A Girl Named Disaster

13

Nhamo woke with a start. At first she was completely confused. The floor rocked and her dress-cloth was soaked. I’m on the boat, she realized after a moment. She sat up cautiously. A faint light marked the eastern horizon, and the shoreline seemed very far away.

Fighting back a surge of panic, she scanned the water for clues as to where she might be. The current was moving much more swiftly than it had in the middle of the night. That was what had awakened her. “This must be the Musengezi,” she said aloud. Nhamo took the oar and began to paddle against the flow, first on one side, then the other, as she had seen Crocodile Guts do. But she didn’t make much headway. The river was very strong.

The light increased, and pink wisps of cloud appeared in the sky. Nhamo felt chilled by her wet dress-cloth. Surely there was more water in the boat than she remembered? Meanwhile, it took all her strength to make any progress. Her arms ached; she clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Soon the villagers would discover her absence and search parties would go out. She would have to be either far away or hidden before anyone decided to visit the river.

The red ball of the sun appeared to her left over the gray-green smudge of the shore. Red ripples dimpled the water, and the odor of cooking fires stirred on the sluggish morning breeze. Nhamo’s chest began to hurt. She badly needed rest, and so she turned toward land.

It would have been safer to go to the farther bank—the villagers wouldn’t be able to find her—but she could barely see it. A heat haze lay over the water and hid all but the tallest rocks. Sometimes even they disappeared. Nhamo doggedly plied the oar. The trees drew closer with painful slowness. Her dress-cloth untied and fell into the murky water sloshing around her feet, but she couldn’t take the time to retrieve it. If she paused, the current rocked the boat in a frightening way.

Finally, with a last burst of energy, she drove the craft toward a stand of reeds and stood up to catch an arm of willow protruding from the water. The boat spun around. Nhamo fell back. “No, no, no, no,” she whimpered as the prow swung toward shore and crunched into a mass of acacias. Wicked-looking thorns passed within inches of her face. She stared up wildly at the branches crackling around the boat. Dust, ants, and twigs showered over her, but the trees also caught the craft and kept it from being swept away. After a few moments she felt secure enough to creep forward and tie the rope to an acacia. Then she lay still with her cheek pillowed on the soggy lump of her dress-cloth. Her body trembled with fatigue.

So much for her first attempt to sail to Zimbabwe!

Nhamo rested for a long time. The water smelled of rotten fish—an odor she had always associated with Crocodile Guts. Now it seemed to sink into her skin as thoroughly as it had permeated the fisherman. People always said you could smell Crocodile Guts before you saw him. Perhaps she, too, would advertise her presence in this way. Nhamo smiled bitterly. Would Zororo be as anxious to marry her if she smelled like a sun-ripened tiger fish?

As the heat of the day rose, Nhamo’s stomach began to churn. Her fingers wrinkled from being immersed in water and, perversely, her mouth dried up with thirst. Still, she was unwilling to move. In the distance she heard voices. They grew and then faded as the searchers combed the forest. It didn’t seem likely that anyone would venture into the acacia thicket and, fortunately, the village had possessed only a single boat.

Grandmother said that once many people had owned boats. At that time the Musengezi was a tame river. When the Portuguese dammed up the Zambezi, it pushed water back up the mouth of the Musengezi, widened it, and made it a dangerous place to sail. During the civil war, Portuguese soldiers came through the village and destroyed all the boats to keep them from being used by Frelimo. Only Crocodile Guts managed to hide his, and only he continued to fish until Frelimo took over the country.

Now, as Nhamo lay in speckled shadow and watched the ants wander over acacia thorns, she considered the implications of this story. Frelimo had defeated the Portuguese several years ago. Why hadn’t anyone rebuilt the boats? Could it be that only Crocodile Guts had the strength to maneuver against the new, strong current? Of course, the water must always have been swift, but the shore was once much more reachable. Lesser men could have managed it.

It had looked so easy when she watched the fisherman set off on his travels. It must have looked easy to Ambuya, too. For the first time a thread of doubt entered Nhamo’s mind. How did Grandmother know it took only two days to reach Zimbabwe? Perhaps it only took Crocodile Guts that long.

