A Girl Named Disaster

38

What happened up there, Mai?” asked Nhamo as she drank sweet milky tea at the hospital. Sister Gladys and Dr. van Heerden were splinting the injured Vapostori’s leg.

“I’ll take this one to Harare. He needs an X ray,” the Afrikaner told the nurse.

Dr. Masuku grimaced at the word mai, but didn’t correct Nhamo. “What do you think happened?”

“Baba Joseph drove Long Teats away. I saw it. First she was a giant hyena and then, when he broke the panga, she turned into a cane rat, and then she became a blackjack weed. I threw it into the fire.”

“Good for you,” said Mother.

“But I don’t understand how the spirits could throw the Vapostori off the mountain,” Nhamo went on. “I thought Jesus was too strong for them.”

“Jesus is too strong for them,” Baba Joseph called from his bed.

“Go back to sleep,” Sister Gladys said. “Do you know, not one of these fools will take an aspirin.”

“Prayer is our medicine,” insisted Baba Joseph.

“I think”—Mother lowered her voice—“that most of the Vapostori weren’t born Christians. They were raised to believe in vadzimu and the mhondoro. It’s very hard to turn your back on something you learned as a child.”

Nhamo nodded. She wouldn’t think of arguing with anything Grandmother had taught her.

“It’s all right to exorcise witches. Everyone thinks they’re bad. It’s different when you try to get rid of your ancestors. I think the Vapostori threw themselves off the mountain without quite realizing it. They couldn’t reconcile their childhood beliefs with Christianity.”

Nhamo wasn’t sure she understood this. “Do you believe in the spirit world, Mai?”

Mother sighed. “I’m a scientist. I’ve been taught not to believe anything that can’t be proved, and yet…” She gazed at Baba Joseph, who had snuggled into the soft bed with a look of bliss. “He often infuriates me, but he’s old. I’ve been taught to revere and obey such people. It’s just…built in.”

“Like motherhood,” Dr. van Heerden said cheerfully. “I’m finished, you layabout.” He put a final strip of tape on the injured man’s splint. “If you don’t take Sister Gladys’s nice medicine, every bump of the Land Rover is going to make your eyes cross with pain.”

“Prayer is our medicine,” the Vapostori said mournfully.

“Speaking of ancestors, I think you should get in contact with your family, Nhamo,” said Mother. “You have relatives in Mozambique and at Mtoroshanga.”

Nhamo clutched Mother’s hand. She had been forced to flee so often, the thought of going anywhere else was simply terrifying.

“I won’t rush you,” Mother said. “We ought to send a message to your Grandmother, though. I’m sure she wants to know you’re safe.”

“They might make me go back. To marry Zororo.”

“There’s no chance of that!” Mother’s eyes flashed. “The very idea! Trying to force a child into marriage to save their own skins. Ngozi sacrifices are illegal in Zimbabwe.”

“I’m…not a child.”

“Oh, Nhamo! Having a few periods doesn’t make you an adult. You have so much to learn—and you’re so clever.”

Nhamo looked down, smiling with pleasure.

“If she’s so clever, tell me how she buggered up half the farm crew,” said Dr. van Heerden as he helped the Vapostori hop out to the Land Rover.

Nhamo was happier than she could ever remember. She was accepted. She was safe. And everyone went out of his or her way to make her feel wanted. The cook made her special milk tarts from a recipe provided by Dr. van Heerden. Sister Gladys took time from her busy schedule to give her lessons in arithmetic. Mother let her look through the microscope at wiggling creatures that lived inside the tsetse flies and made them deadly.

Baba Joseph took a long time to recover from his night-long ordeal on Karoyi Mountain (which he renamed Angel Mountain). One of his sons performed his duties. Nhamo still helped, but she spent several hours a day with the old man, learning to read.

Once she realized the funny marks stood for sounds, she progressed rapidly. She took to reading with a fervor so extreme, Baba Joseph had to take the books from her hands by force. “Your eyes are not tractors. They are not meant to pull heavy loads,” he said sternly. Still, Nhamo couldn’t help sounding out every bit of writing she encountered. Some were in languages she didn’t know, like English. It didn’t matter.

Writing wasn’t nearly as easy. Her fingers were callused from years of grueling work. The pencil wouldn’t obey her, and she became so angry she wanted to snap it in two—except that it belonged to Baba Joseph. “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you to type,” whispered Mother when she found Nhamo in tears over the writing.

But all in all, her life was blissfully free of care. She waited anxiously to hear from Grandmother. “It’s hard to get a message to a place that doesn’t even have a name,” Mother explained. “I sent letters by several people—anyone who might be traveling in that area. They are to ask for Mai Chipo, Mother of Chipo, of the Moyo clan, whose childhood name was Nyamasatsi.”

Weeks passed; months passed. Nhamo’s hair grew back, softer than before, and Sister Gladys rubbed coconut oil into her scalp. The smell made Nhamo hungry. The nurse taught her to oil her skin as well, and to buff her fingernails with a piece of leather. She provided her with underpants, something Nhamo found annoying, but Sister Gladys insisted that civilized women wore them. She even came up with a strange strip of cloth with two bags at the front to contain Nhamo’s growing breasts.

That was too much! The bags were uncomfortable. Besides, no one in the village had ever needed such a thing. Nhamo only wore it under the new dress Mother had given her for special occasions. The rest of the time she trotted around bra-less in her dress-cloth.

After work, she liked to sit in the watchtower that overlooked the lucerne fields. During the war, Mother said, it had been a guard post to protect Efifi from attack. Now it was slowly falling apart, but Nhamo could still lounge under the thatched roof and enjoy an afternoon breeze. On this particular day, she had a bottle of red soda from Dr. van Heerden’s fridge. She had a peanut butter sandwich and a heap of guavas. She gazed contentedly at the distant shadow of Karoyi—now Angel—Mountain.

The sun dipped below the trees. A haze began to gather at the rim of the horizon. It spread out in a gray line, and a long, thin finger of it flowed toward the tower. Nhamo watched in amazement. It came from the east, from beyond the border of Mozambique, where her nameless village lay on the banks of an uncharted stream. It surrounded her with a swirl of gray ashes.

Cousin Tsodzo, Cousin Farai. Granddaughter Nhamo. Please do not be frightened. Your relative has died here. We know you would come if you could, the ashes whispered. And another voice sighed, If I go to my ancestors before we meet again, my spirit will come to you in a dream. I promise it.

Nhamo screamed and fell to her knees. The soda bottle smashed to the ground below. She stared into the east for a long, long time. The sky darkened. The first stars came out, and fireflies began to appear over the damp fields of lucerne.

She heard Sister Gladys calling her to dinner. The nurse came to the bottom of the tower and waited while Nhamo climbed down. “What’s wrong?” said the woman, touching the girl’s tear-streaked face.

“Ambuya” was all she was able to reply.

In the morning, Mother called her to her office. “I think it’s time we visited your relatives at Mtoroshanga,” she said.