Recovering from his shock, Father Vittorio turned on the District Officer. "Are you going to stand there, knowing what those poor girls are about to go through?"
Shannon glanced at the Africans, then presented a smile to the priest. "Take care now, Father. They're watching us. And they're the male relatives of the girls. If you make a wrong move now, I shall be powerless to save you from them."
The priest looked at the Africans. He knew many of them. One was the groundskeeper of his church; another took care of his priestly vestments. These were men who came regularly to mass, who knelt at the altar rail to take holy communion, who brought their children for baptism and Christian names, but who were now, the priest saw, strangers.
Father Vittorio blinked. He experienced a sudden revelation that for some reason struck fear in him: that savage Africa still beat in these Catholic hearts.
While the Europeans continued to argue over what to do, while keeping an eye on the Africans who blocked the path to the homestead, Grace discreetly left the group and went into the bush. No white person, as far as she knew, had ever witnessed an actual irua. She herself had seen only the aftermath: Mario's dead sister and Gachiku trying to give birth.
She followed the direction of the path and eventually saw, through the trees, the sacred arch decorated with flowers. A few Kikuyu men stood guard. Grace continued through the forest, circling the clearing that was the homestead. Finally she came upon a boulder surrounded by Cape chestnut trees. Climbing up, she saw that it gave her an unobstructed view of the homestead below while she herself remained concealed.
She watched with held breath.
Assistant Superintendent Shannon was right. It was one thing to interfere with childbirth, as she had done with Gachiku, but another to intrude upon a most sacred and solemn ritual. In this Grace knew she was powerless to stop them, as was the officer with his askaris. And the Kikuyu also knew this. The irua about to be performed was a blatant nose thumbing to the white authorities. Since the debacle of Pageant Week, when a thousands-strong mass of Africans had been humbled in the eyes of their white masters, they had sought, and found, a way of lashing back.
This was active rebellion, and everyone knew it.
The girls filed into the compound, where mothers were waiting. Grace knew a little of the rules of the ritual. Traditionally a girl had a sponsor, another woman of the tribe who became a kind of second mother. But these girls, she saw, went to their real mothers. Perhaps not enough women had been available. After all, Grace realized, large though this group was, it did not represent the entire Kikuyu population in the province. The majority was staying safely, and wisely, away.
The girls went to their mothers, who were waiting on the cowhides, and sat down. They were taken in groups of ten, while the rest formed a protective circle around them. From her vantage point Grace could see over the heads of the women. Each girl sat down with her legs open, while her mother sat behind her and interlocked her own legs with those of her daughter, to keep them open and steady. The girl reclined in the arms of her mother, her head back so that she looked up at the sky. When the girls were thus positioned, an elderly woman passed among them, sprinkling a liquid—ice water, Grace suspected—on each girl's genitals. This was supposed to numb the area further and retard bleeding, but Grace knew it would have little effect.
Held thus by her mother, each girl was expected to keep her eyes skyward and was not to move, to cry out, or even to blink while the operation was being performed. To flinch in any way was to bring disgrace upon herself and her family.
Grace was not surprised to see Wachera, painted in black and white, appear from inside the hut.
Wanjiru was the first candidate. She lay back in her mother's arms and, as far as Grace could see, not only showed no signs of fear but looked as if she were proud, as if she welcomed this terrible test. And when Wachera's razor did its work, Wanjiru remained serene.
Grace closed her eyes.
When she looked again, Wanjiru was being carried, bandaged with leaves, to the healing hut.
Grace watched as the next girls were attended to. The littlest ones cried. A few screamed. Not many were like the radical Wanjiru.
Grace felt time stand still. The women sang in their haunting, primitive harmony, rejoicing upon each mutilation, as their mothers had done for them, and their grandmothers, and so on back into history in an unchanging, unbroken ancestral legacy. With the cutting of each girl, Grace felt the grip of European civilization slip away. She listened to women with Christian names singing songs of praise to Ngai, the god of Mount Kenya. And she felt herself go numb.
