The Poisonwood Bible
Page 78
“I’m too hot to sing.They never come out anyway.” I was determined to rile her up someway. If I couldn’t find any spark left in Ruth May, I was afraid I might panic, or cry.
“Hey, watch this,” I said. I found a column of ants running up a tree trunk and picked a couple out of the lineup. Bad luck for those poor ants, singled out while minding their own business amongst their brethren. Even an ant’s just got its own one life to live, and I did consider this briefly as I crouched down and dropped a partly squashed ant into an ant lion’s trap. They used to feed Christians to the lions, and now Adah uses that phrase ironically, referring to how I supposedly left her to be eaten up on the path. But Adah is no more Christian than an ant.
We squatted over the hole and waited. The ant struggled in the soft, sandy trap until a pair of pincers suddenly reached up and grabbed it, thrashed up a little dust, and pulled it under. Gone, just
like that.
“Don’t do any more of them, Leah,” Ruth May said. “The ant wasn’t bad.”
I felt embarrassed, being told insect morals by my baby sister. Usually cruelty inspired Ruth May no end, and I was just desperate to help her get her spirits back.
“Well, even wicked bugs have to eat,” I pointed out. “Everything has to eat something.” Even lions, I suppose.
I picked up Ruth May and dusted off her cheek. “Sit in the swing and I’ll comb out your pigtails,” I said. I’d been carrying the comb around in my back pocket for days, meaning to get to Ruth May’s hair. “After I get your braids fixed up I’ll push you awhile in the swing. Okay?”
Ruth May didn’t seem to have strong feelings one way or another. I sat her in the swing, which Nelson had helped us hang with a huge, oily rope he found on the riverbank. The seat was an old rectangular palm-oil drum. All the kids in the village used our swing. I beat some dust off the comb and began to tease out the yellow mass of knots her hair had turned into. I could hardly do it without hurting her, yet she hardly whined, which I took as a bad sign.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Anatole half hidden in the cane thicket at the edge of our yard. He wasn’t cutting cane, since he doesn’t chew it—I think he’s a little vain of his strong white teeth with the handsome little gap in the center. But he was standing there watching us anyway, and I flushed red to think he might have seen me feeding the ant lions. It seemed very childish. In the light of day, almost everything we did in Kilanga seemed childish. Even Father’s walking the riverbank talking to himself, and our mother drifting around half dressed. Combing out Ruth May’s hair at least seemed motherly and practical, so I concentrated on that. In spite of myself I pictured a father with shiny black arms pulling fish from the river and a mother with dark, heavy breasts pounding manioc in a wooden trough. Then out of habit I fired off the Repentance Psalm: Have mercy upon me, O God, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. But I was unsure which commandment my thoughts had broken—Honor thy father and mother, or not coveting thy neighbor’s parents, or even something more vague about being true to your own race and kind.
Anatole started toward us. I waved and called to him, “Mbote, Anatole!”
“Mbote, Beene-beene,” he said. He has special names for each of my sisters and me, not the hurtful ones other people use, like Termite and Benduka, for Adah, which means Crooked Walker. Anatole wouldn’t tell us what his names meant. He tousled Ruth May’s head and shook my hand in the Congolese way, with his left hand clasping his right forearm. Father said this tradition was to show they aren’t hiding any weapon.
“What’s the news, sir?” I asked Anatole. This is what Father always said to him. In spite of how badly that first dinner had gone, Father relied greatly on Anatole and even looked forward to his visits, somewhat nervously, I think. Anatole always surprised us by knowing important news from the outside world—or from outside Kilanga, at least. We weren’t sure where he got his information, but it generally turned out to be true.
“A lot of news,” he said. “But first I have brought you a pig in a sack.”
I loved hearing Anatole speak English. His pronunciation sounded British and elegant, with “first” corning out as “fest,” and “brought” more like “brrote.” But it sounded Congolese in the way it rolled out with equal weight on every syllable—a pig in a sack—as if no single word wanted to take over the whole sentence.
