by Tamar Myers
Henry roared with laughter. “Why, you little matchmaker!”
Julia was fit to be tied. “Now stop it! Just a minute ago the conversation had to do with evicting Cripple because she might be down on her knees praying after working hours, and now you joke about marriage?”
All signs of humor drained from Henry’s face. “Actually, there was a lot more to it than that; the Doyers happened to see the two of you eating together earlier this evening. Eating is practically the penultimate kind of fraternization—it’s almost worse than sex.”
Sex! Julia felt her cheeks burn. She couldn’t believe that an ordained missionary had said the S word. She had never once heard her parents use it—not once.
“Wow” was all she could think to say. That must have made her seem even more stupid, if that was possible.
“So,” Henry said, “good night then.”
That was it! Just like that, he turned and left. Either he was embarrassed as well, or else he didn’t care to be caught in the middle of what was sure to be a heated discussion. After all, she had already made a reputation for herself as a woman of passion—or perhaps in Henry’s eyes, an argumentative college girl.
“Mamu Kindness,” Cripple said, “I too will be going to bed.”
“Sleep well,” Julia said, then caught herself. “No, you will stay until we have cleaned the floor.”
“Good,” Cripple said, “but in that case I must bring up a matter of utmost importance.”
Uh-oh, Julia thought. Not now. Whatever it is, not tonight. Please, Lord, allow me to get settled with the minimum of problems. I already know that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. You’ve already made that abundantly clear.
Having armed herself with the power of prayer, Julia faced Cripple with a smile. “What is this matter of great importance?”
“Mamu Kindness, when I am finished with this labor, I shall return to a room that has no bed.”
“Do not be frivolous at this hour, Cripple. Of course there is a bed. I saw a sleeping platform in there this morning.”
“Tch, did the white mamu sit upon this platform? For if she had, then she would have discovered that it was riddled with termites, and it would have sent her crashing to the hard concrete floor. Perhaps if the white mamu was a cripple like myself, and possessed as many years as surely I must, then her twisted and painful body would hurt even more.”
“Aiyee!” Julia cried sympathetically. “Cripple, is that what happened?”
Cripple looked away, but not before Julia saw that she was blinking back tears. Julia was shocked. It had never occurred to her that someone as feisty as Cripple would cry in public. Maybe this was an act, yet another example of the housekeeper’s manipulative nature. Of course, it had to be an act. Julia hated being played, so she waited it out while Cripple took her own sweet time to answer.
“E, Mamu Kindness,” Cripple said at last. “I do not wish to complain, for if you fire me, I have nowhere to go; these are not my people. But when I fell through the bed, not only did I hurt my back, but had I not been holding Pierre Jardin in my arms, she too would have come to harm. Perhaps something even worse would have happened, Mamu.”
Now it was Julia who bade her time. “Fine,” she eventually said. “Then you will sleep in this house, in that room over there.” She pointed to what was to be her office. “It has a proper bed with a soft top. But you must never, ever, speak of this to anyone.”
Then the most disturbing thing happened. Cripple hurriedly wiped her eyes on the backs of her balled-up fists and fell to her knees. Grabbing Julia’s feet, she began pressing them to her forehead and rubbing them along her cheeks.
“Mamu Kindness,” she crooned, “you are truly my everlasting friend. Pierre Jardin and I will always be in your service. We will follow you even to this America of which others speak so much about, although I have seen no convincing proof of its existence—perhaps a colorful headscarf from your land might be enough.”
Julia literally bit her lower lip to keep from laughing. Well, they did say that when God closed a door, he opened a window. As it turned out, she wasn’t going to be friendless after all. And one thing was for certain, she certainly was not going to be bored.
EIGHTEEN
No, Julia was certainly not going to be bored. They—the little family of Julia, Cripple, and Pierre Jardin—were still eating breakfast when a pint-size visitor showed up uninvited, just inches from Julia’s elbow.
