by Tamar Myers
“Mutoka!” White. It was on the lips of many, and Ugly Eyes knew that the hurtful word was not aimed at the visitors, but that it was being hurled at her like a fist-size stone.
“Pay no attention,” Father muttered. He walked in front of Ugly Eyes, for that was the custom.
“She was a demon who brought bad luck to our village!” Dances Badly was a bitter woman who never had a kind word to say about anyone, and who seemed to be satisfied only by stirring up trouble.
“I should like to kill that woman,” Father said, “and give her silly head to the baboon troop that lives in the ravine where the two streams come together. They could use her head for sport. What do you think, Ugly Eyes?”
She attempted a laugh, which came out as a snort that only succeeded in producing unwanted mucus. Oh well, at least the evil cover-up was good for something.
“Father,” she said when she was through cleaning herself, “what is to become of me?”
“I do not know, daughter. But no one will harm you; I promise you that.”
“Father?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you suppose that we will have to enter the belly of the metal elephant? The one with no trunk?”
“It is possible,” he said, without a second’s pause. “But never, Ugly Eyes, have I heard of a person not surviving such an experience. Although it is said that members of our tribe are particularly afraid of the metal elephant, lacking experience with it as they do. Therefore, some of the old women have given in to fits of screaming. If it is possible, my daughter, do not give in to the temptation, for then you will appear weak in the eyes of the Bula Matadi.”
“Yes, my father.”
Although they walked in silence for a moment, the taunts around them increased. Even the dogs, which knew better than to display any sort of aggression to a villager lest they end up in a cooking pot, were suddenly emboldened and darted in and out of the burgeoning crowd, nipping at the girl’s ankles.
“Have you been inside this beast?” she asked her father by and by.
“No, Ugly Eyes.”
“Then you must remain strong as well.”
“Amanda,” Pierre said, “from now on, we must speak only in French.”
“Porquoi?” Amanda was startled by the dictate.
“Because the poor girl must learn to speak a European language, and as fast as possible if she is to assimilate well.”
“You are sure she is Belgian?”
“What are the odds she is anything else? We Belgians by far outnumber any other white community in the Congo. But tell me, Amanda, you were perhaps hoping that she was American?”
“Pierre! I was hoping no such thing! Okay, so maybe just a little.”
“But don’t worry, Amanda; you speak French very well, and your accent is not so, so terrible. In addition, you always seem to have an extra room or two available at your rest house. Therefore, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government—given that we have no hotel in Belle Vue, and my house would be inappropriate—I am requesting the use of one of your rooms. I would be renting it, of course.”
Amanda’s heart raced. How exciting! Who back home was going to believe this? An actual headhunter’s daughter staying under her roof—well, sort of. The fact that the girl was white, and not really the headhunter’s daughter, made the story all the more exciting. No doubt the Rock Hill Herald would love to do a feature story on this.
“There’s plenty of room,” she said breathlessly. “Isn’t this supposed to be the suicide month?”
He laughed. “Oui. So hot and sticky that the only people who move are the ones who jump over the falls.”
“Maybe it’s because of the weather, but when the current guests leave, I don’t have any other guests booked until November, when the rains are said to be here to stay. I would be glad to help you in any way I can—you know, show her how to be a modern young lady.”
“Good. Now observe, Amanda; watch how this girl walks. What do you see?”
“A beautiful young woman—Pierre! She walks like an African!”
“Exactement! It is not just that filthy didiba that she wears, or those braids in her hair that set her apart. This girl is more African than you think. Did you notice the scarification patterns on her back?”
“Excuse me,” Amanda said. “What kind of patterns?”
“The scars—the marks. From wounds that have healed. They are all over her back. And her cheeks. And she is missing her two front teeth.”
Amanda gasped softly. “I noticed the teeth—not the marks.”
“Scars,” Pierre said, so that she would learn the new word.
“Yes, scars. And look, Pierre, her heels are just as cracked as those of anyone else here not wearing shoes.”
“Which is everyone else, since even my soldiers prefer to go barefoot when it is this hot.”
Suddenly the enormity of the task hit her. “It might not work, Pierre. What if she doesn’t want to be white? It would be wrong to force her. In my country the Indians took a number of white children captive and then later had to release them. Some of the children refused to return to the families of their origin because they had new families now.”
“Mon Dieu! They chose to remain with the savages?”
“But that’s the point I’m trying to make; after a while the Indians ceased to be savages in the eyes of the captives.”
Pierre whistled softly. “I assure you, mademoiselle, that I am not your typical colonial racist. I was born right here in the Congo and was raised by a baba—an African nanny. But she was a Muluba, not a Mushilele. You have been to the workers’ village at Belle Vue many times, where most—admittedly, not all—of the people are Baluba. And now you have been here. Can you not see the difference?”
“Oui, monsieur. Forgive me, but what exactly is your point?”
“Simply that there is no option for failure here, Amanda. The OP will have my head if I return a white teenage girl to live among the Bashilele warriors. Belgium is a very small country—not like the United States. It is possible that eventually even the king will have to be involved.”
