from my missing coin and my Saturday clothes. I was glad about that.

  Finding nothing for my caterpillars on the shelves, I opened the fridge, where I found a gallon-sized container of orange juice. It was perfect, but still a quarter full. I took off the lid, gulped down the contents and immediately felt sick. Romeo seemed to cast me a knowing eye – the previous night he'd eaten hot mashed potato from the dinner table and thrown up on the laundry-room floor. Celeste hadn't been pleased – she wasn't that keen on dogs at the best of times: she said they were only good for killing rats and didn't understand how Mother could have them in the house.

  “Careful, Arthur – you be sick,” she said, coming in with a bucket of water.

  I stumbled to the back door, jar and juice container in hand, and turned on the outside tap. The water shot into the container and out of the neck in a cold spray that splashed my face. Romeo jumped out of the way and watched from a distance, along with the chickens. I filled it to the very top, then let it slosh out in glugs. It was clean.

  My body shook from the cold water and the quarter-gallon of orange juice churning in my belly. Bending over, I heaved the juice up, vomiting easily like Romeo. I examined the contents and turned on the tap, washing the sick away. It was only after it had disappeared and my head had stopped spinning that I noticed, by the gate to Mother's side garden, two skinny black legs – the buddleia girl.

  I tried not to feel embarrassed about the girl having watched me throw up. More importantly, I needed twigs for the caterpillars to pupate. “Pupate” – I liked that word: I'd learnt it from my book.

  After picking up my things I walked, head down, towards the woodshed, with Romeo following behind. The girl inched her way towards the back door. I went into the resin-filled shed and moved towards the back. From there I could see her without her seeing me. Romeo hunkered down and snapped at flies, apparently uninterested in the girl, but I watched her every step. She was against the back of the house, clinging to the kitchen wall. Sliding her way along, arms by her sides, she looked like a capital A.

  I collected a fistful of sticks from the floor, then emerged from the dark of the woodshed and sat in the opening next to Romeo. Now the girl could see me and I could see her. She looked startled, like a gecko when you turn on the light.

  Keeping her in view, I held up the juice bottle and angled the twigs to see which ones I could use. They had to fit snugly so that the caterpillars had something solid to cling on to. The girl crept closer towards the back door. Her spindly dark body in a bright-red dress made me think of Mother's crocosmia flowers.

  Between where she stood and the door I spotted a handsaw. “Just what I need” – I thought – “I can chop off the top of the container and cut the sticks down to size.” I laid the jar, juice bottle and twigs on the ground and picked up the saw. I'd never held one before, but I'd seen Joseph saw plenty of things. I placed my hand firmly on the bottle and set about it. The vibrations tickled my arm but it worked. As the plastic shavings gathered on the ground I could feel the girl watching – her bare feet creeping closer. Her toenails were like the shells on the shore of Lake Kivu.

  Eventually the top of the bottle dropped to one side and I was left with a neat-edged tub. I pushed the sticks at angles until they fitted perfectly. I was pleased.

  All I needed to complete the job was foliage and a cover. I didn't like to leave the yard with the girl clinging to the wall, but Fabrice was in the kitchen listening to the radio and Celeste was washing floors. The girl couldn't get into the house without them noticing. I shot her a warning look, picked up my things and ran to the buddleia in the garden.

  The buddleia was a bendy bush, difficult to break. Its lolly-shaped flowers smelt sweet as I tugged at the branches, which sprang back in a shimmer of purple. I grabbed a small branch and twisted: it came away with a ragged green cut. I felt as if I'd wounded it. I took another, then another, inspecting them for spiders – I didn't want my caterpillars to be eaten by predators. I placed them among the twigs in the container. I was proud of my work – silvery leaves and dark sticks – my very own caterpillar farm. It was good.

