by Tamar Myers
“Is this so? I hadn’t noticed—oh, you must have noticed the difference between American and European women. Cripple, I do not know the reason, only that modern young American women such as myself, and apparently Mrs. Jardin, shave under the arm.”
The native woman nodded. “You are both very foolish, Mamu. This place”—she tried in vain to smell her own armpits—“is where the gods have placed the woman scent. Clearly, in your case, you have offended the gods by removing the bushes upon which they spread the scent for attracting a mate.”
Julia’s cheeks burned, whether from anger or embarrassment, she wasn’t sure. How dare this village woman, who was a bit on the ripe side and whom she had just met minutes ago, be giving her grooming advice. The very idea was ridiculous and insulting. Now that was an unexpected shower on her parade.
She set the rest of her things down. “Shala bimpe (stay well),” said Julia, and pushed past Cripple and out into the hallway.
“Mamu, remember to eat your porridge,” Cripple called after her.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Julia shouted. “I’m free, white, and twenty-one.”
She had barely gone the length of a tether ball cord when it hit her just how awful those words could sound to someone who wasn’t all those things. Had Cripple even heard her? After all, she’d been practically running away from the maid. And even if Cripple had heard that unfortunate phrase, it was strictly an American idiom, and not something an African housekeeper was likely to have picked up on the job.
Then precisely because she was free, white, and twenty-one, with a head as strong as a bull elephant’s, Julia continued to walk briskly through the Missionary Rest House, out the front door, then around the building to where she found a flagstone path that led to a terrace overlooking the falls. So these were the famous Belle Vue Falls as seen by morning’s first light, when supposedly there were rainbows dancing in the mists that shrouded the fern-covered rocks. They were said to evoke awe in the hearts of everyone who saw them.
I’m sorry—but this is not that big a deal, really, Julia said to herself. She was only being honest; her parents had taken her to see Niagara Falls three times as a little girl. She’d seen them once in the dead of winter when the falls were a virtual fairyland of ice formations, and twice in the summer when the power and majesty of the great falls actually brought her to tears. Niagara Falls, as seen from the Canadian side, made this falls look like a mere trickle of water by comparison.
Then Julia stopped seeing the Belle Vue Falls altogether, for she’d focused on the figure of a small child sitting hunched forward on the terrace wall, her elbows on her knees. It was a white girl, of all things! Could she be a Belgian neighbor? Julia approached from the side so as to catch the girl’s attention. Heaven help her if on this, her first real day in the Congo, she was responsible for some waif toppling off a wall and into the catchment basin of some second-rate waterfall.
“Bon jour,” Julia called just loud enough to be heard over the din of the water. “Bon jour.”
Praise the Lord, the child turned, swinging her legs back over the wall! Julia sprinted the rest of the way. It wasn’t that far, and all downhill, but nonetheless when she got there Julia was panting like a husky in July. Meanwhile the child gazed at her with unbridled curiosity.
“You’re wearing everything white,” the imp said just as Julia was about to speak.
“Indeed I am. And what of it?”
“Because you’ll be as black as sin when you get where we’re going.”
“Wait a second,” Julia said. “You’re not Belgian, are you?”
“No, of course not,” the child said. “I’m African.”
“Don’t be silly; you’re white.”
“Yes, but I am a white African. I was born here, just like my papa. This makes me the second generation of my family to be born here, and the third generation to live in Africa.”
“I see,” Julia said. “What is your name?”
“My heathen name, my African name, or my Christian name?”
Julia couldn’t help smiling. “So many choices? Well, first things first, I guess; let’s start with your heathen name.”
“It’s Clementine—but just so you know, I’m nobody’s darling.”
“Hmm. Well, there is an orange called a clementine. Anyway, I think it’s a beautiful name.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I think your name is beautiful too,” Clementine said.
“My name? How do you know my name?”
“Because you’re Auntie Julia, the new missionary coming to join us at Mushihi Station.”
