A Girl Named Disaster

6

Witchcraft,” whispered Masvita in the girls’ hut. The others watched her with frightened eyes. The only light came from a burning wick in a tiny bowl of cooking oil. The smell made Nhamo’s nose twitch.

“Are they sure?” said Tazviona, a large girl who had been born with a twisted foot. Nhamo knew that witches caused deformity, but no one had ever discovered who was to blame for Tazviona’s misfortune. Perhaps it was Anna, who was married to Crocodile Guts, the boatman. Anna had a nasty disposition, and everyone knew that her great-grandmother had been a witch.

“They were talking about it at the dare,” Masvita said in a low voice. “I listened outside after I brought the food. Father says witches send animals to dig up bodies.”

“They didn’t get Vatete?” cried Ruva.

“No, no. Of course not. Father surrounded the grave with branches of mutarara, wild gardenia, to confuse them.”

Nhamo thought about her young cousin. Ruva was known to sleepwalk, which could be the first sign of witchcraft. Aunt Chipo was certainly worried by the habit, and slapped her daughter whenever it happened. But it was hard to think of the little girl as a horrible witch. Anyhow, Ambuya said she would grow out of it and that they should worry more about Ruva falling over a cliff. “—especially because it was a leopard,” finished Masvita.

“What? I didn’t catch that,” Nhamo said.

“We’ve had a lot of visits from leopards recently: first the spirit animal by the stream, and then the one in the banana grove.”

“I didn’t really see a spirit leopard! It was a trick of the light.”

“It growled at you,” Masvita gently reminded her. Nhamo felt trapped. If she protested now, everyone would think she was trying to hide something.

“Will Father send for the nganga?” Ruva asked.

“The nganga isn’t good enough,” Masvita explained. “The elders are going to wait until Vatete’s relatives can visit us. Then they’ll call in a specialist.”

“The muvuki!” gasped Tazviona.

It made sense, Nhamo thought. The muvuki lived near the trading post, where he could be consulted by people from many villages. He could smell witches by their evil thoughts, and it was useless to lie to him.

“I—I heard that he got his powers in a bad way,” stammered Tazviona. The other girls eagerly bent forward. “He studied with a famous doctor in Maputo. The doctor told him to kill a close relative so he could force the spirit to serve him.”

“Ah,” sighed the girls.

“Which relative did he kill?” Nhamo asked.

“His oldest son!”

Everyone was speechless with horror. That made the muvuki very close to being a witch himself.

“I think the nganga is perfectly able to solve our problems, ” Nhamo declared. “Ambuya says witch-hunting is a way to get rid of people nobody likes. She says it’s illegal in Zimbabwe.”

Everyone looked at her in surprise. It was all right for Grandmother to say outrageous things, but not for a girl like Nhamo to repeat them.

“You’re only saying that because the leopard appeared to you,” said Tazviona.

“I am not! Ask Ambuya, if you don’t believe me.”

“Don’t shout. The elders will hear,” said Masvita.

“Of course you don’t want to admit it,” Tazviona said.

“I suppose you think I twisted your foot! I wasn’t even born when it happened.”

“Your mother was there!”

Nhamo threw herself at Tazviona, and the bigger girl punched her right in the stomach. It only made Nhamo angrier. She grabbed Tazviona’s ears and wrenched for all she was worth. “Take back what you said about Mother!” she screamed.

“She was a bad woman! Everyone knows!” Tazviona shrieked back. The other girls fell on the pair, trying to pull them apart. Ruva tipped the light over onto a sleeping mat. It flared up instantly.

Masvita kicked open the door at once and dragged the mat out before it could set the whole hut on fire. Everyone struggled outside. The mat crackled as it burned. Red gleams shone on everyone’s faces.

“You girls are a disgrace!” shouted Aunt Chipo as she ran toward them. She was followed by people from the nearby huts. “We’re all worried sick, and you have to throw temper tantrums! Bad, bad children!” She dealt out blows in all directions.

“Who was fighting?” said Uncle Kufa in a terrible voice. The girls were silent, but it was clear who had been involved. Nhamo and Tazviona were breathing heavily. Tazviona was clutching her ears; Nhamo had deep scratches on her arms. Tazviona’s mother led her off to be punished privately, and Aunt Chipo took Nhamo off to an empty storage hut.