“Ah!” gasped Nhamo as she suddenly noticed that water had crept halfway up her body. The boat was sinking! The sacks of food were dangerously close to getting soaked, and Mother’s pot was actually floating at the far end! She twisted herself into a kneeling position, getting several bad scratches from the acacias in the process, and pulled the clay pot back. She cradled it between her knees and began bailing with her drinking calabash for all she was worth.

Oh, but she was being foolish! She had often seen Crocodile Guts do the same thing. In the morning, before he set out, he had always spent time getting rid of the night’s accumulation of water. When she recalled this, Nhamo felt better. Bailing out water was a normal activity on a boat. Crocodile Guts had sailed around safely for years, leaks and all.

Nhamo stopped to dip up clean drinking water and to nibble some of Masvita’s honey-and-millet cakes. The food made her feel immensely better.

Later, when the boat was as dry as she could manage, she took Mother out of the pot and propped her against the sack of mealie meal. “We’re going to Zimbabwe, Mai,” Nhamo said. “I’ll try to find the nuns at your school—I’m sure you’d like that. I’ll visit the place you lived and talk to your friends. Did you ever meet Father’s relatives? I hope they like me.”

Nhamo listened for Mother’s reply.

“Of course I’ll go on to Mtoroshanga. I imagine Father has a home there—Ambuya said he liked square houses.” Did chrome miners make a lot of money? Nhamo asked Mother. It would be wonderful if his place was as fine as Joao’s.

Mother told her not to expect too much.

“I have gold to help pay my way.” Nhamo jiggled the sack of nuggets tied around her neck. She put Mother away before an accident could happen, rinsed her dress-cloth over the side, and spread it out to dry. Then she stretched out naked in the speckled light and waited for late afternoon. She wanted to give everyone time to get tired of searching before she ventured into the current again.

Sometime later she perched her bottom over the side and relieved herself. The heat in the acacia thicket was overpowering. Even the ants seemed dazed by it. They sat on the thorns and waved their antennae slowly. A small, green snake slid along a branch, causing Nhamo’s heart to speed up, and disappeared into a crack in the bark. A Nephila spider spun a golden web, lazily swinging from twig to twig. It finished the beautiful pattern and settled itself at the center with blue-furred legs outspread.

By now Nhamo had to admit she was stalling for time. She was afraid to venture out onto the dangerous river again. The sun slanted lower and lower in the west. Quelea birds swooped in flocks over the water as they searched for a place to spend the night.

“I can either go home and marry Zororo,” said Nhamo to Mother in the jar, “or I can try to reach Zimbabwe. The only thing I can’t do is stay here. I wish I knew how far Zimbabwe was.”

She tied her dress-cloth as best she could while lying down in the boat, untied the rope, and pushed herself away with the oar. Ah! The minute she was free, the water had her in its grip again. She paddled vigorously. She seemed to have learned something about boats because it was easier to control her direction. Rowing was still tiring.

Nhamo kept close to shore. The sun went down, casting red gleams across the water. A hippo complained loudly from somewhere near the middle of the river. Nhamo shivered. What was its opinion of boats? Did it think she was merely a log floating upstream? Hippos were quite intelligent—and curious, unfortunately. They sometimes watched the women wash clothes. They considered anything that happened to the water to be their business.

Fortunately, this hippo floated off in the opposite direction. Its head formed a black bulge in the reddening river.

Twilight came and swiftly departed. The moon was slightly larger tonight, but still gave little light. Nhamo kept checking the dark shore on her left. She didn’t want to drift too far from land. On and on she went until her arms ached and her breath came in short gasps. It was impossible to tell how far she had traveled. The shore was lightness. No cook-fires shone beyond the trees, and there was no trace of the electric lights Grandmother had described.

Nhamo had to make for land again. This time she glided into a little bay where the current was sluggish, and tied up to what she thought was a willow. She filled her calabash and ate more of the honey-and-millet cakes. “I’ll have to go ashore to build a fire, if this journey takes much longer,” she whispered to herself. It seemed proper to whisper in the dark.

As Nhamo bailed out the boat, a strange sensation came over her. It was extremely unpleasant. For a minute she thought she was going to be sick, but then she realized that this illness came from her spirit, not her body. For the first time in her life she was completely alone.

She had been by herself in the deserted village—and when Aunt Chipo locked her into a hut for being bad—and when she went off to cook private meals. This was different. No one was waiting for her to come home, not even a bad-tempered aunt. For all the villagers knew, she was dead. Masvita would cry because her spirit might be wandering along the dark roads.

