A Girl Named Disaster

18

And yet she couldn’t bring herself to spend the night on the island. Nhamo had been over every part of it now. She was sure there weren’t any dangerous animals. It was unreasonable to return to the damp boat except to bail it out, but she felt safer there. The ruined house gave her a bad feeling. She knew that in the middle of the night, she would think about the door and what might push it the rest of the way open.

She wedged the boat between the fig-tree roots that snaked down into the water, to keep it from battering against the rocks. Even so, the waves tossed her around, sometimes violently.

Nhamo brought everything from the boat to her cooking area. She made a frame from branches and tied bundles of grass across it. This she leaned against two small trees to form a kind of shelter. With her belongings arranged at one end, she could curl up in the shade and feel almost as if she had a home.

She reserved the mealie meal for her eventual trip to Zimbabwe. Instead, she feasted on the riches the island provided. With careful management, she could live there for years, planting at the beginning of the rainy season and harvesting at its end. But of course she didn’t want to stay for years. Father’s family was in Zimbabwe. The thought of aunts and uncles and grandparents waiting for her there was cheering.

Nhamo dried chilies and roasted peanuts. Sweet potatoes and pumpkins would store for weeks or even months. She had ample food for a journey, and her supplies were limited only by the size of the boat. She made herself a grass ring for the top of her head. Now it was much easier to transport water from the lake. She had only to wedge a pot into the grass ring and climb the fig roots. Her hands were free to hold on. Years of practice kept her from spilling so much as a drop.

In the heat of the day, Nhamo sat under the lemon tree at the highest point of the island and made twine. She found young mupfuti trees, broke away the outer covering with a rock, and pulled the inner bark off in long strips. These she alternately chewed and rolled between the palm of her hand and her thigh. Her twine wasn’t as strong as Crocodile Guts’s thick rope, but it had more uses. She could make animal snares and lash together tools or thatching grass.

In the meantime, she thought about the people who had lived here. Once this had been the top of a hill where the owners of the ruined house could catch an afternoon breeze. At the front were traces of a wooden porch. Behind, near the lemon tree, Nhamo had discovered a variety of unfamiliar flowers. Rosa, too, had had a flower garden.

Nhamo closed her eyes and imagined the scene. The parents sat at a table with three—no, six—children. She felt kindly toward them, so she gave them enough offspring to be happy. They ate fish out of cans and used knives and forks. They had a nice, loud radio and a cage with a parrot.

And now they were gone.

Nhamo opened her eyes. The afternoon breeze whistled through the partly open door with a mournful, far-off sound. “They went back to Portugal,” Nhamo said firmly. The civil war had gone on for ten years, with many deaths on both sides. When it was over, many of the Portuguese had returned home. She tried to imagine the inhabitants of the ruined house in their new country, but she knew too little about it.

Sometimes the afternoon breeze turned into a real wind. The trees shook and the waves dashed against the rocks. Nhamo inched the boat out of the water. She had regained her strength, but the craft was still too heavy for her to lift. She wrestled it into the tangle of fig roots. It was safe there, but far too unstable to sleep in. At night she had to let it down again. One evening the weather was too wild to permit this.

“Now what,” said Nhamo, perched in a curl of tree root. “Hezvo! That was a big wave!” The spray blew across her face; she rubbed her eyes. Twilight didn’t last long, and already the lake had turned dark blue. The first stars were appearing in the fading light of the sunset.

Nhamo checked Crocodile Guts’s rope again and the smaller rope she had made. The boat was tied as well as she could manage, but it wouldn’t take her weight. “I’d better find a bed before it gets completely dark,” she sighed. She climbed back to the place where she did her cooking. The fire was never allowed to completely die, and it took only a moment to blow the coals into flame. The wind threatened to scatter the fire. Nhamo rolled rocks around it for a windbreak and tucked her jars, a half box of matches, and supplies into a crevice between two boulders.

She hated being so exposed! She tied the grass shelter more firmly to the trees and crept as far inside as she could manage. It was still unpleasant. The wind seemed like a live thing determined to drag her out of her hiding place. She remembered that njuzu sometimes traveled as whirlwinds.

“Please don’t carry me off,” she prayed. Far off she could hear the waves splashing and, if she concentrated, the voices of the njuzu as they went about their business in the water. Nhamo lay wakeful and nervous for a long time. After a while, she dragged another log onto the fire and retreated to her shelter to sleep.

