The Bride Price: An African Romance (Chitundu Chronicles) (18 page)

“One day, I saw my chance when we were taken down to the river to bathe and wash clothes.  I left my clothes scattered on the shore, made tracks to the water, then ran back using the clothes as stepping stones so there would be no tracks.  I must have run for three days, but no one came after me. I had told none of the other girls what I was going to do, as I was afraid the soldiers would force them to tell, and then punish them for my disobedience. I thought if I left my clothes and the tracks to the river, they would think a crocodile had taken me. I was naked and bitten by insects, and very thin.

I finally found a house where they were willing to take me in. They gave me boy trousers and a big shirt to wear. I worked for them for two years without pay, until I left. I had heard there was a shelter for war orphans in the nearby town.  There I was sent to a school, as they had found a sponsor for me.  By that time, I was bigger than all the girls in Form 2. The teacher would taunt me and say, “Why don’t you go and join your mother?” 

“Of course, my mother was dead, so they were really telling me I should die. No one would be my friend and because the teacher referred to me as a rebel.  I ran away because I couldn’t stand the shaming. Somebody said that shame undresses us, and it is true. Flo at the Big Banana Bar gave me a job.  She was like a mother to me. She washed my hair, got me girl’s clothes, and she taught me how to make change and serve customers. Then Dodge came and arranged for me to come and take care of his mother.  He received a bride price for me and gave it to Flo, so that is how I came to live with Festal and Myrna.”

“Then Festal married me, and we are a family now.  The best compliment was when Myrna told me I could call her sister.  Now that I have met Violet, I see what a compliment that is. And that is my story.” Gift reached for a glass of water.

Beatrice and Violet looked at each other with wide eyes and mouths wide open. Neither of them mentioned that Dodge’s mother had been dead for twelve years and Dodge had lied to everyone involved.

“Gift, you never told me this story,” Myrna said.

“No. I do not like to think about it because it makes me feel how much I have lost, and how I was nothing. When I try to remember things, I often can only remember the crying times, and so I would rather forget everything than have that fill my mind again.”

“You have a family now,” Myrna said.

“Yes.  I cannot tell you how happy I was when I saw you in your beautiful house, surrounded by those babies.  It was like my family had been given back to me. Festal reminded me of my father who worked with the U.N. Peacekeeping force in Zaire. He was a warrior who loved his family.  He used to beg my mother to leave the country, but she loved her village and all the people and family she grew up with. She couldn’t imagine war would come to them as they had never voted, or even carried weapons. She was a Christian and we were all baptized. Of course, you can tell that from the tattoo of the cross on my forehead. I think she thought we were protected.  My father was killed crossing the border. The rest of the family was killed at night in our home and our village was burned. As far as I know, no one from our family survived.” Violet and Myrna exchanged glances.

“Thank you for your story, Gift. We all need to get some sleep now.  We can share my bed and Mother can sleep on the other sofa,” said Violet. The girls were already curled up on the one sofa, each of them cupped around each other with a blanket over the three. Festal was already asleep on his mat in the back parlor near the kitchen, with Royal curled up behind him. Joseph and the boys were in the dormitory upstairs. Beatrice went to check on her husband before turning in.

“Tomorrow, we will visit the mercantile warehouse Joseph is building.” Violet said.

After they washed and cleaned their teeth, Violet sang a song of blessing to the family and their visitors; it was a song she had learned on the radio. “God Bless this House.” Her contralto voice was even richer and more resonant than Myrna remembered. Myrna and Gift had tears in their eyes at the beauty of the music and the night. They slept well, the three sisters in the big bed, three little sisters on the sofa, and Beatrice on the mohair plush sofa. 

In the morning, everyone ate sorghum porridge and sliced mangos, then followed Joseph to his new warehouse. The ground was a crisscross of white strings marking off the corners of the foundation. The children bounced across them as though they were jumping rope. Cement was being mixed in huge circles of gray on the ground as the trenches for the foundation were being excavated by workers. Violet stayed back from the dust and the melee of workers, holding her youngest son in her arms. He was named Bwalya, after Joseph’s father, the first son given a traditional name.