At the thought of spirits, Nhamo lay down in the boat and covered herself with as much of the dress-cloth as possible. She felt around until her fingers touched Mother’s jar. I’m not alone. Mother is with me, she thought. But the pictures that seemed so real by day were unconvincing after dark. She heard disturbing sounds in the water. Was that a crocodile swimming by? She didn’t know what they did at night. A troop of bush babies chattered as they made their way along the shore. A ground hornbill grumbled deep in its throat—hhuhh-hhuhh, hhuhh-hhuhh.

Worse than the feeling of danger was the sheer loneliness. Nhamo had never, ever, spent a night alone. She generally slept in the middle of a troop of girls. Their breathing surrounded her, their bodies warmed the air, their movements formed a barrier between her and the dark. Suddenly, without even expecting it was going to happen, Nhamo began to cry. She did it silently, to keep the creatures on the shore from hearing. Tears rolled from the corners of her eyes and soaked into her hair.

Eventually, she went to sleep with her arms around the sack of mealie meal and her nose buried in its dusty cloth.

She set off before dawn. “I wasted too much time yesterday,” she said. In her mind was the possibility that if she tried really hard, she might reach Zimbabwe by dark. She didn’t want to spend another night alone. She was terribly stiff from rowing and sleeping in the damp, but as she paddled, the soreness went away. The sun dried her dress-cloth and raised her spirits.

The honey-and-millet cakes were almost gone. Good as they were, at any rate, Nhamo craved variety. In the middle of the day she tied up to an immense strangler fig and clambered over it to reach land. There she set about making a fire. She boiled mealie meal and sprinkled it with dried fish. She had even taken a precious packet of salt for flavoring. This was living! With her stomach comfortably stretched, she dozed awhile and set out again.

In midafternoon, a hippo rose out of the water right beside her and opened his huge mouth. He roared—she could see right down his pink gullet—and snapped his teeth at her. Nhamo threw herself flat in the boat. Aunh-aunh-aunh went the hippo. A splash told her he had submerged. A second later the boat rocked. He was bumping it!

Nhamo grabbed the oar and began rowing for shore. Other hippos surfaced around her. They kept pace, their piggy eyes just above the water. The male yawned again, terrifyingly. Nhamo had never seen a hippo’s mouth so closeup. It looked like a slab of raw meat studded with teeth. Aunh-aunh-aunh went the beast, rearing his head toward the sky. He looked as though he wouldn’t mind chopping her boat in two!

She saw babies on the outskirts of the group. She knew that few things were more dangerous than hippos with young.

Nhamo paddled. She used muscles she hadn’t known she possessed. She prayed to every spirit she could think of, even her great-grandfather whom she had never seen. The water became shallow—the boat scraped on stone—and she despaired of escaping. But the hippos didn’t care for the shallows. They fell back to the deeper water and floated there in a long line.

Nhamo jumped out and splashed up to her waist in water. Without her weight, the boat floated free. It began spinning away downstream. She caught it with the tips of her fingers and fought desperately until she was able to plant her feet firmly on the riverbed and pull the craft within reach of a tree.

She sat on shore the rest of the day. The hippos floated near and far. They returned frequently to observe her. It was too unfair! She had been making such good progress. She could almost imagine the electric lights of Zimbabwe, but when darkness fell there was not a shred of light in the forest. She was utterly alone.

The hippos talked among themselves. Finally, silence fell as the huge animals left the water and went foraging for grass. Nhamo climbed back into the boat and resigned herself to another miserable night.

She didn’t sleep well. When the hippos were silent, she imagined them creeping around the tree where she had tied up. Toward dawn, when they returned to the water, their grunts echoed distressingly close by. The red sunlight on the water showed their glistening heads in the deeper channel. They kept sinking and surfacing, but Nhamo thought she could see twenty adults and six babies.

Her bones ached, and her skin itched from the constant damp. Around midday she finished the last of the honey-and-millet cakes. Now she would have to go on shore to cook, but she couldn’t bring herself to face the danger. It was easier to lie in the boat and tell herself stories: the many, many stories she had soaked up from Grandmother and from hiding in the darkness near the men’s dare.

