by Tamar Myers
“Ha-chrumm,” the chief growled. “Ha-chrumm.” He sounded like a motorcycle being kick-started.
“I was speaking to my god,” Julia said.
“Why did he not answer?”
“He did—inside my heart. He said that I should not have spoken so harshly to you.”
“Tch,” Chief Eagle said, and then spat so close to Julia’s feet that she reflexively stepped aside. “You tell only lies, missionary; your god speaks to no one. Now you will listen to me. Return my property to me, and return all the property of the Bashilele warriors that you protect within those walls, and I will not kill you.”
That’s when God spoke to her. That was her Joan of Arc moment, her Daniel in the lions’ den encounter, her David versus Goliath fight, if you will. Julia was never going to willingly give up the girls, one must understand. Either God was going to step in and do something miraculous on their behalf, or not. But either way, Julia Elaine Newton of Oxford, Ohio, was prepared to die that morning in the service of the Lord.
Perhaps one of her students—or even a teacher—witnessing her death would be inspired by it. It was even possible that one day that student or one of the student’s descendants might visit America. Then they would have the opportunity to seek out Julia’s still grieving parents, to tell them what a shining witness she had been. They could share with Julia’s home church in America the story of her bravery, and how it led them, savage Bashilele headhunters, to believe in the Lord.
Julia knelt, clasped her hands in front of her, and bowed her head. “Kill me,” she said bravely. She was not afraid, for God was on her side.
“Kah?” the chief said, and then he laughed. Rudely. Loudly. Then his disgusting, bare-chested warriors in their low-slung, provocative loincloths joined in the laughter. Eventually even the slaves laughed.
“Stop it,” Julia cried. “Stop it now!” The time for submission was over. Having her head lopped off with a razor-sharp machete in the service of the Lord was one thing, but mockery was just cruel.
“Stop it, stop it!” Chief Eagle said in a screeching falsetto.
Instantly all the men imitated him. They began hopping about like robins on hot asphalt, their hands flailing at the air while they kept their elbows tucked in at their sides.
Meanwhile Julia was keenly aware of the dozens of pairs of eyes watching from open-air windows of the four classrooms in the two main buildings. She sensed that as comical as this scene might appear to the casual observer, no one there that morning, besides the chief and herself, was laughing. Yet again she had let her big mouth lead her astray.
The chief seemed to be a mind reader. In an instant he was again his regal, imposing self. Even without his miter he would have towered over Henry.
“White woman, you speak only words of foolishness. Why should I kill the thing that is to become my next wife?”
Julia was only momentarily confused, thinking perhaps that she had heard wrong. The thing? Did he mean her? Was she to be his next wife?
“Eyoa, I speak of you,” Chief Eagle said, making his intentions crystal clear. “When our independence comes and the Belgian masters have been driven from our lands, then I will return and I will take you for my wife. You will bear children for me. These children will have the knowledge of the machines that the white man possesses, as well as the courage and strength of the Bashilele. Then the people of Mushihi Village will rise up, and they will conquer all the surrounding tribes. Behold, the descendants of Chief Eagle will be recited in the palaver huts of every village in Kasai Province for all time.”
“I will never be your wife,” Julia said through clenched teeth. “I will never bear your children. I would sooner lie with a dog than with you!”
What made her say that? Was it Satan? It had to be! Satan was trying to sabotage her witness. Maybe if she had just kept her mouth shut at that point, the egotistical giant would have returned to his village feeling like he’d made a good trade: Buakane for Julia. Then just before independence, Julia and Buakane both could hightail it out of there. Better yet, she would report what just went down to Henry, who would call it in on his short-wave radio to the Belgian police—assuming that there were any still around—and they would go to Mushihi Village, and they would arrest the lunatic. Just not bloody likely.
At least Julia’s cruel words made the chief blink. “Very well,” he said. “I will kill you, white woman—but only after I have had my use of you. And, of course, after all my warriors are through with you. Then, if you are still alive, I will give you to my dogs. Perhaps one of them will choose to lie with you—before he eats you.
