A Girl Named Disaster

  A dip in the waves revealed the top of a rock. Ah! She veered away before it could rip out the bottom of the boat. Suddenly, white foam frothed all around her as other rocks made their presence known. Nhamo was bewildered by so much danger. Directly in front of her was even more whiteness, a ring of it, and in the center a low shelf of land almost hidden in the glare of sunlight. It was an island!

  Nhamo discovered she wasn’t quite out of energy. She made for the island, and when her oar struck bottom, she jumped out and dragged the craft onto shore. The boat wasn’t light. Nhamo had no idea she was strong enough to lift it, but terror gave her supernatural strength. She pulled the boat away from the foaming water and collapsed on the warm stone. Then she must have fainted, because the next thing she noticed was the sun, lying very low in the west. All around her was the slap-slap-slap of waves.

  “Thank you, Va-Crocodile Guts,” she whispered. “Thank you, Va-njuzu.” She didn’t know whether they had anything to do with her rescue, but it was safer to be polite. She watched the shadow of the boat lengthen and the sunlight creep away from the rock. She sat up.

  It was a very small island, hardly a man’s height above the waves at its tallest point. As far as Nhamo could see, there was not another speck of land in any direction. And her new home had not a bush or a tree or a blade of grass.

  16

  Nhamo stretched out with the mealie bag for a pillow. Mother’s pot was wedged into a crevice at her side. She slept heavily, without interruption. In one sense, it was the safest place she had been since she left the village. No leopards could creep up on her here. No hippos would be attracted to a grassless rock.

  The wind died in the night and so, then, did the waves. A haze blotted out the stars, and when dawn came, the sky turned a milky pink. Nhamo opened her eyes briefly onto a glory of shining mist.

  When she finally awoke, the sun was a furious, white ball in the east, the air already unpleasantly hot. Nhamo stood up and stretched. Hezvo!* She had never imagined so much water was possible. Twenty long steps took her from one end of the island to the other; fifteen steps took her from side to side. She hunkered down to consider the situation.

  She had tied up within sight of Zimbabwe. The river had been flowing rapidly all around her, and if the rope came loose there (or was untied by an njuzu, she thought uneasily), the boat would have been rapidly swept downstream. She had slept soundly. Perhaps she had sailed all the way back past the guinea-fowl camp and the stream that went by the village.

  What had Grandmother said? The Musengezi used to flow into the Zambezi River until the Portuguese dammed it up. Now the Zambezi had become a huge lake.

  Lake Cabora Bassa.

  You couldn’t see across Cabora Bassa. Even Crocodile Guts had approached it with caution because of the great waves that sometimes arose. Nhamo felt slightly happier that this was a real lake and not the ghostly realm of the njuzu. Still, water spirits no doubt inhabited the place, as they did any body of water.

  She couldn’t stay here long, that was certain. The island was barren. Her fish trap was useless without a narrow channel, and no birds ventured this far from shore. The thought of leaving filled her with dismay. The lake was calm now, but who could say how long that would last? Meanwhile, her stomach felt as if its two sides were glued together. She ate more of the dried fish and drank as much water as she could manage. For a few moments her belly felt comfortably stretched, but the sensation quickly vanished. She was afraid to eat the uncooked mealie meal: Ambuya said raw flour swelled up inside and made your stomach burst.

  Nhamo laid out the matches to dry. She unrolled Mother’s picture and saw that it had survived the journey unharmed. “Well, Mai,” she sighed. “We don’t have many neighbors in our new home—unless you count the njuzu. I imagine there are a lot of them around here. I’ll make you some tea, and we can talk.”

  Nhamo pretend-boiled the tea and poured it into pots. She didn’t have the heart to cut bread and spread it with margarine. She placed the fish trap over Mother’s head so she wouldn’t get too hot.

  “Grandmother told me a story once about a man who had many wives and sons, but no daughters.” Nhamo sipped her tea as though it were really hot. “The man called his sons together when he was dying. ‘I have no money to buy you wives, or daughters to exchange for them,’ he said. ‘All I have is a single black bull and the friendship of the njuzu who lives in the river.’

