A Girl Named Disaster (10 page)

A
s usual you’ve arrived too late to help,” grumbled Aunt Chipo as Nhamo entered Grandmother’s hut. “Don’t think you’ll get away with such laziness with your new husband. He’s a man who knows what’s what.” She leaned against the wall with a bowl of
sadza
and relish. Masvita was carefully spooning food into
Ambuya
’s mouth.

“She looks better, don’t you think?” said Masvita. “I almost think she understands what we say.”

“Poor Mother! If it wasn’t for Nhamo, she wouldn’t have angered the
muvuki.
Well, what are you looking at, girl?
I’m
not going to wait on you.”

Nhamo helped herself to the pot of relish and platter of
sadza
next to Grandmother’s pot shelf.

“You be ready bright and early—no running off to the forest,” Aunt Chipo said.

“Please come to the girls’ hut tonight,” begged Masvita. “I’ll ask Tazviona to watch Grandmother.”

Nhamo almost choked on her
sadza.
“I’ll see you again, lots of times. I don’t know when I’ll see
Ambuya.”

“Then I’ll stay with you,” her cousin said warmly.

“Oh, no! You won’t get any sleep,” snapped Aunt Chipo. “You have to do this one’s chores, now that she’s running off to a new home.” She
made it sound as though Nhamo were marrying Goré’s brother out of spite.

Masvita made a few gentle protests and dropped the argument. “Don’t worry. I’ll come and see you as often as possible after you’re married,” she whispered. Nhamo doubted this very much. Her cousin had a kind spirit, but she was no match for her mother.

And it didn’t matter. Masvita wasn’t going to visit her in her
real
new home.

Nhamo hurried to perform the final chores of the day after Aunt Chipo and Masvita had left. She helped
Ambuya
sit up to relieve herself. She tidied the hut and made sure a water jar was close to the bed. She discovered that Grandmother could hold a cup and drink without any help at all.

“You fooled everyone,” she said with admiration.

“In a day or two I’ll magically recover.” The old woman smiled serenely.

Nhamo glanced out the dark door. “Grandmother…if I run away, won’t the
ngozi
punish everyone?”

Ambuya
paused before she answered. “I’ve been thinking about that a long time. Many people died of cholera, not just our family. I believe Rosa was right: Goré Mtoko couldn’t be responsible for a whole epidemic.”

“But the
muvuki
—”

“Was wrong. I know that’s a surprise,” said Grandmother when Nhamo’s eyes widened. “You see, spirit mediums are ordinary men and women when they’re not being possessed. A few of them fake messages when they can’t manage a real one.”

Nhamo was deeply shocked.

“I’ve lived a long time, Little Pumpkin. I honor and revere
ngangas;
I believe they can tell us what our ancestors want, but a few—a very few—are dishonest. Now and then one is downright wicked.”

“Like the
muvuki.
”

“What kind of decent person would kill his own son? Really big problems, like drought or swarms of locusts or
epidemics, are dealt with by the
mhondoro
, the spirit of the land. The
muvuki
’s spirit is only a flyspeck compared to it.”

Grandmother’s words were disturbing. Nhamo had never heard anyone question the authority of an
nganga
—except the trader and his wife. They were Catholic, so their opinion didn’t count.

An idea suddenly occurred to Nhamo. “Aunt Chipo! She was possessed by Goré’s spirit.”

“Oh, yes. Chipo,” Grandmother said bitterly. “Listen, Little Pumpkin. What I’m about to say will be upsetting, but you need to understand. Your aunt has hated you from the moment you were born. She hated your mother, too. Runako was the one everyone said was pretty. She was the one who did well in school, and the very worst thing Runako did was have a beautiful child one month before Masvita was born. It took all the attention away from Chipo.”

Beautiful. They thought I was beautiful, Nhamo said to herself.

“She’s always wanted to get rid of you, and her chance came when we visited the
muvuki.
”

“You mean she was
lying
?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

Nhamo’s world turned upside down. First
Ambuya
had accused the doctor of making things up, and now she said Aunt Chipo had pretended to be possessed. What could anyone believe when things like that happened?