“But do not think that you have stopped me from retrieving my property or that which belongs to my men. On independence day, justice will prevail.”
Chief Eagle snapped his fingers and the litter came to him. All he had to do was to step into it sideways. The coordinated movements of the eight slaves, as well as the ten warriors, was astonishing. Julia tried to focus on that scene for as long as she could, because reality was simply overwhelming.
TWENTY-ONE
Nurse Verna had never felt such rage. Anger, yes. Nurse Verna had always been an angry person—except for right after praying. During prayer Nurse Verna habitually turned great chunks of anger over to the Lord. She’d grown up in St. Louis, along the banks of the Mississippi, so she visualized that emotion as one might see a block of ice, bobbing its way downriver from Minneapolis during the spring thaw. But if one wasn’t in the habit of regularly heaving these heavy blocks up onto the very capable shoulders of Jesus, then one’s soul—to mix metaphors—might get clogged with sin and freeze over altogether.
Nurse Verna had no idea where her anger came from. Frankly she really didn’t want to know. It had been suggested by a social worker, at God’s Precious Lambs Orphanage, that it might have to do with the early childhood trauma she’d experienced—blah, blah, blah. Nurse Verna didn’t believe in psychiatry. When she was in nurses’ training and had to serve for a semester on a psych ward, she had felt nothing but contempt for the patients. They were weak; they hadn’t gotten on with their lives as she had. They certainly had not found a source of release for their pain and anger as she had. They had not found redemption through the Lord. They needed to hoist their blocks of ice up onto Christ’s shoulders.
Oh, but if it was only that simple. If only Nurse Verna’s anger would stay away. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? To whom could she turn for advice? Certainly not her husband, Arvin! Reverend Arvin Doyer was an excellent missionary, a good preacher for the natives, but he was no theologian. Arvin was miles away her intellectual inferior. She wasn’t judging him as a human being, mind you; she was merely thinking a fact. Surely God, who was omniscient, understood.
For instance, Arvin had struggled through a mediocre seminary, one that hadn’t even required its students to learn ancient Greek, Aramaic, or biblical Hebrew. It was considered to be sufficient if they could read the Bible in King James English without stumbling. In fact, the True Gospel Seminary claimed that King James English was the “language of heaven,” and that it was the language in which God dictated his Holy Word less than six thousand years ago. Arvin firmly believed that the so-called ancient languages like Aramaic were inventions of the devil. They were languages that God permitted to be mentioned in the Bible as a way to test the faithful.
To put it bluntly (why did no one ever ask for her to put it bluntly?) Nurse Verna had married an imbecile, because beggars couldn’t be choosers, and Nurse Verna had a dream of her own to fulfill. Ever since she was six years old, Nurse Verna longed to be a missionary doctor. A surgeon, in fact. It had been her dream to come to Africa and repair harelips and perform skin grafts—and oh, there was such a need for medical personnel of any kind in the Belgian Congo.
Yes sir, little Verna Johnson, as she was known in those days, became quite an expert on overseas mission work, thanks to the This Little Light of Mine Program that the orphanage held every year, the Saturday bef
ore Christmas. That was when a real live missionary couple, ones who had actually lived among the natives and wild animals and all manner of exotic diseases, came and put on their dog and pony show, as Miss Claussen, the headmistress, called it. Although much to little Verna Johnson’s disappointment, the missionaries never once brought either a dog or a pony.
At any rate, they always brought lots of gruesome Kodak picture slides, which actually turned out to be a much better idea. In return, the orphanage handed over the “offering jar,” to which they had been their adding pennies all year. Once there was over fourteen dollars in that jar, and that wasn’t even counting Canadian money.
The highlight of the missionary visits were always the “altar calls” at the end of the presentations. Before these solemn occasions the children were permitted to ask a few short questions. Perhaps it was because the missionaries came too regularly, or perhaps it was because Miss Claussen had a glare that could melt the paint off a Buick, but every year the same thing happened. It was only little Verna Johnson who went up to get saved, and only little Verna Johnson who dared to ask a question.
