by Tamar Myers
“Baba,” Nurse Verna said, “your child has the fire burning inside her. How long has she been this way?”
Cripple closed her eyes and swayed with remorse. Or was that the way her deformed body reacted to standing still for that long?
“Une semaine,” she said in French. One week.
Nurse Verna took care to corral the smile that had begun twitching the corners of her mouth. She knew only too well how switching to another language helped to mask the shame of that which must at last be spoken aloud.
“Come,” she said. “Follow me. I am a mulami of the white man’s medicine. I can help your daughter.”
“Truly?”
“Truly, truly.”
“E, but is there also a witch doctor in this place? A Muluba witch doctor—or, if we must not be choosy, it can even be a Lulua man.”
Nurse Verna was neither surprised by the question nor incensed. When she was a new missionary, she had experienced both those feelings in a very similar case. She’d gone on for days about the patient’s gall in wanting a witch doctor in attendance when she had just offered to save his life—in that case it was amputating a horribly infected finger. But my, what a difference thirty years’ experience in the Congo made—twenty years at Ditu Dinene Station, and ten years here at Mushihi Station.
“Baba,” Nurse Verna said, “I am sorry, but we no longer have a witch doctor in this place. We used to have a great one. Perhaps you heard of him: He Who Was Born with His Fingers Crossed?”
“No, Mamu,” Cripple said.
“Are you sure?”
“Mamu, I would remember a name so unusual as that.”
“Yes, of course. At any rate, he got to be a terrible nuisance—too much competition for me, really, so I put a curse on him, one that turned him into a goat.”
“Kah!”
“Oh, I tell you, it was very hard on me. Look at me, Cripple, do you see my white hair and these many lines on my face? They are result of the power leaving my body and going into that curse.” Nurse Verna could see that Cripple’s eyes were wide with fear, so it was no time to stop. “So what do you think I did with this goat, Cripple?”
“You ate him?”
“Nasha! I did not eat him. That is a foolish answer. Remember, the witch doctor was a nuisance, but his magic was no match for mine. Instead of eating him, I put another curse on him, and made him run into that canyon yonder, and over the steepest cliff. Later that day the buzzards ate him. And that night a leopardess took her turn.”
Cripple was not considerate enough to control her smile. “You tell bold lies for a missionary. Usually missionaries restrict their lies to what is written in their Book of God. Frankly, it is most refreshing to hear a new story, one in which you became an evil spirit capable of performing magic.”
“Kah! Baba, I did not claim to be an evil spirit! I said that I was a witch doctor. Besides, this story was not meant to be believed.”
“You lie again, Mamu. Only an evil spirit would be so stupid as to turn a man into a goat and then drive it over a cliff.”
By now the sun had burned off the fog, and Nurse Verna was getting hot under the collar in more ways than one. Lord, help me, she prayed to herself, help me to keep my cool. Ha-ha. Well, it was funny the way the Lord kept popping those puns into her mind, just when she needed a diversion the most. Just not that Great Diversion. She detested the Great Diversion. Oh Lord, anything but her.
“Mamu,” Cripple said, “I did not mean to offend. I will go with you now to your place of healing, e?”
“E,” Nurse Verna said.
ELEVEN
Buakane awoke to sunshine streaming through a fly-splattered screen. It was a screen, something that she had never seen before, and the sight of it made her sit up, her back as straight as an arrow. The soft cover that someone had spread over her during the night puddled around her waist. She glanced to her left and saw that there was indeed a white girl lying in an adjacent bed. She could hear the white girl snoring now, not loud, sounding more like a puppy or a human child—a Mushilele child, that is.
So there had been truth mixed in with some of Buakane’s nightmares. The whites, the monster with the blinding eyes, the hyenas—Buakane gently fingered her leg through the cover and then threw it back.
She gasped. It was an enormous wound, but it was sewn shut! Sewn! Like one might sew a rip in a loincloth, but instead of using a very fine thread of tightly braided palm fiber, this thread was stiff and black—even darker than her skin.
