The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

He looked up, a little surprised. "I respect him, if that's what you mean."

  "But as a Christian. Did you really get anywhere with him?" Brother Fowles stood up and scratched his head, making his white hair stand on end. The longer you watched that man doing things, the younger he looked. Finally he said, "As a Christian, I respect his judgments. He guides his village fairly, all things considered. We never could see eye to eye on the business of having four wives. ..."

  "He has more than that noo/'Leah tattled.

  "Aha. So you see, I was not a great influence in that department," he said. "But each of those wives has profited from the teachings of Jesus, I can tell you. Tata Ndu and I spent many afternoons with a calabash of palm wine between us, debating the merits of treating a wife kindly. In my six years here I saw the practice of wife beating

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  fall into great disfavor. Secret little altars to Tata Jesus appeared in most every kitchen, as a result."

  Leah tossed him the tie rope and helped him push the boat out of the shallow mud into deeper water. She just slogged right in up to her knees, blue jeans and all, without the slightest regard. Adah was clutching her new books about the ornithoptery of butterflies to her bosom, while Ruth May waved and called out weakly, "Wenda mbote! Wenda mbotel"

  "Do you feel what you did was enough?" Mother asked Brother Fowles, as if it hadn't sunk in that we'd already said good-bye here and this conversation was over-and-out.

  Brother Fowles stood on the deck facing back, looking Mother over like he just didn't know what to do about her. He shrugged finally. "We're branches grafted on this good tree, Mrs. Price. The great root of Africa sustains us. I wish you wisdom and God's mercy."

  "Thank you kindly," she said.

  They were pretty far out on the water when he perked up suddenly and shouted,"Oh, the parrot! Methuselah! How is he?"

  We looked at each other, reluctant to end the visit on what you might call a sour note. It was Ruth May who hollered out in her puny little voice,"Bird heaven! He's went to bird heaven, Mr. Fowles!"

  "Ha! Best place for him, the little bastard!" cried Brother Fowles, which shocked the pants off us naturally.

  Meanwhile, every child in the village had gathered around and was jumping in the mud of the riverbank. They'd all gotten presents too, I could see: packets of milk powder and such. But they were yelling so happily it seemed like they loved Brother Fowles for more reasons than just powdered milk. Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa.

  Mother alone didn't wave. She stood ankle-deep in the mud, like it was her job to bear witness as their boat shrank down to a speck on the shimmering water, and she didn't move from her post till they were long out of sight.,,: :

  Adah

  To MARKET to market to buy a fat pig! Pigfat a buy! To market to market! But wherever you might look, no pigs now. Hardly even a dog worth the trouble and stove wood. Goats and sheep, none. Half-hour after daybreak the buzzards rise from the leafless billboard tree and flap away like the sound of old black satin dresses beat together. Meat market closed for the duration of this drought, no rain and still no rain. In the way of herbivores, nothing left here to kill.

  July had brought us only the strange apparition of the family Fowles, and in its aftermath, the conviction in all our separate minds that their visit could only have been a dream. All minds except Father's, that is, who frequently takes the name of Brother Fowles in vain, feeling certain now that all the stones in his path were laid by this deluded purveyor of Christian malpractice.

  And August brought us no pleasant dreams at all. Ruth May's condition pitched suddenly into decline, as inexplicably as it had earlier improved. Against all hope and Mrs. Fowles's antibiotics faithfully delivered, the fever rose and rose. Ruth May fell back into bed with her hair plastered to her head in a dark sweat. Mother prayed to the small glass god with pink capsules in its belly.

  The second half of August also brought us a special five-day Kilanga week, beginning and ending on market day, which did not contain a Sunday but left Sundays standing on either side of it like parentheses. That particular combination stands as one chance in seven, by the way. It should occur on average seven times per year, separated by intervals just slightly longer than that endured by Noah on his putative ark.

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  Was this blue-moon event special to our neighbors? Did they notice? I have no idea. Such was our fellowship with our fellow man in Kilanga. But in our household it passed as a bizarre somber holiday, for on each of those five days the village chief of Kilanga, Tata Ndu, came to our house. Udn Atat. He sent his sons ahead of him shouting and waving ceremonially preserved animal parts to announce his eminence.

