The Poisonwood Bible (20 page)

The chicken house is made out of sticks. The wall has square little holes and I just wanted to see Nelson. I was bad. Sometimes I prayed for Baby Jesus to make me be good, but Baby Jesus didn’t.

The chickens were setting on eggs. Good little mamas, we said, making us some more chickens. Their house was nothing but a shack. They tried to hide their nests in the bushes but Nelson and I found them. He said they were bad hens trying to steal their babies from us. I tried to scold them, but he said chickens don’t understand English. He showed me how to sing to them: Kuyiba diaki, kuyiba diaki, mbote vel Mbote ve! Then we took back all those eggs. I got to help Nelson in the morning when Rachel and them had school, if I promised Mama I wouldn’t go near any other children.They are all sick. They have to go to the bathroom number two in the bushes and we might catch it.

We took the eggs in to Mama and she floated them in a bucket. Some sank on the bottom, and some floated on top like when you bob for apples.The sinkers are okay to eat and the floaters are the rotten ones. When you say, Last one in is a rotten egg! I reckon that means you’re going to float. Nelson wanted those and Mama worried he’d get sick if he ate them but she said, “Oh, go ahead,” and so he took them. But he didn’t eat them. He hid them in a place. He said the witch doctor Tata Kuvudundu wanted those eggs for the dead people that needed to lie down. Nganga means witch doctor. Tata Kuvudundu is one because he has six toes on one of his feet. Nelson said Nganga Kuvudundu could make live people dead, and dead people come back alive. Nelson thinks Tata Kuvudundu is probably so important he could run the army, but he’s too old. Maybe one of his sons instead. Nelson knows who Patrice Lumumba is, too, like me. He says some of them are saying to bury rocks in your garden right now, and after the white people are all dead, dig them up and those rocks will be turned into gold. Nelson said he didn’t believe that. Nobody really believes it, he said, except the people that want to. I said, Why will all the white people be dead? Nelson didn’t know.

There’s all these extra people going to church now. Nelson says it’s because the lion tried to eat up Adah, but Jesus turned her into a bushbuck right just at the last minute. Like in the Bible. And right when the lion’s mouth bit down on the Adah that turned into a bushbuck, the real Adah disappeared from there and turned up okay on our porch.

Nelson says everybody’s got their own little God here to protect them, special African ones that live in the little tiny thing they wear around their necks. Agree-gree is what you call it. It’s like a little bottle, only made out of sticks and shells and things. Sometimes I think about all those little teeny Gods riding around on people’s necks, a-hollering: Help! Let me out of here! Like the genie in the Laddin’s lamp. You just rub it and say, Here, little God, you better watch out for me or you’ll get eat up by the lion right along with me!

All the little Gods are mad at Jesus right now, and they’d like to hurt one of us if they could. If Jesus doesn’t look out. I told Nelson that Jesus is -way too big to ride around in a little gree-gree. He is big as a man, with long brown hair and sandals, size extra-large. Nelson says yes, everybody has figured out that He is a right good size. They’ve a lot of them started going to hear Father talk about Jesus and figure out what’s what. But Nelson says they’ve got one foot in the door of the church and one foot out. If something bad happens to one of us, out they’ll go.

After we found all the eggs in the bushes and took them, Baby Jesus made all the chickens be good and lay their eggs in the one big nest we made in the corner of the chicken house. Mama took a pencil and marked thirteen eggs with X.We kept those in the nest, and when the hens laid fresh ones, we took those for eating. Sometimes scrambled, sometimes hard-boiled. We don’t ever eat the X-mark eggs, because they’re a-going to turn into baby chickens. When they grow up they’ll be our new laying hens, some of them. And the other ones will grow up to be fried chicken! The not-lucky ones. They’ll get their necks chopped off and jump around squirting blood, ha ha ha, poor them. The chickens better get their own little gree-grees to wear on their necks, I reckon.

Every day I looked to see if the babies hatched out, and I was the first one to find them. They all hatched out but save for one, and it got squashed. It was flat against the mud wall behind the nest like a picture hanging up. Nelson lived in there with a dead baby chicken picture on the wall. I was sorry and didn’t try to look at his peewee any more after that.