Aunt Chipo pinned Nhamo’s head between her knees and lashed her with a leather strap until her arm was tired. “You can sleep here. You won’t find anyone but the mice to fight with!” She slammed the door shut and secured the bolt outside.

At first Nhamo barely noticed the welts Aunt Chipo had inflicted. Her spirit was too angry. But gradually, as the excitement of the fight wore off, she began to hurt. She huddled next to the wall with her knees drawn up almost to her chest. “I’m glad Tazviona’s foot is twisted,” she said to the dark hut, but almost at once Mother’s voice whispered inside her head, You don’t really think that. You’re angry because she insulted me.

“I should be angry,” Nhamo said. “You weren’t bad.”

Of course not. I’m proud of you for sticking up for me.

It was so dark Nhamo couldn’t see anything, even with her eyes wide open. If she concentrated, she could imagine Mother sitting across the room from her. Mother wore a bright blue dress and pink plastic sandals. A flowered scarf covered her hair.

Nhamo stretched out, wincing as the marks of the lash met the floor. Most girls would have been terrified to be left alone, but Nhamo rather liked it. She had never let Aunt Chipo realize this, however.

I wonder if they really will call the muvuki, she thought sleepily. Uncle Kufa might think twice after he considered how much a specialist cost. He would have to bring him from the trading post and entertain him until the judgment was given. Uncle Kufa was so stingy, he would rather eat boiled weevils than admit porridge had gone bad.

Could the muvuki really have killed his own son to get power? A man like that wouldn’t think twice about killing anyone else. What happened to the people he smelled out?

Nhamo understood that most witches were tolerated, as you might tolerate a bad dog in the neighborhood. But if someone had done something really evil—like spread cholera, for instance—wouldn’t that person be punished? Nhamo had heard a story of a witch who had her eyes poked out with a sharpened stick.

“They don’t do that anymore, do they?” she asked Mother, but Mother’s spirit had stolen away, and the hut was silent.

Takawira was the next to fall ill. He was dead in less than a day. “He was very old,” everyone whispered. “He had reached the end of his natural life.”

But when Crocodile Guts got sick, everyone was shocked. Crocodile Guts owned the only boat in the village. No one else cared to go out on the river, where hippos could chop your boat in half or crocodiles could pull you overboard. No one else knew how to swim. The boatman plied his homemade nets not far from shore and brought in fat bream and tiger fish.

Everyone liked bream; the tiger fish weren’t as popular. They spoiled rapidly in the heat. Crocodile Guts sometimes tried to sell them after their eyes had gone milky, but people weren’t often fooled. If he couldn’t unload his catch, Crocodile Guts would merely laugh—he was a large man with a booming, hearty voice—and eat the fish himself. That was how he got his name. Crocodiles could eat meat that had rotted in the water for several days without getting sick. The boatman seemed to have the same ability, and people made detours around his cook-fire.

If he could get sick, everyone whispered, no one was safe.

The villagers watched in horror as, day by day, the big man shrank with illness. His eyes turned milky as a sun-ripened tiger fish, and then he died. His wife, Anna, howled with grief. No one had suspected how attached she had been to her husband. She was such a sour, complaining woman that everyone expected her to dance with glee. But Anna wept bitterly for Crocodile Guts and then she, too, fell ill and died.

In spite of Grandmother’s precautions, cholera had already found its way to the heart of the village. Suddenly, it was everywhere. Some people were only lightly affected; some were stricken with all the savage force of the illness. A few didn’t get sick at all. Aunt Shuvai lingered for a week before she died. Then Masvita wasted away until she was barely recognizable. Aunt Chipo, far from well herself, implored her daughter to live with heartbreaking cries until Grandmother ordered her to sleep in another hut.

Ambuya was one of the lucky ones. So were Nhamo and Uncle Kufa. They boiled water and mixed it with the precious sugar and salt to feed the weakest people. Grandmother explained that this would keep everyone’s strength up until he was ready to eat again. It seemed to work. Nhamo patiently dribbled the liquid into Masvita’s mouth. Slowly, the gray pallor faded and the killing fever cooled from her cousin’s skin. Her body was skeletal and her hair, which had begun to regrow after the coming-of-age ceremony, fell out.

