The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

And if that wasn't already the living end, now my knight in shining armor has arrived: Mr. Stinkpot Axelroot. He just showed up in the yard one day, right when Tata Ndu was coming up the steps in his stupid hat and his no-glass glasses, and the two of them had a word of exchange. After that Tata Ndu only stayed about ten minutes and then left. I was just getting going on my retarded-daughter presentation. Too bad!

  Well, it turns out Father and Mr. Axelroot hatched up a plan to get me out of marrying Tata Ndu without hurting the whole village's feelings. They're setting it up to look like I was already promised in marriage to Eeben Axelroot! I about croaked. Mother says don't let it get me down, it is only for appearance's sake. But that means now he comes around the house all the time, Coo, and I

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  have to act engaged! And, naturally, we have to act like it out on the front porch so everybody can see. Sit out there and watch the grass dry up, is my social life at this point in time. Don't let it get me down? Man, oh man! I always wanted to be the belle of the ball, but, jeepers, is this ever the wrong ball.

  The very first time we were alone for ten seconds on the porch, believe it or not, Axelroot tried to get fresh. He put his arm on the back of my chair. I slapped him hard like Elizabeth Taylor in the Hot Tin Roof and I guess that showed him a thing or two. But then he laughed, if you can believe. Well! I reminded him this entire engagement was a lot of bunk and don't you forget it. "Mr. Axelroot," I said, "I will commiserate your presence on this porch "with me but only as a public service to keep the peace in this village. And furthermore, it would help if you took a bath once every year or two." I'm willing to be a philanderist for peace, but a lady can only go so far where perspiration odor is concerned. I kept thinking of Brigitte Bardot and all those soldiers.

  So he behaves pretty well now. I just call him Axelroot. He calls me Princess, which really is maybe too much polish for the jalopy, but he means it in the right way, I think. He can be halfway decent if he tries. He actually did start taking baths and leaving his horrible hat at home, praise the Lord. Mother hates him as much as ever, and I guess I do too, but what am I supposed to do? I talk to him. As long as you're sitting out there pretending to be engaged to somebody, you might as well pass the time. And his company does keep the children away. They don't care for Axelroot. He smacks them. Well, all right, he shouldn't, I know that! But at least I don't have to be surrounded with little brats jumping up and pulling on my hair all the livelong day. Normally they clamber around me until I feel like Gulliver among the Lepidopterans.

  My unspoken plan is that, if I can butter him up enough, maybe he'll change his mind and fly us out of here. Mother already secretly offered him her wedding ring plus a thousand dollars, which supposedly we'd dig up after we got back to Georgia without Father or any visible means of self-support. Axelroot said, "Cash only, ladies," he doesn't take credit. But maybe he'll take pity!

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  So I pass the time by telling him stories from home: the kids I knew back at Bethlehem High and things we used to do. It makes me homesick. But, oh boy, if those fast cheerleaders who teased me for being a preacher's kid could see me now, practically engaged to an older man! He has been around the block, let me tell you, being born in South Africa and spending his youth here and there, partly even in Texas, from what I gather. His accent sounds normal. And he makes up these cockalamie stories to stand my hair on end about being a flying fighter. How he has shot very influential men in cold blood and dropped fire bombs from the air that can burn up a whole field of crops in ten seconds flat. He's not just an errand boy flying missionaries around, no, sir! That's only his cover, or so he informed me. He claims he's actually a very important figure in the Congo at this moment of history. Sometimes he rattles off all these names of people I can never keep straight: CIA Deputy Chief, Congo Station Chief. He has code names for everybody. Big Shot is the Deputy Chief, and the Station Chief he calls Devil One. Oh, it's all a game I'm sure. A man of his age might seem too old to be playing Zorro, but then consider the source.

  I asked him, "If you're such an important figure in the Congo, how come all we've seen you do is pay too-cheap prices for people's stuff to sell in the city and come back with our powdered milk and comic books from Leopoldville?"

  He says he hasn't been at liberty to discuss his real work, but now he has U.S. protection and he can tell me a thing or two, so long as I keep it under my hat. Well, natch, even if it were true�who would I tell? An innocent teenager in the middle of God's green hell with no telephone, and not on speaking terms with her parents? Although Father hasn't noticed I'm not talking to him, as far as I can tell. Mother has, though. Sometimes she tries to get chummy and ask me a lot of personal questions. She's hoping to find out,Who is the real Rachel Price?

