The Flower Plantation

by Nora Anne Brown

  The next morning I attempted to hide the fact I'd abandoned my pillow in the cave by folding up my jacket and pulling my blanket over it. Thankfully, when Mother entered my room she didn't notice: she had other things on her mind.

  “Do you want to see Sebazungu fell the tree for the hotel?” she asked. Rather than have her wait for an answer or stay in any longer than necessary, I left my room and headed outside.

  We went up to the clearing to watch Sebazungu and the gardeners cut down the tree, which fell to the ground with a thud. Sebazungu stood with his saw held up to the sky and watched as the gardeners bound it in rope.

  “Very good, Sebazungu,” said Mother. “Mr Umuhoza will be pleased: it's the perfect size. Make sure it's on the pickup in fifteen minutes. Come on, Arthur – we're going to town.”

  She took my hand and led me down the side of the bright chrysanthemum fields, through the spotted foxgloves and the golden alstroemeria that rippled in the breeze. I turned to watch the gardeners lift the load onto their shoulders. The green tree and their dark legs looked like a gigantic caterpillar creeping down the hill.

  “Arthur,” said Mother, “go wash your face before we leave.”

  In the yard I splashed cold water over my face, grabbed a towel from the drying line and ran back to the cutting shed, where I watched the gardeners roll the tree into the pickup. The plant juddered, then gave in to the force of Simon, who was ordering Thomas to pull the elastic cords tighter.

  “Are you ready, Arthur?” asked Mother when the tree was secure. Romeo leapt into the front, and I lifted Monty in beside us. I moved my butterfly book from the warm seat to the glove compartment, while Sebazungu and Simon got into the back beside the tree.

  Mother turned the key – the engine spluttered but didn't start. She tried again several times. “Not today!” she said, pumping the clutch and thumping the steering wheel in frustration. It was Christmas Eve, and if the pickup broke down we wouldn't be able to get things for Christmas dinner. Eventually it started up, fumes belching out of the exhaust. We turned out of the plantation and down the road.

  “Look, Arthur,” said Mother after we'd driven past the school. “There's Beni's house. Give her a wave.” I wondered if Beni was in school. I wondered if, unlike me, she'd told her mother that we'd been to the cave and been frightened off by the boy with the bloodshot eyes. I felt guilty that Mother didn't know. It felt like a lie – and that didn't seem right.

  * * *

  “Remember not to touch things,” said Mother for the umpteenth time as we pulled into the car park of the Kivu Hotel. Sebazungu and Simon jumped out of the back, saw off the beggar and began undoing the elastic cords round the tree. They cut the rope, and the branches pinged back to life with a sweet smell of pine. Romeo yapped excitedly – Monty limped behind Mother.

  “Madame,” said Mr Umuhoza as we entered the hotel, placing his hand in the small of her back. “How are you?”

  Mother gave her reply.

  “And good to see you, Arthur.” He reached out to ruffle my hair, but I ducked out of the way.

  “Off you go,” said Mother to me as Mr Umuhoza took her into the lounge. “Go find some butterflies or shells by the lake.”

  Even though two years had passed since the day I'd been mobbed by the local children, I still didn't like to be alone on the beach. Most Tuesdays, when Mother was having coffee, I'd sit next to her and read African Butterflies, hoping she'd share her cake. But that day she wanted to be alone, so I decided to sit by the pool instead. I knew there'd be cake for Christmas, so I didn't mind.

  I walked round the side of the pool with Romeo, looking for a shady place to sit away from the watchful eyes of the tall thin women on the pool loungers, in their brightly coloured swimsuits smelling of talcum powder.

  At the far side of the pool – where nobody could see me – I sat down under a palm tree with Romeo and opened my book. I was reading about the development of chrysalides when a white man, in shorts, socks, garters and sandals approached with one of the ladies in the swimsuits. She wore so much make-up I couldn't say how old she was, but her bottom was as big and firm as a melon, and she wore her hair like a pineapple on top of her head.

  The man patted the lady's bottom and kissed her cheek, which prompted a teasing laugh. They had a whispered conversation, then he reached into his back pocket and took out lots of money. He handed it to her. She counted it and put it in her handbag. I returned to my book.

