Through triangles between quiet banana leaves I saw flame-haloed faces laugh at the promise of death everlasting. Presentiment that long shadow passes over, and we are the starded grass.
Leak
THIS AWFUL NIGHT is the worst we've ever known: the nsongonya. They came on us like a nightmare. Nelson bang-bang-banging on the back door got tangled up with my sleep, so that, even after I was awake, the next hours had the unsteady presence of a dream. Before I even knew where I was, I found myself pulled along by somebody's hand in the dark and a horrible fiery sting sloshing up my calves. We were wading through very hot water, I thought, but it couldn't be water, so I tried to ask the name of the burning liquid that had flooded our house?no, for we were already outside?that had flooded the whole world?
"Nsongonya," they kept shouting, "Lesfourmis! Un corps d'armee!" Ants. We were walking on, surrounded, enclosed, enveloped, being eaten by ants. Every surface was covered and boiling, and the path like black flowing lava in the moonlight. Dark, bulbous tree trunks seethed and bulged. The grass had become a field of dark daggers standing upright, churning and crumpling in on themselves. We walked on ants and ran on them, releasing their vinegary smell to the weird, quiet night. Hardly anyone spoke. We just ran as fast as we could alongside our neighbors. Adults carried babies and goats; children carried pots of food and dogs and younger brothers and sisters, the whole village of Kilanga. I thought of Mama Mwanza: would her sluggish sons carry her? Crowded together we moved down the road like a rushing stream, ran till we reached the river, and there we stopped. All of us shifting from foot to foot, slapping, some people moaning in pain but only the babies shrieking
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and wailing out loud. Strong men sloshed in slow motion through waist-deep water, dragging their boats, while the rest of us waited our turn to get in someone's canoe.
"Beene, where is your family?"
I jumped. The person beside me was Anatole.
"I don't know. I don't really know where anybody is, I just ran." I was still waking up and it struck me now with force that I should have been looking out for my family. I'd thought to worry about Mama Mwanza but not my own crippled twin. A moan rose out of me: "Oh, God!"
"What is it?"
"I don't know where they are. Oh, dear God. Adah will get eaten alive. Adah and Ruth May."
His hand touched mine in the dark. "I'll find them. Stay here until I come back for you."
He spoke softly to someone next to me, then disappeared. It seemed impossible to stand still where the ground was black with ants, but there was nowhere else to go. How could I leave Adah behind again? Once in the womb, once to the lion, and now like Simon Peter I had denied her for the third time. I looked for her, or Mother or anyone, but only saw other mothers running into the water with small, sobbing children, trying to splash and rub their arms and legs and faces clean of ants. A few old people had waded out neck-deep. Far out in the river I could see the half-white, half-black head of balding old Mama Lalaba, who must have decided crocodiles were preferable to death by nsongonya. The rest of us waited in the shallows, -where the water's slick shine was veiled with a dark lace of floating ants. Father forgive me according unto the multitude of thy mercies. I have done everything so wrong, and now there will be no escape for any of us. An enormous moon trembled on the dark face of the Kwilu River. I stared hard at the ballooning pink reflection, believing this might be the last thing I would look upon before my eyes were chewed out of my skull. Though I didn't deserve it, I wanted to rise to heaven remembering something of beauty from the Congo.
Rachel
{THOUGHT I HAD DIED and gone to hell. But it's worse than that? I'm alive in hell.
While everybody was running from the house, I cast around in a frenzy trying to think what to save. It was so dark I could hardly see, but I had a very clear presence of mind. I only had time to save one precious thing. Something from home. Not my clothes, there wasn't time, and not the Bible?it didn't seem worth saving at that moment, so help me God. It had to be my mirror. Mother was screaming us out the door with the very force of her lungs, but I turned around and shoved straight past her and went back, knowing what I had to do. I grabbed my mirror. Simply broke the frame Nelson had made for it and tore it right down from the wall. Then I ran as fast as my legs would carry me.
Out in the road it was a melee of shoving, strangers touching and shoving at me. The night of ten thousand smells. The bugs were all over me, eating my skin, starting at my ankles and crawling up under my pajamas till they would end up only God knows where. Father was somewhere nearby, because I could hear him yelling about Moses and the Egyptians and the river running with blood and what not. I clasped my mirror to my chest so it wouldn't get lost or broken.
We were running for the river. At first I didn't know why or vhere, but it didn't matter. You couldn't go anywhere else because the crowd just forced you along. It caused me to recall something I'd read once: if ever you're in a crowded theater and there's a fire, you should stick out your elbows and raise up your feet. How to Sur-
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five 101 Calamities was the name of the book, which covered what to do in any dire situation?falling elevators, train wrecks, theater fires exetera. And thank goodness I'd read it because now I was in a jam and knew just what to do! I stuck my elbows very hard into the ribs of the people who were crushing in around me, and kind of wedged myself in. Then I just more or less picked up my feet and it worked like a charm. Instead of getting trampled I simply floated like a stick in a river, carried along on everyone else's power.