But when the next group of girls came to the cowhides and she saw a terrified Njeri lie back between Gachiku's legs, Grace came suddenly alive.
Wachera performed her quick, skillful surgery upon four girls before she reached Njeri, and when Grace saw the fear in the seventeen-year-old's eyes, saw how she struggled against her mother's hold, and when she remembered the day she had brought the baby out of Gachiku's abdomen, Grace cried, "Stop!" and climbed down the boulder.
The singing ceased. The women turned.
It was the worse sacrilege—a non-Kikuyu and, from what they understood of white ways, uncircumcised, coming into their presence. Grace's intrusion brought thahu upon the sacred irua. But the women were too shocked to react. They drew back as she made her way to the inner circle.
"Wait," Grace said breathlessly as she drew up behind the kneeling medicine woman. "Please stop!"
Wachera rested back on her heels, razor in hand, paused a moment, then rose to her feet and faced Grace. She did not appear surprised to find the memsaab in her midst; in fact, Grace realized, Wachera seemed to welcome the interruption. As though this were a chance at last for us to fight, Grace thought.
"Please do not do this, Wachera," Grace said in Kikuyu. "Please let the girl go. Look how frightened she is."
"She will not disgrace her family."
Grace appealed to the girl's mother. "Gachiku, isn't this your favorite child? Isn't this the daughter of your beloved Mathenge? How can you do this to her?"
"I do it because I love her," Gachiku said in a tight voice, not meeting Grace's eyes. "And to honor my dead husband."
"Would you have your daughter suffer in childbirth as you did?" Gachiku didn't reply.
"Give the girl to me," Grace said to Wachera. "She belongs to me! I gave her life when everyone else would have let her die. Your grandmother, the elder Wachera, would have let her perish. And Chief Mathenge, too. I saved Njeri! But not for this!"
"She belongs to Kikuyu. She will be made a true daughter of Mumbi."
"Please, Wachera! I'm begging you!"
"Begging? As my grandmother once begged the bwana your brother not to cut down the sacred fig tree?"
"I am sorry for that, Wachera, truly I am. But I am not responsible for my brother's actions."
"Where is my husband?" cried Wachera. "Where is my son, David? Where are my unborn children? If your brother had not come to Kikuyuland, I would have all my family at my side today. Instead, I am alone. Go away. You do not belong in Kikuyuland. Go back to where your ancestors dwell."
Before Grace could respond, Wachera dropped to her knees and worked her hasty skill upon Njeri.
The girl's scream tore the air, sending birds into flight from the surrounding trees.
Wachera poured the herb milk on Njeri and then applied the healing leaves. She said, "Now this girl is a true daughter of Mumbi."
Grace looked down. She began to tremble as Njeri's weeping filled her eyes. For as long as she lived, Grace knew, she would never forget the girl's scream.
As Gachiku helped her daughter to the healing hut, Grace turned to the next woman on the cowhide. "Rebecca," she said in an even voice, "I have taught you surgery. I have taught you about cleanliness and infection. You know that what you are doing here today is harmful. You know that you place your daughters at great risk. Let them go. Because if you don't, then you will
never work at my side again."
The Kikuyu woman with the small gold cross around her neck gazed impassively at the white woman.
"And I say to all of you," Grace called out, looking at each woman in turn, "if you do not stop this evil practice now, you are never welcome in my mission again. If you are ill, do not come to my clinic. You will not be welcome there."
They stared back at her.
"They will not listen to you," Wachera said, "because I have told them that your clinic will not be there much longer. The day when the white man leaves Kikuyuland is near at hand. We are returning to the old ways, and you will be forgotten."
Grace regarded the face hidden behind black and white paint, the face of a woman whom she had thought she knew but who she realized now was a stranger. And Grace sensed a premonition, cold and gray, pass over her like a cloud briefly obscuring the sun. She thought of the few thousand whites ruling over millions of Africans, she heard Officer Shannon say, "They're getting harder and harder to control," she looked down at the bloodstained cowhides, and suddenly she knew beyond a doubt that some terrible, irrevocable threshold had been crossed here today.