  But I won't tell her. I prefer to remain anomalous.

  Ruth May

  AT NIGHT the lizards run up the walls and upside down over the bed looking down at me. They stick up there with their toes. Mice, too. They can talk to me. They said Tata Undo wants to marry Rachel. She did her hope chest already, so she can. But Tata Undo is a Congolese. Can they marry us? I don't know. But I'd sure like to see Rachel in the white dress; she'll be pretty. Then they said she was going to marry Mr. Axelroot instead, but he is mean. Sometimes I dream it is Father she's marrying and I get mixed up and sad. Because then: where is Mama?

  The lizards make a sound like a bird at night. In the dreams that I get to watch I can catch the lizards and they're my pets. They stay right in my hand and don't run off. When I wake up I don't have them anymore and I'm sad. So I don't wake up if I don't have to.

  I was in the dark in Mama's room but now I'm out here. It's bright and everybody talks and talks. I can't say what I aim to. I miss my lizards at night, is what I want to say. They won't come out in the bright and it hurts my eyes too. Mama puts the cold wet rag all over and then my eyes feel better, but she doesn't look right. She's all big, and everybody is.

  Circus mission. That's what they said. Tata Undo keeps on coming over. He is orange sometimes, his clothes. Black skin and an orange dress. It looks pretty. He told Father Rachel would have to have the circus mission where they cut her so she wouldn't -want to run around with people's husbands. I can't hear him when he talks French but Father told Mama about it at night. The circus mission.

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  He said they do it to all the girls here. Father said, Can't you see how much work we must do? They are leading these female children like lambs to the slaughter. Mama said, Since when did he start to care about protecting young ladies. She said her first job was to take care of her own and if he was any kind of a father he would do the same.:

  Father said he was doing what he could and at least Mr. Axelroot was a better bargain. Mama had a conniption fit and ripped a sheet in two. She doesn't like either one of them but they still have to come because Tata Undo is the chief of everything, and Mr. Axel-root is a bargain. But everybody keeps on having a conniption fit. Rachel especially.

  Mama found the pills I stuck on the wall. They came out of my mouth. I couldn't help it. They tasted too bad and they stick on the -wall better after they go in your mouth. Mama got them all off with a knife and put them in a white teacup. I saw where she put it, on the shelf with the Bayer aspirins we ran out of. Rachel said, What are we going to do with those? and Mama said, Take them of course, Ruth May will have to and all the rest of us when we run out. But I don't want to, they make me sick. Rachel said she won't either. She got disgusted and said, Ye gads, like ABC gum, already been chewed. Rachel gets disgusted a right smart lot of the time. Mother said, Fine if you want to get sick like Ruth May go on ahead, make your own bed and then lie in it. So that's what happened to me. I made my own bed and now I'm sick. I thought I was just too hot but she told Rachel I'm sick bad. Mama and Father talk about it sometimes and he says The Good Lord and she says A Doctor. They don't agree with each other and I'm the reason.

  I went to the doctor before in Stanleyvi
lle two times, when I broke my arm and when it was fixed. My cast got dirty. He cut it off with the biggest scissors that didn't hurt. But now we can't go because they are having big fights and making all the white people go naked in Stanleyville.They killed some. When we went up there the first time I saw those little dirty diamonds in a sack in the back of the airplane. Mr. Axelroot didn't like to catch me spying on his

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  stuff. While we were waiting for Father to come back from the barbershop Mr. Axelroot put his hands on me hard. He said, You tell anybody you saw diamonds in those bags your Mama and Daddy both will get sick and die. I didn't know what the diamonds were till he said that. I didn't tell. So I got sick instead of Mama and Daddy both. Mr. Axelroot still lives down at his shack and when he conies up here he looks at me to see if I told. He can see right inside like Jesus. He comes to our house and says he heard what all's going on with Tata Undo wanting to get married to Rachel. All the people around here know about that. Father says white people have to stick together now so we have to be Mr. Axelroot's friend. But I don't want to. When we were waiting in the airplane, he put his hands on me hard.