But as soon as we reached the river my world came crashing down. The rush came to a standstill, yet the ants were still swarming everywhere. The minute I stood up on the riverbank I got covered with them again, positively crawling. I couldn't bear it another second and wished I would die. They were in my hair. Never in my innocent childhood did I prepare for being in the Congo one dark night vith ants tearing at my scalp. I might as well be cooked in a cannibal pot. My life has come to this.
It took me a moment to realize people were climbing into boats and escaping! I screamed to be put in a boat, but they all ignored me. No matter how hard I screamed. Father was over yonder trying to get people to pray for salvation, and no one listening to him either. Then I spotted Mama Mwanza being carried on her husband's back toward the boats. They went right past me! She did deserve help, poor thing, but I personally have a delicate constitution.
I waded out after her and tried to get into their family's boat. All the Mwanza children were still clambering in, and since I am their neighbor I thought surely they would want me with them, but I was suddenly thrown back by someone's arm across my face. Slam bang, thank you very much! I was thrown right into the mud. Before I even realized what had happened, my precious mirror had slipped from my hand and cracked against the side of the boat. I scooped it up quickly from the river's edge, but as I stood up the pieces slid apart and fell like knives into the mud. I stood watching in shock as the boat sloshed away from the shore. They left me. And my mirror, strewn all around, reflecting moonlight in crazy shapes. Just left me flat, in the middle of all that bad luck and broken sky.
Ruth May
EVERYBODY WAS WHOOPING and hollowing and I kicked my legs to get down but I couldn't because Mama had a hold of me so tight it was hurting my arm. Hush, little baby! Hush! She was running along, so it kind of bounced when she said it. She used to sing me: Hush, little baby! Mama's going to buy you a looking glass!
She was going to buy me every single thing, even if it all got broke or turned out wrong.
When we got down there where everybody was she put me over her shoulder and stepped in the boat sideways with somebody's hands holding me up and the boat was wobbly. We sat down. She made me get down. It hurt, the little ants were biting us all over bad and it burned. That time Leah fed one to the ant lion, Jesus saw that. Now his friends are all coming back to eat us up.
Then we saw Adah. Mama reached out to her and started
to cry and talk loud, like crying-talking, and then somebody else had a hold of me. It was somebody Congolese and not even Mama anymore, so I cried too. Who will buy me a looking glass that gets broke and a mockingbird that won't sing? I kicked and kicked but he wouldn't put me down. I heard babies crying and women crying and I couldn't turn my head around to see. I was going away from Mama is all I knew.
Nelson says to think of a good place to go, so when it comes time to die I won't, I'll disappear and go to that place. He said think of that place every day and night so my spirit will know the way. But I hadn't been. I knew where was safe, but after I got better I
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forgot to think about it anymore. But when Mama ran down the road with me I saw everybody was going to die. The whole world a-crying and yelling bad. So much noise. I put my fingers in my ears and tried to think of the safest place.
I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them anymore because you are one. They lie so still on the tree branch; they are the same everything as the tree. You could be right next to one and not even know. It's so quiet there. That's just exactly what I want to go and be, when I have to disappear. Your eyes will be little and round but you are so far up there you can look down and see the whole world, Mama and everybody. The tribes of Ham, Shem, and Japheth all together. Finally you are the highest one of all.
Adah
LIVE WAS I ere I saw evil. Now I am on the other side of that night and can tell the story, so perhaps I am still alive, though I feel no sign of it. And perhaps it was not evil I saw but merely the way of all hearts when fear has stripped off the husk of kind pretensions. Is it evil to look at your child, then heft something else in your arms and turn away?
Nod, nab, abandon.
Mother, I can read you backward and forward.
Live was I ere I saw evil.
I should have been devoured in my bed, for all I seem to be worth. In one moment alive, and in the next left behind. Tugged from our beds by something or someone, the ruckus, banging and shouting outside, my sisters leaped up screaming and were gone. I could not make a sound for the ants at my throat. I dragged myself out to moonlight and found a nightmare vision of dark red, boiling ground. Nothing stood still, no man or beast, not even the grass that writhed beneath the shadow, dark and ravenous. Not even the startled grass.
Only my mother stood still.There she was, planted before me in the path, rising on thin legs out of the rootless devouring earth. In her arms, crosswise like a load of kindling, Ruth May.
I spoke out loud, the only time: help me.
"Your father . . ." she said. "I think he must have gone on ahead with Rachel. I wish he'd waited, honey, he'd carry you but Rachel was ... I don't know how she'll get through this. Leah will, Leah can take care of herself." ! '
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She can you can't you can't!
I spoke again: Please.
She studied me for a moment, weighing my life. Then nodded, shifted the load in her arms, turned away.
"Come on!" she commanded over her shoulder. I tried to stay close behind her, but even under the weight of Ruth May she was sinuous and quick in the crowd. My heels were nipped from behind by other feet. Stepped on, though I felt it vaguely, already numb from the burning ants. I knew when I went down. Someone's bare foot was on my calf and then my back, and I was being trampled. A crush of feet on my chest. I rolled over again and again, covering my head with my arms. I found my way to my elbows and raised myself up, grabbing with my strong left hand at legs that dragged me forward. Ants on my earlobes, my tongue, my eyelids. I heard myself crying out loud?such a strange noise, as if it came from my hair and fingernails, and again and again I came up. Once I looked for my mother and saw her, far ahead. I followed, bent on my own rhythm. Curved into the permanent song of my body: left. . . behind.