  On each occasion he brought a gift: first, fresh antelope meat wrapped in a bloody fold of cloth (how hungrily we swooned at the sight of that blood!). Day two: a neat spherical basket with a tight-fitting lid, filled with mangwansi beans. Third, a live grouse with its legs tied together; fourth, the soft, tanned pelt of an ant bear. And on the last day, a small carving of a pregnant woman made of pink ivory. Our Father eyed that little pink woman and became inspired to strike up a conversation with Tata Ndu on the subject of false idols. But up until day five�and ever afterward, on the whole�Our Father was delighted with this new attention from the chief. The Reverend cockadoodled about the house, did he. "Our Christian charity has come back to us sevenfold," he declared, taking liberty with mathematics, gleefully slapping the thighs of his khaki pants. "Hot dog! Orleanna, didn't I tell you Ndu would be on our side in the end?"

  "Oh, is it the end now, Nathan?" Mother asked. She was silent on the subject of Tata Ndu as a houseguest. We ate the meat all right and were glad to have it, but the trinkets she sequestered in her bedroom, out of sight. We were curious to inspect and handle these intriguing objects, especially the little pink madonna, but Mother felt we should not show excessive interest. In spite of Brother Fowles's vouching for his character, Mother suspected these gifts from the chief were not without strings attached. And she was right, it turned out. Though it took us a month of Sundays to catch on.

  At first we were simply flattered and astonished: Udn Atat walking right through the front door of our very house, standing a moment before the shrine of Rachel's hand mirror-mirror on the

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  wall, then settling himself into our single good chair with arms. Enthroned there under his hat, he observed our household through his un-glasses and swished the animal-tail fly swatter that denoted his station in life. Whenever he took off his strange peaked hat, he revealed himself as a large, powerful man. His dark half-dome forehead aind gravely receding hairline emphasized a broad face, broad chest and shoulders, and enormously muscular arms. He pulled his colorful drape up under his armpits and crossed his arms over the front of his chest as a man only does when proud of his physique. Our Mother was not impressed. But she mustered manners enough to make orange juice, of which the chief was fond.

  Our Father, who now made a point of being home to receive Tata Ndu, would pull up one of the other chairs, sit backward with his arms draped over the back, and talk Scripture. Tata Ndu would attempt to sway the conversation back around to village talk, or to the vague gossip we had all been hearing about the riots in Matadi and Stanleyville. But mainly he regaled Our Father with flattering observations, such as: "Tata Price, you have trap de jolies filles�too many pretty daughters," or less pleasant but more truthful remarks such as: "You have much need of food, n'est-ce pas?" For his esoteric amusement he commanded the jolies filles (and we obliged) to line up in front of him in order of height. The tallest being Rachel, at five feet six inches and the full benefit of Miss America posture; the shortest being myself, two inches lesser than my twin on account of crookedness. (Ruth May, being delirious and prone, was exempt from the lineup.) Tata Ndu clucked his tongue and said we were all very thin. This caused Rachel to quiver with pride and stroll about the ho'use preceded by her pelvis
in the manner of a high-fashion model.. She tended to show off excessively during these visits, rushing to help Mother out in ways she would not have dreamed of without an audience.

  "Tatta Ndu," Mother hinted, "our youngest is burning up with fever. You're a man of such importance I hope by coming here you aren't exposing yourself to some dreadful contagion." This was the nearest she could come to asking outright for help.

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  Tata Ndu's attention then lapsed for a number of days, during which time we went to church, swallowed our weekly malaria pill, killed another hen from our dwindling flock, and stole turns sneaking into our parents' bedroom to examinine the small carved woman's genitalia.Then, after two Sundays had passed, he returned. This time his gifts were more personal: a pagne of beautifully dyed cloth, a carved wooden bracelet, and a small jar of a smelly waxy substance, whose purpose we declined to speculate on or discuss with Tata Ndu. Mother accepted these gifts with both hands, as is the custom here, and put them away without a 'word.

  Nelson, as usual, was the one who finally took pity upon our benighted stupidity and told us what was up: kukwela. Tata Ndu wanted a wife.