  “You can listen, too,” Nhamo told the snake-girls under the water. “This story is about your people.

  “The old man said, ‘My sons, I can give you only good advice. Before you do anything important, sprinkle mealie meal on the black bull’s head. If he shakes it off, it means I agree with your plan. I will speak through the bull. As for getting enough money for roora, you must jump into the deepest pool in the river!

  “The old man died. His sons thought he was making fun of them with his advice. They planted their crops and toiled in the fields. Not one of them made enough money to buy a wife.

  “One day, when they were discussing the problem, the youngest boy, who was called Useless, said, ‘Don’t you remember? Father told us to jump into the river.’

  “‘You have the brain of a flea, Useless. If you jump into the river, you will drown,’ said the oldest.

  “Useless went to the black bull and sprinkled mealie meal on his head. ‘O Bull of the Ancestor, I am going to jump into the river. Do you think that’s a good idea?’ The bull shook his head vigorously. ‘That means yes!’ cried the youngest son.

  “‘That means we will have one less mouth to feed around here,’ replied the oldest.

  “All the sons went to the river to watch Useless throw himself in. The boy sank like a stone. His brothers waited and waited. All day they waited, but Useless never returned. They went to the boy’s mother and told her what had happened.

  “His mother wept and cried. She put on the bark cord of mourning and refused to cut her hair anymore. The older brothers hired themselves out to other farmers. They worked for many years to earn enough to marry the farmers’ daughters. ‘Still, we are more clever than our youngest brother,’ they said. ‘His bones are rolling around in the mud somewhere.’

  “One day Useless’s mother went to the river to get water. She found a beautiful girl sitting on a rock. ‘Cut your hair and put on your finest clothes,’ the girl told the astonished woman. ‘I will give you a horn full of oil.’

  “The mother didn’t understand, but she obeyed. Soon she saw a great herd of cattle, goats, and sheep approaching with many servants. Leading them was a handsome young man dressed in a lion skin and wearing a crown of reeds. On his right side hung a sword and on his left a bag. He carried an animal tail and a black horn full of oil. Behind him walked the beautiful girl who had been at the stream.

  “‘Mother! Mother! Don’t you recognize me?’ called the young man. ‘I am your son, Useless!’

  “‘Oh, my son! What happened to you?’

  “The man explained that he had turned into a tiny fish when he threw himself into the river. He went through a crack in the rocks and found himself in an underground country as big as the earth. It had fields and cattle and houses.

  “‘I lived there, Mai, with a giant snake as big as a river. Plants grew along his back, and my job was to weed them. He was the njuzu Father told us about. He told me I must eat only mud and never touch mealie meal. If I ate real food, I would be trapped forever in his country. Finally, he gave me a horn of oil to cure people and a bag of medicine. He gave me a crown of reeds and a sword to rule my brothers with. Last of all, he gave me an njuzu bride.’

  “Useless had learned how to be an nganga from the water spirit. He became a great chief, and his mother, who had been mistreated by everyone, was treated like a queen from then on.”

  Nhamo lay on her stomach and watched the waves lap against the shore. The wind was rising. She had been wise not to venture out in the little boat. She gathered up the matches before they could
blow away, and stored Mother’s picture in the pot. When this was done, a heavy feeling of despair fell over her.

  It had been all right when she was telling the story. Somehow, she was transported away. Mother had been there; even the njuzu girls had listened from their watery houses. Now she was all alone on a tiny island. The waves foamed around the shore and the rocks that lurked beneath the surface.

  “If I threw myself in…,” she began. But with her luck, she wouldn’t find any underground country. She would merely drown, and her spirit would wander without any hope of rejoining her relatives.

  The spray left Nhamo feeling damp and irritated. She would like a bath. It was unfair to be surrounded by bathwater and unable to use it! She squatted next to the shore and doused herself, using the calabash. Then she took out her treasures from the boat and went over them.