“A poke,” I said. “Mother says that: Never buy a pig in a poke. I guess a poke is a sack.”
“Hey, watch this,” I said. I found a column of ants running up a tree trunk and picked a couple out of the lineup. Bad luck for those poor ants, singled out while minding their own business amongst their brethren. Even an ant’s just got its own one life to live, and I did consider this briefly as I crouched down and dropped a partly squashed ant into an ant lion’s trap. They used to feed Christians to the lions, and now Adah uses that phrase ironically, referring to how I supposedly left her to be eaten up on the path. But Adah is no more Christian than an ant.
We squatted over the hole and waited. The ant struggled in the soft, sandy trap until a pair of pincers suddenly reached up and grabbed it, thrashed up a little dust, and pulled it under. Gone, just
like that.
“Don’t do any more of them, Leah,” Ruth May said. “The ant wasn’t bad.”
I felt embarrassed, being told insect morals by my baby sister. Usually cruelty inspired Ruth May no end, and I was just desperate to help her get her spirits back.
“Well, even wicked bugs have to eat,” I pointed out. “Everything has to eat something.” Even lions, I suppose.
I picked up Ruth May and dusted off her cheek. “Sit in the swing and I’ll comb out your pigtails,” I said. I’d been carrying the comb around in my back pocket for days, meaning to get to Ruth May’s hair. “After I get your braids fixed up I’ll push you awhile in the swing. Okay?”
Ruth May didn’t seem to have strong feelings one way or another. I sat her in the swing, which Nelson had helped us hang with a huge, oily rope he found on the riverbank. The seat was an old rectangular palm-oil drum. All the kids in the village used our swing. I beat some dust off the comb and began to tease out the yellow mass of knots her hair had turned into. I could hardly do it without hurting her, yet she hardly whined, which I took as a bad sign.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Anatole half hidden in the cane thicket at the edge of our yard. He wasn’t cutting cane, since he doesn’t chew it—I think he’s a little vain of his strong white teeth with the handsome little gap in the center. But he was standing there watching us anyway, and I flushed red to think he might have seen me feeding the ant lions. It seemed very childish. In the light of day, almost everything we did in Kilanga seemed childish. Even Father’s walking the riverbank talking to himself, and our mother drifting around half dressed. Combing out Ruth May’s hair at least seemed motherly and practical, so I concentrated on that. In spite of myself I pictured a father with shiny black arms pulling fish from the river and a mother with dark, heavy breasts pounding manioc in a wooden trough. Then out of habit I fired off the Repentance Psalm: Have mercy upon me, O God, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies. But I was unsure which commandment my thoughts had broken—Honor thy father and mother, or not coveting thy neighbor’s parents, or even something more vague about being true to your own race and kind.
Anatole started toward us. I waved and called to him, “Mbote, Anatole!”
“Mbote, Beene-beene,” he said. He has special names for each of my sisters and me, not the hurtful ones other people use, like Termite and Benduka, for Adah, which means Crooked Walker. Anatole wouldn’t tell us what his names meant. He tousled Ruth May’s head and shook my hand in the Congolese way, with his left hand clasping his right forearm. Father said this tradition was to show they aren’t hiding any weapon.
“What’s the news, sir?” I asked Anatole. This is what Father always said to him. In spite of how badly that first dinner had gone, Father relied greatly on Anatole and even looked forward to his visits, somewhat nervously, I think. Anatole always surprised us by knowing important news from the outside world—or from outside Kilanga, at least. We weren’t sure where he got his information, but it generally turned out to be true.
“A lot of news,” he said. “But first I have brought you a pig in a sack.”
I loved hearing Anatole speak English. His pronunciation sounded British and elegant, with “first” corning out as “fest,” and “brought” more like “brrote.” But it sounded Congolese in the way it rolled out with equal weight on every syllable—a pig in a sack—as if no single word wanted to take over the whole sentence.
“A poke,” I said. “Mother says that: Never buy a pig in a poke. I guess a poke is a sack.”
