The Girl Who Married an Eagle

by Tamar Myers

  Buakane shook her head, for she was appalled at the idea that she should place her buttocks where another had so recently placed hers. Besides, she was still not convinced that the white man was fully human. Although Worthless had stated emphatically that she was not a kayeke—one of the humanlike creatures who dwelt in caves—perhaps there was more than one kind, and that the tuyeke of another region went by another name. Was it not possible that the thing upon which Worthless sat was not a block of salt, but a trap?

  “What is the matter?” Worthless asked.

  “I will make water outside,” Buakane said. “I can walk to the tshisuku. I am not afraid of hyenas.”

  “You are afraid of this nkumba,” Worthless said, sounding angry. “You do not want to sit on it because I am white.”

  “Aiyee! That is not so.”

  “Truly, it is so. Bashilele children are naked until their bodies start to change. You do not mind sitting where they have sat. Even under their madiba they wear nothing, so do not say—”

  “Hello,” said Henry in the Bushilele language.

  Buakane yelped. She sounded just like a puppy whose foot had been accidentally stepped on, she was sure of that. But never mind, the white man with whom she’d ridden in the metal beast had just entered the room.

  “Kah!” Worthless said to the man. “How long have you been standing there?”

  Unfortunately, the man spoke in his own tongue, which made him sound like he was trying to speak with a mouthful of stones and thistles. Surely, this was proof enough that at least he was a kayeke. To say nothing of his powerful stench.

  “Worthless,” Buakane said, summoning her courage and that of her mothers, and her mother’s ancestors, “you must take me back to where you found me. Cast me out into the road so that the hyenas may indeed eat me. If not them, then perhaps a leopard, or a lion, will devour me. In any case, I will be happy. And in any case, our husband will not lie with me, nor will I sit upon your trap. I swear this oath upon the life of my mother—who yet lives!”

  Worthless put her hand over mouth, but behind it she was laughing. She said something to the kayeke, who laughed as well.

  Then Worthless spoke rapidly, while spitting laughter with each word. “He is not my husband! This man is my father. And he is not your husband either!”

  “Kah!” Buakane said.

  Again the whites exchanged gibberish.

  “Buakane,” Worthless said, “my father says that you should not be afraid. That we wish only to help you.”

  Buakane could but stare helplessly. Her chief fault, her own father always said, was coming to judgment without carefully considering all the facts. In this case, she should have given more importance to the behavior that the man had exhibited earlier toward Worthless. Bulelela. He had been tender with her.

  Paddle had once remarked that only men who preferred other men could show the trait of tenderness. Gentleness as well. Oh, if only Paddle were here! Buakane commenced blinking back tears. Hot, salty, unbidden tears.

  “Please do not cry,” Worthless said.

  “Tch,” Buakane said and turned away. “I do not cry; it is only that my eyes water from too many suns.”

  There was even more of the strange talk, after which Worthless spoke, pointing frequently to her father. “He has a white man’s gun. We will go with you to the edge of the tshisuku, and he will stand guard against dangerous animals. Meanwhile, I will guard your modesty. When you are finished with your business, you will return here and spend the night. Tomorrow, we will take you to a school where all the students are Bashilele. They are all girls who have run away from very old men—some of these men are even older than my father.”

  Buakane shook with emotion. How could such words be true? She had done a very bad thing by running away from Chief Eagle. The man had paid her parents a very handsome dowry. Now they would have to repay him. And what of their reputation? Would Paddle and Bad Odor now become outcasts in the village of their birth?

  What were the chances that Buakane should just happen to stumble upon a school that sheltered Bashilele girls who’d run away from arranged marriages with elderly husbands? Such a thing was not possible, unless the witch doctor had cast a spell on her—or the missionaries—and one or the other of them was in a trance and no longer in touch with reality.

  Who should Buakane trust? The whites and the kindness they had shown to her? Or should she listen to the voice inside her, the one that called for her to run as soon as she reached the tshisuku? If this was a trick, would the white mamu have bothered to sew her wound closed? On the other hand, perhaps whites enjoyed playing with their catch, such as a cat does.

