A Girl Named Disaster Read online

  Silently, Nhamo edged back from the cliff. She found the biggest rock she could lift.

  Slowly, the guinea fowl approached the cook-fire, which was now only a drift of ashes. They found the sack of mealie meal. It was tied up, but they clearly sensed it was something they might enjoy. They clustered on top and pecked at the fabric. One of the birds wandered close to the bottom of the cliff. Nhamo slowly lifted the rock over the edge. Her arms began to tremble from the weight.

  Closer, closer—ah! She lost her grip. The rock fell straight down. The guinea fowl panicked—and fluttered in the wrong direction. The rock caught it squarely on the back. The other birds blundered into the air, their heavy bodies crashing through branches as they fled.

  Nhamo slid down. The guinea fowl was squashed flat as one of Masvita’s honey cakes. She cleaned it as well as she could with Uncle Kufa’s broken knife and soon had it boiling over a crackling fire. As it cooked, Nhamo made up a song. It was like the boasts the boys chanted when they wanted to show off. Girls weren’t supposed to use them, but Nhamo was so elated, she didn’t care. It went:

  “I am she who lifts mountains

  When she goes to hunt,

  Who wears a mamba* for a headband

  And a lion for a belt.

  Beware!

  I swallow elephants whole

  And pick my teeth with rhinoceros horns.

  I drink up rivers to get at the hippos.

  Let them hear my words!

  Nhamo is coming

  And her hunger is great.”

  She sang it over and over. After a while, she hauled everything back to the boat and ate as much of the guinea fowl as she could manage. She had to pick numerous fragments of bone from the stew. She ate and dozed and ate again. The only way she could store the meat was inside her round belly.

  The hippos floated far and near, unmoved by Nhamo’s threats. They paid no attention to the boat or to her when, late in the day, she attempted another swimming lesson. All in all, it was a most successful day.

  Still, when darkness fell, so did her spirit. “Why do I need people?” she wondered as she huddled in the damp boat. “I’m full of food and comfortable—well, fairly comfortable. I’m safe—well, fairly safe. Soon I’ll go on to Zimbabwe. But right now I wish I could see Aunt Chipo. I don’t care if she beats me. I even want to see Zororo, and he’s a pig! I don’t understand it.”

  As for Ambuya and Masvita, Nhamo didn’t dare think of them. Her longing was so great, she might throw herself into the river. She fell asleep with her arms around the mealie bag. “If I eat all the grain, I’ll have to fill the bag with grass,” she told Mother. “I seem to need something to hold on to.”

  Nhamo stayed at what she named the guinea-fowl camp for several more days. She didn’t try to flatten another bird—that had been sheer luck, and besides, it wasn’t exactly pleasant finding shreds of bone and intestines in her soup. Instead, she made a trap. She laid a trail of beans leading to a very deep, circular hole in the ground. Then she hid nearby in a clump of elephant grass.

  After a while a guinea fowl discovered the new source of food. It foraged along with one beady eye fixed on the next morsel. Soon it came to the hole and stuck its head inside. At once, Nhamo sprang out and wrung its neck. The trap was simplicity itself. If guinea fowl had been slightly more intelligent, it wouldn’t have worked, but fortunately they were as dull-witted as earthworms.

  Nhamo ate one of the heavy birds every single day. Even in the village she hadn’t done as well. The birds around her home had been thinned by hunting, and the survivors were wary. For variety she found straggly mhuvuyu, blackjack weeds, and cooked their leaves as a kind of spinach.

  One day she fashioned a fish trap, following the pattern she had learned at the trading post. She peeled off the bark of a musasa tree, then chewed and rolled it until it formed a kind of twine. She used this to bind strips of reed into a cone. She wedged the cone into a side channel of the Musengezi, with the narrow end pointing toward a fenced-in pool. The little fish swam into the wide end and slipped through to the pool. Then they couldn’t get back. The sharp points Nhamo had thoughtfully carved at the narrow end discouraged them. They swam round and round until she scooped them into her basket.