  Later on, when a twinge of pain from my front tooth drew my attention away from my reading, I glanced up to see Sebazungu standing over the same lady. I wasn't sure why he was talking to her when he should have been putting up the Christmas tree. What happened next surprised me. Sebazungu raised his voice at the lady and bent over her in the same way he did when one of the gardeners did something wrong. The lady didn't seem frightened like the gardeners: her eyes were so mean that I thought she might punch him. But instead of punching him she opened her handbag and gave him the money.

  Then Mr Umuhoza arrived and took Sebazungu into the bar, where the ladies couldn't see them but I could. I held my book up, pretending to read. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I could see that Mr Umuhoza was angry. He kept pointing at the lady's money, which was really the white man's, and which Sebazungu held on to tightly.

  I glanced over at Mother to gauge her reaction, but she was tapping her watch face and looking at me, which meant it was time to go.

  * * *

  “Just a quick trip to Goma,” said Mother as we left the hotel car park. Mother had sent Simon to the market for supplies; Sebazungu was still with Mr Umuhoza. There was something different about her voice: it didn't sound the way it usually did after coffee and cake; it was tight.

  At the border to Zaire I waited in the jeep with the dogs. It was as hot as Fabrice's stove. I kept Mother in view via the side mirror. She forced her way through a crowd of people huddled around the two-roomed customs building who were waving passports and other bits of paper. She went into the first of the rooms, where there was an officer with a big buffalo chest sitting behind a desk. Mother pulled a bottle from her bag and handed it to him alongside her paperwork, which he stamped without even looking at her passport. She came back to the pickup, turned the key, tutted when the engine didn't start immediately, then backed out towards the city.

  I hated Goma. It was dirty and smelly, busy and loud. Everything looked as if it had been drawn in charcoal and then smudged out. Grey potholed roads, volcanic ash and hardened lava made it look like a giant scar on the face of a dead man. It gave me the creeps.

  “We'll just pop in on Mr Patel,” said Mother. Mr Patel was the dentist. We never popped in on Mr Patel. We only ever went for a reason.

  Running my tongue round my mouth I thought about the day my first tooth had come out over a year ago. Since that day I'd lost many more, some to jam sandwiches, others to absent-minded twisting – but all had been replaced with big teeth pushing through. My big front tooth, unlike the others, had come through crooked and brown. It hurt when I ate and drank. That's why I was seeing Mr Patel. I didn't know why Mother had to pretend otherwise.

  “Come on, Arthur,” said Mother as she parked the pickup in the gravel that was neither road nor pavement.

  As I got out, clutching my book, I saw a man with no legs hauling himself through the dirt on his knuckles, which were wrapped in rags. I could see the brown blood seeping through the grey fabric. I tried to imagine how much it hurt to heave yourself on bleeding fists and what it felt like to have no legs. But I couldn't.

  The man looked at Mother, then at me, and grunted something I didn't understand, pleading with his eyes like the dogs did for dinner scraps. Mother looked straight ahead, her face blank: she must have seen him, but she ignored him. I didn't understand why she gave scraps to the dogs, but didn't give anything to the man with no legs.

  She took my hand and marched me up to Mr Patel's practice. The alley to the surgery was dark and narrow and litte
red with excrement. It opened into a yard through screeching sheet-metal gates. On two sides a brick wall with coils of barbed wire and broken glass surrounded a patch of dirt where blades of grass tried but failed to grow. On the other two sides was Dr Patel's L-shaped clinic with its barred windows. There were no butterflies or flowers in the yard. I used to wonder if there was a single butterfly or flower in the whole of Goma. It seemed unlikely.

  “Hurry up, Arthur, there's nothing to be afraid of,” said Mother, and she guided me up the cracked cement path towards the clinic door. The dogs lay down in the shade of the veranda – we went inside.

  A small TV, mounted on the wall, blared into the reception room, which was full of boxes packed with green envelopes. Pieces of cardboard stuck up, with capital letters on them from A to Z. Seeing things in alphabetical order usually made me feel calm, but not at Mr Patel's. Nothing could make me feel calm at Mr Patel's – not my photo album, my chrysalides, my book or rubbing my knuckles together.