  She had one box of matches, five pots, the calabash, Aunt Chipo’s old head scarf, the red cloth (minus a corner) she was supposed to wear for her marriage ceremony, Uncle Kufa’s broken knife, the lamp she had used to light her way from Grandmother’s hut, four wooden spoons, a few glass beads, a packet of salt, dried chilies, the bag of mealie meal, a small bag of dried beans mixed with ash to discourage weevils, and the sturdy rope Crocodile Guts had left in the boat.

  And around her neck was the red cloth bag containing Ambuya’s gold nuggets.

  “If I was in the village…,” Nhamo said dreamily. “Well, I wouldn’t be in the village. I’d be at Zororo Mtoko’s house. I’d be stamping mealies for his three wives. They would be sitting indoors with pots of maheu.” Nhamo imagined the sour, rich taste of maheu. Her mouth watered. “They wouldn’t give me any, oh no! They’d make me eat rotten porridge and wormy fruit.”

  Nhamo closed her eyes, seeing the three angry women inside the hut. Their skin was blotched with disease. Their heads were almost bald. “Their children are rude and stupid,” Nhamo went on. She didn’t know this, but it gave her spirit pleasure to imagine it. “They fight among themselves. Zororo can hardly bear to look at them. They’re ugly, like him. He comes home drunk and swings his knobkerrie* in all directions. His wives think about putting poison in his food, but they don’t dare.”

  Nhamo felt satisfied with the dismal scene she had imagined. “And I am not there! I, Nhamo, am visiting the country of the njuzu. They will tell me their secrets and send me home with cattle and goats.”

  But when she opened her eyes, she was still alone in the middle of a vast lake. The lonely-sickness came over her again, and she pressed her fists to her temples to force it away.

  You mustn’t be afraid of njuzu, child. They taught me everything there is to know about water.

  “What can I learn, Va-Crocodile Guts?” Nhamo cried.

  For one thing, swimming.

  Now where had that come from? Nhamo so badly wanted to hear a voice, she wasn’t sure whether someone had actually spoken or whether she had imagined it. She considered the shoreline. The lake was shallow where she had pulled up the boat, and farther out were clusters of rocks. She waded in, keeping a sharp eye on the bottom. By slowly feeling her way around—and scrambling back onto shore when a large wave came through—Nhamo staked out a sizable area where the water reached no higher than her chest.

  She perched on the island again and rewarded herself with a few tiny dried fish and a pinch of chili powder.

  Njuzu took the shapes of snakes and fish and—ugh!—crocodiles, Nhamo thought. How did they move? She tried to wriggle like a snake. No, she wasn’t long and thin enough. Crocodiles floated. She knew how to do that. But they moved along by swishing their tails from side to side. She didn’t have a tail.

  She tried to remember how other animals swam. Most creatures didn’t venture to try if they could avoid it. The ones that did—hippos and elephants—were too dangerous to spy on. Very occasionally, Uncle Kufa threw a stick into the stream for one of his dogs to retrieve. The dog swam back with its legs going as though it was racing across a field. It looked relieved to get back on land—not that she could blame it. Even dogs understood about crocodiles. But wait! There was one animal who swam readily, even joyfully. The otter, or binza.

  Nhamo had often observed binza hunting in the stream. They skimmed along the bottom and turned over rocks to flush out frogs and fish. They caught these in their hands just like people, rose to the surface, and ate while treading water. Again and again they dove with restless energy until, sated, they bobbed around on top with their heads out of the water.

  They were fascinating, but dangerous. An enraged otter would hurl itself at an enemy far larger than itself. One of Uncle Kufa’s hunting dogs had been drowned by a mother protecting two cubs.

  But they certainly knew how to swim.

  Nhamo waded out on the shallow shelf of rock. She practiced floating like a crocodile. She kicked her legs like an otter. She trotted like a dog running across a field. Little by little she began to understand how a creature could maneuver in such a treacherous medium. She practiced until dark, by which time she was exhausted. For dinner she had two small fish and another pinch of chili powder. She drank two calabashes of water to stretch her stomach.

  Days passed; Nhamo lost count. After the dried fish were gone, she suffered from gnawing hunger for a day before a new plan occurred to her. Ambuya had told her often enough of the dangers of eating uncooked flour and beans. She no longer had a choice in the matter. She soaked a handful of mealie meal in a pot. Hopefully, if it swelled enough outside, it wouldn’t swell inside and burst her stomach.

