A Girl Named Disaster

42

Efifi looked exactly the same as Dr. van Heerden’s Land Rover roared through the gate. Nhamo sighed with relief. She was so used to losing things, she was afraid Efifi had vanished. She ran to find Baba Joseph as the doctor unloaded supplies. Then she ran to the hospital to find Sister Gladys.

It was wonderful to be back! No matter how she tried, she couldn’t really please the Jongwes, except for her great-grandfather. In subtle ways they made her feel like an intruder, and she suspected they always would. Efifi felt like home. She raced eagerly from place to place to assure herself everything was all right. The bottles were lined up on the same shelves in the hospital; the pumpkins were heaped in the corner of the cookhouse where they belonged. Even the same crows perched on the fence near the livestock pens.

Only she had changed. She had stylish new clothes, pink plastic sandals, and almost-emerald earrings in her newly pierced ears. One thing worried her, though: She no longer knew how to address Dr. Masuku.

Nhamo couldn’t call her Mother anymore, now that she knew what Mother had looked like. And yet it seemed unfriendly to go back to “Dr. Masuku.” She hesitated at the door of the lab.

“Nhamo!” cried Dr. Masuku in a delighted voice. “Oh, my! You really are a woman now. Turn around. The Jongwes didn’t pinch pennies on that cloth. And those earrings! You look beautiful!”

“Grandmother made me the dress,” said Nhamo shyly. “She took time off from crocheting blankets.”

“You told me about those wretched blankets.”

Nhamo had written letters to Dr. Masuku in her clumsy, uneven scrawl. She started them “Dear Mother,” although it made her uncomfortable to do so. This summer she would learn to type and would throw away pencils forever.

“I finally got a message from Mozambique,” Dr. Masuku said. “I thought it was better for you to read it in person.” She took out a piece of yellowed paper that had been folded and refolded. It had obviously been carried in someone’s pocket for a long time. The writing was just as crabbed as Nhamo’s.

“Dir Neese,” it began. It took a moment for Nhamo to realize it meant “Dear Niece.” The letter was from Uncle Kufa. It confirmed what she already knew, that Ambuya had died. Aunt Chipo was devastated (“veri veri sad”), but she was cheered up when Masvita had a baby boy. Masvita had married a man from Vatete’s village and was pregnant again.

Two children! Nhamo’s eyes became distant as she calculated. They must have married her cousin off the minute her hair grew back. She remembered the fever dream she had after the scorpion sting. Masvita had sacrificed herself in the lake with Princess Senwa “because it was the custom,” but Grandmother had held her, Nhamo, back. “Ambuya didn’t want me to be like Masvita,” she murmured.

“I’m sure she didn’t,” Dr. Masuku agreed.

“I ought to visit them.”

“I’d wait awhile. They might still be worried about ngozis.”

Nhamo thought about living in the village again. She would have to spend her days pounding mealies and hauling water. She wouldn’t have any books. Most of her fellow students hated studying, but Nhamo loved it—except for the writing. Well, as Ambuya said, even the best bowl of porridge has a few weevils in it.

“Dr. van Heerden and I need to talk to you,” said Dr. Masuku. They went off to find the Afrikaner in the barn, supervising the birth of a calf. Baba Joseph was watching the procedure critically.

“I don’t think you should have given her medicine to hurry it along,” he said.

“She’s weak from the blerry flies. I suppose you’ll want to baptize the baby,” Dr. van Heerden said, soaping his hands as he prepared to deliver the calf.

“Vapostori don’t baptize animals. I can pray for your soul, however.”

“Thanks, oupa,” said the doctor. He wrestled the calf from its weakened mother. Nhamo’s eyes grew wide as she watched the new life slide into the world. Animals had one spirit from Mother Earth, but people had an extra one from Mwari. She wasn’t sure why you had to pray for it.

“I wondered where you’d got to,” boomed the Afrikaner as he plunged his hands into a bucket to clean them.

Dr. van Heerden, Dr. Masuku, and Nhamo sat outside the cookhouse in the shade of a bougainvillea vine. The cook had provided a box of arrowroot cookies to go along with the tea.

“I’ve had this weighed,” Dr. van Heerden said, tossing the bag with Grandmother’s gold nuggets into Nhamo’s lap. Her throat constricted as she looked at it. The red cloth was almost black with dirt, but it was the only surviving link to her life in the village.

“Your granny provided for you better than she realized. She had to sell her gold at a tiny fraction of the real price and probably didn’t know what it was worth in the outside world. There’s almost three ounces here. That’s worth over four thousand dollars.”*

Nhamo, who had recently been granted an allowance of fifty cents a week, could only stare at him.

“We think,” said Dr. Masuku gently, “you should open a bank account in your name. We think it should be secret from the Jongwes.”

Now Nhamo stared at her.

“Both your grandmother and mother were trapped by poverty. You can be free. That’s why Ambuya gave you the gold.”

“But why can’t I tell the Jongwes—”

“Right now the old nganga rules the roost,” said Dr. van Heerden. “When he dies, you can bet that Long Fingernails won’t rest until you’re out of the house.”

“Tell me, does anyone there really care about your happiness? Aside from sewing you dresses to relieve the boredom of crocheting blankets,” said Dr. Masuku.