Beatrice checked on her husband and took him some breakfast and Myrna insisted on going along. Bishop lay curled on his mattress. The room was dark and at first he didn’t recognize Myrna. When he saw her, he said,   “I must be dreaming. My angel is back.  Don’t come too close. I am so joyful to see you looking so well. I have prayed for you every night, and here you are. I am happy. This is the best medicine I could have. Now don’t stay too long, the doctor was very strict about that. I guess I am catching.” Myrna squeezed his hand and left to join the others outside.

During a lull in the conversation, when lunch was over and the women gathered on the verandah,  Gift offered another story. The women looked on with anticipation, as Gift’s stories were proving very interesting. Violet nursed the baby while the other women looked on.

“Did I ever tell you how Myrna saved my baby?” Gift began.

“No. Tell us,” the women said in unison.

“I was just married to Festal and I didn’t know exactly when the baby was due, as I had never had a period. One day, my waters broke and Myrna hitched up the donkeys, which she had never done before. She put her twins into the huge black pot with the three legs, and she hauled me to the doctor. Only my baby wouldn’t wait. So Myrna parked the wagon and delivered Royal right there on the wagon under the eucalyptus trees. The doctors said Myrna had the skills of a surgeon, the way she had washed me and wrapped me up tight in the cloth she had packed. I had a fistula, and without her help, I would have bled to death, they said. That is my only baby that has survived, so far.”

Beatrice was aghast at this story and praised her daughter for her courage. Violet said it just confirmed what a great doctor she might have been.” Did you know, Myrna, how I coveted that big old pot with the three legs? I knew what it meant to Mother, and when she gave it to you, I was bitter for a long time. Funny, because I never had a daughter to pass it down to.”

“I didn’t know that, Violet. I will see that you have it one day. I don’t think my girls will have any attachment to it, but it has been very useful to me.”

“Myrna, why didn’t you ever write and tell us that you did this? It is remarkable,” her mother added.

“She has been an angel and an example to my boy and me,” Gift said.
At the end of the week, Myrna was sorry to leave her sister and Joseph and the festive holiday they all enjoyed together. But she was glad to get back to her place, her women’s co-op, her calves, and the serenity of their life in Copperfine. They were laden down with gifts from Joseph and Violet, including a clock with red velvet roses and rhinestones on the hour hand, a new kerosene lantern, a knitting machine for the women’s cooperative, and half a dozen sewing shears.

Violet made a resolution to visit Myrna, once her latest baby was two and more resistant to disease.  Gift, in her candid way, said, “In Copperfine, you could breathe flies if you weren’t careful.”  That image disarmed Violet, so that she rarely found an opportunity to visit Copperfine.

One day when Joseph was in cattle country, he stopped by the Big Banana Bar to purchase baskets and sleeping mats from the women’s co-op for his mercantile. He overheard Gift talking to Flo.

“You know, Myrna didn’t know I was going to marry her husband.  But when I did, she tried to help me stay in his good graces, even though I was jealous of her, because he told me I could never measure up to her.  I can’t, but she never makes me feel that way.  She is my angel.” The two women were sitting at the inside counter with Royal Festal pulling at their clothing. He didn’t hear what response Flo made, but he wanted to understand how Myrna became such a paragon of virtue. He knew his family was lacking something that hers had.  He would bring his family to visit their cousins in the country.

CHAPTER 30
COUNTRY COUSINS

Two years later, Violet visited the cattle country with her brood.

I visited Myrna and Festal when my boys were old enough to avoid the mud holes, the manure, and be strong enough to ward off diseases the flies carried. We arrived at midday when the heat was that dull, heavy white heat where the sun is so pervasive—it isn’t even visible. The dust was settled, the birds were silent, and the cattle were standing in small groupings with their tails running like fans, trying to protect their udders and flanks. The calves hung under their mothers, never lifting their heads as they waited their turn to nurse. The cows sucked up water and you could see their sides fill. 