  “Bonjour, Madame Baptiste,” said the receptionist, a big woman whose white uniform was too tight. I could see the shape of her underwear and bits of bare flesh where the buttons strained. She checked her appointment book and smiled at me from behind her wooden desk: her eye tooth shone a brilliant gold.

  “I'll be back for him in an hour,” Mother whispered to the receptionist – as if I might not hear over the television – as if I might not notice she was leaving.

  “Arthur,” she said, “there's nothing to worry about. This lady is going to look after you for an hour while I do some shopping.” She placed her hand on my shoulder and said: “You'll be fine.”

  I sat on a green plastic chair, folded my arms and bit my lip, trying hard not to cry. I opened African Butterflies and leant forward to check for Romeo, who was keeping a lazy guard by the door. Tears plopped from my eyes and wrinkled the pages. I blotted them with my palm.

  The receptionist disappeared into the surgery. I looked at the clock and watched every noisy second tick by. She reappeared, smiling, as if that might make me feel better. She returned to her filing, humming as she did so.

  “Arthur,” she said, after I'd listened to the clock tick over three minutes, “the doctor see you now.” She indicated to the door with the little brass plaque that read “Mr Patel”, with a whole lot of letters after his name. I stalled. “Allez, Arthur. Le docteur est très occupé.”

  I pushed the door open and entered the hot room, which smelt of warm rubber and cloves. The receptionist closed the door behind me.

  “Take a seat,” said Mr Patel.

  I walked towards the huge chair with its overhead lamp, spittoon and rack of gleaming instruments. I clambered onto the hard chair, which reclined until I was lying facing the broken ceiling panels. Mr Patel snapped his rubber gloves and readjusted his mask, then brought down the lamp, blinding me. I heard him select an instrument from his rack.

  “Open wide,” he said, then forced his rubbery fingers into the corners of my mouth, shoving in two pieces of cotton. “Hmm,” he muttered, as he dragged the hook around my mouth. “Yeesss,” he said, and tapped on my brown front tooth.

  A current of pain coursed round my jaw, up through my temples, and filled my skull. He removed his fingers, cotton wool and instrument from my mouth, clicked off the lamp and sat me up.

  “Arthur,” he said from behind his mask, his eyes boring through me. “I need to extract a tooth.”

  * * *

  I'm not sure I ever quite forgave Mother for leaving me alone with the dentist. When she returned from shopping I was waiting in reception, my mouth still numb from the huge needle Mr Patel had stuck into my gum.

  “Well, maybe the tooth fairy will come,” Mother said lightly as we got into the truck.

  She had placed a tarpaulin over her shopping in the back, which was odd: she only covered her shopping during the wet season, and we weren't expecting rain. I stared through the back window hoping I could see something, maybe something for Christmas, but Mother pulled at my T-shirt and said, “Sit still until the anaesthetic has worn off. You don't want to be sick.”

  When we got home, she told me to go for a lie-down, adding: “Remember to put your tooth under your pillow.”

  I put it under my folded jacket and fell fast asleep.

  The next thing I knew it was Christmas morning. I checked under my jacket to see what the tooth fairy had brought. The disappointment of finding my tooth still there stung more than Mr Patel's syringe.

  10

  “Very smart, Arthur,” said Father, who was wearing clothes similar to mine. Christmas clothes made me want to burst, even though they were almost the same colour as the clothes I wore every Sunday: brown and blue. My shirt collar pinched my neck, and the tie was so tight I thought I might choke. Celeste had ironed paper-sharp creases down my trousers – I felt like the chicken Fabrice had stuffed and bound the night before. I clutched my book to my chest.

  “Only for an hour,” said Father, ruffling my hair. We were standing by the Christmas tree, its lights dimmed by the sunlight streaming through the windows. I cast him a doubtful look, knowing church dragged on for much longer on Christmas Day. “Well, maybe a little more than an hour,” he said with a smile. “Maybe two.” I knew we'd be lucky to get out before three hours had passed. “Then we can get stuck into presents and lunch. Good, huh?”

  “Shall we go?” said Mother. “We don't want to be late.” I wondered why not; nobody else was ever on time for church. She tied a silk scarf round her neck that matched the dress that she was wearing – a very rare occasion. She appeared gentler than usual, prettier too. Father looked pleased and gave her a kiss on the mouth. Mother pursed her lips momentarily as if remembering something, then busied herself around me.