Amanda stopped walking, precipitating yelps of distress from some otherwise aggressive boys who had been showing off by slowly creeping closer to the Bula Matadi. They fell back now, and virtually everyone, including Amanda and Pierre, had a good laugh at their dismay. But the youths were soon at it again, acting out with even more bravado than before.
Good little headhunters-in-training, Amanda thought. Mama always said I had a big head, every time she dragged a comb through my hair or tried to pull my woolen stocking cap down over my ears. These little guys probably know a good thing when they see it. I wonder how much palm beer my skull would hold. They probably wouldn’t have to do much cleaning of it either; Miss Kuhnberger always said I had an empty head, which is why I couldn’t remember how to do long division.
“Were you serious about the king having to get involved?” Amanda asked when they’d fallen back into the rhythm of walking.
“Oui, of course. If it came to that. This is a very delicate time in the colony now, Amanda. When word of this girl gets out—and believe me, it will grow wings—she will become a symbol.”
“A symbol of what?”
“Oh Amanda, I do not mean to insult your intelligence when I say that I find your simplicity most endearing.”
Amanda first bit her tongue, then counted to three. That was as far as she could go.
“Well, I very much mean to insult you when I say that I find your Gallic arrogance insufferable, and were you not the only English speaker at Belle Vue, I might seriously reconsider our friendship. As for your request that we continue to speak only French—well, I find the act of doing so very taxing. True, this language can be pronounced with great flourish, but it lacks nuance. Did you know that it has only one third the vocabulary words that English has?”
“Mais c’est impossible! This is the language of Voltaire.”
“And Engli
sh is the language of Shakespeare, who, by the way, was a far greater genius.”
“Alors, Amanda, perhaps we should keep our opinions to ourselves.”
“Perhaps so—at least when it comes to patriotic things. After all, it wouldn’t be ladylike of me to win all our arguments.”
But there really wasn’t much Amanda wanted to say to Pierre until they got to the truck.
They were about an hour’s walk from the village when Ugly Eyes noticed that the crippled woman was having an especially hard time keeping up. They were walking single file: first the Africans in Bula Matadi clothes, then the cripple, then Father, then self, then the white woman, and lastly, the white man, who incidentally, appeared to be the headman in this situation.
At any rate, every time the crippled woman faltered, or paused, Father’s rib cage rose and fell with irritation, although he made not a sound. This woman had one leg shorter than the other, and her foot was twisted. This was the first grown woman with a deformity that Ugly Eyes had ever seen. What barbarians her tribe must be, to have allowed her to live past infancy. How cruel of them to subject her to the childhood taunts she must have endured, and the inevitable physical pain that a deformed body such as this was bound to have experienced. Ugly Eyes seethed with rage.
“Father,” Ugly Eyes said, “I will carry the dwarf.”
Father spat into the grass at the hand of the men (that is to say, to his right side). “Daughter, she is the white man’s slave; we cannot get involved.”
“But Father, see how she suffers?”
“Tell me, Ugly Eyes, is this something that you feel strongly about?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You have the gift of knowing, daughter—as do I. But truly, your gift exceeds mine; therefore, you have my permission to do as you wish in this case.”
Ugly Eyes said nothing in return because she could not think of the right words to express her jumbled thinking. How proud it made her feel that her father, who was such an esteemed headman, should find her to be so wise. But oh how confusing that was as well; after all, she was but a female, and a young unmarried one at that, with no husbands to her credit.
To her relief the little Muluba woman appeared to recover her strength for a few steps. Then alas, the poor creature fell forward on her face, like a child just learning to walk. There she floundered in the dirt path like a fledgling while the African Bula Matadi, who had now stopped and turned, just stared. Even the whites did nothing except to call out to the poor creature.
“Tch, tch, tch,” Ugly Eyes said, and brushing past Father, swooped down and scooped up the broken little bird in her strong, young arms. Much to her astonishment the full-grown woman felt practically weightless.
“Aiyee,” Cripple protested, her arms beating in vain about the head and shoulders of the strangest Mushilele girl she had ever seen. “Put me down,” she yelled in Tshiluba. “Put me down, you giant turd of a colobus monkey!”
“Cripple!” Captain Pierre grabbed one of her hands and held it still. “This girl is trying to help you—I think. She’s offering to carry you.”
“Eyo, muambi. She wants to carry me to her cooking pot. Is it not time for the evening meal?”
The captain laughed. “You have a delightful imagination, Cripple. “But you are like an old hen that no longer lays but has been kept around to sit on the eggs of the young hens that refuse to brood. Your meat will be far too tough to eat; even if it is tenderized with all the papaya leaves in the Kasai.”
“Aiyee! Mona buphote buebe!”
“What did she say?” the white mamu demanded. “I did not learn these words in my Tshiluba language school.”
“I cannot translate this for your ears,” the captain said, and laughed.
Cripple was not appeased by his good humor. “Will you make this strange child put me down?”
“No. It will be dark soon and then the hyenas will be out.”
“See what you have done?” Cripple said, directing her words to the white face just inches from her own. The Headhunter’s Daughter didn’t even bat an eyelash, which made Cripple all the angrier. “Muambi,” she cried, “this Mushilele does not bathe; never have I smelled such stink. Even you whites do not offend me as bad as this one.”