Joseph was oblivious to the filth and the heat. He grasped Festal around the neck and held his hand all the way to the house. Our boys looked at each other in disbelief, then joined their cousins in one game after another. We had to corral them at night, they were so caught up in the expanse of the place, and the myriad of places where they could run and hide, fire slingshots, and capture locusts. The chameleon with her skittish brood of offspring was a huge hit, as were the calves that bucked around the corral, butting at the boys and chasing them.

Festal’s hounds were ecstatic, slavering in their eagerness to give chase and play every game the boys dreamed up.  Everyone had to have a turn at pumping water from the well.  The girls were quick to engage their cousins in games of hide and seek, steal the flag, jump rope, and other chase games. The termite hills were their forts and castles. By nightfall, the entire group was exhausted, including the twins and Royal Festal.  He fell asleep on the wall of the compound, his legs hanging down on either side, and had to be carried to the sleeping hut by his father.

   Myrna and Gift and I caught up on the changes in our lives. While most of the women in her village of Copperfine still wore the traditional chitenge of patterned prints imported from Holland, our townspeople no longer sewed their own garments, nor were woven traditional fabrics readily available. The foot looms were now consigned to the cultural museum. We had graduated to wearing fashions from Europe. Some were current, but most came from the second hand clothing market. There was every conceivable fashion from the last twenty years, coming from all over the world, sold in the market place. Women wore pointed toe shoes, not a very good fit for feet used to open-toed sandals, or going barefoot on trails to get water or firewood. The town women were even starting to wear slacks, not in public, but at home. The hairstyles that imitated the afros of the civil rights movement –  although none of us were too sure what that was about, other than hearing the names – had given way to wigs of every conceivable style and color.  We had all heard of their King, Martin Luther, Jr.. 

When we looked at an
Ebony Magazine
, it was hard to see what they meant by a ghetto, since the buildings were better than what our wealthy magistrate owned.  Women wore wigs to work, and long skirts and dresses of various styles. Many polyester leisure suits came our way, which were indestructible and of every hue, although burnt orange and baby blue seemed to be the most prevalent. Much later, Levis and sweatshirts, and printed tee shirts with a myriad of ads on them, flooded our market stalls. But in the early sixties, we were lucky to find sweaters and church wear in the dead-white-men’s-clothing of the marketplace. We called them dead-white-men’s-clothes because no one would abandon such good clothes unless he was dead, and only a white man could afford so many. 

Most of the families had two sets of clothing, one for work, and one for church. Students often wore their school uniforms to church, and some churches even provided a gown or robe for church members, so the entire congregation could parade to church as one body.  I could see that Myrna’s family had two basic changes of clothing, and they hung them on the posts of their beds. She did not have electricity, but I gave her a new kerosene lantern with an adjustable wick. It gave off a brilliant glow, bright enough for her to sew or read in the evening.  Festal took offense at it, and would mutter every time she lighted it, which she told me later, was every evening for the next thirty years. The children did their homework by it, and it allowed her more hours in her always long day.

Festal took excellent care of his family. His children were all in school, and his three rondavels comfortably housed, with simple, but traditional furnishings. They did not have any appliances or furniture other than the bed for Myrna, mats for the children, and a slatted crib Festal had built for the infants. The inside of the house was remarkably cool and free of flies.  It was dark and smelled of floor polish and the candles that Myrna made from beeswax, and other scents such as lavender and cinnamon. When they would whitewash the inside, the whole room would smell like animal glue.

Myrna kept the bedclothes in hampers and the foodstuffs in clay canisters or tins. She had a water jug with a spigot that slowly leached through its red clay sides, the evaporation keeping the water as cool as if it was refrigerated. Only the kitchen table and single bed interrupted the circular symmetry of the house. While I was there I noted the small hole in the curtains and the worn-thin area on the table cloth. But Myrna was still meticulous about keeping them clean and ironed. I recognized the fabric we gave Festal so many years ago throughout the house.