With great dignity, her bearing a cover for the anger in her heart, the trouble in her soul, Grace turned her back on the medicine woman and walked from the compound. When she reached the sacred arch of the ancestors, she heard behind her the resumed soft, harmonious chant of the African women.
33
M
ONA REACHED OVER AND TOOK HER AUNT'S HAND NOT because she was afraid of the airplane flight, but because Grace looked as pale as death.
This was not a pleasure trip; they were going to a funeral.
Mona studied her aunt's tight profile. Grace seemed oblivious of her niece in the seat next to her. Mona told herself that it was because she sat on her aunt's "blind," side, the side of the injured eye. Unaware she could not see them, anyone not knowing Grace Treverton might stand or sit on her left. Giving her aunt's unresponsive hand a squeeze, Mona returned to staring out the window.
The Avro monoplane was flying low over dense forest and jungle. From the air Mona thought Africa looked far wilder and more intimidating than it ever did on the ground, but it was also more breathtakingly beautiful and compelling. This dark continent was her home, its rivers ran in her blood, its trees were rooted in her flesh; she believed that because she had been born here, she loved Africa with a passion that surpassed anyone else's, especially people like her father, interlopers in a land they barely understood. Mona wanted to remove the glass from the window and stretch her arms out to embrace it all, to shout down to the herds grazing on the plains below, to call to the herdsmen leaning on their tall staffs. Mona believed that because of her unique love for Africa, she would never become disillusioned with it or embittered.
She glanced at her aunt again.
Grace had said little since receiving the telegram from Ralph Donald three days ago. Something had happened at the irua ceremony, Mona suspected, but Grace wouldn't talk about it. All she had said was "I wasted my time while James lay dying."
And now she was afraid she was too late.
Grace had insisted they wear black. Not even for Arthur had Mona worn black; she simply didn't own anything that was darker than brown. Light colors were the most practical in an equatorial climate. But they had found an Indian duka in Nairobi that had been able to supply them with mourning dresses and little black hats with black veils.
Mona felt the airplane shudder, watched its canvas-covered wings dip and sway in the East African winds. Only last week a twin-motor Hanno carrying mail into Uganda had crashed upon landing.
She thought about death. She thought about Arthur in his solitary grave in the burial plot behind Bellatu, the first grave on a patch of ground waiting for future Trevertons. He had been dead only two months; it seemed two years. And now perhaps Uncle James, whom Mona barely remembered.
Geoffrey Donald was sitting in the rear of the plane, down where the cabin narrowed and where he shared a window with two Catholic nuns traveling to a mission at Entebbe. Geoffrey's loss of his mother had made Mona suddenly sympathetic toward him, had made her feel an unexpected tenderness for him, so that now, as the plane banked and came into its final leg of the flight, she thought about Geoffrey Donald.
BECAUSE GRACE HAD sent a wire to Ralph concerning their flight, he was at the landing strip outside Entebbe, waiting for them. He wore a black band on the sleeve of his khaki outfit.
The brothers embraced solemnly; then Ralph turned to Grace, who said, "I'm sorry for your loss, Ralph." Finally he turned to Mona and took her into his arms. "I'm glad you came," he murmured, and she looked at him, this tired-looking man, who was so colorless compared with his brother. She wondered what she had ever seen in him.
"Your father—" Grace began as she stood by the open door of Ralph's Chevrolet.
"He's on thirty grains of quinine a day, but he's stabilized."
Grace bowed her head and whispered, "Thank God."
"It's been a nightmare," Ralph continued, "what with absolutely everyone coming down with the malaria." His voice broke.
Geoffrey laid an arm around his brother's shoulders.