“You can’t wait any longer,” Grandmother said softly.

“Now? I don’t want to go!”

“You have to. If I could come along…”
Ambuya
sighed. “Well, I can’t, and that’s that. I know all about Zororo. Believe me, you wouldn’t last a year before he either beat you to death or one of his wives poisoned you. Your only hope of survival is to go. I gave Runako her chance long ago. Now I’m giving you yours. I only wish you were older.”

“I’m frightened,” sobbed Nhamo, clinging to Grandmother.

“I know.”
Ambuya
smoothed her hair, and Nhamo felt a tear drop onto her head. “The journey will be the hardest
thing you’ll ever do, but it will be worth it. Just think of finding your father. I don’t expect the trip will take more than two days—we’re very close to the border. Remember to push yourself
against
the current when you reach the Musengezi. Close to the border the river divides in two, but it doesn’t matter which branch you take. They both go to Zimbabwe.”

“What lies in the other direction?” Nhamo asked.

“Lake Cabora Bassa. The Musengezi used to flow into the Zambezi River until the Portuguese dammed it up. Now the Zambezi’s become a huge lake. You can’t even see across it.” Nhamo nodded. She had heard many tales about Lake Cabora Bassa.
Ambuya
gently removed her granddaughter’s arms from her neck and pushed her toward the door.

“You might get sick in the night,” Nhamo protested.

“I’ll be fine. Remember, Little Pumpkin, your mother’s spirit is watching over you. She’ll warn you of any danger.”

“I’ll never see you again!”

“Sh. Sh. Someone might hear us. If I go to my ancestors before we meet again, my spirit will come to you in a dream. I promise it.”

Nhamo felt sick with grief as she crept out. She removed the small oil lamp that lit the interior of the hut and put the wooden door in place to keep out predators. She heard Grandmother sigh as the old woman lay back down.

All around stood the dark huts of the village. A quarter moon lay low in the west, not giving enough light to tempt anyone to stay up late. Nhamo took the lamp along to light the way. Far off, in the distance, a lion roared.
He
was not the dangerous one, the girl knew, but his mate who padded noiselessly through the trees.

Every trickle of noise made Nhamo freeze and her body break out in sweat. Every rustle of leaves made her want to flee back to
Ambuya
’s arms. But it was a false safety. Besides, she had been ordered to go by her elder. “Please protect me,
Mai
,” she prayed as she tiptoed along.

Eventually, she pushed aside the reeds and saw Crocodile Guts’s boat floating right where she had left it. She climbed
in. Oho! It swayed like a tree branch. Nhamo had never been in a boat, and she didn’t like the sensation. She lay on her stomach with her arms over the stern, untying the rope. A puddle of water in the bottom soaked her dress-cloth.

Once free, she took the oar, as she had seen Crocodile Guts do many times, and pushed herself away from shore. The boat moved! At first it edged by inches, but it drifted more swiftly as it reached the middle of the stream. Nhamo held tightly to the sides. The quarter moon was almost down.

She could see the sky over the trees. Now and then she glimpsed a round boulder or a patch of sand. Of her village there was not a trace.

In spite of her fear, Nhamo felt a little thrill of excitement. She was really doing it! She was sailing away from Zororo and his jealous wives. In two days she would arrive in Zimbabwe and ask the first people she met to find her some nuns. And then—oh, then!—they would send a letter to her father at Mtoroshanga.

Thinking happily of the aunts and uncles she was soon to have, Nhamo watched the dark shore slide by as she floated on toward the Musengezi River.

N
hamo woke with a start. At first she was completely confused. The floor rocked and her dress-cloth was soaked. I’m on the boat, she realized after a moment. She sat up cautiously. A faint light marked the eastern horizon, and the shoreline seemed very far away.

Fighting back a surge of panic, she scanned the water for clues as to where she might be. The current was moving much more swiftly than it had in the middle of the night. That was what had awakened her. “This must be the Musengezi,” she said aloud. Nhamo took the oar and began to paddle against the flow, first on one side, then the other, as she had seen Crocodile Guts do. But she didn’t make much headway. The river was very strong.