If it’s dark outside and you see a snake, or even if you just want to talk about one, you can’t say snake.You have to say string.You say, Remember that day we saw a little black string coming home from the picnic? If it’s nighttime, that’s how you talk. Nelson got so mad at me for saying snake when it was dark, because he says after the sun goes down a snake can hear you calling its name and it’ll come a-running. Other animals too. They can hear real good in the dark, so watch out.

Nelson got mad at Leah, too, for keeping her a owl for a pet.The owl was a baby that couldn’t fly right when we found it, so Leah made it a cage and fed it bugs and some meat. Its fur is white and sticks out all over. Leah named it a word in that language they have here: Mvufu. It means owl. But Leah’s friend Pascal hates it, and Nelson hates it worse. Mama Mwanza hates it when she comes over scooting on her hands to trade us oranges for eggs. And Mama Boanda does. She’s the one that wears the black skirt with the great big pink star across her bottom and a hairdo that looks like stars too, sticking up ever whichaways. The one that does people’s hairdos is old Mama Lo, who’s only just got the two teeth, one upstairs and one down, so she chews crossways. She hates our owl the most of all, and hollered at us for having it! Because her sister just died here awhile back. Everybody that ever sees our owl just plumb hates it. Nelson said take it out of the house or he wasn’t coming in and that

was that. Well, Mama made her take it outside, even though Leah pitched a fit because it was still yet just a baby. That’s true, it was. It was getting feathers but mostly it still had white baby hair and was tame.

Nelson went and got Anatole, pulling on him by the hand like he was a note from home. Anatole said the Congo people don’t like owls because an owl flies around at night and eats up the souls of dead people. And there’s just way too many of them here lately, he said. Too many sick children for people to abide an owl hanging around and looking at them with his eyes still hungry. Even if the owl was just a baby himself. Maybe he’d want other babies for company.

Father said that was just all superstitions. So Leah went and fetched the owl back and sashayed around the house with it sitting on her shoulder, saying Father was sticking up for her side of things. Uh-oh. He smacked her hard for the sin of pride, and made her do The Verse. She sat there holding the side of her neck while she wrote it out. When she put her hand down you could see the bruise just as plain. It looked like Father was holding his hand in front of the kerosene light and making a shadow on her. But he wasn’t, he was in the other room a-reading in his Bible.

When she got done with her Verse, she went way down in the jungle to turn that baby owl loose, and we thought she never would come back. We were all scared half to death and sat up waiting for her, except Father. It was so quiet you could hear the second hand on Rachel’s Timex going sit-sit-sit. The flames in the lantern went up and down and the shadows jiggled ever time you’d go to blink your eyes. It was way after dark by then. So whatever you were thinking might have got ahold of Leah out there, snake or leopard, you couldn’t say anything out loud but string or spotted cloth. I said, “I hope a string didn’t bite her!”

Father already went in his bedroom, way way earlier. He hollered finally for Mama to put us to bed and come on herself. He said our sister would be back, so we’d just as well go on about our business because she was just looking for the attention. He said not to pay her any mind or we’d get the same medicine. Then he said, “If an owl can eat up a soul outright, he is one step ahead of the Devil, for the Devil has to purchase them first, and I see he has made some purchases right here in my own household.” Father was mad and wanted to get the subject off of Leah, since it was him that ran her off.

We didn’t say boo to him, nor go to bed either. We just sat there. Mama stared out the open doorway with all her might, waiting on Leah to get home. The mosquitoes and big white moths came in the door and went out the windows. Some of them decided to take off their coats and stay awhile, so they flew in the kerosene lamp and got burned up. That is what happens to you if you’re bad and don’t go to heaven, you go and get burned up in the bad place instead. So that night our house was the bad place for the Congolese bugs. Ha ha.

Father is trying to teach everybody to love Jesus, but what with one thing and another around here, they don’t. Some of them are scared of Jesus, and some aren’t, but I don’t think they love Him. Even the ones that go to church, they still worship the false-eye dolls and get married to each other time and again. Father gets right put out about it.