  I broke my arm because I was spying and Mama told me not to. This time I got sick because Baby Jesus can see ever what I do and I wasn't good. I tore up some of Adah's pictures and I lied to Mama four times and I tried to see Nelson naked. And hit Leah on the leg with a stick and saw Mr. Axelroot's diamonds. That is a lot of bad things. If I die I will disappear and I know where I'll come back. I'll be right up there in the tree, same color, same everything. I will look down on you. But you won't see me.

  Rachel

  SEVENTEEN! I am now one score and seven years old. Or so I thought, until Leah informed me that means twenty-seven. If God really aims to punish you, you'll know it when He sends you not one but two sisters who are younger than you but already have memorized the entire dictionary. I just thank heavens that only one of them

  talks.

  Not that I actually got a speck of attention on my birthday. Two birthdays now I have had in the Congo, and I thought the first one was the worst there could be. Last year on my birthday Mother at least did cry, and showed me the Angel Dream cake-mix box she brought over all the way from the Bethlehem Piggly Wiggly to help ease the burden of spending my tender teen years in a foreign land. I felt put out because I didn't get any nice presents: no sweater set, no phonograph records�oh, I thought that day was the lowest a

  girl can go.

  Boy oh boy. Never did I dream I'd be spending another birthday here, another August 20 in the exact same clothes and underwear as last year, all grown shabby, except for the Bobbie girdle I quit wearing right off the bat, this horrid sticky jungle being no place for Junior Figure Control. And now on top of everything, a birthday passed by with hardly anybody even noticing. "Oh, it's August twentieth today, isn't it?" I asked several times out loud, looking at my watch like there -was something I needed to do. Adah, on account of keeping her backwards diary, is the only one that keeps a close track of what day it is. Her and Father, of course, who has his

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  little church calendar for all his important appointments, in case he ever gets any. Leah just ignored me, sitting herself right down at Father's desk to work on her teacher s-pet arithmetic program. Leah thinks she is all high and mighty ever since Anatole asked her to help teach some lessons at the school. Really, what a thing to get all jazzed up about. It is only math, the dullest bore in the entire world, and he only lets her teach the very littlest kids anyway. I wouldn't do it even if Anatole paid me in greenback American dollars. I'd probably get highway hypnosis, watching the snot run down all those little snotroads from their noses to their lips.

  So I asked Adah rather loudly, "Say, isn't today's date the twentieth of August?" She nodded that it was, and I looked around me in amazement, for there was my very own family, setting the breakfast table and making lesson plans and what not as if this were simply the next day after yesterday and not even anything as special as Thursdays back home in Bethlehem, which was always the day we had to set out the trash.

  Mother did finally remember, as it happened. After breakfast she gave me a pair of her own earrings and a matching bracelet I had admired. It's only cut glass, but a very pretty shade of green that happens to set off my hair and eyes. And since it was about the only jewelry I'd seen in an entire year, it could have been diamonds�I was that depraved. Anyway it was nice to have some small token. She'd wrapped it up in a piece of cloth and written on a card made from Adah's notebook paper: For my beautiful firstborn child, all grown up. Sometimes Mother really does try. I gave her a kiss and thanked her. But then she had to go back to giving Ruth May her sponge baths, so that was the whole show. Ruth May's fever shot up to a hundred and five, Adah got stung on the foot by a scorpion spider and had to soak it in cold water, and a mongoose got in the chicken house and ate some eggs, all on the same day: my birthday! And all of them just to detract attention away from me. Except, I guess, the mongoose.

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  Adah

  TATA JESUS is BANGALA!" declares the Reverend every Sunday at the end of his sermon. More and more, mistrusting his interpreters, he tries to speak in Kikongo. He throws back his head and shouts these words to the sky, while his lambs sit scratching themselves in wonder. Bangala means something precious and dear. But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree. Praise the Lord, hallelujah, my friends! for Jesus will make you itch like nobody's business.

  And while Our Father was preaching the gospel of poisonwood, his own daughter Ruth May rose from the dead. Our Father did not particularly notice. Perhaps he is unimpressed because he assumed all along this would happen. His confidence in the Lord is exceptional. Dog ho! Evol's dog! The Lord, however, may or may not be aware that our mother assisted this miracle by forcing Ruth May to eat the same pills twice.

