A Girl Named Disaster

2

Most girls were afraid to gather firewood by themselves. The village was surrounded by a forest where almost anything might hide. Nhamo was afraid, too, but she had a compelling reason to venture out alone. She didn’t expect to meet elephants—although they migrated to the river at certain times of the year. She wasn’t likely to run into a buffalo—although someone had done so a few months earlier. Her most persistent worry was leopards. She feared leopards with a terror so complete that she couldn’t breathe when she thought of them.

Her mother had been killed by one when Nhamo was only three. The child was sleeping by the door of the hut, but the animal walked past her and attacked Mother instead. Grandmother rocked back and forth, wailing with grief, when she recounted the story. “In daylight, Little Pumpkin! With the sun streaming in the door, that disgusting beast killed my poor, poor daughter! It wasn’t her fault. It was that hyena-hearted husband of hers—may he fall into a nest of flesh-eating ants!”

The hyena-hearted husband was Nhamo’s father.

Nhamo couldn’t remember the tragedy, yet somewhere inside her was a memory of flowing, spotted skin and terrible claws.

Now she followed a broad path from the village to the stream. She saw women beating clothes on rocks; their round-bellied babies were deposited on a mat in the shade of a tree. A small girl watched to be sure they didn’t crawl away.

Nhamo followed the stream to an area of yellow sand where she could see the bottom clearly in both directions. No crocodile could creep up on her here. She waded across. The water came up to her shoulders. She always experienced a moment of panic in the middle because she couldn’t swim, but she planted her feet firmly in the coarse sand and struggled on. When she got to the other side, she scrambled up a rock and picked off a leech that had managed to fasten onto her ankle.

She hid behind a bush to wring out her dress-cloth. The wetness against her skin was very pleasant, but she couldn’t waste time enjoying it. Aunt Chipo would be waiting for her firewood. Even more important, Nhamo had to return before dusk.

Dusk was when the leopards came out to hunt.

She followed an old, overgrown trail for a long time until she came out into a meadow. It wasn’t a natural clearing. A few poles remained of the village that had once been there, and a few pumpkin mounds with vegetables gone wild. Nhamo wasn’t sure who had lived here. It might have been her own people, but they no longer visited the site. Masvita said the place was haunted.

With a nervous look at the shadows under the trees, Nhamo crossed the clearing and quickly gathered firewood from a deadfall in a dry streambed. That was the good thing about this place: The wood was easy to find. It took her far less time than Aunt Chipo suspected. She tied the wood into a bundle with vines and deposited it by the trail.

She climbed a hill at the edge of the deserted village. It was really only a large, round boulder, but it allowed her to see in all directions from the top. On one side was the stream and wavering smoke from her village; everywhere else was a sea of low, gray-green trees. In the distance she saw the river where the stream ended: a flat brightness at the edge of the forest.

At the very top of the hill a perfectly round and deep hole had been worn into the rock. Rain filled it in the rainy season; even now it was half-full of water. Nhamo leaned over and studied her face. She didn’t think she was ugly.

Now came the moment she was waiting for. She dragged aside a slab of stone from a smaller, dry hole in the rock. Inside were the treasures Nhamo had managed to collect. She removed pots, wooden spoons, a drinking gourd, an old cloth Aunt Chipo once used to cover her hair, and a knife Uncle Kufa had hurled into a bush when the tip broke off. (He was even angrier when he couldn’t find it again later.) She left a few things inside the hole: a precious box of matches, some glass beads that had come off Aunt Shuvai’s bracelet, some of the copper wire Uncle Kufa used to decorate his snuffboxes.

Reverently, Nhamo smoothed out the cloth and put the utensils on it. Last of all, she reached into a pot and removed—a roll of paper.

She weighted the edges down with stones. It was a picture torn out of a magazine.

Books were unheard of in Nhamo’s village, but very occasionally a magazine found its way from the distant cities of Zimbabwe. Only two men in the village could read. They retold the stories for everyone’s entertainment. The women studied the pictures of clothes and houses, gardens and cars with great interest. They tried to copy the hairstyles in the photographs. Eventually, the magazines fell apart and were used to light fires.