I did not know who it was that lifted me over the crowd and set me down into the canoe with my mother. I had to turn quickly to see him as he retreated. It was Anatole. We crossed the river together, mother and daughter, facing each other, low in the boat's quiet center. She tried to hold my hands but could not. For the breadth of a river we stared without speaking.
That night I could still wonder why she did not help me. Live was I ere I saw evil. Now I do not wonder at all. That night marks my life's dark center, the moment when growing up ended and the long downward slope toward death began. The wonder to me now is that / thought myself worth saving. But I did. I did, oho, did I! I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom.
I
Leak
SUDDENLY THEN I was pushed from behind and pulled by other hands into a boat and we were on the water, crossing to safety. Anatole clambered in behind me. I was stunned to see he had Ruth May over his shoulder, like a fresh-killed antelope.
"Is she okay?"
"She is sleeping, I think. Twenty seconds ago she was screaming. Your mother and Adah have gone ahead withTata Boanda," he said.
"Praise God. Adah's all right?"
"Adah is safe. Rachel is a demon. And your father is giving a sermon about Pharaoh's army and the plagues. Everyone is all right."
I squatted low with my chin on my knees and watched my bare feet change slowly from dark auburn, to speckled, to white as the ants dispersed and forayed out into the bottom of the canoe. I could hardly feel the pain now?the feet I gazed at seemed to be someone else's. I gripped both sides of the boat, suddenly fearing I might vomit or pass out. When I could hold my head up again, I asked Anatole quietly, "Do you think this is the hand of God?"
He didn't answer. Ruth May whimpered in her sleep. I waited so long for his answer I finally decided he hadn't heard me.
And then he simply said, "No."
"Then why?"
"The world can always give you reasons. No rain, not enough for the ants to eat. Something like that. Nsongonya are always moving anyway, it is their nature. Whether God cares or not." He sounded bitter against God. Bitter with reason. The night felt like a dream
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rushing past me too fast, like a stream in flood, and in this uncontrollable dream Anatole was the one person who cared enough to help me. God didn't. I tried to see through the thick darkness that clung to the river, searching out the opposite shore.
"God hates us," I said.
"Don't blame God for what ants have to do. We all get hungry. Congolese people are not so different from Congolese ants."
"They have to swarm over a village and eat other people alive?"
"When they are pushed down long enough they will rise up. If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know."
The boat was crammed with people, but in the dark I couldn't recognize their hunched backs. Anatole and I were speaking English, and it seemed no one else was there.
"What does that mean? That you think it's right to hurt people?"
"You know me as a man. I don't have to tell you what I am."
What I knew was that Anatole had helped us in more ways than my family could even keep track of. My sister was now sleeping on his shoulder.
"But you believe in what they're doing to the whites, even if you won't do it yourself. You're saying you're a revolutionary like the Jeune Mou Pro!'
The dark, strong arms of a stranger paddled us forward while I shuddered with cold dread. It occurred to me that I feared Anatole's anger more than anything.
"Things are not so simple as you think," he finally said, sounding neither angry nor especially kind. "This is not a time to explain the history of Congolese revolutionary movements."
"Adah says President Eisenhower has sent orders to kill Lumum
ba," I confessed suddenly. After holding in this rank mouthful of words for many days, I spilled them out into our ant-infested boat. "She heard it on Axelroot's radio. She says he's a mercenary killer working for the Americans."
I waited for Anatole to make any response at all to this?but he didn't. A coldness like water swelled inside my stomach. It couldn't
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possibly be true, yet Adah has always had the power to know things I don't. She showed me the conversation between Axelroot and another man, written down in her journal. Since then I've had no clear view of safety. Where is the easy land of ice-cream cones and new Keds sneakers and We Like Ike, the country where I thought I knew the rules.Where is the place I can go home to? "Is it true, Anatole?"
The water moved under us and away, a cold, rhythmic rush. "I told you, this is not a time to talk."
"I don't care! We're all going to die anyway, so I'll talk if I please."
If he was even still listening, he must have considered me a
tedious child. But I had so much fright in me I couldn't stop it from
coming out. I longed for him to shush me, just tell me to be still
and that I was good.
"I want to be righteous, Anatole. To know right from wrong, that's all. I want to live the right way and be redeemed." I was trembling so hard I feared my bones might break. No word.
I shouted to make him hear. "Don't you believe me? When I walk through the valley of the shadow the Lord is supposed to be with me, and he's not! Do you see him here in this boat?"
The man or large woman whose back I'd been leaning against shifted slightly, then settled lower. I vowed not to speak another word.
But Anatole said suddenly, "Don't expect God's protection in places beyond God's dominion. It will only make you feel punished. I'm warning you.When things go badly, you will blame yourself"
"What are you telling me?"
"I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky."
I could see what he thought: that my faith injustice was childish, no more useful here than tires on a horse. I felt the breath of God