  “It's important we show up,” she said, dabbing her handkerchief on her tongue and rubbing it on the corner of my mouth. “We don't want people thinking we're complete heathens,” she added, examining the big gap in my gum.

  “We do after all live in a Christian country,” replied Father.

  “Hardly.” She put her hanky into her purse and opened the front door. “If it weren't for the Belgians, we'd be living in a country of infidels.”

  “If it weren't for the Belgians we wouldn't be here at all.”

  “Well, wouldn't that be terrible?” muttered Mother, closing the door behind us.

  On the walk to church, Father told me the story about how the Belgians had taken over Rwanda from the Germans nearly seventy years earlier. And he told me about his father, Papa.

  “He came to Rwanda in the 1930s to study the Hutus and the Tutsis,” Father said. I thought about my favourite picture of Papa in my photo album. He was a Belgian scientist – a smart-looking man with a straight back who wore shiny shoes and stiff collars. In the photograph he was fitting someone's head with a strange wooden contraption that looked as if it screwed into the actual skull. And in the background, other men were measuring noses with callipers and consulting a chart.

  “The Tutsis,” Father went on, “were very tall, with light skin and big heads. They'd been in Rwanda for six hundred years, herding cattle and ruling the kingdom. They were thought to be warriors from a far-off land – some even believed they came from the sky.” I reached out to hold Father's large hand, the skin of which was the lightest brown. I wondered if he was a warrior from the sky too.

  “The Hutus were short and dark, with smaller heads, and were here long before the Tutsis. They were hard workers, ordinary people who followed the powerful, superior Tutsis.” I squeezed Father's hand, urging him to continue.

  “Papa and his men decided that the Tutsis must have bigger brains in their big heads and therefore must be smarter than the Hutus. The Belgians favoured the Tutsis and gave them the good jobs. Then they gave everybody a card to say to which group they belonged.” I noticed Mother was shaking her head.

  “After Papa had finished measuring people's heads he came here, to the plantation, and that's where he met my
mother, Immaculée.” I couldn't remember seeing a picture of Immaculée in my album. As we passed the closed-up shops I thought she must be like one of the laughing ladies with the yellow eyes. “Papa said she was by far the prettiest of all the Tutsi girls. He decided to marry her, and six months later I was born.” He gave me a poke in the ribs and pulled a funny face as if to say “whoopsee” – just as he did when I was younger and I spilt my milk. Mother laughed a little, so I did too, even though I didn't know why they were laughing.

  “Turns out Papa and Immaculée didn't like each other much. They separated before I was three years old, and two years later she died giving birth to another Belgian man's child.” Father was very matter-of-fact about the death of his mother. The thought of Mother dying made me sick with worry. She put her arm round my shoulder. “That's when I was sent to boarding school.”

  In my album there was a tattered picture of Father as a glum-looking boy in a woollen coat on a station platform. I couldn't tell if he was unhappy because his mother had died or because he was being sent away to school, or both. Whichever, it was clear from his tone that boarding school in England was not something to wish for. Looking into the empty schoolyard, as we walked past, I wondered if school in England was anything like school in Rwanda – did their schools smell like hen coops too?

  “Papa told me, ‘It will do you good.’” Father put on a voice that was supposed to sound like his Papa's and wagged his finger, which made me giggle. “I didn't like boarding school much, but it did do me good.

  “When I was eighteen I went to Oxford, and after that I spent five years travelling round Africa.” I thought about the old photographs of him standing tall and upright behind dead lions, slumped elephants and heavy buffalo, with squads of men in dirty vests and big helmets. I loved those pictures. Father looked happy.

  “It was on a trip back to England that I met your Mother. Like Immaculée, she was by far the prettiest girl in town.” Mother rolled her eyes, but smiled too. “I asked her to marry me after only a month.” Father looked fondly at Mother, the same way he did in the photo of them cutting their wedding cake, in which his eyes sparkled. Mother looked down at me, her look both wistful and sad. “After saying our vows, eating some cake and having our photograph taken, we said goodbye to England and set sail for Africa.” A glance up at Father's lean face, with its long nose and plump lips, told him not to stop, but as we passed Beni's house Mother discouraged him from continuing with a slight shake of her head.