The Girl Who Married an Eagle

by Tamar Myers

  “Buakane, why do you already cease to listen?” Head Drinking Cup demanded, snapping his fingers in front of her eyes.

  “Aiyee! I have not ceased, Headmaster.”

  “Then what were my last words to you?”

  “They were words of wisdom, Headmaster, such as only you are qualified to say.”

  Head Drinking Cup beamed, as only a vain, inglorious man can beam, which is to say, quite brightly. “I will leave you to rest now until the girls return from school. The privy is the round building behind the hut. We use corn husks; you get a maximum of three per day.”

  Then Head Drinking Cup departed, and after marveling over her many treasures in private, Buakane grew sleepy and spread her new blanket out upon her springy bamboo slat platform, one that she did not have to share, and soon fell fast asleep. When she awoke, it was only after a good deal of dreaming, wherein her younger brother was poking her foot with his toes. It was not a welcome disturbance; thus Buakane awoke disoriented and out of sorts.

  “Stop that,” she said.

  “The chief’s wife commands me,” a girl’s voice said, and many other voices outside the hut laughed.

  Buakane rubbed sleep from her eyes and sat up. Her heart began to beat faster. Her hut was crowded with girls, and she could hear more of them outside. How many were there altogether? Thirty? Perhaps forty of them?

  “Look,” Buakane said, “I was sleeping. I did not know that I had guests. It was not my intention to offend. I wish only to do what I am supposed to do.”

  “You think that you are special because your husband is the chief, is that not right?” said a big girl with wide shoulders and no waist.

  Buakane recognized this girl as Hermaphrodite, who was also from the village of Mushihi but was several years older than Buakane. Hermaphrodite was named thus because her body parts were both male and female. It was said that as young child, Hermaphrodite had behaved as any other Mushilele girl, but as she approached womanhood and her body changed, so did her personality. Hermaphrodite developed small breasts and bled, but she was prone to fits of anger, and her large size and muscular build intimidated many people. Needless to say, her bride-price was set very low. She was bought by a young man from a faraway village and was never heard from again.

  “Hermaphrodite,” Buakane said happily, “how good it is to see you once more, and to know that I have a friend here.”

  “Shut up,” the big girl said, and, reaching down, she dug her thumb and forefinger into the Achilles’ heel of Buakane’s good leg. “I have never seen you before, and here you are supposed to call me Brings Happiness.”

  “Aiyee,” cried Buakane in pain. Then she let the pain be funneled into anger so that it would work on her behalf. “But I have seen you. It was you who taught me how to braid a proper grasshopper paddle—not my mother, even though that is her name.

  “And it was you who taught me how to dig clay and work it into a pot that would stand up to the baking. You, and not my mother. Do you remember how lopsided my first effort was? You made me destroy it and start over. I cried then, which you said was a good thing, because the clay was starting to dry out too much and a little bit of my snot and tears were what it needed to stay moist enough for another try. And of course you were right!”

  “I said, shut up,” Brings Happiness said.

  “E,” Buakane said.

  “Come, we will eat.”

  Buakane followed in silence. In front of the headmaster’s hut, where the cooking fires lived, most of the girls quietly squatted in two concentric semicircles with a piece of banana leaf on the ground in front of each child. Because the act of squatting pulled at the stitches in Buakane’s leg, she gasped in pain. It was an involuntary response that she regretted immediately; nonetheless, it caused Born Without a Neck to shout at one of his little daughters.

  “Bring a stool for this heathen Mushilele,” he yelled. “And hurry up about it, too. Do you not know that her father drinks his beer from the heads of little Muluba girls like you?”

  The girl commenced screaming, and although she was of an age where she was still new to walking, she staggered over, while yet maneuvering a wooden stool as big as she was. To their credit, none of the other heathen Bashilele girls laughed at this pitiful sight.