Auntie Julia! She’d arrived in Africa just two days prior, and already she was being addressed by the missionary honorific “aunt,” which was the right of every Protestant white woman, just as “uncle” was for the men. The mission field was one big family, and finally to be included among that number thrilled Julia to the bone.
“Ah, so you’re that little girl,” Julia said at last.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s me. I’m the Great Distraction. That’s what Reverend and Mrs. Doyer call me on account of I’m wicked, deceitful, and an all-around distraction to them from doing the Lord’s work. It’s quite possible that I might be guilty of adultery as well, although I am not quite sure. I know that Auntie Verna certainly thinks so.”
What an odd little creature Clementine Hayes was. Big brown eyes, dark brown hair that hung in tangles almost to her waist, skin as golden brown as buttered toast. A waif—that’s the word that had first come to mind, and it was a good one. She was a waif who appeared to be drowning in a sea of khaki fabric. The sleeves of her shirt extended beyond her fingertips, and her skirt, which had been cinched at her child’s waist with a man’s belt, draped over the tops of her shoes. Clearly, these had been her mother’s clothes.
Clementine must have read Julia’s mind. “My mama is dead, you know,” she said. “So she doesn’t mind it when I borrow her clothes. Papa doesn’t care either; it’s only other adults who seem to care.” She paused and fixed the large brown eyes on Julia. “Do you care, Auntie Julia?”
“Not in the least—although I wouldn’t want you to trip on your skirt and go tumbling off the terrace.”
“At least I wouldn’t be the first to fall,” Clementine said. “The last guy was eaten by a crocodile. I bet you it’s that very same one that’s there now.”
“What?” Julia flushed. “Good one,” she said. “Joke’s on me, the newcomer. Just wait until I get settled in on the mission station and take you snipe hunting. You ever been snipe hunting?”
Clementine stood and pointed at something below them, but her eyes were on Julia. “There! Down there you’ll see it, if you’ll only look. Even an American like you can see it.”
Julia peered cautiously over the edge. She hated being made a fool of, especially by children.
“Oh my God,” she blurted involuntarily. “I mean, what is that?”
“Like I said—it’s a croc. Papa says it’s a twenty-footer. The Belgians call him Cyclops, on account of he only has one eye, but us missionaries call him—well, we just call him the croc.”
“Huh. That’s kind of sad.”
“Don’t worry, Auntie Julia, I don’t think it hurts him anymore. Where his eye used to be. I can’t remember him ever having two. Papa said it’s against the law now to shoot him because it’s impossible to get down there anymore, and that old croc has a job to do, which is eating the bodies of any Africans who might find themselves swept over the falls. Europeans too, but it doesn’t happen much to them.”
“I see. But I meant it was kind of sad that we missionaries don’t have a name for such a magnificent beast.”
Clementine cocked her head. Her dark eyes glittered.
“Mama was eaten by a crocodile,” she said, without displaying the faintest trace of emotion.
“Are you serious?” Julia asked gently. On the face of it, her question was stupid and insen
sitive, but the girl’s statement had been so bizarre, how else should Julia have responded?
“Oh, I’m quite positive,” the child said. “You can ask Papa if you don’t believe me. He shot the crocodile that ate Mama, and when he butchered it, he found her Timex watch in its tummy. He also found two iron bracelets that were from Bashilele women, and also one from a Mujembe woman.”
“You don’t say!” Julia said, although who was she kidding? Only cowards and truly kind people trot out that hackneyed phrase, and it was always a stand-in for disbelief.
Clementine’s gaze didn’t waver. “Of course, now I suppose you’re going to ask him if I’m lying. Go ahead, see if I care, ’cause I’m telling the truth—I swear I am.”
Julia had a younger brother; she could stare anyone down.
Clementine sighed dramatically. “No fair, I’m only ten years old.” She paused. “Okay, I’m almost ten—which is double digits—so being almost ten has to count for something. And so maybe the crocodile didn’t eat all of Mama, but it did eat her arm. And she did die from it, which, to hear Auntie Verna tell it, is all my fault.”