“Good,” the captain said. “Then you will stay awake, which will make it easier to transfer you into the truck when we reach it.”
“Baba wetu, baba wetu,” Cripple moaned. “Surely now this is the end of me.”
When they got back to the truck, they found a pack of jackals prancing around it. One brave individual had actually jumped in back and was trying in vain to loosen the securely bundled elephant meat. Other than that, everything was just as the rescue party had left it. This astounded Amanda. Such a state of affairs might not have been the case had one been able to transpose the scene to Cherry Road, back in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Of course back home the precious commodity would have been something quite different than elephant meat—like maybe a hi-fi stereo.
“Where are we all going to sit?” Amanda asked.
“You, and I, and Miss Bossy Pants will sit up front. The others can stand in back, behind the elephant meat.”
“Yes, but what about the girl?” Amanda said. “And please, Pierre, try to think charitable thoughts about Cripple. You, more than anyone, should know that she really is a diamond in the rough.”
“Mais oui, but diamonds stick to grease; that is how they are mined in Kasai Province. Every time I’m through dealing with Cripple I feel greasy.”
“Oh, stop the dramatics, Pierre. Anyway, this Mushilele girl cannot ride in the back.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s white, silly.” Although they were thousands of miles apart, there were some things about South Carolina culture and Belgian Colonial culture that were identical; segregation of the races being one of them. Personally, Amanda saw nothing wrong with the races mixing upon occasion, but at Belle Vue where the whites were the minority, it did make sense to maintain one’s distance. One couldn’t, for instance, invite a black into one’s home socially, because then all the Africans would want to see what the inside of a white person’s house looked like.
“I see,” said Pierre. “So Cripple gets to sit up front in my truck, as does this white Mushilele girl. I suppose you get to do so as well—am I right?”
Amanda’s heart pounded. She had never assumed anything but that she would get to ride in the cab.
“Yes, of course.”
“Then where does that put me? I am, after all, the silly owner of this truck. And if I am to ride in back, which of you three ladies will drive?”
Ladies? Was Pierre mocking the other two women, or did his Gallic sense of gallantry really extend to women of color? Amanda had heard that the Portuguese were more tolerant in that regard, but not the Belgians, half of whom were Flemish and were said to have brought with them to the Congo the more Germanic views on race.
“I am a perfectly good driver,” she said crisply. “I possess an International Driver’s Certificate—although it is back at the rest house.”
“Alors,” Pierre said, “then our problem is solved. I will ride in back with my soldiers and guard the elephant meat with my life.”
If looks could kill, Amanda shot him a look that could have killed a pair of pachyderms, had any live ones been handy. Unfortunately, it was too dark for the handsome young captain to read the passion in her expression.
“Are you being sarcastic?” she demanded.
“Quite possibly,” he said.
“Have the ladies get in,” she said, and without speaking to him again climbed up to the driver’s seat and retrieved the keys from their “hiding place” behind the sun visor.
“The girl will sit next to you,” Pierre said.
Amanda bristled at the directive. “If she wants to, then she may,” she said.
“No, Mademoiselle Brown. The white Mushilele cannot sit next to the door; there is too much danger that she
might jump out. I have seen it before with natives who have never ridden in automobiles. They are terrified of the noise and the motion. It was the same way with our grandparents, no? And back then the autos did not even go so fast as we drive now on these terrible Congo roads.”
The trouble was that the girl did stink. The combination of wood smoke and body odor was bad enough, but with every bump, every sudden jostle, her unwashed, scarified, scab-covered flesh seemed to seek out Amanda and press up against her, and for far longer than was necessary. But remarkably, the girl did not let out a peep when the truck roared to life. And even when Amanda misjudged the location of a deep rut that the truck had to straddle, and the axle nearly broke, the strange white girl remained eerily silent.
Then, just a few kilometers outside Belle Vue, all hell broke loose—literally, to hear Cripple tell it. One minute they were driving along a fairly smooth stretch of hard packed clay, anxious to get home with their elephant meat and tales of the strange white mamu, and the next minute a demon was flapping about the cab.
Yes, Amanda had screamed. Who wouldn’t have? But the boldly patterned demon that thrashed about their faces was merely a bewildered nighthawk that had been blinded by the headlights. Cripple had been just as frightened; she’d practically wet herself and had shrieked like a banshee. However, the bizarre young woman sitting between them had remained as still and silent as a stone carving. That’s when Amanda knew for sure that repatriating the girl was simply not going to be possible.
Chapter Eight
She’s beautiful!” The American teenager strained to get a better look at the creature squatting next to the wood box in the kitchen; only her father’s arm prevented her from getting any closer.
“We need to leave her alone for the night,” Dorcas said. As the oldest white present, she represented the voice of wisdom.
There really was no point in waking up the OP at this hour of the night, was there? This was, after all, first and foremost, police business. Besides, Pierre knew from past experience that the OP could be as congenial as a cape buffalo if aroused from a deep sleep. No, there was nothing so important that it couldn’t wait until morning except for a heart attack and acute appendicitis, and the white Mushilele suffered from neither.