“A ghost!” Cripple screamed. She fled the table, knocking her chair over behind her.
“Hi,” Clementine said, coming around to where Julia could see her. “It’s me again.”
“I see,” Julia said, although there wasn’t much of the child to see. She was wearing a white cotton dress that had clearly belonged to her mother, and it was bunched up around her waist, with the excess material held in place by a man’s worn brown leather belt wrapped twice around her waist. Along the edges of the neckline and short raglan sleeves were pink hand-embroidered roses. Set atop her mass of dark curls was a straw hat with a five-inch brim, which hid all her face except her delicate chin. Around the brim of the hat was a wide pink ribbon, and affixed to one side was a tired pink bow.
“Auntie Julia,” Clementine said as she righted Cripple’s chair, “do you suppose that we could be cohorts? I should like that very much—of course, if that’s all right with you. Cohort Clementine sounds ever so much better than Accomplice Clementine, don’t you think?”
Julia was stunned. And amused. Then mortified. That’s what she should be: plain old mortified. Now her stubbornness—make that her willful disobedience—was leading this innocent child down the path of sin.
“No, you’re not,” said Clementine as she reached for a piece of toast.
Now Julia was back to stunned. “I’m not what?”
“You’re not a bad influence—because that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
Then before Julia could even cry out in disbelief, the child prattled on. She was like a little windup toy.
“It’s not like I didn’t already know what you were up to,” Clementine said. “See, when Papa got back last night, Uncle Arvin and Auntie Verna were still with him. They were articulating a mile a minute, in a most disagreeable tone, so I made myself scarce. Well, you can guess what they did next.”
Julia smiled inwardly at the child’s adult, if somewhat stilted vocabulary. “I’m not sure that I can.”
“They prayed, of course, Auntie Julia. That’s what grown-ups always do when they disagree. Papa and the Doyers got down on their knees and they held hands and then they just really let God have an earful. I bet you can guess what it was about.”
“This time you might be right.”
Clementine had been trying to transfer an overloaded teaspoon of marmalade from the jam bowl to her toast. She managed to get the spoon halfway there before dumping its entire contents onto the clean white tablecloth that had been so kindly provided for Julia’s use.
“Rats,” she said. “Yeah, it was about you, Auntie Julia, all right. Auntie Verna thinks that you aren’t dry behind the ears yet and need to be seasoned spiritually. Papa said that her analogy made you sound like an ear of corn.” She giggled. “Both Auntie Verna and Uncle Arvin want the Home Board to send you back to America because you can’t play by the rules. They said that you are only going to cause big problems now that independence is coming.”
Julia rested her forehead in her hands. “What did your papa say?”
“He said that they should ask God if you were a fresh wind blowing?”
Julia straightened. “A fresh wind blowing what?”
Clementine shrugged. “My nose started itching then and thought I was going to sneeze, so I went to my room. Auntie Julia, I think I want to be a linguist when I grow up. Just not a missionary linguist.”
“Uh-huh,” Julia said absentmindedly.
Oh Lord, tell me what to do, Julia prayed. And then the answer, the right answer, just popp
ed into her heart—or her head—or wherever it was that God spoke to her. What would Jesus do? Didn’t he tell his followers to sell everything that they had and give it to the poor? Strictly speaking, the food and the extra bed weren’t hers, but Cripple was as poor and needy as Julia could possibly imagine anyone being.
She took Clementine’s sticky hand gently in hers. “Listen, Clementine, I am not going to keep this a secret.”
“Aw—”
“Do you know why?” Julia asked.
“No!”
“Because you and I are warriors,” Julia said.
“We are?”
“Oh yes,” Julia hastened to say. “We fight for what’s right; we don’t need to slink around in the shadows, now do we?”
“We’re good warriors! But I don’t want to kill anybody, Auntie Julia.”
“No, no, we’re not that kind of warrior. We just battle things like fear, and we stand up for our principles.”