  When the girl reached Buakane, she pushed the stool at her, screamed even louder, and then toddled away as fast as her chubby bowed legs would take her. They did not take her far, however, before the little legs gave way and the toddler sat down with a plop. That seemed to be what stunned the child into silence. A slobbery silence. It was only then that her mother ceased laughing and, scooping up her daughter, held her close.

  “You have delayed my meal,” said Born Without a Neck, and he clapped his hands twice. “Buasha, buasha,” he said in Buakane’s heathen tongue. It was clear by his tone what he meant: Serve me my dinner immediately—or else! Since Born Without a Neck was the headmaster of the school, and in charge of keeping the girls’ husbands out of the stockade, the two words or else were of great importance.

  Immediately, several girls who’d been assigned to help the headmaster’s wife cook on that particular day jumped into action. They began by making rounds, first plopping a fist-size lump of stiff cassava porridge on the leaf, a spoon of carefully prepared cassava leaves (for they too contain strychnine), a ladle of palm oil gravy, and a pinch of stinging green chilies.

  Where was the chicken? Buakane wondered. Fortunately, she did not ask, because when she glanced over at the headmaster’s plate, she saw half of the bird perched on his lump of cassava. Looking around, she saw that the other half of the chicken appeared to be have been divided among his four sons in proportion to their ages. His four daughters received no meat, and his wife a piece no larger than her thumb.

  When the headmaster’s wife saw that Buakane’s eyes were upon her, she looked away quickly. Buakane felt pity for the woman, but anger as well. A Mushilele wife would not watch her girl children grow into weak women because they ate no meat. After all, it is the lot of Congolese women—Bashilele, Baluba, and Bapende—to work in the fields. And it is the privilege of the men to sit on their stools in the communal hut and tell stories of their brave exploits. The men would have you believe that the telling of stories requires more energy than hoeing fields, digging up cassava tubers, and pounding the cassava tubers into flour. Let it be known that the tubers are pounded in wooden mortars as big around as a fat man’s belly, and the pestles are as hefty as a fat man’s thigh.

  “Headmaster,” Buakane said, addressing him in a most respectful tone, “is it true that the chicken only flew over the pot of gravy before landing on your plate? For behold, these forty students of the Bashilele tribe, and your four daughters of the Baluba tribe, not one of them has as much as one bite of that delicious meat that we can see on your plate, and the plates of your handsome sons.”

  Buakane had much more to say on the issue of fairness, and the division of limited resources. She was no expert by any means, but coming from a noble clan, she had been privy to palavers around her hearth that dealt with these issues. Buakane was a woman of the royal court; she had been raised to be a skilled conversationalist. Although her tongue had been designed by the gods to converse with women, it had been honed by Paddle, and it had often been said that she was clever beyond measure.

  But much to her dismay, her small joke about the chicken flying over the pot was met with hoots of laughter from many of the girls, and fits of giggles from the rest. Even the headmaster’s wife had to cover her mouth with the corner of her wrap cloth, so as not to give herself away.

  Only the headmaster was not amused. “Tangila weh!” he said as he stabbed the air with his finger. Look you! He had used the shortened form of “you,” the threatening form; there was no need for him to say more. Besides, his entire body was shaking; it was as if he had taken ill with a sudden case of malaria.

  After that, stillness descended over all the compound. Except for the sounds of c
hewing—for one must chew with an open mouth to enjoy the aroma along with the flavor—the meal was consumed in silence. Buakane ate slowly, because for her the end of the meal was problematic. It was customary to belch at the end in order to express one’s satisfaction, but how could one be satisfied with a meal in which the chicken only flew over the pot?

  Yes, there had been only one small chicken, but a fair person would have cooked that bird in a small amount of water, in a covered pot, until the meat fell off the bones. Then she would have shredded the meat before adding it to the gravy. In truth, Buakane had never seen it done just this way, but only because Paddle had never had to feed forty growing girls at one time.

  Still, there had been lean hunting times, when Paddle had had nothing better to add to the gravy pot than a handful of dried caterpillars. Or perhaps a sparrow or two. Yet Paddle had always been fair about the way in which she rationed available protein. E, no doubt about it, Paddle would have shredded the meat!