Nhamo was so exhausted she could hardly move, what with running from one patient to the next. In some huts, bodies lay unburied because no one had the strength to bury them. Ruva wasn’t ill, but she was half-mad with fear and grief. She curled up next to Masvita and refused to eat. Very early on, Nhamo dragged her off to stay with a family at the other end of the village. She visited frequently to cuddle her little cousin, rocking her back and forth while the tears silently ran down her own face.

Nhamo plodded from one chore to the next like a small donkey pulling a cart too heavy for it. Sometimes she sat down in the road like a donkey, too, and stared into space until she regained the energy to go on.

“Masvita is looking so much better,” she whispered to Ruva. “Your mother isn’t sick at all anymore. Would you like me to tell you a story?” Nhamo really didn’t have time for this, but she needed the escape almost as much as Ruva did. Besides, stories kept the little girl from asking for Aunt Chipo, who proved useless even after she recovered. The woman spent her days demanding to be waited on and weeping over Masvita. She had forgotten all about Ruva.

“Once upon a time,” Nhamo said, “there was a hunter with two dogs. The dogs were called Bite Hard and Grip Fast.”

“What color were they?” asked Ruva. Nhamo had a bowl of porridge in her lap, and as soon as the little girl opened her mouth, she popped a spoonful of it inside.

“Brown, with a white tip on their tails and four white paws,” Nhamo said quickly. “The hunter went out one day and saw a dassie* hunched on a rock. Just as he was about to shoot it with an arrow, a honeyguide bird flew over his head and cried, ‘Leave it, O hunter. Better things are ahead.’ The hunter called his dogs away and walked on.” Nhamo popped another spoonful of porridge into Ruva’s mouth.

“After a while, the man came upon a rabbit. He lifted his bow, but the honeyguide flew over his head and cried, ‘Leave it, O hunter. Better things are ahead.’ He obeyed the bird, and soon he encountered a kudu. ‘What a fine, fat antelope!’ he said. ‘This is certainly a better prize.’

“But the honeyguide still sang, ‘Leave it, O hunter. Better things are ahead.’

“Grumbling to himself, the man went on until he found a buffalo. It had just fallen over a cliff and was already dead. ‘Wonderful!’ cried the hunter. ‘I didn’t even have to waste an arrow.’ He sat down to carve up the buffalo and roast the meat. But the honeyguide flew over his head and sang, ‘Leave it, O hunter. Better things are ahead.’

“By now, the man was getting angry. Pesky bird, he thought. I have never seen a finer prize than this. There can’t be anything better ahead. But he was afraid to disobey the honeyguide because it was a magical creature. I know what, he thought. I’ll hide from it in a cave. When it flies away, I’ll go back and get the buffalo.

“He went into a cave. It got bigger and bigger as he walked farther into the mountain. At the back was an entire village, with fine houses and pens of cattle and goats. The village was ruled by an old, old woman who had only one long, sharp tooth, and the only inhabitants were women. All the men had been eaten by the old woman. They were her favorite food.

“‘Welcome, welcome,’ said the old woman, eyeing the hunter up and down. ‘Please stay at my house this evening.’ She gave him a bowl of food and showed him a soft bed. But during the night, she sharpened her long tooth—whisk, whisk, whisk—and prepared to eat him. The dogs Bite Hard and Grip Fast stood in front of their master and growled to protect him. So the old woman ate a goat instead.

“The next morning, she said, ‘There’s a dead tree in the forest. Could you help me gather firewood from it?’

“‘Certainly,’ replied the young man.

“‘But you mustn’t take those dogs with you. They are too frisky and might knock me over.’ The man shut the dogs away in a goat pen. He and the old woman walked far into the forest until they came to a tall, dead tree. ‘Start at the top,’ ordered the old woman.

“The man climbed until he was at the very top. He began to break off branches and throw them down. Meanwhile, the old woman sharpened her long tooth on a stone—whisk, whisk, whisk—and prepared to chop down the tree. He’ll fall and break his neck, she thought. Then I can have him for lunch.