“No,” Nhamo admitted.

“Right now you’re a doll for them to dress up. People get tired of dolls. You’re far too intelligent to be turned into a family drudge or forced into a bad marriage. Women are never free until they can control their own money.”

“And during the summers when you work here, your salary will go into the account,” added Dr. van Heerden.

It was all happening too fast. Nhamo could only agree blindly and hope for the best. She felt uncomfortable about hiding the bank account from the Jongwes, but she had no illusions about Mrs. Edina Jongwe. Someday the woman might casually say, “You can beat her if you like” to a stranger, and then introduce him as her future husband.

“You know, you haven’t once called me Mother since you returned,” said Dr. Masuku. “Or used my name.”

Nhamo hung her head.

“Ach, it just came to me: She hasn’t called me Daddy in donkey’s years,” said Dr. van Heerden, stirring three spoonfuls of sugar into a fresh cup of tea.

Dr. Masuku pursed her lips in irritation. “I’ll admit I was relieved about Mother, Nhamo, but you really ought to think of something. I won’t accept ‘Hey, you!’”

“I’m sorry.” Nhamo’s eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, dear. You look like I just hit you! Why don’t you call me Aunt Everjoice? I’ll be your vatete and tell you all the secrets of womanhood.”

“Like how to get the lipstick to stay inside the little lines,” Dr. van Heerden said. Dr. Masuku swatted him with a magazine from a pile by the cookhouse.

Nhamo’s eyes suddenly focused on the cover.

“Oh! Oh! It’s the picture! It’s Mother,” she cried. She jumped to her feet. Startled, Dr. Masuku held out the magazine. Nhamo grabbed it and smoothed it out on the table. The back cover showed a woman wearing a white apron and a flowered dress. She was spreading white bread with margarine. Nearby stood a little girl with hair gathered in two fat puffs over her ears, and Nhamo knew the bread and margarine were for the little girl. She looked up.

The picture didn’t look anything like Dr. Masuku.

“That’s a margarine advertisement,” exclaimed the woman. “Good grief! You were communicating with the spirit of Stork margarine all those years.”

“Sh-she doesn’t 1-look like you,” hiccuped Nhamo. “H-how could I have made such a stupid m-mistake?”

“Don’t cry.” Dr. Masuku hugged her tightly. “We always suspected you imprinted on me. It’s not surprising after all you went through.”

“What’s imprinting?”

“When certain birds break out of the egg, they think the first thing they see is their mother. They follow it everywhere.”

“Even if it’s a jackal?”

“So they say. I don’t think a bird with a jackal mother lasts very long,” Dr. van Heerden remarked.

Dr. Masuku hesitated before she spoke again. “In one sense, you died after leaving the village, Nhamo. If the spirit world exists, you certainly went through it, and when I found you in the underground chamber, it was as though I brought you back to life. I was the first thing you saw after you broke out of the egg.”

Nhamo looked from the magazine to the two doctors and back again. This was an idea she would have to think about for a long time. “The picture doesn’t even look like my real mother,” she said sadly.

“No, but wait…” Dr. Masuku held up the picture. “This is fantastic.” She marched Nhamo over to the hospital and made her look into the full-length mirror.

Nhamo had steadfastly refused to do this since the horrifying moment when she saw the wall spider with the burr stuck on top. She had to see bits of herself, of course, to attach earrings and so forth, but she had avoided putting the bits together.

Now she gazed in amazement at her image. She was taller and had a womanly figure. Her hair shone with good health, and her eyes no longer stared back from hollows. She wore a flowered dress and pink plastic shoes. The almost-emeralds glittered in her ears.

She was beautiful.

And she looked like the woman in the Stork margarine ad.

“I can’t explain it,” said Dr. Masuku in an awed voice.

“Auntie Everjoice. I like the sound of that,” Dr. van Heerden said from the door of the hospital.

The last evening of summer vacation, Nhamo sat in the ruined guard tower watching the twilight fade. Out of the hazy east came three figures walking like people who have come a long way. They passed through the fence and moved across the fields without disturbing the leaves. They halted below the tower, one ahead, the other two hanging back among the tall fronds of a stand of mealies.

Little Pumpkin, whispered the foremost figure.

Tears began to roll down Nhamo’s face.

You’ve done well, Little Pumpkin, said Grandmother. A bank account at your age! If I’d had a bank account, things would have been different, I can tell you. Well, I said I would visit you when I returned to my ancestors, so here I am. What have you got to say for yourself?

Nhamo explained about the Jongwes and her new life.

Bunch of donkeys, except for the old man, said Grandmother. Still, what can you do? They’re family.

Nhamo talked until darkness fell and an evening wind made the mealies rustle. The other two figures came out into the starlight. Mother’s face was young, so young! She looked like Masvita. Father was more difficult to see. Sometimes he seemed to be standing there and sometimes he was only a shadow padding silently along the fence.

We have a long way to go, said Grandmother at last. Ruva is having her coming-of-age party. I don’t want to miss it.

But you will return? Nhamo wanted to ask.

The paths of the body are long, but the paths of the spirit are short, said Mother in a low, sweet voice. And then they were gone. And Nhamo was left with the wind blowing out of the forest and the fireflies hovering over the lucerne.

*Zimbabwe dollars.