  Buakane, daughter of Bad Odor and Grasshopper Paddle, decided that she would keep her options open until she reached the edge of the tshisuku. Only then would she decide. At that time, her deceased ancestors would whisper through the tall grass blades, and she would listen. For they lived in the past, which is also the present, as well as the future. It is our ancestors to whom we must turn, and so for now they would be her guides.

  TEN

  While the dew was still heavy on the ground, and the sun not yet above the tshisuku, Nurse Verna Doyer took her daily walk with God. To be sure, by then she had clad her body in its full physical armor and had conducted her private devotions by lamplight, but neither food nor drink had passed her parched and shriveled lips. For verily, Nurse Verna was a mouth breather. At any rate, Verna’s favorite hymn verse, from “In the Garden,” had always been “I come to the garden alone / While the dew is still on the roses.” There were no roses on Mushihi Station, but there were dog-faced baboons.

  These large monkeys came out of the canyon in the early morning hours to catch the grasshoppers that were so weighed down by the heavy dew that they couldn’t jump properly, much less fly. When the baboons and the missionary first came face-to-face, there were a few uncomfortable moments. When the dominant male reared on his hind feet, he stood nose to snout with the implacable little woman. When he bared his dripping fangs and barked, he looked every bit as vicious as the rottweiler that had lived in the junkyard across the street from the orphanage in St. Louis where Nurse Verna grew up.

  One day little Verna took baby Jackie, another orphan, over to pet the “nice doggie.” Despite the heavy chain-link fence between them, the ugly rottweiler managed to nick baby Jackie with its hideous yellow teeth. For her kindness, little Verna received the whipping of a lifetime.

  Verna, who was eleven at the time and had a library card, did a little research. While the other orphans were attending a compulsory church service the following Sunday morning, little Verna, who was supposed to be in bed sick, took a bowl of antifreeze soup over for the “nice doggie.” Thereafter, her only regret was that she had taken the life of one of the Lord’s creatures on the Sabbath instead of on a weekday.

  Nurse Verna was quite unprepared for her encounter with the baboons. The troop could have torn her limb from limb and dined on her for breakfast, instead of on grasshoppers. She had no weapons at her disposal—none at all, except for the two-edged sword that was her tongue, which was also the bane of her existence. Of course there was the Lord, and the power of prayer. If God could send an angel to shut the mouths of lions on behalf of Daniel, after he’d been cast into the lions’ den, then surely God could intervene now. After all, was not Nurse Verna in this very place, Mushihi Station, to win heathen souls over to the Kingdom of Christ?

  So Nurse Verna prayed that the Lord would shut the baboon’s mouth, and that the troop would leave her alone. Despite her faith in her God, Nurse Verna didn’t want to have her eyes open at the moment of her death, so she closed them and prayed silently. Besides, one is always supposed to pray with closed eyes.

  That being said, when Nurse Verna was finished and dared to open her eyes again, the baboon troop was calmly grazing for grasshoppers all around her. The dominant male was now about ten yards away, on his haunches, and doing nasty things with a young female. The totalit
y of that miracle was that not only had she been spared, but that from that day on, the troop accepted her almost as if she were one of their own.

  Verna’s early morning walks with God, which sometimes led her among the baboon troop, were not always dominated by prayer. Often she talked to herself. Aloud. And in English. Nurse Verna enjoyed the sound of her own voice. Arvin was not a conversationalist, and when she attempted to converse with Henry, they were invariably interrupted by the Great Distraction. Did not that man understand that children were to be seen and not heard? If Nurse Verna had butted into adult conversations the way that this child habitually did, she would not have been able to sit down—ever!

  Anyone who believes in the literal truth of God’s holy writ, and who is a parent, should read Proverbs 29:15. It explicitly advocates putting the rod to the bottoms of impudent children. And speaking of impudent, the Great Distraction and all that she represented were a cross so heavy that Nurse Verna could hardly bear them. Even with the Lord’s help, Nurse Verna staggered.