She was in the girls’ hut. Tazviona had lit an oil lamp, and she could see everyone’s faces by its feeble light. Masvita, Ruva, and the others sat in a circle, waiting expectantly. “Go on, Nhamo. Tell us a story,” whispered Masvita.

“A scary one,” said Tazviona.

Nhamo held up her hand for silence. “In the forest, in the deep, deep forest lived an old, old woman.”

“Go on,” whispered the girls.

“She wore no clothes. She didn’t need to.”

“Go on.”

“Her breasts were so long, she could wrap them around herself, round and round like a blanket!”

“Hhhuuuhh,” murmured the girls.

“Her name was Long Teats. When she got pregnant, she didn’t give birth to babies, but to swarms of locusts!”

“Go on.”

“They ate everything: the plants, the houses, the stored grain. They even fastened onto the cattle and drank their milk.”

“Horrible! Horrible!” responded the girls.

Nhamo went on with the tale of Long Teats, who, when she wasn’t giving birth to locusts, was finding children to devour. Ruva hid her face in Masvita’s lap.

Afterward, Nhamo had to go outside. To her surprise, she didn’t see the village at all. She was in a strange place where the trees tossed in a high wind. Hhhuuuhhh went the wind, moaning over the rocks. She tried to return to the girls’ hut, but it had vanished. In its place was the black outline of a square house, a Portuguese house. Its door creaked on rusty hinges, eeeee, eeeee.

Inside the house something moved. Something put its hand on the rusty door and flung it open. It was Long Teats! She sprang outside, wielding a giant knife, a panga. “Whhhooo’s going to be my next meal?” she cackled. “Whhhooo’s going to sweeten my cooking pot?”

Nhamo screamed and ran down to the lake, where the boat lay smashed to bits and the njuzu girls swam among the pieces in the pounding waves.

“Yiiii!” screamed Nhamo. The wind had torn away the grass shelter, and she was exposed. She grabbed a burning branch from the fire and backed into the crevice where she had stored her belongings. The flames danced; the trees groaned.

“Oh, Mother, protect me!” Nhamo cried. “Oh, Grandfather, help!” She trembled like a calf confronted with a leopard.

Whhhooo’s there? whistled the wind over the trees and rocks.

“I didn’t know this was your island,” whimpered Nhamo. “I’m sorry I ate your vegetables. Please don’t eat me, Va-Long Teats.”

She crouched down—and remembered the zango, the charm against witchcraft that Masvita had tied around her arm so long ago. She always removed it to bathe or swim, but carefully replaced it when her skin was dry. Now she felt it beneath her fingers. The zango bristled with tiny bones and feathers, a comforting shape that spoke of powerful charms.

“I am Nhamo, your child,” she whispered to her ancestors. “I gave you maheu when you brought me here. Please tell Long Teats to leave me alone.”

The wind gusted in a new direction, blowing from the jumbled saplings on the far side of the island. She smelled mutarara, the wild gardenia. What was it Grandmother had said about the mutarara? Its branches were very thick and complicated. It was used to keep away leopards and—and—she almost had it—to keep witches from plundering graves! That was it! Uncle Kufa had put gardenia branches on Vatete’s grave.

Ah! Her ancestors were sending the scent of mutarara to confuse Long Teats. The old witch would stumble into the sapling grove and fall over a cliff—Nhamo hoped.

Sometimes the wind blew away from the grove and sometimes toward it. And gradually, the wind’s fury died down. The sky changed from black to a wash of deep blue. Nhamo was wedged so far into the rock crevice, her hips were bruised. She wriggled out when dawn was near and rubbed her body to get the stiffness out.

The sky brightened rapidly. Soon she was able to see the green of trees and brown of bark. Nhamo huddled next to the fire with her hand on the zango. Finally, when the sun cast blue shadows through the trees, she carefully made her way to the fig tree.

The boat was unharmed. It had tipped sideways, but since it was empty, nothing was lost. “So that part of the dream wasn’t true,” she said. “Maybe Long Teats wasn’t real either.” But Nhamo knew that dreams always had some significance. The ancestors were telling her something was wrong, or perhaps they merely wanted her to stop putting off her trip to Zimbabwe.

Nhamo climbed down and checked the ropes holding the boat. The waves were higher than she liked, but safe enough. Holding on to a fig root, she got into the water and refreshed herself with a quick swim.