  The beans provided a more hopeful solution to the problem of food. Until now, Nhamo had only considered cooking them, but they could be soaked, too. And would begin to grow. The young plants were perfectly edible.

  Why didn’t I think of it earlier? she wondered.

  She changed the water frequently, but the mealie meal spoiled anyway. When she touched it with her finger, ropes of slime pulled away from its surface. Even so, Nhamo attempted to eat a small portion. It made her vomit, and she threw the rotten meal away.

  The beans sprouted. She devoured them as soon as she dared and set the rest to soak. The future was too terrible to contemplate, and so Nhamo didn’t. It was like the time she had cared for Grandmother on the Portuguese trader’s porch, an endless present. She spent the day telling stories to Mother and the njuzu girls. She talked to Crocodile Guts, too, in case he was visiting down below.

  When the lonely-sickness came over her, she plunged anew into the blue-green waves. Danger kept her from despair. Farther and farther out she swam. She clung to submerged rocks and lifted her head above the water. She ventured out beyond the safe shallow area. She skimmed along under the surface like an otter. As long as she kept busy, she didn’t think. But at night, in the middle of the night, she woke up without any defenses and cried hopelessly until dawn showed in the sky.

  One day she didn’t have the strength to return to shore. She turned over on her back to catch her breath. The lake roared in her ears, and sunlight jagged off the waves. When she eventually regained the island, she was so overcome with dizziness, she had to lie half out of the water for a long time until her strength returned.

  Nhamo couldn’t hide the facts from herself anymore. She had gone past hunger to real starvation, where the body no longer struggled against its fate. She would become progressively weaker until her arms and legs refused to move at all, and then she would die.

  * * *

  *Hezvo! Good heavens!

  *knobkerrie: A club.

  17

  Nhamo slowly dragged the boat down to the water. She rested frequently, having no desire to reach her destination, but she couldn’t postpone the journey any longer. “It seems you insist on me visiting you, Va-njuzu,” she said bitterly as she wrestled the heavy boat over the rocks. It was early morning, when the water was generally calm. Nhamo floated the boat and walked it out of the shallows. On one side of the island was a field of dangerous rocks; on the other, as far as she could tel
l, was a deep, clear area.

  Nhamo didn’t allow herself to think. She clambered into the boat, waited for it to stop rocking, and started out. She didn’t allow herself to look back at the island. A pinch of the precious salt and a few bean sprouts filled her with energy for a while, but it wore off.

  For once, the waves remained small. Unfortunately, the still air brought a heat haze that covered the water and made it difficult to see very far. Midday came and passed. Nhamo rested and ate more beans. They rumbled inside her stomach. Long before sunset, Nhamo was too exhausted to row, so she brought the oar inside and stretched out with Aunt Chipo’s scarf over her head.

  “Mother, how will my spirit return to the village if my body is at the bottom of the lake?” she asked.

  Mother smiled at her over the white tablecloth, where she was spreading bread with margarine. “I got home, didn’t I? The paths of the body are long, but the paths of the spirit are short.”

  “Don’t worry, little Disaster,” said Crocodile Guts, who was lounging in a chair. “You’ve got my boat. It’s made out of mukwa wood. Even the termites won’t touch it.” He scratched his head, and ghost lice crept over his fingers.

  Two njuzu girls coiled up the table legs and bent gracefully over cups of tea that Mother had poured. They lapped at them with forked tongues.

  Nhamo woke in the middle of the night. Mwari’s country spread out above her. It was a region of which she knew little. Nighttime was too full of danger to encourage anyone to relax and study stars. Mwari, of course, was everywhere, but his special place was the sky.

  The air was still, and the boat drifted gently. Nhamo thought about the dream. She knew that her spirit wandered with the ancestors when she was asleep. It made perfect sense that Mother would speak to her, but the presence of Crocodile Guts was puzzling. He wasn’t a relative. Perhaps he was attracted by the boat.