“What? Verna Doyer—I mean, Mrs. Doyer actually said that?” Julia had heard rumors of discord at Mushihi Station, but this was shocking. Well, that is, if it was even true. It was difficult for even bright children to separate fact from fiction. And hadn’t Julia learned in her Psychology 101 class that bereaved children often blamed themselves for the death of a parent?
But little Clementine stared at her with all the conviction of a martyr, never once blinking. “Yes, ma’am, Auntie Julia.”
“ ‘Auntie Julia’ is sufficient. Go on.”
“I heard her telling all her troubles to God during one of the weekly prayer meetings. I’m excused, you see, on account of I’m too young to hold still that long, and I’m supposed to be in bed. Auntie Julia, sometimes the grown-ups pray about boring stuff like getting more school supplies, or debts and fund-raising, but other times their voices get sharp—like knives—or cold—like ice—and that’s when I creep close to hear what they’re saying.”
“Why, you little imp!”
“Does that mean you want me to stop?”
“Heavens, no,” Julia said after only the slightest hesitation. Perhaps it was wrong to encourage gossip from a disobedient child, but on the other hand, it was readily apparent that the little girl very much needed a sympathetic ear.
“Well, you see, it was like this. One night, during all that praying—which can go on for hours and hours and such—I hear a woman crying, and I think that’s Mama, but of course it wasn’t, on account of Mama was dead and eaten by that crocodile. Anyway, I nearly fell back on my behind when I saw that crying woman was Auntie Verna, and that Papa was crying too. And Auntie Verna is saying things like ‘I might have saved her if that child hadn’t been so distracting.’ And Papa was saying things like ‘You can’t blame a little girl for caring about her mother.’ Then Auntie Verna says ‘I might have saved her anyway if she hadn’t been in the family way.’
“Ooh, Auntie Julia, you oughta have seen Papa’s face. We’re peace-a-fists, we don’t believe in violence. But Papa was so mad that I thought he might actually give Auntie Verna the fist part. Then Reverend Doyer—he doesn’t like to be called Uncle Arvin—jumped to his feet and said that the prayer meeting was over.”
Just like that, Clementine’s story was over as well. Julia counted to ten—rapidly.
“Then what happened?”
Clementine pursed her lips, two pink rose petals. “Before they left, Papa said that he couldn’t help blaming Aunt Verna a little a bit if she was gonna have that attitude. But you know something, Auntie Julia?”
“What?”
“Reverend Doyer didn’t cry or nothing.”
“Cry or anything.”
“Yeah. The next time he saw me, he grabbed me by the arm and looked me straight in the eye, like he was trying to dispose me of a demon. ‘You are the great distraction to your father’s work,’ he said. ‘You are why missionaries shouldn’t have children.’ ”
“Oh, dear, dear Clementine,” Julia said as she practically lunged for the child with open arms. After all, that was by far the saddest story the recent college graduate had ever heard.
Yet, with the agility of a trained boxer, Clementine feinted this way and that, managing to avoid all physical contact. “I am the Great Distraction,” she said. “You are well advised to stay clear of me. Did you not hear a word I said?”
Julia fought to suppress a smile. At the same time, she was as mad as hops. She’d been played for a fool by a very disturbed little girl—very disturbed indeed. Julia was framing a rebuke in her mind when the child suddenly lost interest in her game and craned her neck to get a closer look at the new missionary’s face.
“Auntie Julia, how old are you?”
Julia winced. “One doesn’t ask a lady her age.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not polite.”
“Mama didn’t mind when I asked her,” the child said. “And I didn’t mind when you asked me. Aren’t I a lady?”
“I didn’t ask you; you volunteered,” Julia said, but when she saw the child’s expression—such innocence, such vulnerability—she felt awful. “I’m sorry, Clementine. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.”
“I forgive you, Auntie Julia.”
Oh my gracious, thought Julia, what a cheeky thing to say. Instead of speaking her thought, she smiled. “Thank you, dear. And yes, you are quite the young lady; you certainly don’t seem like any child I have ever met. What grade are you in?”
“I don’t go to school,” Clementine said, “because I’m wicked and a misfit.”