“Now that I’m saved,” she’d say, “do I have to get me a husband to be a missionary doctor to deepest, darkest Africa?” Only a new kid to the orphanage would be stupid enough to laugh at Verna Johnson.
“I’m afraid so, Verna,” the missionary lady would say. “You see, life in the Belgian Congo is so difficult that a wife needs a husband to survive.”
“Uh-huh. But I don’t want to be someone’s wife; I just want to be a missionary doctor.” And still, there wasn’t a soul at God’s Precious Lambs Orphanage who dared to laugh at little Verna Johnson, for her anger—backed up by her teeth and fingernails—were legendary.
Verna’s quick wit, fiery temper, and flailing limbs put her at the top of the orphanage’s food chain. This started with day one. Margaret, a fat, unhappy twelve-year-old and current resident bully, had tripped the six-year-old Verna as she was lining up for her very first chow line. Instantly, there followed a blur of arms and legs—all of them Verna’s—and screams of pain—all of them Margaret’s.
Then like two cats, the girls went their separate ways, the incident having been apparently forgotten. The only thing that changed was that Margaret never again tried to bully little Vera, and in private, Miss Claussen referred to little Verna as the Threshing Machine when speaking about her to other staff members.
The visiting missionary was always very patient with little Verna. “My advice to you, Verna,” she invariably said, “is to turn this problem over to the Lord.”
“Do you mean I should pray?” said little Verna.
“Exactly,” the visiting missionary lady said. “The Bible tells us to pray without stopping. And you know what? God answers all our prayers too. It might not seem that way, but that’s because we might not like the answers and we refuse to hear them.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like what we were just talking about. What if God said to you: ‘Verna Johnson, I like the idea of you becoming a missionary doctor to Africa, but you need a helpmate.’ ”
“What is a helpmate—exactly?”
This time, however, the missionary lady said something different. In fact, her words were so surprising that little Verna almost didn’t hear them.
“Well, I suppose that in your case it might be sort of an ordinary husband, one to help you meet the official requirements. And if a tree falls across the jungle path, he can help the natives move that tree out of the way while you do the important medical tasks.”
That was Verna Johnson’s—hitherto little Verna Johnson’s—defining spiritual moment. That was the last time that she had to go up and get saved, because that time she knew that her conversion had finally taken. God had finally spoken to her, and his words were these—more or less.
You, Verna Johnson, have been chosen to be one of my medical missionaries to Belgian Congo, Africa. Work hard, study hard, pray hard, accept donations, and marry whomever I, your Lord God, wilt send along—no matter how ordinary that man might be.
So Verna Johnson was faithful to the Lord God Jehovah, even if God slipped a little bit when it came to keeping his side of the bargain. Nurse Verna fumed inwardly when she heard other folks making excuses for God, because a fact was a fact. Besides, Nurse Verna had already made a ton of excuses on God’s behalf, and of course she’d heard the same ones a million times from other so-called faithful Christians.
Nurse Verna had worked two part-time jobs during college and graduated with a 4.0 (the highest score imaginable in those days). But no medical school in the country would risk offering a scholarship to an orphaned girl with a reputation as a hothead. That went double for an Ivy League school. However, Nurse Verna Johnson’s work ethic and good grades did get her a full scholarship at a church-funded but state-accredited school of nursing, located halfway between St. Louis and Springfield. And for what it was worth, Nurse Verna Johnson received her R.N. degree and M.R.S. certificate on the same day.
On this part of their covenant, the Almighty came through: Reverend Arvin Doyer was dumber than a plate of cold macaroni. In a way that was a shame, because his intellect was by far his strongest feature. Nurse Verna understood and agreed that such thoughts were unkind, perhaps even unchristian, but they were her private thoughts. Everyone has unkind, private—even ugly—thoughts. People who deny having such thoughts are hypocrites, and they are in need of intense self soul-searching. There would never be any pulling the wool over Nurse Verna Doyer’s eyes.