  One by one, the girls who were finished belched, stood up, and quietly left the family compound. It occurred to Buakane that she had better not be the last girl left eating. As she pressed a wad of bidia between her thumb and forefinger to form a scoop for the gravy and chopped cassava leaves, a solution came to her. The bidia was really of an excellent quality. It alone was deserving of a hearty burp.

  So Buakane burped loudly and all but jumped to her feet. It was possible that the headmaster cleared his throat to call after her, but if so, by then she was already back inside her hut.

  The hut, which she was to share with seven other girls, already held sixteen. When Buakane entered, some ululated softly, others clapped, while still others danced. Then in one voice they began to chant.

  “Buakane, Buakane, our hero is Buakane!”

  All this behavior was shocking to Buakane, for she had not meant to stick her head above the grass. But what surprised Buakane the most was that it was Hermaphrodite who chanted with the greatest enthusiasm. From now on, in Buakane’s mind, she would forever be known as Brings Happiness.

  FIFTEEN

  Every summer when she was a little girl, Julia’s parents would take her to the Butler County Fair. The three memories Julia promised herself she would never forget were the two-headed calf, the fear she felt at the top of the Ferris wheel, and the wonder she felt as she watched the knife sharpener advertise his wares. This man would sharpen a knife, and then he would slice a piece of paper down the middle—presumably attacking it edge-on. People said that it was a trick, that it was physically impossible to do this. Yet it was being done in front of their eyes—or so it seemed. At any rate, they felt deceived, so they became angry.

  One fellow accused the knife sharpener of rigging the paper, of gluing two pieces together. This fellow demanded that the performer slice open a sheet of paper that had been given to him by an outside source. The knife sharpener agreed to do this, and again he was successful. Another guy—a man whose face was red from drinking—said that this didn’t prove anything. He said that if the guy who sharpened knives wanted to be taken seriously, then he had also to be open to using a knife supplied to him by an outside source. The knife sharpener agreed to do this as well, provided he could first sharpen the blade.

  When the drunk heard this simple request, he exploded with rage. He said many choice words to the knife sharpener and the growing crowd before being ushered out of the state fairgrounds by two burly police officers. With him, of course, was his little daughter, Julia, and his small son, Willard.

  That day was particularly significant for the Newton family, because it was the day that Mr. Theodor Newton, Julia’s father, hit rock bottom as an alcoholic (although it would still take several more months until he sought treatment). For Julia, personally, this lesson taught her that even the slimmest edge can be reduced to something even slimmer. But when one is hanging on by one’s proverbial fingernails, then what?

  For Julia’s entire first day at Mushihi Station, she felt like she was clinging by her fingernails to a chunk of balsa wood about the size of a breadbox while adrift in a sea of sharks. After chapel, she’d been dumped at her new home by Henry and told to “settle in.” That was her job for the day—that, and that alone.

  But “settle in” with what? Unlike most other missionaries, Julia had not arranged to have her household furnishings shipped in crates or barrels. In fact, everything that she owned was contained in the two rather large suitcases she’d brought with her.

  Because her arrival coincided with the end of colonial rule, it was impractical for her to plan for a term of any particular length. Therefore, her house was to be furnished with the basics—whatever that meant—including the kitchen, and the latter would be stocked with three months (the time it took to get more supplies) of dry and canned goods. However, when Julia took a peek into the pantry cupboards, she burst into tears. Nothing—not one item looked familiar!

  She saw full-fat powdered milk labeled KLIM, and wieners in tins canned by Plumrose, whole heads of cauliflower in tins, courtesy of Libby’s, ditto peas, and SPAM, SPAM, and more SPAM. Fortunately Julia liked the luncheon meat, just as long as there was ketchup to be had—and there was—but she would have to train herself to down the many tins of kippered herring, and sardines, which had been stacked neatly in alphabetical order.

