The Poisonwood Bible

and shoving, and you just ride along. In the end, the neck you save will be your own. Perhaps I sound un-Christian, but let's face it, when I step outside
SONG OF THE THREE CHILDREN 517
my own little world at night and listen to the sounds out there in the dark, what I feel down in my bones is that this is not a Christian kind of place. This is darkest Africa, where life roars by you like a flood and you grab whatever looks like it will hold you up.
If you ask me, that's how it is and ever shall be. You stick out your elbows, and hold yourself up.
Leak Price
SANZA POMBO, ANGOLA
ONCE UPON A TIME," Anatole says in the dark, and I close my eyes and fly away on his stories. It's almost a shock to be alone together in our bed, practically elderly, after almost thirty years of little elbows and heels and hungry mouths. When Taniel turned ten he abandoned us for a cot of his own, full of rocks that fall out of his pockets. Most boys his age still sleep on the pile of their families, but Taniel was adamant: "My brothers have beds to themselves!" (He doesn't realize they've moved on from solitude