  Sllip emas. There is no stepping in the same river twice. So say the Greek philosophers, and the crocodiles make sure. Ruth May is not the same Ruth May she was. Yam Htur. None of us is the same: Lehcar, Hael, Hada. Annaelro. Only Nahtan remains essentially himself, the same man however you look at him. The others of us have two sides. We go to bed ourselves and like poor Dr. Jekyll we wake up changed. Our mother, the recent agoraphobe, who kept us pumpkin-shelled indoors through all the months of rain and epidemic and Independence, has now turned on her protector: she eyes our house suspiciously, accuses it of being "cobwebby" and

  "strangling us with the heat." She speaks of it as a thing with will and motive. Every afternoon she has us put on our coolest dresses and run away from our malignant house. Down the forest path we march, single file, to the stream for a picnic. When we run off and she thinks we cannot see her she sways in the clearing, gently, like a tree blown by wind. Despite the risk of hookworm, she removes her shoes.

  And now rejoice, oh, ye faithful, for Ruth May has risen, but she has the naked stare of a zombie and has lost interest in being first or best at anything. Nelson will not go near her. This is his theory: the owl we held as a temporary captive memorized our floor plan so it could find its way back through a window and consume her soul.

  My other sisters, in different ways, have become stricken with strange behavior regarding men. Rachel is hysterical and engaged. The engagement is feigned, but that does not keep her from spending hours at a time playing "Mirror Mirror on the Wall" in her new green glass earrings, then throwing tantrums of protest against her upcoming marriage.

  And Leah, the tonier twin. Leah has come down with a devout interest in the French and Kikongo languages�specifically, in learning them from Anatole. In the mornings she teaches arithmetic to his younger pupils, and afterward spends many hours at his bright-white shirtsleeve conjugating the self-same reflexive verbs� I'homme se noie�which a year ago she declared pointless. Apparently reflexive verbs gain a new importance for certain girls at the age of fifteen. She is also being instructed in the art of bow hunting. Anato
le gave her as a gift a small, highly functional bow and a quiver of arrows with red tail feathers�like the "Hope" in Miss Dickinson's poem, and like the quite hopelessly dead Methuselah, our former parrot. Anatole, with his very own knife, slipped these gifts for Leah out of a branch of greenheart wood.

  Here is my palindrome poem on the subject: Eros, eyesore.

  Nelson, however, is cheered. He views Leah's bow and arrows as a positive development in our household after so many other discouraging ones, such as the death, for all practical purposes, of Ruth

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  May. Nelson has taken it upon himself to supervise Leah's military education. He makes targets of leaves, and pins them to the trunk of the great mango at the edge of our yard. The targets grow smaller each day. They began with a giant elephant-ear leaf, like a big triangular apron flapping in the breeze, which was nearly impossible to miss. One at a time Leah sent her wobbling arrows through the slashed green margin. But she has worked her way steadily down, until she now aims at the round, shiny, thumb-sized leaflet of a guava. Nelson shows her how to stand, close one eye, and whack her arrow trembling into the heart of a leaf. She is a frighteningly good shot.

  My hunt-goddess twin and I are now more distant kin than ever, I suppose, except in this one regard: she is beginning to be looked upon in our village as bizarre. At the least, direly unfeminine. If anything, I am now considered the more normal one. I am the benduka, the single word that describes me precisely: someone who is bent sideways and walks slowly. But for my twin who now teaches school and murders tree trunks I have heard various words applied by our neighbors, none with much fondness. The favored word, bdkala, covers quite a lot of ground, including a hot pepper, a bumpy sort of potato, and the male sexual organ.

  Leah does not care. She claims that since Anatole gave her the bow, and since it was Anatole who requisitioned her to teach school, she must not be breaking any social customs. She fails to see that Anatole is breaking rules for her, and this will have consequences. Like an oblivious Hester Prynne she carries her letter, the green capital D of her bow slung over her shoulder. D for Dramatic, or Diana of the Hunt, or Devil Take Your Social Customs. Off with her bow to market she goes and even to church, although on Sundays she must leave the arrows behind. Even our mother, who is not on the best of terms with Jesus just now, still draws the line at marching into His house toting ammunition.