The Poisonwood Bible
Page 145
Leah Price
MISSION NOTRE DAME DE DOULEUR 1964
LA DRAGUEUSE, the nuns call me here. The Mine Sweeper. And not because my habit drags the ground, either. I wear trousers underneath and tuck it up half the time just to move faster or climb up a tree with my bow to shoot a little meat, which I’d say they’re happy to have. But I can see in their eyes they think I have too much piss and vinegar for the present circumstances. Even Soeur Therese, who’s the closest thing I have to a friend here in the Grand Silence, has marked me as the black sheep in this snowy flock by insisting I wear all brown below the shoulders. She’s in charge of the hospital laundry and claims I’m a hopeless case where white is concerned.
“Liselin!” she scolds, holding up my scapular stained with the blood of something or other, some cat I have skinned.
“The monthly visit?” I’ll offer, and she doubles over, pink-faced, declaring me de trop.Yet I look around me and wonder how, in the present circumstances, any amount of piss and vinegar could possibly be enough.
Liselin is me: Soeur Liselin, a mercy case smuggled in under cover of darkness, given refuge for the indefinite term of my fiance’s imprisonment, tucked for the meantime into too much cloth and married to the Lord to conceal my maiden name. I hope He understands when I pray that our marriage won’t last forever. The sisters seem to forget I’m not one of them, even though they know how I came here. Therese makes me repeat the details while her gray eyes grow wide. Here she is, merely twenty years old and thousands of miles from the pastures of France, washing out the dressings of lepers and awful miscarriages, yet she’s electrified by my narrow escape. Or maybe that I shared it with Anatole. When we’re alone in the sweltering laundry room, she asks me how I know I’m in love.
“I must be. What else would make you stupid enough to put hundreds of people in danger?”
It’s true, I did that.When I finally woke up from my drugged stupor in Bulungu I could see what a burden I’d been, not just for the fufu and fish sauce I’d eaten day after day, but for being a foreigner in the eye of a storm. Mobutu’s army was known to be ruthless and unpredictable. Bulungu could be accused of anything for harboring me. Bulungu could also be burned to the ground for no reason at all. Everyone learned fast, the best strategy was to be invisible. Yet my presence was known throughout the region: I was a gaudy flag waving overhead during all those months of sickness and oblivion, just a girl in love, the center of my own universe. Finally, I sat up to see the sun still rose in the east, but everything else had changed. I begged Anatole to get me out to anyplace where I wouldn’t be a danger to others, but he wouldn’t send me alone. He insisted I had nothing to be ashamed of. He was risking his own pro-Lumumbist neck to stay near me, but many people were now taking risks for what they loved, he said, or simply for what they knew. Soon we’d go, he promised, and go together.
Plans were laid for us by friends, including some men from Kilanga I’d never dreamed would take such chances for Anatole. Tata Boanda, for one. Bright red trousers and all, he arrived late one night on foot, toting a suitcase on his head. He had money for us that he claimed was owed to my father, though this is doubtful. The suitcase was ours. In it were a dress and a coloring notebook of Ruth May’s, pieces of our hope chests, my bow and arrows. Someone in Kilanga saved these precious things for us. I suppose it’s also possible the women who went through our house didn’t want these
items, though the bow at least would have been valuable. A third possibility, then: dismayed by the failure of our Jesus to protect us, they opted to steer clear.
The news of Father wasn’t good. He was living alone. I hadn’t thought of this—who would cook for him? I’d never envisioned Father without women’s keeping. Now he was reported to be bearded, wild-haired, and struggling badly with malnutrition and parasites. Our house had burned, with the blame going either to Mother’s spirit or the mischief of village children, though Tata Boanda allowed it was probably Father trying to toast meat over a kerosene flame. Father ran off to a hut in the woods he was calling the New Church of Eternal Life, Jesus Is Bangala. As promising as that sounds, he wasn’t getting a lot of takers. People were waiting to see how well Jesus protected Tata Price, now that he had to get by the same as everyone without outside help from the airplane or even women. So far, Father seemed to be reaping no special advantages. Additionally, his church was too close to the cemetery.
Tata Boanda told me with sincere kindness that Ruth May was mourned in Kilanga.Tata Ndu threatened to exile Tata Kuvudundu for planting the snake in our chicken house, which he was known to have done, since Nelson pointed out the footprints to many witnesses. Kilanga had fallen on trouble of every kind. The pro-Lumumbists among Anatole’s schoolboys were having armed skirmishes with what was left of the National Army, now Mobutu’s army, farther south along the river. We were warned that travel anywhere would be difficult.