The light increased, and pink wisps of cloud appeared in the sky. Nhamo felt chilled by her wet dress-cloth. Surely there was more water in the boat than she remembered? Meanwhile, it took all her strength to make any progress. Her arms ached; she clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Soon the villagers would discover her absence and search parties would go out. She would have to be either far away or hidden before anyone decided to visit the river.

The red ball of the sun appeared to her left over the gray-green smudge of the shore. Red ripples dimpled the water, and the odor of cooking fires stirred on the sluggish morning breeze.
Nhamo’s chest began to hurt. She badly needed rest, and so she turned toward land.

It would have been safer to go to the farther bank—the villagers wouldn’t be able to find her—but she could barely see it. A heat haze lay over the water and hid all but the tallest rocks. Sometimes even they disappeared. Nhamo doggedly plied the oar. The trees drew closer with painful slowness. Her dress-cloth untied and fell into the murky water sloshing around her feet, but she couldn’t take the time to retrieve it. If she paused, the current rocked the boat in a frightening way.

Finally, with a last burst of energy, she drove the craft toward a stand of reeds and stood up to catch an arm of willow protruding from the water. The boat spun around. Nhamo fell back. “No, no, no, no,” she whimpered as the prow swung toward shore and crunched into a mass of acacias. Wicked-looking thorns passed within inches of her face. She stared up wildly at the branches crackling around the boat. Dust, ants, and twigs showered over her, but the trees also caught the craft and kept it from being swept away. After a few moments she felt secure enough to creep forward and tie the rope to an acacia. Then she lay still with her cheek pillowed on the soggy lump of her dress-cloth. Her body trembled with fatigue.

So much for her first attempt to sail to Zimbabwe!

Nhamo rested for a long time. The water smelled of rotten fish—an odor she had always associated with Crocodile Guts. Now it seemed to sink into her skin as thoroughly as it had permeated the fisherman. People always said you could smell Crocodile Guts before you saw him. Perhaps she, too, would advertise her presence in this way. Nhamo smiled bitterly. Would Zororo be as anxious to marry her if she smelled like a sun-ripened tiger fish?

As the heat of the day rose, Nhamo’s stomach began to churn. Her fingers wrinkled from being immersed in water and, perversely, her mouth dried up with thirst. Still, she was unwilling to move. In the distance she heard voices. They grew and then faded as the searchers combed the forest. It
didn’t seem likely that anyone would venture into the acacia thicket and, fortunately, the village had possessed only a single boat.

Grandmother said that once many people had owned boats. At that time the Musengezi was a tame river. When the Portuguese dammed up the Zambezi, it pushed water back up the mouth of the Musengezi, widened it, and made it a dangerous place to sail. During the civil war, Portuguese soldiers came through the village and destroyed all the boats to keep them from being used by Frelimo. Only Crocodile Guts managed to hide his, and only he continued to fish until Frelimo took over the country.

Now, as Nhamo lay in speckled shadow and watched the ants wander over acacia thorns, she considered the implications of this story. Frelimo had defeated the Portuguese several years ago. Why hadn’t anyone rebuilt the boats? Could it be that only Crocodile Guts had the
strength
to maneuver against the new, strong current? Of course, the water must always have been swift, but the shore was once much more reachable. Lesser men could have managed it.

It had looked so easy when she watched the fisherman set off on his travels. It must have looked easy to
Ambuya
, too. For the first time a thread of doubt entered Nhamo’s mind. How did Grandmother know it took only two days to reach Zimbabwe? Perhaps it only took Crocodile Guts that long.

“Ah!” gasped Nhamo as she suddenly noticed that water had crept halfway up her body. The boat was sinking! The sacks of food were dangerously close to getting soaked, and Mother’s pot was actually floating at the far end! She twisted herself into a kneeling position, getting several bad scratches from the acacias in the process, and pulled the clay pot back. She cradled it between her knees and began bailing with her drinking calabash for all she was worth.

