The Butterfly Heart (8 page)

However, telling Dad did not go exactly as planned. He comes back early on a Wednesday, so he was home by the time we got in from school. I did not especially want Madillo with me but she always knows when I am trying to avoid her. Even if I try not to act suspiciously. Today was just like that.

“What are you doing when we get home?” she said after counting her steps in Bemba (she is taking a break from Japanese). Numbers in Bemba can get very long (twenty-one, for example, is
makumi yabili na cimo
– which, if you translated it, would be “two times ten and one”, so it took us even longer than usual to get home). And to add to it Madillo only knows numbers up to a hundred, so it was very boring because she repeated herself at least ten times.

“Nothing in particular. Why?” I said.

“Are you sure you have nothing planned?”

“No.” If I had said anything else, it would have been even more obvious. And “Why are you asking?” would have made me sound guilty.

“So … if you have nothing planned, you can help me pick mulberries. I’m going to dye my T-shirts mulberry colour. The best berries are at the top of the tree and I can’t do it on my own.”

“I’m tired, Madillo. I just want to lie down when we get home. Can I help you tomorrow? Or you could get Fred to help?”

“Why would I do that when I have you, my very own DNA? And anyway, Fred doesn’t like mulberries so he won’t want to touch them. He says they are devil food.”

That is true. Fred has developed a category of food he calls “devil food”, and once he’s put something in that category he will not eat it or even touch it. He says that if he touches it, it will creep in through his skin and then he’ll be in the grip of the devil. He’s spent too much time with Madillo. And his great-granny backs him up, so when he doesn’t feel like eating something, he makes sure she is within hearing distance. Apparently she always says, “Listen to the poor boy. He’s right: you must not make him eat that.” His mum and dad seem to obey her, so it’s easy for him to get his way when she’s around.

“Well, what’s the hurry, anyway? Tomorrow will do, won’t it?”

“No, tomorrow is Thursday.”

“And?”

“You can’t pick mulberries on a Thursday, because…” Madillo looked around, trying to think of something. “Because bad things happen on a Thursday and then you might die in the tree.”

Apart from anything else, I wasn’t aware it had been decided I would be the one to climb the tree.

“On a Thursday in particular?”

“Well, Thursday’s named after Thor. He’s the one who throws lightning bolts from the sky, and it’s the rainy season. Just think about it. I mean, if you want to die a horrible, flaming death in a mulberry tree, that’s fine by me. I’m only thinking of you, Bul-Boo.”

I wish I had not been “blessed” (as Mum says) with a vivid imagination, because despite knowing that not a word of this was true I suddenly saw myself crying out piteously as I tumbled to the ground, a whirling mass of flame and lightning bolt. An imagination like that is not a blessing. And I knew then that a large part of this afternoon would be spent picking mulberries. Which it was. I didn’t mind really, because we’ve been picking them ever since we were small. Not the ones at the top that we can reach now, but the ones that hang down from the lower branches. Mum wrote a poem about it once, when we were about three. Here it is:

Anyway, I ended up not telling Dad, which was maybe just as well.

I
think this time I must act fast. But I cannot tell the small girl what is to be done. She is quiet, but her sister talks to the wind if it will listen. She talks to the acacia trees and the stones, and to the snakes when they are carefully tied up in the bag. And if there is a human close to her, she will talk to them. If I tell the quiet one, she will tell her sister – and she will tell someone else. She cannot help it: they are one person split into two. There are some things children do not need to know and this is one of those things.

For this I will have to call on Chitimukulu, our great chief. Our priest who knows all things. He knows of my gift with the snakes, he knows I use it well. But I will seek his approval for what I must do. I do not want to bring shame to the Palace of Lubemba. Our tradition is not for abuse by old men with nothing but wickedness in their minds. It is not for buffalo heads and drunkards to destroy our young girls. I will speak to him and he will grant me permission.

The young girl who ran away – Lubilo, the fast one – she died in sadness and fear. Her small life was swallowed by the crocodile, which knows no better. Winifred walks now with a weight on her shoulders, her small head dropping so that she stares at the earth. But there is no hope for her in the earth. Perhaps she would rather die like Lubilo, quickly, with no time for thoughts. But I do not want that to happen. Chitimukulu would not want that to happen.

I must do this thing.

It
was so hot last night, I couldn’t sleep. All the windows were open but the air wasn’t moving, so I got up and woke Madillo. This is not an easy thing to do – she could sleep through a tidal wave – but I didn’t want to go downstairs by myself. Once I did that and I almost stepped on a scorpion that was just sitting at the bottom of the stairs as if it was waiting for me. I know some people say that scorpions won’t attack you unless you attack them first, but how do they know the difference between an attack and someone stepping on them by mistake? I read about one type called the deathstalker, which definitely sounds like it would attack first. Although I suppose it didn’t give itself that name. Anyway, that’s why I woke Madillo to come with me.