  "A wife" Mother said, staring at Nelson in the kitchen house exactly as I had seen her stare at the cobra that once turned up in there. I wondered whether she might actually grab a stick and whack Nelson behind the head, as she'd done to the snake.

  "Yes, Mama Price," he said tiredly, without a trace of apology. Nelson was used to our overreactions to what he felt were ordinary things, such as cobras in the kitchen. But his voice had a particularly authoritative ring when he said it, for he had his head stuck in the oven. Mother knelt beside him, helping to steady the heavy ash can while Nelson cleaned the ashes out of the cookstove. They both had their backs to the door, and did not know I was there.

  "One of the girls, you mean," Mother said. She pulled on the nape of Nelson's T-shirt, extracting him from the stove so she might speak to him face to face. "You're saying Tata Ndu wants to marry one of my daughters."

  "But, Nelson, he already has six or seven wives! Good Lord." "Yes. Tata Ndu is very rich. He heard about Tata Price having no money now for food. He can see your children are thin and sick. But he knows it is not the way of Tata Price to take help from the Congolese. So he can bargain man to man. He can help your family by paying Tata Price some ivory and five or six goats and maybe a

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  little bit of cash to take the Mvula out of his house. Tata Ndu is a good chief, Mania Price."

  "He wants Rachel!"

  "The Termite is the one he wants to buy, Mama Price. All those goats, and you won't have to feed her anymore."

  "Oh, Nelson. Can you even imagine?"

  Nelson squatted on his heels, his ashy eyelids blinking earnestly as he inspected Mother's face.

  Surprisingly, she started to laugh. Then, more surprisingly, Nelson began to laugh, too. He threw open his near-toothless mouth and howled alongside Mother, both of them with their hands on their thighs. I expect they were picturing Rachel wrapped in a. pagne trying to pound manioc.

  Mother wiped her eyes. "Why on earth do you suppose he'd pick Rachel?" From her voice I could tell she was not smiling, even after all that laughter.

  "He says the Mvula's, strange color would cheer up his other wives."

  "What?"

  "Her color." He rubbed at his own black forearm and then held up two ashy fingers, as if demonstrating how the ink in Rachel's sad case had all come off. "She doesn't have any proper skin, you know," Nelson said, as if this were something anyone could say of a woman's daughter without offending her. Then he leaned forward and ducked his head and shoulders far back into the stove for the rest of the ashes. He did not speak again until he emerged from the depths.

  "People say maybe she was born too soon, before she got finished cooking. Is that true?" He looked at Mother's belly inquiringly.

  She just stared at him. "What do you mean, her color would cheer up his other wives?"

  He looked at Mother in patient wonder, waiting for more of a question.

  "Well, I just don't understand. You make it sound like she's an accessory he needs to go with his outfit."

  "

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  Nelson paused for a long time to wipe the ash from his face and puzzle over the metaphor of accessories and outfits. I stepped into the kitchen house to get a banana, knowing there would likely be nothing more to overhear. My mother and Nelson had reached the limits of mutual understanding.

  Leak

  HERE WAS OUR PROBLEM: Tata Ndu would be very offended if Father turned down his generous offer to marry Rachel. And it wasn't just Tata Ndu involved. Whatever we might think of this imposing man in his pointed hat, he is a figurehead who represents the will of Kilanga. I believe this is why Brother Fowles said we should respect him, or at least pay attention, no matter how out-of-whack the chief might seem. He's not just speaking for himself. Every few weeks Tata Ndu has meetings with his sous-chiefs, who have their own meetings with all the families. So by the time Tata Ndu gets around to saying something, you can be pretty sure the whole village is talking to you. Anatole has been explaining to me the native system of government. He says the business of throwing pebbles into bowls with the most pebbles winning an election�that was Belgium's idea of fair play, but to people here it was peculiar.To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy, and according to Anatole, in a village that's left halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line.

  The way it seems to work here is that you need one hundred percent. It takes a good while to get there.They talk and make deals and argue until they are pretty much all in agreement on what ought to be done, and then Tata Ndu makes sure it happens that way. If he does a good job, one of his sons will be chief after he dies.