  Nhamo gutted the little fish and smoke-dried them over her cook-fire. She wasn’t sure how to store guinea fowl, but she had often preserved fish. “Now I not only smell like Crocodile Guts, I act like him,” she told Mother. “Soon I’ll sit on my haunches and scratch.” The boatman had been alive with lice, which had disgusted the other villagers but seemed not to worry Crocodile Guts at all.

  Nhamo practiced swimming several times a day. Part of her intense fear of water was due to crocodiles, but she saw no sign of any in the shallows, nor did she find tracks or the slidy print of their bodies in the mud. “Maybe they don’t like hippos,” she concluded. “Or, more likely, hippos don’t like them.” She remembered seeing a crocodile once in a mud hole near the village. It had been bitten in two, with its head at one end of the pond and its tail at the other. A hippo wallowed in between. No, the animals weren’t friends.

  The absence of crocodiles made her swimming lessons slightly less frightening. Nhamo willingly let go now—if she was within reach of the rock. She could float and maneuver her feet to the bottom. She could even turn over onto her back, but she hadn’t figured out how to propel herself forward.

  One morning, she sat up from the bed of grass in the boat and found the river deserted. She felt a sudden, odd stab of loneliness. Not that she liked the hippos—far from it—but they had become a familiar part of her world. Nhamo waited all day to be certain. They didn’t come back. After darkness fell, she couldn’t hear them snorting and complaining to one another. The night felt strangely empty. When Nhamo went to sleep with her arms around the mealie bag, she missed their constant muttering almost as much as the breathing of her cousins in the girls’ hut.

  She untied the rope before dawn. “Today we’re going to Zimbabwe, Mother,” she said as she pushed away from the shallows. The current caught her, but Nhamo plied the oar expertly. She not only had learned a lot about boats, but she was less afraid of water. And her muscles were fueled with roasted guinea fowl. She sang:

  “I am she who tosses trees

  Instead of spears.

  The ostrich is my pillow

  And the elephant my footstool!

  I am Nhamo

  Who makes the river my highway

  And sends crocodiles scurrying into the reeds!”

  All day she paddled, with stops to rest and eat. She went on through the sunset on a blood-colored river. The moon was three-quarters full and cast a silvery sheen when the red faded. The forest was an indistinct shadow, now near, now far, as she struggled against the current. She kept turning at right angles and having to fight her way back. Eventually, she gave up and made for shore. Or where she imagined the shore to be.

  That was when she discovered the sandbanks. The boat scraped alarmingly, broke free, and scraped again farther on. It took every ounce of strength to fight her way past. She didn’t dare get out to lighten the load. Nhamo began to pant with exhaustion and fear. It sounded as though the sandbanks were ripping out the hull. For a few moments the boat eased into deeper water, and she breathed more easily, but then it crunched into another obstacle. Something slapped Nhamo in the face: It was a sharp-leafed reed.

  She reached out in the dark and felt plants all around her. Water rushed by on either side. This must be an island, she thought. She fastened the rope to a bundle of reeds and sat back to rest her aching arms. Suddenly, the many hours of fighting the river caught up with her. Her body shook as though she had a fever, and she leaned over the side to vomit what little she had in her stomach. She rested her cheek on the smooth wood until her head stopped swimming. Far ahead, she saw a bright star on the horizon.

  It’s awfully low to be a star, she thought, and awfully big. Then it came to her: She was looking at an electric
light.

  As she studied that part of the horizon, she detected other lights winking as they were hidden or eclipsed by trees. It was Zimbabwe. “Oh, Mother! Oh, Mother! I wish we could go there tonight!” Nhamo cried from sheer disappointment.

  When she tried to lift the oar, it slipped out of her hands and clattered to the bottom of the boat. She began to tremble again. All she could do was sit dumbly and watch the lights winking beyond the far trees. Eventually, she curled up with Mother’s jar at her side, but now and then she lifted her head to check that Zimbabwe was still there. And once, when the wind was blowing the right way, she thought she heard music.

  * * *

  *black mamba: The largest and most feared of African snakes. It is quick to bite if disturbed. Its poison can cause death within minutes.