When we got downstairs, I opened the fridge so I could stand in its cold air for a bit. We didn’t switch on the lights or the mosquitoes would have come. Madillo just sat at the kitchen table and rested her head on her arms. I didn’t need her falling asleep, so I decided (why do I always do this?) to talk to her about the back-up plan I had been thinking about.

“You know you suggested we spoke to Fred’s great-granny about Winifred? Well, I think we should. It’s not that I believe in this witch thing or anything, but maybe she can help.”

Madillo sat up then. “I knew I was right. Did Fred ever tell you about the time she put a spell on the chief in their village? He had taken one of her goats without asking, and when she asked for it back he said he was the chief and it was now his goat. She cast a spell on him then and there – ‘Abracadabra, psika psoka, hocus pocus, ying yong yang’ – and he began to grow horns straight out of his head. Goats’ horns, curly and hard, pushing their way through his skull. He begged her to take away the curse, he brought herds of goats to her door, he wailed and lay flat out on the ground in front of her. But she ignored him. And the horns carried on growing, each day a few centimetres longer, until they were too heavy for his head and he could no longer stand upright.” She stopped and looked at me. “So I think we should speak to her. Maybe she could cast a spell on this old man who wants to marry Winifred?”

“
Psika psoka, hocus pocus, ying yong yang
? Madillo, she did not say that! I know she didn’t.”

“Well, maybe not those exact words… But she did curse him – she has powers.”

“What happened to the chief afterwards, did the horns stop growing?”

“When it got to the stage where he couldn’t get up from the ground, she reversed the spell so that slowly, centimetre by centimetre, they shrank. But first she took his whole herd of goats, as well as his chickens and a cow. He never did anything to her again.”

“Perhaps it would be too dangerous to involve her. What if she got irritated with
us
? Can you imagine what she’d do?”

“We’re Fred’s friends – she wouldn’t do anything to us. Anyway, I think she likes me,” Madillo said.

“Then you can do the talking,” I said, because I know the way it goes. We make plans and then when we get to the point of having to speak to someone, Madillo goes quiet and pushes me forward, or just looks the other way as if she has nothing to do with it.

“I’m not good at talking to adults,” she said.

A feeble excuse, but we agreed in the end, as we always do, that I would do the talking. We would ask Fred to bring his great-granny to the gate tomorrow so we could speak to her. (We don’t like going into the house because of his silent mum and loud-voiced dad.)

I felt a bit cooler after standing in front of the fridge all this time, so we went back to bed where I dreamt I’d grown hooves on my hands and feet and couldn’t write so Sister Leonisa put me out of the classroom.

Madillo and I have been put out of the classroom so many times, I can’t keep count. It’s as if Sister Leonisa wakes up some mornings and thinks, yes, today I might just have to put one of the twins out of the classroom. It could be for anything, big or small. And to be honest, I don’t really mind – I prefer to be outside than in the stuffy classroom.

Winifred has only been put out once, but it was for a funny thing. One day she brought in a string with three tiny cowbells tied onto it. One of the boys who sits in front of our desk is called David and he’s really annoying because he spends all his time trying to get into Sister Leonisa’s good books, especially by telling on people. I don’t know why he carries on doing it, because Sister doesn’t like tell-tales, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I think he has what Mum would call a “mean streak”, which I always imagine as a thin streak running down his body with thin little mean thoughts trapped inside it.

That day I watched as Winifred carefully tied the string with the cowbells onto the back of David’s trousers. She had wrapped the bells in tissue paper so they wouldn’t make a noise while she tied the string. She’s the only one who could have done it without him noticing, as she always does everything quietly. When David got up to go and tell on somebody, the bells started tinkling as if he had a ringing tail. That was when Winifred got put out of the class. And she felt bad about it – even though David’s mean – so the next day she brought him a lollipop to say sorry. I think it’s probably the only time I have seen her play a trick on someone. It stopped him telling tales, anyway, and since the lollipop he and Winifred have even become a bit friendly. Maybe he was just mean because he didn’t know how to make friends.

It
is a long way to Kasama to visit Chitimukulu. Many hours on the bus which leaves in the dark of the morning and arrives in the dark of the night. A young man who I share an ancestor with drives the bus and he will let me travel for nothing if it is not full. I will sleep so my head is clear when I see Chitimukulu.