I’m scared of Jesus, too.

When she came back from the woods, we hooped and hollered and ran to the porch and just jumped up and down and pulled her inside by her shirttails. But uh-oh, there “was Father in his dark bedroom doorway looking out. All you could see was his eyes. We didn’t want to get the same medicine, so we just looked at Leah real hard with I’m sorry for you eyes and tried to get a nice message across. After we went to bed I reached over through the mosquito net and held her hand.

Mama didn’t sleep in her room.

Mama says birds are going to be her death. I’d sooner say it was snakes. But I guess if a bird is going to eat up the dead children’s souls, that is a worry. That is one more sound to listen for at night. One more thing you can’t say out loud after dark.

Rachel

IN JANUARY the Underdowns showed up as a complete surprise from Leopoldville.They came in Mr. Axelroot’s plane, when the most we were really expecting was Potato Buds and Spam. The Underdowns don’t like to come out here in the boondoggles, so believe you me this was an occasion. They looked like they had nervous-tension headaches. Mother was upset because they’re our bosses from the Mission League, and they’d caught her red-handed doing housework in her old black Capri pants with the knees worn through. She was a sight to behold there on the floor, scrubbing away, with her flyaway hair sticking out and dark bruise-colored circles under her eyes from all her worrying about us catching the kamikaze disease. What with the mongooses and lizards traipsing in and out of the house as they pleased, she had a lot more to be embarrassed about than just getting caught in her old clothes, it seems to me. But at least that horrible owl was gone.Thank goodness to that, even if Father did come down too hard on Leah about it. That was a bad scene. We were all tiptoeing around on the eggshells even more than usual, after that. But that owl stank of rotten meat so I do have to say, Good riddance.

But listen, why should we have to put on the Ritz for the Underdowns? They aren’t even Baptists, I heard Father say; they just oversee the financial affairs for the Mission League since so many people have pulled out. They are Episcopotamians, and their real name is actually something foreign like On-tray-don. We just say Underdown because it’s easier. To tell you the truth, the two of them are just a couple of the plainest Janes you ever saw, in their economical home haircuts and khaki trousers. The funny thing about Frank and Janna Underdown is that they look exactly alike except for the accessories: he has a mustache, she has little gold cross earrings and glasses on a chain. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

They sat at our table sweating while Mother ran and squeezed the orangeade and served it. Even the glasses were dripping with sweat. Outside, the sky was getting its regular afternoon storm organized: wind whacking the palm leaves together, red dust ghosts flying up from the road, little kids running like bansheets for cover. Mother was too nervous to sit down with the company so she stood behind Father’s chair, leaning on the windowsill, waiting for him to finish the newspaper they’d brought. All of them passed it around. Except Mr. Axelroot, the pilot, who probably wouldn’t know what to do with a newspaper except wipe his you-know-what.Yes, he was there among our numbers too. He stood leaning in the back doorway and spitting until I thought I would croak. He stared right at me, undressing me mentally. I have said already my parents are entirely in the dark about certain things. I made faces at him and finally he went away.

While Father was reading the latest news, Mrs. Underdown tried to make friends with Mother by complaining about her houseboy in Leopoldville. “Honestly, Orleanna, he would steal anything except the children. And he would have those, too, if he thought he could sell them. If I try to lock things up, he slaps his hands over his heart as if I’ve accused him of murder. Even though I just caught him the night before with four of Frank’s handkerchiefs and a kilo of sugar tucked into the front of his shirt. He always claims he has no idea how they got there.”

“Well, my stars,” Mother said, without seeming all that interested.

Mrs. Underdown stared at Mother, puzzled. “Your stores’?” She always implies we have an accent, by repeating our words and expressions like little jokes. With her being somewhat of a foreigner herself, that’s the pot calling the skillet black if you ask me.

For once, my sisters and I got excused from spending the whole livelong morning playing Ding Dong Schoolhouse with Mother. But we were curious about the Underdown visit and didn’t really