The Poisonwood Bible
Page 180
But the practice of speaking a rich, tonal language to my neighbors has softened his voice in my ear. I hear the undertones now that shimmer under the surface of the words right and wrong. We used to be baffled by Kikongo words with so many different meanings: bangala, for most precious and most insufferable and also poison-wood. That one word brought down Father’s sermons every time, as he ended them all with the shout “Tata Jesus is bangalur.”
Way back then, while Rachel could pull words out of thin air to mean what she pleased, and Ruth May was inventing her own, Adah and I were trying to puzzle out how everything you thought you knew means something different in Africa. We worried over nzolo—it means dearly beloved; or a white grub used for fish bait; or a special fetish against dysentery; or little potatoes. Nzole is the double-sized pagne that wraps around two people at once. Finally I see how these things are related. In a marriage ceremony, husband and wife stand tightly bound by their nzole and hold one another to be the most precious: nzolani.As precious as the first potatoes of the season, small and sweet like Georgia peanuts. Precious as the fattest grubs turned up from the soil, which catch the largest fish. And the fetish most treasured by mothers, against dysentery, contains a particle of all the things invoked by the word nzolo: you must dig and dry the grub and potatoes, bind them with a thread from your wedding cloth, and have them blessed in a fire by the ttganga doctor. Only by life’s best things are your children protected—this much I surely believe. Each of my peanut-brown babies I call my nzolani, and said it with the taste of fish and fire and new potatoes in my mouth. There is no other possibility now.
“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place. Especially here” I say this frequently, while I’m boiling diapers in the kitchen house and having my imaginary arguments with an absent Rachel. (Which are not so different from arguments with Rachel in person.) She reminds me once again of the Communist threat. I walk outside to dump the water and wave at my neighbor, who’s boiling peanuts in a hubcap. Both of us cower at the sound of tires. It might be the black Mercedes of the casque-bleus, Mobutu’s deputies come to take our measly harvest to help finance another palace. And then it comes to me suddenly, from childhood, my first stammering definition of communism to Anatole: Thej do not fear the Lord, and they think everybody should have the same kind of house.
From where I’m standing, sister, it’s hard to fathom the threat.
I live in a tiny house piled high with boys, potatoes, fetishes and books of science, a wedding cloth, a disintegrating map of the world, an ancient leather suitcase of memories—a growing accumulation of past crowding out our ever-narrowing future. And our waiting is almost over. It’s taken ten years and seems like a miracle, but the Americans are losing in Angola. Their land mines are still all over the country, they take off the leg or the arm of a child every day, and I know what could happen to us if we travel those roads. But in my dreams I still have hope, and in life, no safe retreat. If I have to hop all the way on one foot, damn it, I’ll find a place I can claim as home.
Book Six
SONG OF THE
THREE CHILDREN
All that you have brought upon us and all that you have done to us,
You have done injustice... Deliver us in your wonderful way.
SONG OF THE THREE CHILDREN,
THE APOCRYPHA
Rachel Price THE EQUATORIAL
I AM FOREVER GETTING COMPLIMENTS on my spotless complexion, but let me tell you a little secret. It takes more work than anything in this world to keep yourself well preserved.
Jeez oh man, nothing like turning fifty to make you feel a hundred years old. Not that I was about to put candles on a cake and burn the place down. I got through that day without telling a soul. Now I’ve closed the bar and here I sit with my Lucky Strike and my sandal hanging off my toe and I can always look back on it as just one more day like any other. But it sure gives you something to compensate upon.
Did I ever think I would wind up here getting old? Not on your life. But here I am. I’ve walked off more marriages and close calls than you can shake a stick at, but never got out of the Dark Continent. I have settled down here and gotten to be such a stick-in-the-mud I don’t even like to go out! Last week I was forced to drive down to Brazzaville for the liquor order because I honestly could not find a driver trustworthy to come back with the liquor and car in one piece, but there was a flood on the way and two trees across the road, and when I finally got back here I kissed the floor of the bar. I did, I swear. Mostly I kissed it for still being there, since I still expect every plank of this place to be carried off by my own help during my absence. But so far, so good.