Oh, but she was being foolish! She had often seen Crocodile Guts do the same thing. In the morning, before he set out, he had always spent time getting rid of the night’s accumulation of water. When she recalled this, Nhamo felt better.
Bailing out water was a normal activity on a boat. Crocodile Guts had sailed around safely for years, leaks and all.

Nhamo stopped to dip up clean drinking water and to nibble some of Masvita’s honey-and-millet cakes. The food made her feel immensely better.

Later, when the boat was as dry as she could manage, she took Mother out of the pot and propped her against the sack of mealie meal. “We’re going to Zimbabwe,
Mai
,” Nhamo said. “I’ll try to find the nuns at your school—I’m sure you’d like that. I’ll visit the place you lived and talk to your friends. Did you ever meet Father’s relatives? I hope they like me.”

Nhamo listened for Mother’s reply.

“Of course I’ll go on to Mtoroshanga. I imagine Father has a home there—
Ambuya
said he liked square houses.” Did chrome miners make a lot of money? Nhamo asked Mother. It would be wonderful if his place was as fine as Joao’s.

Mother told her not to expect too much.

“I have gold to help pay my way.” Nhamo jiggled the sack of nuggets tied around her neck. She put Mother away before an accident could happen, rinsed her dress-cloth over the side, and spread it out to dry. Then she stretched out naked in the speckled light and waited for late afternoon. She wanted to give everyone time to get tired of searching before she ventured into the current again.

Sometime later she perched her bottom over the side and relieved herself. The heat in the acacia thicket was overpowering. Even the ants seemed dazed by it. They sat on the thorns and waved their antennae slowly. A small, green snake slid along a branch, causing Nhamo’s heart to speed up, and disappeared into a crack in the bark. A
Nephila
spider spun a golden web, lazily swinging from twig to twig. It finished the beautiful pattern and settled itself at the center with blue-furred legs outspread.

By now Nhamo had to admit she was stalling for time. She was afraid to venture out onto the dangerous river again. The sun slanted lower and lower in the west.
Quelea
birds
swooped in flocks over the water as they searched for a place to spend the night.

“I can either go home and marry Zororo,” said Nhamo to Mother in the jar, “or I can try to reach Zimbabwe. The only thing I
can’t
do is stay here. I wish I knew how far Zimbabwe was.”

She tied her dress-cloth as best she could while lying down in the boat, untied the rope, and pushed herself away with the oar. Ah! The minute she was free, the water had her in its grip again. She paddled vigorously. She seemed to have learned something about boats because it was easier to control her direction. Rowing was still tiring.

Nhamo kept close to shore. The sun went down, casting red gleams across the water. A hippo complained loudly from somewhere near the middle of the river. Nhamo shivered. What was its opinion of boats? Did it think she was merely a log floating upstream? Hippos were quite intelligent—and curious, unfortunately. They sometimes watched the women wash clothes. They considered anything that happened to the water to be their business.

Fortunately, this hippo floated off in the opposite direction. Its head formed a black bulge in the reddening river.

Twilight came and swiftly departed. The moon was slightly larger tonight, but still gave little light. Nhamo kept checking the dark shore on her left. She didn’t want to drift too far from land. On and on she went until her arms ached and her breath came in short gasps. It was impossible to tell how far she had traveled. The shore was lightness. No cook-fires shone beyond the trees, and there was no trace of the electric lights Grandmother had described.

Nhamo had to make for land again. This time she glided into a little bay where the current was sluggish, and tied up to what she thought was a willow. She filled her calabash and ate more of the honey-and-millet cakes. “I’ll have to go ashore to build a fire, if this journey takes much longer,” she whispered to herself. It seemed proper to whisper in the dark.

As Nhamo bailed out the boat, a strange sensation came over her. It was extremely unpleasant. For a minute she
thought she was going to be sick, but then she realized that this illness came from her spirit, not her body. For the first time in her life she was completely alone.