Her wound was tender, and it throbbed, but by rights it should have made her grasp her belly with both hands and cry aloud for Grasshopper Paddle, and all the mothers who came before her. What sort of magic had the white witch doctor performed on her thigh to hasten its journey of healing?
Buakane shivered and drew the covers back up around her shoulders. Muena tshihaha mukashi mutoke. A white woman who was also a witch doctor. Buakane had heard of this thing! For surely it could not be a real person, not like the child still asleep in the bed next to her. This thing had come into Chief Eagle’s territory along with some other whites, claiming that they had permission from the Bula Matadi—the Belgians—to settle in the tribe’s traditional hunting lands.
These whites did not request Chief Eagle’s permission; instead they gave him permission to send his children, and the children of his village, to a school that they were building. In addition, one of the white women claimed to be a very powerful witch doctor, one who could heal the swollen bellies of the little children with red hair, such as were sometimes seen in Mushihi Village.
The white witch doctor could do many other marvelous things as well—one need only come and ask. But there was a catch; if you were a child, and you survived the white witch doctor’s treatment, then you had to attend the school. And if you were an adult, what then? Adults who survived the mamu’s treatment had to bring her their idols—all of them—and she would burn them. Imagine that! This white, foreign ghost-thing—this tshintu tshitoke—would demand that you destroy the images that represented the unseen spirits that had shaped the destinies of your ancestors since before the before. Then she would try to convince you to worship an unseen spirit from her foreign land. This land supposedly lay across a lake so wide that no dugout canoe, no matter how large and stocked with provisions, could be paddled to the other side.
But what this foolish woman, and others like her, did not understand was that the idols themselves were just symbols, objects standing in for that which was spiritual and unseen. Christian missionaries had their symbols as well. For Protestants it was two very plain, crossed sticks of wood that hung in the back of their churches. The Roman Catholics, at their mission up near Basongo, possessed a much nicer symbol. Somehow they managed to do a perfect job of mummifying a Belgian dwarf, which they hung on crossed sticks of wood. When the Bashilele heard about the white dwarf mounted on crossed sticks, they came from villages as far away as twenty-four kilometers.
Yet even though the Bashilele knew just how stupid the white man was when it came to matters of theology, they were a pragmatic people, and little by little they began to wander onto the mission grounds in search of help for sickness and wounds that would not heal. Well, Buakane had brought no idols with her. She looked around the bed—aiyee! Even her bloodstained didiba was gone. Now there remained to her not a single possession. I am like a newly born infant, she thought to herself, but even less that that. At least an infant is wrapped in a blanket of innocence, but I have been stripped of everything.
“You need not worry,” the white girl whose name was Worthless said. “I will give you one of my mother’s dresses to wear.”
The unexpectedness of the girl’s soft voice was startling, but her accent was entirely perfect, and thus both comforting and alarming. It was as though a pet monkey had spoken.
“What?”
“Just a minute,” said the white girl. She jumped out from beneath her covers and scurried away like a large rat into the tshisuku.
Soon she returned, her small arms weighed down by a pile of colorful cloth, which she carelessly threw on the bed. Then selecting one long piece of cloth, she held it up to her chin. The other end, however, touched the floor.
“This was my mother’s dress,” she said. “You are to wear it today when you go to the school for runaway brides.”
“Yala! I cannot wear your mother’s dress, Worthless. She will get angry with me and beat me with the stick that she uses to stir the mush. Aiyee!”
Worthless did not laugh as Buakane had hoped that she would. Instead she turned to her and looked down, as if she had spotted something important on the floor beside her. Perhaps she had seen a spider, or perhaps not.
“My mother is dead,” Worthless said. “She will not mind.”
What was Buakane to do now? She could not risk offending Worthless, for this white girl was her only hope for the future. But neither could she wear the dress of a dead woman. How was she to explain this?