Way back then, while Rachel could pull words out of thin air to mean what she pleased, and Ruth May was inventing her own, Adah and I were trying to puzzle out how everything you thought you knew means something different in Africa. We worried over nzolo—it means dearly beloved; or a white grub used for fish bait; or a special fetish against dysentery; or little potatoes. Nzole is the double-sized pagne that wraps around two people at once. Finally I see how these things are related. In a marriage ceremony, husband and wife stand tightly bound by their nzole and hold one another to be the most precious: nzolani.As precious as the first potatoes of the season, small and sweet like Georgia peanuts. Precious as the fattest grubs turned up from the soil, which catch the largest fish. And the fetish most treasured by mothers, against dysentery, contains a particle of all the things invoked by the word nzolo: you must dig and dry the grub and potatoes, bind them with a thread from your wedding cloth, and have them blessed in a fire by the ttganga doctor. Only by life’s best things are your children protected—this much I surely believe. Each of my peanut-brown babies I call my nzolani, and said it with the taste of fish and fire and new potatoes in my mouth. There is no other possibility now.
“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place. Especially here” I say this frequently, while I’m boiling diapers in the kitchen house and having my imaginary arguments with an absent Rachel. (Which are not so different from arguments with Rachel in person.) She reminds me once again of the Communist threat. I walk outside to dump the water and wave at my neighbor, who’s boiling peanuts in a hubcap. Both of us cower at the sound of tires. It might be the black Mercedes of the casque-bleus, Mobutu’s deputies come to take our measly harvest to help finance another palace. And then it comes to me suddenly, from childhood, my first stammering definition of communism to Anatole: Thej do not fear the Lord, and they think everybody should have the same kind of house.
From where I’m standing, sister, it’s hard to fathom the threat.
I live in a tiny house piled high with boys, potatoes, fetishes and books of science, a wedding cloth, a disintegrating map of the world, an ancient leather suitcase of memories—a growing accumulation of past crowding out our ever-narrowing future. And our waiting is almost over. It’s taken ten years and seems like a miracle, but the Americans are losing in Angola. Their land mines are still all over the country, they take off the leg or the arm of a child every day, and I know what could happen to us if we travel those roads. But in my dreams I still have hope, and in life, no safe retreat. If I have to hop all the way on one foot, damn it, I’ll find a place I can claim as home.
Book Six
SONG OF THE
THREE CHILDREN
All that you have brought upon us and all that you have done to us,
You have done injustice... Deliver us in your wonderful way.
SONG OF THE THREE CHILDREN,
THE APOCRYPHA
Rachel Price THE EQUATORIAL
I AM FOREVER GETTING COMPLIMENTS on my spotless complexion, but let me tell you a little secret. It takes more work than anything in this world to keep yourself well preserved.
Jeez oh man, nothing like turning fifty to make you feel a hundred years old. Not that I was about to put candles on a cake and burn the place down. I got through that day without telling a soul. Now I’ve closed the bar and here I sit with my Lucky Strike and my sandal hanging off my toe and I can always look back on it as just one more day like any other. But it sure gives you something to compensate upon.
Did I ever think I would wind up here getting old? Not on your life. But here I am. I’ve walked off more marriages and close calls than you can shake a stick at, but never got out of the Dark Continent. I have settled down here and gotten to be such a stick-in-the-mud I don’t even like to go out! Last week I was forced to drive down to Brazzaville for the liquor order because I honestly could not find a driver trustworthy to come back with the liquor and car in one piece, but there was a flood on the way and two trees across the road, and when I finally got back here I kissed the floor of the bar. I did, I swear. Mostly I kissed it for still being there, since I still expect every plank of this place to be carried off by my own help during my absence. But so far, so good.
