therefore unto the supplications of thy servant, that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day.
Night and day and night and day. Jesus is looking right in the windows no matter what. He can see through the roof. He can see
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inside our heads, where we think the bad things. I tried not to think of the doctor with no clothes on with all of them up on the roof but he had that yellow hair on his arms. Rachel screamed and thrashed her white hair and sassed back at Father bad: "Who cares who cares who cares! Who is even going to know the difference if we scoot out of here and go back home where it's safe?" Father yelled, "God will know the difference!" And Rachel fell down hard before I even heard the sound of the wall and his hand. "God despises a coward who runs while others stand and suffer. "
Where will we be safe? When Mama raises her eyes up to him they are so cold there isn't even any Mama home inside there, and she says, "Nathan Price, the meek shall inherit.You wait and see."
I know the meek shall inherit and the last shall be first, but the Tribes of Ham were last. Now will they be first? I don't know.
In our family, Mama conies last. Adah is next to last because her one whole side is bad, and then comes Mama last of all, because something in her is even worse hurt than what Adah's got.
Nelson told me how to find a safe place. One time I woke up and there he was: Nelson.
Oh, is he mad because I tried to see him naked, I don't know. My mouth couldn't say any words. But there he was by the bed, and Mama gone from beside me.
He put his hand over my mouth, stooping down and nobody else there. Nobody else. Shhh, he said and put his hand. I thought he vas going to hurt me, but instead he was my friend. Shhh, he said, and took his hand off my mouth and gave me a present. A bu, Bandu.Take this!
Bandu is my name. Nommo Bandu! It means the littlest one on the bottom. And it means the reason for everything. Nelson told me that.
What is it? I said, but not any words came out of my mouth. I looked inside my two hands, where he put it, and there was a tiny box like what matches come in. A matchbox. The matchbox had a picture of a lion on the outside and I thought there would be a tiny little lion inside to be my pet, like the mean ones that eat the ants
only nicer. Stuart Lion. But no. Nelson opened it up and took out something, I couldn't tell what. It looked like a piece of chicken bone -with gristle and string all on it and sticky and something black. What was it, something that died? I was scared and started fixing to cry.
Nelson said, Don't be scared. He said, this has been in the magic fire.You call this nkisi. He made me touch it and it didn't burn me. Look, he said. He held it right up to my eye. There was a tiny hole in the side and a tiny peg that fit in the hole, tied with string. Put your spirit inside here, he said, here quick, blow in this hole. He opened up the peg and I blew in the little hole and quick he said my name Nommo Bandu Nommo Bandu Nommo Bandu! and shut up the hole -with the little peg and Now you are safe. He said now if anything happens to me, if I start fixing to die or something, hold on to this tight and bambula! Ruth May will disappear.
How do you know? But Nelson knows everything about dead people. His mama and father and brothers and baby sister are all dead on the bottom of the river.
I don't want to disappear, I said.
But he said, Only if you are going to die. He said this way I won't die, I will just disappear for a second and then I'll turn up someplace else, where it's safe. Instead of dead I'll be safe. But first I have to think of that place every day, so my spirit will know where to run away to, when it's time. You have to think of your safe place every day. Nelson's face was bigger than a candle right in my face and I could hear the good way he smelled.That soap he uses for washing up and his clothes. All those smells were so loud in my ears. Nelson is my friend that showed me how to sing to the chickens. Bidumuka is the magic name of a chicken. Nobody else knows that, not even Leah or Father.
Nelson said, Don't forget!
I put the matchbox with the lion picture on it, and the magic burned bones inside, I put it under my pillow. Nkisi. Sometimes I wake up and it is still there. If they come and try to make me go up on the roof naked I will just disappear, and turn up some whole
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other place. But first I have to think of where I will go. I can feel the box in my hand. My pillow is wet and the tiny little box is soft but I know what is inside. Secret. There is the window, and it's daytime now and people in the other room talking and they don't know? I have a secret. But Nelson has gone somewhere and his mama dead; I wonder where and I can't remember the song we sang to the chickens.
Leak
J UTH MAY'S SICKNESS stayed with her, but Mother began pulling f Jierselftogether. Seeing the two of them curled in the same bed, one slowly emerging and the other losing ground, put me back onto familiar, unpleasant thoughts of Adah and me in the womb. I have prayed a thousand times for God to tell me: Did I do that to Adah? If I showed her more kindness now, could I be forgiven for making her a cripple? But a debt of that size seems so impossible to pay back it is a dread thing even to start on.
Mother used her own reserves, without stealing the life out of Ruth May or anyone else. She seemed to draw strength right out of the muggy air. Sometimes I saw her sit on the side of the bed for a while before getting up, drawing in deep breaths through thin, pursed lips. She had her good and bad phases, but finally stopped sleepwalking once and for all. It happened rather suddenly one day, after Rachel burned up an egg omelet. She burned two in a row, to be exact