Worthless solved the problem for her by pointing a tiny finger straight at Buakane, going so far as to poke her in the chest. “You need not worry about her spirit entering your body. My mother was a Protestant, and Protestant spirits cannot enter bodies of heathens such as yourself. When Protestants die, their spirits go straight up to a place called diulu, which is above the clouds, and because it is such a wonderful place, they stay there forever. Believe me when I tell you this, Buakane, not one Protestant has ever come back to haunt his village.”
Buakane reached out to finger the material. Two of the dresses were the color known as the color of manioc leaves, and thus very pretty. This one, however, was special. It was the color known as black, which could have many meanings, although in this case it meant the color of sky on a day without clouds.
“Then I will wear this one,” she said. “But you must tell me what happens to those whites who call themselves Roman Catholics when they die. We have heard about the little Belgian dwarf they keep nailed to their sticks. It is my wish to see this creature someday.”
Worthless shook her head. “It is not a Belgian dwarf, Buakane; it is an idol. In fact, it is an idol that they actually worship. It is because of this idol worship that the spirits of the Roman Catholics will go straight down, deep into the earth when they die. Deeper even than the deepest cave. There it is even hotter than the giant fires that your hunters set in the tshisuku at the end of the dry season.”
Such foolishness, Buakane thought, but again, she decided it was best to refrain from putting her thoughts into words. In many ways the whites were like little children who played in the dirt. They imagined various actions with bits of fluff or sticks wrapped with twine. This was an infant, the little girls would say, but in reality, anyone with eyes could see it was a stick wrapped in a corn husk.
Anyway, Worthless was in a great hurry. “It is my duty,” she said, “to see that you are fed. Real food—bidia bwa bene Kasai. In order to do that, we must stop in at the girls’ compound on the way to school.”
Buakane was taken aback. “What sort of food do you eat, Worthless? Is it not real?”
“Eyo, it is real—but it is not as satisfying as cassava mush. On that account we whites must eat three times a day, instead of just two, and as you can see just by looking at us, we are neither as strong nor as handsome as the Bashilele.”
Buakane nodded. Her new friend was capable of admitting the truth, even when it did not flatter her, which meant that quite possibly, here was a base upon which trust could be built. Who could have imagined, just one moon cycle ago, that a Mushilele girl—one of the nobility on her mother’s side—could one day be friends with something so hideous as a girl with white skin?
“Please,” Worthless said, “you must put a fire under your feet; this is no time to savor compliments.”
Again, the truth. Therefore, after putting on the sky-colored dress—with some help from Worthless—Buakane allowed herself to be pulled into another room where there was a very large mirror.
Now, Buakane had once caught a glimpse of her face in a mirror smaller than the palm of her hand. This was the year that old Diamba had an extraordinarily successful Indian hemp crop, more than he and all the men in the village could ever smoke and still do any hunting. So the old man dried and bundled part of his crop and toted it to the nearest Portuguese-owned trading post. In exchange for the plants (which were widely known to bring peace and euphoria), Diamba was given a gray blanket, a speckled gray enameled basin, two axe heads, six bars of blue-and-white lye soap, each the length of his forearm, nine cans of sardines packed in olive oil, and a kilo of brightly colored beads. Plus one small mirror, with glass on one side and a portrait of King Baudouin of Belgium on the other.
Everyone of rank in the village was allowed to glimpse themselves at least once in the tiny mirror. Each person, upon beholding their visage, could not help but yelp with astonishment—no matter how clearly they might have seen their faces reflected in water at some earlier time. But then a terrible thing happened; almost everyone who had seen their reflection thus desired a little mirror of their own. When the next planting season rolled around, no one planted manioc—only hemp, so that the village would have faced starvation for the first time had not something happened.