  There wasn’t much to say about the rest of the house. It was separated from the kitchen by a covered breezeway and was composed of three small rooms, plus the bathroom. The first room, the one behind the front door, was the common room, so it would serve as Julia’s dining room—especially during inclement weather.

  In the back were three doors. The two on the outside opened to reveal two very small bedrooms, each with a single bed and nightstand. The bedroom on the left also contained a small desk, whereas the one on the right laid claim to a chest of drawers. Tucked between the bedrooms was a utilitarian bathroom that was so tiny, one could theoretically be sitting on the john while brushing one’s teeth and simultaneously soaking one’s feet in the tub. That was only a minor exaggeration, Julia thought.

  The bedroom with the desk would, of course, be Julia’s study. She chose not to sleep in this room because it had a rear door. Despite the fact that such a door might be beneficial should the house catch fire, it bothered Julia that this door opened onto the tshisuku, the elephant grass. How easy it would be for a heathen headhunter to slip in unnoticed and slip out again, with a new wine cup. To ensure that this didn’t happen, Julia took the small bed that was in that room, tilted it on end, and leaned it against the door. If anyone tried to come in, she would hear it crash to the floor.

  In the second bedroom, the one that she would make her own, there was no rear exit to worry about, just a small window that appeared to have been painted shut. This bedroom also contained a small bed, but unlike the first, this one was already made up with linens and a coarse blanket. There was a pillow on the bed that was stuffed with barley chaff—some of which poked through the burlap inner case. Julia immediately stripped off the pillow’s cotton outer case and tossed the pillow in a corner. She would much rather use her dirty laundry to stuff the pillowcase than that hideous thing.

  Beside the bed stood a simple stand, on which a kerosene lamp and a box of wooden matches awaited the night. Upon spotting this rough, but somewhat cozy setup, Julia felt the unmistakable sensation of pent-up adrenaline wash from her body. She nearly collapsed onto the bed, not even bothering to take off her shoes or bobby socks.

  When she awoke, the light in the room was dim. Her head ached, her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt like a bundle of broom straws. At first she thought that she’d only been dreaming of Africa, which was, frankly, a huge relief. Then from outside her window she heard the query call and then answering call of a pair of francolins, a bird resembling a large quail. Julia had always hated napping, because instead of waking refreshed, she invariably felt even more tired and horribly depressed after sleeping during daylight hours.

  T
hat afternoon was no different. “Oh, Julia, you stupid, stupid fool,” she said aloud. Then she started to shout, and why not? Who was there to hear her emote at her pity party, except the quail and possibly some baboons? The Muluba woman, Cripple? Nah. That clever little manipulator had probably already talked Henry into giving her a ride back to Belle Vue.

  “I’m stupid!” she shouted to the four walls. “I’ve done it again! Crown me Queen Precipitous of the Kingdom of Dilettantia. I’m always rushing around, hungry for adventure, and I never stop, and I never consider the consequences.”

  At that point, just by chance, Julia stopped ranting long enough to hear rapping at her door. Her first impulse was that her brother was pestering her; that was his favorite sport. Pester, pester, pester. There were times when she just wanted to haul off and—

  “What?” she cried, and then remembering where she was, and that she was supposedly alone, her heart raced.

  But then the door opened and to Julia’s utter astonishment, the woman named Cripple stood there, brandishing an iron fire poker from the wood-burning stove. Over her head the strange little woman wore an upside-down metal colander.

  “Were is the intruder?” she demanded without a preamble.

  “Uh—”

  “Mamu, I have come to your defense. Who is it who wishes to inflict harm upon you? Show me, that I might skewer him like a grasshopper on a broom straw.” The really scary thing was that Cripple somehow managed to say this with a straight face. Like she really meant it.

  This woman was nuttier than a Christmas cheese log. Surely she couldn’t really have supposed that Julia was being attacked in any way. Because if she had, what good could she possibly hope to effect, armed with an ember poker?

  “I am alone, Cripple,” Julia said. “Sometimes I experience bad dreams.”