One of the very few benefits of having been orphaned at age six was that by then Nurse Verna had already experienced the worst of humanity, and she was ready for a clean slate. Orville, her father, was a “professional gambler,” a clean-cut second-generation Norwegian who worked for the St. Louis mob as a shill at a backroom gambling table: the local yokel seemingly hell-bent to lose the family farm while in town on a drinking binge. Meanwhile, Pussycat, aka Verna’s mother, slithered among the players passing out “drinks on the house” to everyone except to Orville, who was served iced tea.
The money was good, but it was oh so much better for the “house.” Finally, Orville and Pussycat came up with a surefire way to sneak a few bills unnoticed past the house, and why shouldn’t they have? They were doing all the work, after all! Their scheme paid off. At least it paid off for several months—until the urge to show off their wealth got the best of them and they purchased a brand-new 1910 Model T Ford. Barely a week later, they were found dead in this car, their bodies riddled with bullets.
The cops surmised that they were the target of a hit man, who had rightly presumed that they were dead when the Model T Ford strayed from the road and then over a high bluff above the Mississippi. The killer had either been unaware that a six-year-old was asleep on the backseat when the shooting began or didn’t care. It was a riverboat captain who first spotted the automobile perched in the branches of a giant sycamore, but he didn’t report it to the authorities until he had exhausted every harebrained scheme he could think of to get the automobile down on his own.
Little Verna Johnson had no next of kin, and in 1910 there weren’t a lot of folks lining up to take in a mean-tempered girl who looked “as if she’d done wrassled with the devil and lost.” God moves in mysterious ways, does he not? So when a nameless benefactor stepped up to the plate and promised to make an annual donation to God’s Precious Lambs Orphanage if the facility would take in a certain six-year-old—anonymously, of course—was that one of God’s mysterious ways? Even the grown-up Nurse Verna Doyer, who had an opinion on virtually everything, was stumped when it came to thinking about that. Obviously Orville and Pussycat weren’t “saved,” and thus they were doomed to spend an eternity in hell. The same went for their killer. Yet if Nurse Verna had not been orphaned, she might never have been the recipient of salvation.
She certainly never would have come to Africa and performed hundreds of surgeries—yes, real surgeries that would have re
quired a doctor to perform them in the States. She had delivered thousands of babies and wrapped tens of thousands of wounds.
But now, because of the humiliating words spoken to Chief Eagle by one neophyte woman—a woman who didn’t deserve the title of missionary—all this was about to come to a screeching halt. The missionaries might even lose their lives over this, become martyrs. Martyrs! Like St. Stephen! Well, yes—there would be glory in that . . .
Then the Lord, as he was wont to do, ripped that savory morsel of daydream from between Nurse Verna’s teeth. These days it was the RCs—the Roman Catholics—who were big on martyrs. Real Christians, like Protestants, just quietly died in the Lord, and for the Lord.
Thus far Nurse Verna had served the Lord as a missionary nurse to the Belgian Congo for thirty-three years, which just happened to be the same amount of time that Jesus had spent on his mission as both God and man. The bulk of the Doyers’ time had been spent on other mission stations, since Mushihi Station, their present posting, was only ten years old.
However, the Doyers, along with Henry and his now-deceased wife, had been at Mushihi Station from the very beginning. They were like the pioneers of yesteryear in that regard; they were pioneers for the Lord.
They’d staked out a virgin plot of land, high up on a plateau, applied for, and received a lease from the Belgian Crown. They’d cleared away the elephant grass—the tshisuku—built houses for themselves, a medical dispensary for her, a church for Arvin, a carpenter shop/garage for Henry, and of course a school. The Mission Board back in the States was adamant about that. Education was to be their main thrust—otherwise the Roman Catholics, who had great schools, would steal both the bodies and the souls of the Africans.
Nurse Verna had her own opinion, thank you very much, but the Mission Board was composed exclusively of men. As everyone knows, men are not inclined to listen to a charity case, especially one who, rumor had it, was descended from the “criminal element.”