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  If he does a bad job, the women will chase Tata Ndu out of town with big sticks and Kilanga will try out a new chief. So Tata Ndu is the voice of the people. And that voice was now telling us -we'd be less of a burden to ourselves and others if we let him buy Rachel off our hands for some goats. It kind of put us on the spot.

  Rachel went into a frenzy, and for once in my life I couldn't blame her. I was very glad he hadn't picked me. Mother crossed her heart to Rachel that we -weren't going to sell her, but reassurances of this kind are not the words you're prepared to hear coming out of your mother's mouth.The very thought of being married to Tata Ndu seemed to contaminate Rachel's frame of mind, so that every ten minutes or so she'd stop whatever she was doing and scream with disgust. She demanded to Father's face that we go home this instant before she had to bear one more day of humiliation. Father disciplined her with The Verse that ends on honoring thy father and mother, and no sooner had she finished it than Father smote her with it again! We'd run out of blank paper so she had to write out the hundred verses in a very tiny hand on the backs of old letters and envelopes left from when we were still getting mail. Adah and I took pity and secretly helped her some. We didn't even charge her ten cents a verse, as we used to back home. For if we did, how would she pay?

  We couldn't refuse visits from the chief, no matter how we felt. But Rachel began to behave very oddly whenever he came to the house. Frankly, she was odd when he didn't, too. She wore too many clothes at once, covering herself entirely and even wearing her raincoat indoors, as hot and dry as it was. She also did strange things with her hair. With Rachel, that is a deep-seated sign of trouble. There was nervous tension in our household, believe you me.

  Ever since Independence we'd heard stories of violence between blacks and whites. Yet if we looked out our own window, here's what we'd see: Mama Nguza and Mama Mwanza chatting in the road and two little boys stepping sideways trying to pee on each other. Everybody still poor
as church mice, yet more or less content. The Independence seemed to have passed over our village, just as

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  the plague did on that long ago night in Egypt, sparing those who had the right symbol marked over their doorsills. Still, we didn't know what the symbol was, or how we were spared. We barely knew what was going on in the first place, and now, if things had changed, we didn't know what to believe or how to act. There was an unspoken feeling of danger, which we couldn't discuss but felt we should be attending to at all times. Mother had little tolerance for Rachel's tantrums. She told Rachel to straighten up because right now she had her hands full with Ruth May sick.

  Ruth May was now getting rashes all over her back and was hot to the touch. Mother gave her cool sponge baths every hour or so. She spent most nights curled up at the foot of my parents' iron double bed. Mother decided we should move Ruth May's cot out into the main room so she could be with us in the daytime, where we could keep a closer eye. Rachel and I helped move it, while Adah rolled up the bedding. Our cots were made of iron pipes welded together, about as heavy as you'd think a bed could be. First we had to pull down all the mosquito netting from the frame. Then with a grand heave-ho we shoved the bed away from the wall. What we saw on the wall behind it made us stare. "What are those?" Rachel asked. "Buttons?" I guessed, for they were perfectly round and white. I

  was thinking of our hope-chest projects. Whatever this was, it had

  been Ruth May's project for a very long time.

  "Her malaria pills," Mother said, and she was right. There must

  have been a hundred of them, all partly melted and stuck in long

  crooked rows behind where the bed had been.

  Mother stood looking at them for a good long while. Then she

  left, and came back with a table knife. Carefully she pried the pills

  off the plaster wall, one by one, into her cupped hand. There were

  sixty-one. Adah kept count, and wrote that number down. Exactly

  how many weeks we'd been in the Congo.

  Rachel

  MAN ALIVE, I am all steamed up with no place to go. When Tata Ndu comes to our house, jeez oh man. I can't even stand to look at him looking at me. I revert my eyes. Sometimes I do unladylike things like scratch myself and pretend I'm retarded. But I suppose he'd be just as happy to add a retarded wife to his collection; maybe he doesn't have one yet. Jeepers.The very fact my parents even let him in the door! I refuse to give Father the pleasure of a reply whea he talks to me. Mother either, if I can help it. Ruth May is all she cares about: poor Ruth May this and Ruth May that! Well, jeez, maybe she is sick, but it's no easy street for me either, being here and taking this guff. My family is thinking of everything but my personal safety.The instant we get back to Georgia I am filing for an adoption.