“The honeyguide saw her sharpening her tooth. It flew away to the cave. ‘Quick! Quick! Turn the dogs loose,’ it called to the women. The women turned the dogs loose. Away flew Bite Hard and Grip Fast. They caught up with the old woman, knocked her down, and broke all her bones.

“The hunter went back to the cave. All the women greeted him. They showed him pens of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens. They showed him storehouses of grain and springs of fresh water. ‘Please be our husband,’ they said. ‘The old witch ate all of ours.’

“So the young man became a great chief, and he always remembered to leave honey out for the honeyguide.”

By now the porridge bowl was empty. Ruva lay relaxed in the arms of the chief wife of the house, who had also been listening to the tale. “You’re a fine storyteller,” the woman complimented Nhamo. Nhamo smiled and stood up. Her body felt so heavy, she thought she couldn’t move, but she had to keep going. Masvita had to be fed, and there were dozens of other chores waiting.

Nhamo returned to find Aunt Chipo hunched over her oldest daughter’s bed. Ambuya sat in the corner, grinding peanuts in a small mortar. “Let her sleep,” Grandmother snapped. “You make her twice as sick with all your wailing.”

“She was such a beautiful girl!” Aunt Chipo moaned.

“She’s alive, isn’t she? The hair will grow back.”

“She looks like an old cooking pot,” blubbered Aunt Chipo.

“You’re such a fool. I must have dropped you on your head when you were a baby.”

“That’s right! Attack me. You always liked Runako and Shuvai better!” Aunt Chipo snapped right back at Grandmother.

Nhamo shrank against the wall in dismay. Never had she heard her elders arguing like this.

“Runako was worth ten of you. She could have gone to university.”

“Oh, sure! Who came home with a fat belly and a no-good husband? Clever Runako! Too bad she and Shuvai are dead. I’m all you’ve got left!”

Grandmother began to weep stormily at this. “I can’t stand it! My good daughters are gone, and the last one wants to feed my heart to the vultures!”

“You don’t deserve anyone as nice as me,” shouted Aunt Chipo. She broke into noisy sobs herself. “Day and night I wait on you—‘Bring me tea, bring me sugar, rub my feet!’ No one else would put up with such selfishness!” Aunt Chipo had forgotten that Nhamo did all these chores.

Over their cries, Masvita whimpered, “Please don’t fight. I can’t bear it.”

Nhamo immediately scrambled to her cousin’s side and began stroking her as she would a terrified infant. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Everyone is too tired. They aren’t really fighting.” She lay down next to Masvita and held her in her arms. She couldn’t think of anything else to do.

She was dazed by all the illness around her, and by her elders shouting at each other. Masvita was so thin. She might die at any moment. Suddenly, Nhamo began to shake all over. She gasped for breath and clung to Masvita as though she were trying to keep her from being dragged off by lions.

Uncle Kufa entered to find Grandmother rocking back and forth on her knees. Aunt Chipo howled like a dog. Masvita produced thin, wailing cries as she lay on her mat, and Nhamo trembled as though she had malaria. He backed out of the hut and ran into the forest.

By the time Uncle Kufa returned several hours later, the madness had lifted and everyone was on speaking terms again. It was as though the cholera had wrung everything out of the villagers’ bodies and found nothing left to attack except their spirits. When the strange fit was over, the disease was truly defeated. Every hour saw its strength ebb away.

The men dug a mass grave in the forest, and the bodies were buried with as many of the proper ceremonies as possible. Ambuya and Aunt Chipo behaved with affection toward each other once more. Masvita took over the care of Aunt Shuvai’s children, a task she enjoyed in spite of her extreme weakness. Everything appeared to be healing. But Nhamo felt that something was not right.

She had difficulty putting it into words. The conversation at the dare was too quiet; the women no longer clustered in groups at the stream. Rather, there was a space between one person and the next. It was as though a necklace had come apart and each bead rolled separately across the floor. The village had broken somewhere deep inside, and she had no idea how to mend it.

*dassie: An animal that resembles a large guinea pig. Also called a hyrax or rock rabbit.