“What did you say?” Julia was sure she hadn’t heard right.
“I’m wicked and a misfit; that’s why I don’t go to school.”
“Where did you hear that? Who said that to you?”
“I’m not supposed to gossip,” said Clementine.
“Fair enough. But isn’t there a boarding school for missionary children?”
“Yes, but they won’t take me on account of I’m wicked. Incorrigible, is what they tell Papa, but that’s just on account of they’re afraid of him. Besides, the housefather beats the students with an old fan belt taken from a diesel engine. He beats them until they are covered with black and purple stripes. The girls too. Papa would never allow that to happen to me. My flesh is too valuable, he said.”
Julia gasped softly, a sound not even heard above the roar of the falls. Clementine, it seemed, needed no encouragement to continue on with her tale.
“You are not allowed to leave your bunk at night for any reason—not even to go to the bathroom. But if you wet your bed, then Uncle Derrick will thrash you with the fan belt and put your mattress in the schoolyard so that everyone can make fun of you. Papa would never hit me, and he won’t allow anyone else to hit me either.”
Julia, who had never even been spanked, was horrified. At the same time, she was trying to take what she heard with a grain of salt until she could have the girl’s stories verified, perhaps by her father.
“Are you homeschooled then?” she asked the child.
“Ma’am?”
“Does you father teach you at home?”
“Oh yes, Papa makes sure that I study my two or three pages every day—except for Sunday. Then we study the Bible.”
“What do you study the rest of the week?”
“The Encyclopaedia Britannica.”
Julia had been advised—perhaps warned is really a better word—by the secretary of foreign missions that the child, Clementine Hayes, was something of a prodigy and perhaps deeply disturbed (wicked was not in the description). In retrospect, perhaps upon hearing those words, Julia should also have seen red flags pop up in her mind. Any sane person would have turned tail and run. Was it her youth, her infamous inherited stubbornness (from Grandma Jenny on her father’s side), or her wanting to get on to the mission field while th
e colonial sun still shone that compelled her to accept this exceptionally difficult challenge?
Even now, having just met the precocious child, she was torn between feelings of sympathy for her and mounting dread that she had bitten off more than she could chew. Every word that issued from Clementine’s mouth seemed preposterous, just more evidence that she was a psychopathic liar. Julia had signed on for a five-year term to serve as a teacher on a remote mission station where there was just Clementine and her father, Reverend Paul Hayes, and the Reverend Arvin Doyer and his wife, Verna, a nurse. She had done it to herself; she had no one to blame but herself.
“Auntie Julia, I know what you’re thinking.”
There was that thrill again, but this time it was tempered by worry. “What?”
“You’re worried about me being wicked. But you’re not to worry, you see. I don’t need a new mama, and Papa doesn’t need a new wife. So, even though you’ll be living next door to us, you shouldn’t be expecting to see very much of us at all—except for Wednesday-night prayer meetings, and Sunday at church, and then Sunday-night suppers together, and then more prayer. Oh, I forgot chapel every morning.”
“My stars,” Julia said, “you certainly are a praying brunch of folks.”
Oops, in addition to having been born stubborn, Julia had what her mother termed “a slippery tongue.” That explained why so many things had trouble staying put in her mind where they belonged. In her defense, however, it was possible that her slippery tongue could be blamed on all the cod liver oil that her mother had forced her to down as a child.
“Don’t get me wrong, Auntie Julia,” Clementine said. “Due to my intense wickedness and my excessive immaturity, I’m not the least bit like the grown-ups; my mind wanders. Anyway, that’s not what I meant about me being wicked. You see, it’s like this; everyone—except for Papa—thinks that I’m a liar on account of I’m so smart. But I’m not a liar, Auntie Julia, I swear I’m not.”
“But dear, you claim to study the Encyclopaedia Britannica for homework. Isn’t that a little far-fetched?”
The little brown waif, weighed down by her mother’s khaki shirt, attempted to shrug. “I guess so, but my papa said to always tell the truth. And anyway, it’s the student version of the encyclopedia, so it’s not like it’s all that big of a deal.”