  When I was done, I looked around to see where the girl might be. I glanced towards my bedroom window to check she wasn't there: she wasn't. Curiosity got the better of me and, after transferring the caterpillars from the jar to their new home, I went back to the house in search of a cheesecloth, an elastic band and – the girl.

  “Eh, Arthur,” said Fabrice as I looked for a cloth in the pantry. “That's nice, very nice,” he said, admiring my farm. I secured a thick rubber band around a cheesecloth and the tub. He put his hands on his hips and smiled, saying: “Eh, I know someone who'd like that.” I gave him a wary look. Why did he think I'd want to share my caterpillar colony? “Come to the kitchen,” he said. “I show you how to clean it.” This, I was aware, was a bribe. I knew about those. Sometimes Mother had to bribe the gardeners with banana beer to work harder.

  I was about to put my caterpillar farm on the kitchen table, when I saw the buddleia girl standing at the sink. I tugged at Fabrice's trousers and shot a look in her direction.

  “Eh, Arthur,” he said, laughing, “it's OK. This is Benitha.” The girl turned towards me: water from her hands dripped onto the floor. “Beni is my granddaughter.”

  We stared at each other – Fabrice busied himself, seeming not to notice our unease. I looked at Beni in her red dress, her skinny limbs, beaded hair and buddleia flower tucked behind her ear. Her eyes, which were bright like her face, were the shape and colour of almonds and, as she smiled, I noticed her new front teeth formed an upside-down V.

  “What is it?” she asked shyly, looking at my farm. Before I could stop myself I placed the farm on the table for her to see.

  “It's his caterpillar farm,” said Fabrice.

  I pointed to the leaf where my newly hatched caterpillars were clambering. She craned her neck and took a step away from the sink. I took a pace back.

  “OK, Arthur,” said Fabrice. “OK.”

  Beni knelt down and peered into the juice container. She tapped her finger against the side. I frowned. She started to turn the farm around. I reached out to stop her. She flinched. The flower behind her ear fell to th
e table.

  “Eh,” said Fabrice, as he finished washing the dishes Beni had abandoned. “Caterpillars have one job. It is what?” he asked triumphantly. The answer was “eating”. I wondered if Beni knew too.

  I wondered if she went to the school with the saggy-eyed teacher where Mother had taken me when I was five – and, if so, why she was here on Friday with Fabrice.

  “To eat,” said Fabrice, wiping his hands on the tea towel that hung from his belt. “And when they eat, then what?” he asked.

  Beni giggled, covering her mouth with her fingers.

  “What?” smiled Fabrice. “What?”

  Beni giggled again: too shy to answer.

  “Waste,” said Fabrice. “Waste, waste, waste.”

  I wanted to tell them that caterpillar poop was called frass. I knew that because I had read it in my book, but I couldn't think of how to communicate it to them, so I just listened instead.

  “We must clean every day. Every day,” repeated Fabrice, stepping out of the kitchen. “Every day,” I heard him say again in the pantry.

  I knew that mould could grow if I didn't keep the farm clean. Did Beni know too? Had the teacher taught her that in school? She giggled as I pretended to study the caterpillars, but really I was studying her. I looked up – she looked down. She looked up – I looked down. I slipped the buddleia flower from across the table and into my pocket: I thought it would be nice to press.

  Fabrice returned with Father's old newspapers, which he'd brought back from the city.

  “Et voilà,” he said, tearing off a sheet. “Put this on the bottom and change it every day. This will keep it clean. Now go and find a light space to keep them, but not in direct sunlight,” he warned. “Caterpillars can die from too much heat.”

  * * *

  Beni started to come to the house every Friday to help Fabrice. She'd wash dishes, peel potatoes and sift the rice while I studied English grammar with Mother. As the weeks passed and the dry season turned to wet, I grew to accept Beni with her almond eyes, V-shaped front teeth and twig-like legs. I got used to her dripping water over the kitchen floor, leaving potato peel in the yard and sitting with her legs wide open when sifting rice, so that I could see her underwear.