“But I’m not scared, Auntie Julia. Just ask Papa. Once I heard him tell Uncle Arvin that I wasn’t afraid to stir up a hornet’s nest.”
“Is that so?” It wasn’t hard for Julia to see how that might have come about. Then in the far distance Julia heard what sounded like drumming.
“That means it’s a half hour till chapel,” Clementine said. “If you don’t want to be late, you’d better ela kahia.”
“I don’t understand,” Julia said. “Something about a fire, I think.”
“It’s an idiom,” Clementine said. “And you better buasha, buasha too.”
With that she was halfway out the door. Julia grabbed her hat and bag of supplies from a chair and followed the child. In the spirit of benign rebellion, she would refain from brushing her teeth that morning. For her, it was another form of bravery—an extreme one, breaking free of the “you musts” of childhood imposed upon her by her mother. Even in college, when living in the dorm with no one to look over her shoulder or feel her toothbrush, Julia had tried mightily to toe the party line. She had always been the obedient child, as the Bible commanded.
Outside it was another glorious morning. A long dirt path led straight from Julia’s house to the church. The dew was still glistening on the short grass on either side of it, weighing down the grasshoppers. The long-tailed birds were out in force today, and seeing them flitting about filled Julia’s heart with unexpected joy.
“I think I’ll try catching one of those birds,” she said to Clementine. “You know, by putting salt on its tail.”
Clementine snickered, perhaps in pity. “It can’t be done, Auntie Julia. If it could, there wouldn’t be any there for you to see now. The boys of the school all board, and they are starving for protein. That’s why Papa brings in barrels of dried caterpillars that he stores for them in the shed behind our house.”
She caught up with Clementine long enough to glimpse her face. The child was serious. Dead serious.
“Ugh.”
“They’re good, Auntie Julia—but you have to fry the caterpillars in palm oil with hot chilies.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Approximately halfway to the chapel, the path took them near a clump of bushes. Clementine, who was again well in the lead, steered into the verdant hedge and virtually disappeared. Of course Julia felt compelled to follow.
From a very narrow gap in the foliage, the bushes gave way to a small clearing, hardly greater in scope than a king-size bed. This small space was taken up by two concrete slabs, separated by three whitewashed stones. Atop each slab lay the wilted remains of flowers, perhaps picked over a long period of time. In addition, a single plastic flower lay in front of each whitewashed stone.
Inscribed on the slab to the left were the words:
Elizabeth Rose Hayes
Cherished wife of Henry Hayes
Beloved mother of Clementine Hayes
Inscribed on the right-hand slab were these words:
Jonathan Allen Hayes
Our son, our brother
The stones were unmarked.
Julia stopped just in time. She had always been told not to step on a grave, yet the little side path opened right at the foot of these graves. It was very awkward, not to say a bit shocking. And suddenly there was Clementine sitting on the ground in the small clear space at the end of what was surely her mother’s grave.
“Auntie Julia, may I present my mother, ‘who never should have had children to begin with.’ These three stones represent three years of Mama’s life when she should have been dedicating herself to winning more souls over to the Lord, instead of succumbing to morning sickness, which as we know is God’s punishment to all women, ‘because Eve didst bite into the mango, which the mamba didst offer her in the Garden of Eden. And had it truly been God’s will that these three little ones should be born alive on this evil place called earth, then the angels would not have snatched them away at the hour of their birth.’
“Oh, Auntie Julia, you should have heard Mama cry—I just know that she didn’t take a bite from any mango dangled out to her by a snake. And she had such hopes for this next one—the named one. I don’t remember everything that clearly, but I do remember that Papa cried so much after Mama and the named one both died that he took forever getting back to saving souls. Auntie Julia, why did God Almighty let me live? Aren’t I the greatest distraction of them all? It’s me who is the bane of Auntie Verna’s existence.”
“Clementine! Where did you hear that horrible stuff ?” It was a rhetorical question, the kind one asks when one is taken aback.