  The Great Distraction and her family were the cause of Verna’s one great sin. It was the one thing that she could never tell—not even whisper—to Arvin during their shared prayer time. She surely couldn’t bring it up to Henry, not even under the guise of a confession. Only the Lord and the baboons were privy to the awful burden that Nurse Verna had to carry around in her heart, and all because of that awful Great Distraction. Of course and her mother. Her dead mother.

  That was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it? The Hayes woman had selfishly gone ahead and died on Nurse Verna, even though she didn’t really have to do so. There was no reason for her to; a Mushilele woman would not have died so easily. Nurse Verna had not even intended for the fetus to die—fetus, wasn’t that how they referred to them in nursing school? Nevertheless, if the Hayes woman hadn’t so foolishly attempted to birth a seemingly endless string of fetuses—so very many distractions from the Lord’s service—she might not have bled out so easily that day. Truly, she might not have. Bulelele.

  This morning, as on every other morning, Nurse Verna gave the little white cemetery a wide berth. Actually it couldn’t properly be called a cemetery; strictly speaking, it was a medical waste disposal area for all the miscarriages that Mrs. Hayes had needlessly experienced. Four in all—even if you didn’t count the last one. That was the sum of her vanity. Not one of them was bigger than a walnut, except for the last one, which was going on six months. A baby boy—no, it was a male fetus! And it was the Lord God himself who took the life of Elizabeth Hayes. It is God, and only God, who has the power to give and to take life.

  “You must remember that, Nurse Verna,” she said speaking quite loudly to herself. “It was that woman’s job to save souls. That woman had no business breeding like a rabbit. No Christian does. We are living in the Last Days. All around us heathens are dying in sin. We can’t afford to waste—”

  Nurse Verna stopped in midsentence because she’d had a “speaking of the devil” moment. It was an expression that she hated, but one that was too often most appropriate. Like then. To think that she’d just been talking aloud about heathens, when out of the wet elephant grass, in the diminishing fog, stepped an African. More accurately, it was an African woman: the same bent and crippled woman who had accompanied Henry and Julia from Belle Vue the night before. Oh yes, and the infant. The infant was so tiny that Nurse Verna had an impulse to snatch it from its mother’s arms and run it over to the clinic, where she might feed it some formula. Instead, she remembered her place in life and nodded brusquely.

  “Life to you,” she told the mother.

  “Good morning,” the mother replied. In English!

  “How—are—you?” Nurse Verna said with much exaggerated slowness. Occasionally an African would learn that phrase by rote—perhaps from a missionary child—but that was always the extent of the native’s English. The Mission Board had a policy prohibiting the teaching of English to blacks. After all, how else were the missionaries supposed to be able to communicate among themselves in private?

  “I am quite tired after my trip,” the African said. “Thank you for asking. Now please, allow me to inquire of you; how are you today? Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes, yes, of course!” Nurse Verna said. “No, no, this will not do.”

  “Excuse me, Mamu, but you speak from both sides of your mouth. What is it that will not do?”

  “Your manner of speaking. You cannot speak in English.”

  The little woman with the twisted body stepped back and cocked her head. “Please believe me when I say that I did not wish to offend. I did not know that you were Belgian, and that English was not your native tongue. By your unattractive way of dressing, you appeared to be a Protestant missionary.”

  Nurse Verna was stunned. She was appalled at the woman’s cheek. At the same time, she was delighted.

  “Tell me about yourself, Baba. What is your name? Who are your people?”

  Just then the infant began to fuss, so the African matter-of-factly lifted her blouse to expose a breast, stuffed it into the child’s mouth, and calmly began to answer. The infant, however, continued to fuss.

  “My name is Cripple,” the native said, “and I am a Muluba. Do you speak Tshiluba?”

  “Yes, Cripple, I do. Do you prefer that we continue in your language?”

  “Indeed, Mamu, for I find the sounds of your language very unpleasant.”

  “Is that so?” Nurse Verna said, feeling justifiably irritated by this rude and judgmental remark.