MISSION NOTRE DAME DE DOULEUR 1964
LA DRAGUEUSE, the nuns call me here. The Mine Sweeper. And not because my habit drags the ground, either. I wear trousers underneath and tuck it up half the time just to move faster or climb up a tree with my bow to shoot a little meat, which I’d say they’re happy to have. But I can see in their eyes they think I have too much piss and vinegar for the present circumstances. Even Soeur Therese, who’s the closest thing I have to a friend here in the Grand Silence, has marked me as the black sheep in this snowy flock by insisting I wear all brown below the shoulders. She’s in charge of the hospital laundry and claims I’m a hopeless case where white is concerned.
“Liselin!” she scolds, holding up my scapular stained with the blood of something or other, some cat I have skinned.
“The monthly visit?” I’ll offer, and she doubles over, pink-faced, declaring me de trop.Yet I look around me and wonder how, in the present circumstances, any amount of piss and vinegar could possibly be enough.
Liselin is me: Soeur Liselin, a mercy case smuggled in under cover of darkness, given refuge for the indefinite term of my fiance’s imprisonment, tucked for the meantime into too much cloth and married to the Lord to conceal my maiden name. I hope He understands when I pray that our marriage won’t last forever. The sisters seem to forget I’m not one of them, even though they know how I came here. Therese makes me repeat the details while her gray eyes grow wide. Here she is, merely twenty years old and thousands of miles from the pastures of France, washing out the dressings of lepers and awful miscarriages, yet she’s electrified by my narrow escape. Or maybe that I shared it with Anatole. When we’re alone in the sweltering laundry room, she asks me how I know I’m in love.
“I must be. What else would make you stupid enough to put hundreds of people in danger?”
It’s true, I did that.When I finally woke up from my drugged stupor in Bulungu I could see what a burden I’d been, not just for the fufu and fish sauce I’d eaten day after day, but for being a foreigner in the eye of a storm. Mobutu’s army was known to be ruthless and unpredictable. Bulungu could be accused of anything for harboring me. Bulungu could also be burned to the ground for no reason at all. Everyone learned fast, the best strategy was to be invisible. Yet my presence was known throughout the region: I was a gaudy flag waving overhead during all those months of sickness and oblivion, just a girl in love, the center of my own universe. Finally, I sat up to see the sun still rose in the east, but everything else had changed. I begged Anatole to get me out to anyplace where I wouldn’t be a danger to others, but he wouldn’t send me alone. He insisted I had nothing to be ashamed of. He was risking his own pro-Lumumbist neck to stay near me, but many people were now taking risks for what they loved, he said, or simply for what they knew. Soon we’d go, he promised, and go together.
Plans were laid for us by friends, including some men from Kilanga I’d never dreamed would take such chances for Anatole. Tata Boanda, for one. Bright red trousers and all, he arrived late one night on foot, toting a suitcase on his head. He had money for us that he claimed was owed to my father, though this is doubtful. The suitcase was ours. In it were a dress and a coloring notebook of Ruth May’s, pieces of our hope chests, my bow and arrows. Someone in Kilanga saved these precious things for us. I suppose it’s also possible the women who went through our house didn’t want these
items, though the bow at least would have been valuable. A third possibility, then: dismayed by the failure of our Jesus to protect us, they opted to steer clear.
The news of Father wasn’t good. He was living alone. I hadn’t thought of this—who would cook for him? I’d never envisioned Father without women’s keeping. Now he was reported to be bearded, wild-haired, and struggling badly with malnutrition and parasites. Our house had burned, with the blame going either to Mother’s spirit or the mischief of village children, though Tata Boanda allowed it was probably Father trying to toast meat over a kerosene flame. Father ran off to a hut in the woods he was calling the New Church of Eternal Life, Jesus Is Bangala. As promising as that sounds, he wasn’t getting a lot of takers. People were waiting to see how well Jesus protected Tata Price, now that he had to get by the same as everyone without outside help from the airplane or even women. So far, Father seemed to be reaping no special advantages. Additionally, his church was too close to the cemetery.
Tata Boanda told me with sincere kindness that Ruth May was mourned in Kilanga.Tata Ndu threatened to exile Tata Kuvudundu for planting the snake in our chicken house, which he was known to have done, since Nelson pointed out the footprints to many witnesses. Kilanga had fallen on trouble of every kind. The pro-Lumumbists among Anatole’s schoolboys were having armed skirmishes with what was left of the National Army, now Mobutu’s army, farther south along the river. We were warned that travel anywhere would be difficult.