“One day Mwari was thinking about the things he had made,” Nhamo told Mother in the jar. “He looked at the sun, the moon, and the stars. He looked at the sky and the clouds. ‘I think I’ll make something even more beautiful,’ he said, so he created Mother Earth.

“He made her in the shape of a winnowing basket and gave her water from the clouds and fire from the sun. He covered her with trees and bushes and grass. ‘I give you the power to make these things grow,’ he told Mother Earth.

“Mwari spoke so often of his beautiful Earth, the sun and moon became jealous. The sun grew hot and tried to burn her; the moon chased away the clouds to dry her up. But the trees and grass continued to grow. The heat only made them put out more flowers.

“The sun and moon complained so much, Mwari decided he would have to make something to eat the plants. Then Mother Earth would not be quite so beautiful. He took clay and made the animals. He worked quickly because he had a lot of animals to create. He worked so fast he forgot to give horns to some or tails to others. Some animals had big ears, others no ears at all. As the day passed and the sun began to go down, Mwari became tired. He took a big lump of clay, poked holes in it for eyes, and stuck a few bristles on its rump. ‘There! I’m too tired to create anything else,’ Mwari said.

“The last animal was only half made. It was very ugly and bad-tempered. It was the hippopotamus.

“Even Mwari doesn’t like you,” Nhamo called out over the river. “He makes you hide in the water so he doesn’t have to look at you.”

The hippopotamuses continued to doze with their noses above the surface.

“The next day, the water complained,” Nhamo went on. “‘The land is full of creatures. What about me?’ Mwari took more clay and made the fishes, only he didn’t have much left, so he couldn’t give them legs. He told Mother Earth to bring everything to life.”

Nhamo looked over the edge of the boat. A big catfish foraged along the bottom. She could roast it over mopane coals with a little salt for flavoring. Ah! She could almost taste it now! Her mouth watered. Slowly, stealthily, she slid her hand into the river and wiggled a finger very slowly. The fish drew closer; its fins stroked the sluggish current. It hesitated, watching the finger.

Nhamo lunged with both hands, but the catfish was even faster. It shot out of the shallows and disappeared under a raft of water lettuce. She sat back down with her hands clasped across her grumbling stomach.

“Well, anyway,” she continued, “Mwari decided to make a master for all the animals. He took clay from deep in Mother Earth’s womb and formed a man. He had barely finished when Mother Earth said, ‘My creator, this is a fine creature, but it looks like you, not me. Why don’t you make another one?’

“Mwari took more clay and formed a woman. He took a little of the rivers and mountains, the grass and flowers, and added them to the clay to give Earth’s beauty to the woman. He took a pinch of fire for her heart and a handful of water for her womb, so she could grow new life.

“When he was finished, he let his shadow fall over the pair. The animals had received only one spirit from Mother Earth, but the people had one from her and one from Mwari.

“Oh, why won’t they go!” Nhamo cried out suddenly. “I’ll die out here. My spirit will be trapped forever with those ugly animals watching me. I wish I’d never left home!”

She curled up into a ball. The water in the bottom of the boat soaked into her dress-cloth. It clung to her like a second, evil-smelling skin. She was alone, alone, alone and she was going to die.

Nhamo lay in a fit of grief with her eyes squeezed shut. But presently a breeze stirred the forest. The leaves tossed with a rushing sound and the scent of wild gardenias hidden somewhere in the trees blew from the shore. It was as if a hand stroked her hair—lightly, swiftly passing, but most certainly there. Nhamo opened her eyes.

Sometimes, when she was in the deserted village at dusk, the wind awoke as day shifted into night. It had a different quality from other breezes, just as the silvery air was different from the harsh light of noon. It seemed to have a voice, as of people talking far away, but she could never quite make out the words. She heard that voice now.

Nhamo…Nhamo…, it whispered. Or perhaps it only said Aauuu, the usual sound of the wind. Yet, if she strained her ears, she could almost hear it: Nhamo…

“Mother?” said Nhamo.

The wind blew away, riffling the water.

She sat up. The hippos were still floating in the central channel. The sun slanted through the trees, low and golden, sending showers of light around their drifting hulks. Something let go deep in Nhamo’s spirit. She lay down again in the boat and fell into a sleep as profound as any she had had surrounded by the breathing of her cousins in the safety of the girls’ hut.