She had been by herself in the deserted village—and when Aunt Chipo locked her into a hut for being bad—and when she went off to cook private meals. This was different. No one was waiting for her to come home, not even a bad-tempered aunt. For all the villagers knew, she was dead. Masvita would cry because her spirit might be wandering along the dark roads.

At the thought of spirits, Nhamo lay down in the boat and covered herself with as much of the dress-cloth as possible. She felt around until her fingers touched Mother’s jar. I’m not alone. Mother is with me, she thought. But the pictures that seemed so real by day were unconvincing after dark. She heard disturbing sounds in the water. Was that a crocodile swimming by? She didn’t know what they did at night. A troop of bush babies chattered as they made their way along the shore. A ground hornbill grumbled deep in its throat—
hhuhh-hhuhh, hhuhh-hhuhh.

Worse than the feeling of danger was the sheer loneliness. Nhamo had never, ever, spent a night alone. She generally slept in the middle of a troop of girls. Their breathing surrounded her, their bodies warmed the air, their movements formed a barrier between her and the dark. Suddenly, without even expecting it was going to happen, Nhamo began to cry. She did it silently, to keep the creatures on the shore from hearing. Tears rolled from the corners of her eyes and soaked into her hair.

Eventually, she went to sleep with her arms around the sack of mealie meal and her nose buried in its dusty cloth.

She set off before dawn. “I wasted too much time yesterday,” she said. In her mind was the possibility that if she tried really hard, she might reach Zimbabwe by dark. She didn’t want to spend another night alone. She was terribly stiff from rowing and sleeping in the damp, but as she paddled, the
soreness went away. The sun dried her dress-cloth and raised her spirits.

The honey-and-millet cakes were almost gone. Good as they were, at any rate, Nhamo craved variety. In the middle of the day she tied up to an immense strangler fig and clambered over it to reach land. There she set about making a fire. She boiled mealie meal and sprinkled it with dried fish. She had even taken a precious packet of salt for flavoring. This was living! With her stomach comfortably stretched, she dozed awhile and set out again.

In midafternoon, a hippo rose out of the water right beside her and opened his huge mouth. He roared—she could see right down his pink gullet—and snapped his teeth at her. Nhamo threw herself flat in the boat.
Aunh-aunh-aunh
went the hippo. A splash told her he had submerged. A second later the boat rocked. He was bumping it!

Nhamo grabbed the oar and began rowing for shore. Other hippos surfaced around her. They kept pace, their piggy eyes just above the water. The male yawned again, terrifyingly. Nhamo had never seen a hippo’s mouth so closeup. It looked like a slab of raw meat studded with teeth.
Aunh-aunh-aunh
went the beast, rearing his head toward the sky. He looked as though he wouldn’t mind chopping her boat in two!

She saw babies on the outskirts of the group. She knew that few things were more dangerous than hippos with young.

Nhamo paddled. She used muscles she hadn’t known she possessed. She prayed to every spirit she could think of, even her great-grandfather whom she had never seen. The water became shallow—the boat scraped on stone—and she despaired of escaping. But the hippos didn’t care for the shallows. They fell back to the deeper water and floated there in a long line.

Nhamo jumped out and splashed up to her waist in water. Without her weight, the boat floated free. It began spinning away downstream. She caught it with the tips of her fingers and fought desperately until she was able to plant her feet
firmly on the riverbed and pull the craft within reach of a tree.

She sat on shore the rest of the day. The hippos floated near and far. They returned frequently to observe her. It was too unfair! She had been making such good progress. She could almost imagine the electric lights of Zimbabwe, but when darkness fell there was not a shred of light in the forest. She was utterly alone.

The hippos talked among themselves. Finally, silence fell as the huge animals left the water and went foraging for grass. Nhamo climbed back into the boat and resigned herself to another miserable night.

She didn’t sleep well. When the hippos were silent, she imagined them creeping around the tree where she had tied up. Toward dawn, when they returned to the water, their grunts echoed distressingly close by. The red sunlight on the water showed their glistening heads in the deeper channel. They kept sinking and surfacing, but Nhamo thought she could see twenty adults and six babies.