That something was Chief Eagle. In a rage, Chief Eagle—for he really did care about the welfare of his people in general—seized the mirror from Diamba and ground the reflecting glass into powder. He then ordered his people—with the exception of Diamba—to replant their gardens, each one to grow only manioc and corn. Old man Diamba died the following year, but his oldest son was allowed to take over the tradition of growing hemp—but only enough to fill the village’s needs.
Buakane had never encountered another mirror until now, and to think that the little one with the king’s face on the back and this one that stood on the floor were the same thing was to remember that the shrew and elephant were both animals. But that was later. Her first reaction was to jump to the conclusion that she was witnessing a form of serious magic. Or was she gazing upon her spirit body in that other world, the real world? How was Buakane to know if she was alive now? Or dead?
She pointed to the image she saw standing before her. “Can you tell me the place where I used to hide when my mother sought me out to do work.”
The image mocked her, saying the same words, and in the same way. It too pointed a finger.
Buakane’s anger gave the her courage to step closer. This time she held her hand out, with the fingers open, and the palm pointing up.
“If you are from the true world,” she said, “and I am but the illusion, then please take my hand and guide me back to your world, so that the thought of a thing and the thing itself can again be one. Only then will I finally be at peace.”
Clap, clap, clap. Somebody—in this, the world of illusions, the existence of sorrow and pain—someone here had been watching and listening, and now the person spoke. Make no mistake, that person was not Worthless; Worthless had been watching Buakane, where Buakane could see her. The little girl’s mouth was open in astonishment.
“You will never find peace,” the someone said in Tshiluba, “unless you believe that Jesus died for the bad things that you have done, and then you ask him to forgive you.”
Buakane could see now that the mirror revealed the image of the same white man she had seen the night before in the house where her wound had been treated. From this information she understood that she was not being given a glimpse of the real world.
The white man spoke again. “Child,” he said, “have you heard of Jesus?”
Buakane looked to Worthless for help, but found none forthcoming. Instead, Worthless giggled.
“Quit the noise!” the man barked.
Worthless jumped forward and grabbed Buakane’s hand with both her tiny hands. “Come! We must get you some bidia to eat before school begins.”
“Nasha,” the man said. No! “It is too late; that is why I am here. The savage has overslept
, and already she has missed prayers in the house of our one true God. Now she must go straight to school.”
Worthless dropped Buakane’s hand and spoke what sounded like words of pleading, but in her own tongue, to the stern white man. Meanwhile, he shook his head vigorously. Finally, they both grew so agitated that the old man struck Worthless across the face, sending her reeling into a wall. There she crumpled to the ground, like a wilted manioc bush that has had a machete laid to its stem.
The man then grabbed Buakane’s wrist. To be sure, he did not touch her hand, for that would have been an intimate gesture.
“You can eat this evening in the girls’ compound,” he said, “assuming that you behave the rest of the day. And do not ever speak of what you have seen or heard this morning. Is that clear?”
“Eyo,” Buakane said.
“Do not think about it either. Instead, think about all the wicked things that you have done in your life, so that you may ask the one true God to forgive you. Otherwise you will be punished severely.”
“Master,” she said, “what is this punishment?”
“You will burn forever in a lake of fire.”
Buakane stumbled, for such a harsh punishment came to her as a great shock.
“Up, child,” the white man ordered. “We must hurry. Classes will have started.”
“But truly, master? I will burn forever?”
“E. That is why we have come all the way to this terrible place to tell you—to warn you before it is too late.”
“Aiyee! Surely, I have no wish to burn, master; I have a terrible fear of fire. My mother’s sister fell asleep while tending a fire, and she fell face forward into it. Master, her face is now as white as yours.”
The white man jerked her off her feet for a step. “You are a rude child!”
“Master, I did not wish to offend you, only to express my deep concern.”
“About the color of my face?”
“Nasha. Master, it is true that I am very much afraid of fires. However, I can think of no great wickedness that I have committed. Since that is the case, why must I ask your one true God to forgive me?”