Ralph wiped his eyes. "It was madness. Some sort of unusual strain, the experts at the Makerere medical department tell us. Mother went swiftly, thank God. She was hardly ill. And then Gretchen put up a big fight. She's all right now, but I'm afraid you won't recognize her."
"Ralph," Grace said softly, a catch in her throat, "please take us to your father now."
SIR JAMES WAS sitting up in bed, insisting to his daughter than he couldn't possibly swallow another cup of tea. When the four came into the bedroom, he cut himself off in mid-sentence and stared like a man who couldn't believe his eyes.
Geoffrey went to him, sat on the edge of the bed, and embraced his father.
"Thank you for coming," Gretchen said to Mona and Grace.
Mona was shocked. Ralph had warned her that she wouldn't recognize her old friend. Gretchen looked years older than eighteen. "We came as quickly as we could," Mona said. "We decided that flying would be faster than the train."
"You're very brave. I could never get on an airplane."
"I'm sorry about your mother, Gretchen."
Her friend's eyes filled. "Well, at least it was quick. She didn't suffer."
Then Geoffrey rose from the bed, and Mona looked at her aunt. But Grace seemed unable to move. So Mona went and shyly said, "Hello, Uncle James. I'm glad you're feeling better."
"Well, getting better," he said in a weak voice but smiling. "It's good to see you, Mona. You've grown into a lovely young lady."
An awkward moment followed. James gazed across the room at Grace. Finally, he held out an arm, and she went to him.
Mona watched as her aunt went smoothly and naturally into his arms, burying her face in his neck, crying softly. And how James's hands stroked her back, her hair, how he comforted her. And suddenly Mona knew: This was the long-ago love her aunt had spoken of, the man she could never marry.
Grace drew back and studied James's haggard face. The years and harsh living in Uganda and this final illness had etched their work in his features. The cheekbones were sharper; the mouth was thinner.
"We were afraid we were going to lose you," she said.
"When Ralph told me you and Mona and Geoffrey were coming, it was the perfect medicine. I decided right then that I wasn't going anywhere."
"I'm sorry about Lucille."
"She was happy here, Grace. She did a lot of good work and has left her mark. Many people will remember her with love. When she was dying, she said she didn't mind. She had done her work and she was going to the Lord. If there is a heaven, she's there now."
He sighed and rested his head back on the pillow and said, "But I'm through with Uganda, Grace. I want to go back to Kenya. I want to go home."
ENTEBBE WAS A small port town on the north shore of Lake Victoria, and it was the administrative center o
f Uganda. A young African lurked among the official buildings, as he did every day, in the hope of catching news from home. When he saw four white people emerge from the Provincial Commissioner's bungalow, and he recognized the two women as Grace and Mona Treverton, David Mathenge retreated into the shadow of the building and watched them cross the dirt road.
He could almost taste the sweetness of revenge.
Because of them and others like them, he had had to flee his homeland, live in exile, and be hunted down for a crime he didn't commit—a shamed man. But his mother had promised him that the land would someday return to the Children of Mumbi and that her thahu upon the Trevertons would someday be fulfilled. The white people were currently the masters of East Africa, but David Mathenge vowed that they would not be so forever. He would return to Kenya someday, when he was prepared, when he had learned what he had to learn, and he would see to it that he had his revenge.
PART FIVE
1944
34
T
HE RADIO WAS PLAYING A GLENN MILLER SONG, AND ROSE hummed along with it as she went through her wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear.
She looked through the bedroom window to let the weather be her guide. Since it was a gloriously sunny day splashed with the colors of newly blossomed flowers, and since she was going to overstitch the wild gardenias on her tapestry today, she settled upon a primrose yellow dress of moss crepe.
It was impossible to get new dresses these days. The war in Europe had brought the fashion industry to a standstill. Styles hadn't changed in five years; dresses still had padded shoulders and below-the-knee full skirts. Worse, clothing in England was rationed, and the only "new look" to come along in years was called the "utility suit." Rose found it all baffling. Wartime had made uniforms and working clothes the guideline of high fashion!
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