  “Oh yes, they are much like grating a tuber of manioc with a dull knife.”

  “Kah!”

  “There you see? Mamu, is that not better than saying ‘what’?”

  Nurse Verna couldn’t help but laugh. My goodness, when was the last time she had done that? To be honest, she couldn’t remember. Perhaps she hadn’t even laughed since that happy day she’d received the letter informing her that she had been accepted as a missionary to the Belgian Congo. Oh what a joyous day that had been! And let her not forget; Nurse Verna had been saved from the eternal fires of hell. Nurse Verna had a right to be happy.

  The woman Cripple shifted her fussing infant to her other breast. “Mamu,” she said, “what is your name?”

  “What do you wish to call me?”

  “Kah! That is a nonsense question. Surely a woman as ancient as yourself is in possession of a name.”

  Nurse Verna laughed again. “Me? Ancient? Yes, I suppose that I am ancient by Congolese standards. I possess a Bushilele name, but not one in Tshiluba. I do not like my Bushilele name, so perhaps you could give me a new name in Tshiluba.”

  Cripple shook her head. To do so, she had to move her entire body. On the plus side, that was the only thing that made her baby shut up.

  “A name does not fall from the sky like bird droppings. Or hailstones. It settles on the soul softly like this mist.”

  “Tch,” Nurse Verna said, “when it has settled on my soul, let me know what it is. In the meantime, let me see your baby.”

  “Aiyee!” Cripple said.

  “Baba, are you a Christian?”

  “No,” the African said with shocking vehemence. “Most certainly not; I am a heathen.”

  “But have you not heard of heaven with all its wonders?” Nurse Verna asked.

  “Indeed, I have,” Cripple said. “But now I put to you a question, for which I desire an honest answer.”

  “E?” Nurse Verna said.

  “Will there be white people in heaven?” Cripple asked.

  “Of course!” Nurse Verna said.

  “Then I have no desire to go,” Cripple said.

  “Kah!” Nurse Verna had never been so insulted in all her life.

  “Oh, do not be offended, Mamu,” Cripple said. “My desires have nothing to do with you, but with all whites. For is not this heaven, of which you speak fondly, is it not a place of days without end?”

  “E,” Nurse Verna said. “What of it?”


  “You whites crossed the Great Waters, took countless of our people back to your side as slaves, killed just as many of them here, and forced others to harvest rubber sap in the forest. If our men could not meet their sap quotas, you chopped off their hands.

  “Here we are not allowed to live in your white villages—but we may work in them. We cannot not sit with you or eat with you. We are forbidden to marry you—although not one of us would want to do such a disgusting thing. This I assure you. Yet now you ask if I would like to spend the period known as the ‘days without end’ with you? Mamu, it is you who have offended me with such a question.”

  “Aiyee!” cried Nurse Verna, who was quite taken aback. “Would you not even consider heaven for the promise of a house that was nicer than mine?”

  “Mamu, would you consider such an offer if it meant living in a house filled with thousands of snakes? Snakes even in your bed?”

  “Do not be ridiculous,” snapped Nurse Verna, whose Bushilele name was Mamu Snake. “If there were snakes in your house, then it would not be in heaven.”

  “Exactly, Mamu,” Cripple said, and gave her crooked chin an irritating and triumphant tilt.

  “You are a wretched heathen,” Nurse Verna growled. “Now hand over your baby.”

  “I will do no such thing!”

  “You child is very ill, Baba. Surely you can see that. Behold, she lacks the strength to latch on to your breast.”

  “No, Mamu, my daughter is no longer hungry.”

  “Allow me to feel her for fire.”

  Then, against all odds, Cripple actually held her infant out so that Nurse Verna might touch her. Nurse Verna didn’t believe in instinct—that was too Darwinian—but she did believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to move and direct people, both spiritually and physically. She wasn’t sure just how the latter worked; maybe with the help of unseen angels. At any rate, Nurse Verna did not believe there was any such thing as coincidence.