This picture had been on the cover, so it was of sturdier paper. The minute Nhamo had seen it, her heart beat so fast it hurt. The picture showed a beautiful woman with braided hair decorated with beads. She wore a flowered dress and a white, white apron. She was cutting a slice of white, white bread, and next to her was a block of yellow margarine.

Nhamo didn’t know what margarine was, but Grandmother told her it was even better than peanut butter.

The room behind the woman was full of wonderful things, but what interested Nhamo most was the little girl. She was wearing a blue dress, and her hair was gathered into two fat puffs over her ears. The woman smiled at her in the kindest way, and Nhamo knew the white bread and yellow margarine were meant for the little girl.

She thought the woman looked like Mother.

She couldn’t remember Mother, and of course no one had a picture of her, but the way her spirit leaped when she saw that picture told her this was how Mother had looked.

Nhamo hadn’t waited for the magazine to get old. Right away, when Aunt Chipo wasn’t looking, she’d torn off the cover and hidden it. Aunt Chipo was terribly cross. She accused her sister of doing it, but it never crossed her mind that Nhamo was responsible. What would Nhamo want with a new hairstyle, anyway?

Nhamo pretended to pour tea into the pots. She cut bread and covered it with margarine. “I climbed the mukuyu tree and got so many figs, Mai,” she said. “But they were full of worms. I had to throw half of them away. Then I saw a yellow bird—the kind that builds a basket over the water—and it ate the worms. Do you think they grow inside?”

Nhamo paused to let Mother answer.

“I didn’t think so either. I saw a swarm of bees fly overhead—oh, so many! But fortunately they didn’t land.”

Sometimes Nhamo tried to imagine her father at the tea party, but she knew almost nothing about him. He had run away before she was even born. Grandmother said he was working in a chrome mine in Zimbabwe. How she had learned this was unknown, but visitors did wander through the village from time to time. Father was at a place called Mtoroshanga and someday, Ambuya said, he would return to claim his daughter.

The thought was frightening. A stranger could merely show up and take her away from everything she’d ever known. No one would stop him. But probably—or so Aunt Chipo said—he had found himself another wife and forgotten all about his daughter by now.

Nhamo suddenly realized the light was going. Maiwee! She had been so absorbed, she had forgotten the time. Scrambling, she packed everything and dragged the lid over the hole.

She slid down the hill and tied the firewood to her back. Oho! In this light, the trail was almost invisible! The air was a strange, silvery color, and the gray-green trees melted into the sky. It was the moment when the day animals passed the night animals on their way to hunt. Nhamo listened for the stream. The air was so still she couldn’t smell it.

Sh, sh—there it was in the distance. She made more noise than usual, smashing through the bushes in her haste. All at once, she was by the stream. The surface of the water gleamed with silver light, and it was impossible to see underneath. Crocodiles liked this time of day. They floated just beneath the water, where their flat, yellow eyes could watch anything that approached.

“Oh,” whispered Nhamo. She lifted the bundle of firewood to her head and slowly approached the stream. Sh, sh went the water as it rushed along the banks. By the trail, in the bushes, was a spotted shadow. It was sitting on its haunches, barely visible in the speckled light.

Nhamo froze. Behind her was no safety. If she returned to the deserted village, the creature would only follow her. She could throw the firewood at it and hope to frighten it. Or she could wait. The villagers would come to look for her.

Or would they? Nhamo wasn’t sure.

The darkness increased. Then, quite suddenly, the strange, silvery quality of the air faded. A half-moon lit the path, and Nhamo saw that the leopard was merely a tangle of leaves by the water. It had been a trick of the light. She could even see faintly into the water. The sand lay in a pale sheet without any crocodiles floating over it.

Shaking with relief, she edged past the spot and entered the water. It felt warm now in the cool air of evening. She held the firewood up high to protect it, and presently she came up the other side and hurried toward the cook-fires beyond the trees.