The little girl under the hat, the one swallowed on the ground in her mother’s clothes, wasn’t listening. “Mama,” she was saying, “this is Auntie Julia, your replacement. She’s very young, Mama, and I’ve only just met her, but I think she’s going to work out okay. Nobody likes her just yet, except for me, so you know that’s a good sign.
“What’s that, Mama? Oh, well, Papa thinks that she’s sassy, and that she doesn’t carry any meat on her bones, but that’s exactly what you predicted he’d say. And Auntie Nurse Verna doesn’t like Auntie Julia because she’s so young, which means that she is bound to be both pigheaded and obstinate. Plus, since Auntie Julia went to a secular college, she might even harbor Darwinian thoughts. Oh, the horror of it all.”
Clementine paused for perhaps a minute, although it seemed much longer. When she spoke again, it was clear that she was addressing Julia.
“Is there something special that you wanted to say?”
Julia gulped. How do you meet someone’s dead relatives? That was one topic that had not been covered in her missionary orientation program.
“Ah—sure, that would be great. Muoyo wenu,” she said, which is the traditional Tshiluba greeting that Mrs. Hayes would have used every day of her stay in Africa.
But when Clementine reacted with the giggles, Julia realized exactly what her mistake had been. How thoughtless of her to wish “life to you” to five lifeless corpses.
“Hello, Mrs. Hayes and Jonathan—and the nameless ones,” she added. “Clementine is a delightful daughter and sister.”
“Amen,” the child said and performed her usual magic trick of standing while clothed in yards of excessive material.
It wasn’t until she was out of the little cemetery, having rejoined the path, that Julia beheld the strangest element of that entire experience. Julia was in the lead now, with Clementine lagging slightly behind as she said her good-byes to her family. When Julia turned, she was startled to see Clementine reach into the bushes and withdraw a wooden stake. The stake wasn’t much longer than a yardstick; however, for some bizarre reason, a large ceramic doll’s head had been securely taped, as well as glued, to one end.
The head came from the sort of doll that had glass eyes—in this case, brown—that could open and close depending on the positioning of the head. In addition, the eyes were trimmed with long dark lashes—very much like Clementine’s. Had the head been just a size larger, at first glance one might ev
en think that it was the Great Distraction!
Julia stopped in her tracks, shocked and bewildered. “Clementine, what is the meaning of that?”
The child looked around, just as innocent as a lamb at play. “Of what, Auntie Julia?”
“Of that hideous thing! Of your head on a stake!”
Then the child snickered. “Oh, that! It’s just a doll’s head; it’s not my head. Look closely. Her nose is way too petite.”
“Hmm. The two of you look—I mean, you and it, look very much alike.”
“Really?” Clementine said. She held the stake even closer, so that the head rested against her hat brim.
Julia was flabbergasted by this behavior. “Isn’t this silly game more than a bit disrespectful? What would your papa say if he saw you doing that?”
“Papa put it there, Auntie Julia. And it’s not a silly game; it’s to scare away the natives. They think that it is a real human head.”
Oh, please, Julia thought. “Why would the Bashilele rob graves?” she said. “It’s not like missionaries are pharaohs, and they’re buried with heaps of treasure. Anyway, I thought they were afraid of ghosts and spirits.”
Clementine’s eyes narrowed as she raised her delicate chin. “It’s to protect my Dearly Departed from a cult, Auntie Julia. And just so you know, it isn’t things that those cult people want. If you don’t believe me, then ask Papa. And if you don’t believe him, you can even ask Uncle Arvin and Aunt Verna.”
Then it hit Julia like a truckload of coconuts. She remembered hearing from someone—perhaps her Tshiluba teacher back in Ohio—that there was a cult that used human brains in their rituals. More specifically, the cult members used the brains of whites. They procured the brains by digging up the remains of Caucasians. Not only that, but Mushihi Station was dead center in the middle of all this wickedness.