  15

  Nhamo was walking in a strange place. It was very beautiful, with trees full of fruit. Cattle grazed in thick grass that rippled about their legs, and goats with fat udders wandered with clanking iron bells tied about their necks. On either side she saw hillocks covered with pumpkin vines, while beyond stood row upon row of ripe mealies.

  She, herself, felt unusually light. Her feet barely brushed the ground, and when she jumped, her body moved through the air in a slow, dreamy fashion.

  Is this Zimbabwe? No wonder Mother was sorry to leave, she thought. Nhamo followed a path that wound through the hillocks. The earth was soft beneath her feet. Presently, she came to a cluster of huts in a clearing: fine huts that looked as though they had been built yesterday. The thatching was evenly trimmed, the walls freshly plastered, the ground smooth without the print of a foot.

  Two girls sat on a bench outside. Nhamo’s spirit leaped. People! And what wonderful ones! They were even lovelier than Masvita before her illness. Their skin shone with oil. Their hair was woven into an intricate pattern, more like the scales of fish than like any style Nhamo had seen. They smiled at her with even, perfectly white teeth.

  “Masikati! Good day!” said Nhamo.

  “Masikati!” responded the two beautiful girls.

  “Have you spent the day well?”

  “We have done so if you have done so,” they answered politely. Around their necks and looped over their arms were many, many strands of black beads. These rippled like drops of water when the girls moved.

  “Your village is very fine,” Nhamo said, uncertain how to strike up a conversation.

  “Come and eat with us,” they called. Nhamo needed no second invitation. She quickly settled herself on the ground. The girls produced plates of sadza, white as gardenias, and pots of steaming relish. Nhamo clapped in thanks before accepting a bowl.

  She dredged a morsel of sadza with relish, lifted it to her mouth—and sprang to her feet, knocking everything to the ground. Crocodile Guts suddenly stood in the doorway of the dark hut!

  “Maiwee! A ghost!” she cried. The girls twined around her; their long arms held her prisoner. “Please don’t hurt me,” Nhamo moaned.

  “As if I would hurt you, little Disaster,” Crocodile Guts said cheerfully. He sat down on the bench and helped himself to the food. He smacked his lips and scratched his neck with long, dirty fingernails. Even in death, his hair swarmed with lice—or ghost lice.

  The fisherman belched satisfyingly. “I see you have my boat, little Disaster. Well built, isn’t it? You have to remember to bail it out every morning, though. I never did get all the cracks filled.”

  Nhamo felt tongue-tied. What was the polite way to address a ghost?

  “I carved it out of mukwa wood,” Crocodile Guts continued. “That’s the best. The termites won’t touch it. But after many years, even a good boat gets cracks. I used to plug them with sap from the mutowa, the rubber tree. Most of the time it was easier to bail the thing out.”

  “Baba…,” Nhamo began uncertainly.

  “Yes, little Disaster?”

  “Forgive me, baba, but aren’t you…dead?”

  The fisherman roared with laughter. “Of course! Why else would I be in this fine place with two beautiful njuzu girls to wait on me?”

  Njuzu! Water spirits! Nhamo felt the long arms of the girls twining around her—or were they arms? She was afraid to look.

  “Most people wander on land between the time they die and the kugadzira ceremony, when their family welcomes them home,” the fisherman explained. “I was so fond of water, I came here instead.”

  “I—we—are underwater?”

  Crocodile Guts pointed up.

  For a moment Nhamo didn’t know what she was seeing. The sky rippled as though the wind had become suddenly visible. Above hovered a small, dark shape.

  “The boat!” moaned Nhamo, struggling against the girls. They slithered around her with a whispering, rustling sound. Their faces were still those of beautiful humans, but their bodies had turned into long, black snakes! Nhamo screamed. The njuzu shrugged themselves off and rippled over to Crocodile Guts.

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

  But Nhamo screamed again and again, and stretched her arms toward the distant boat.

  “I’m drowning!” cried Nhamo. She flailed wildly, and the sky rocked back and forth. Mother’s jar rolled on its side. In spite of her panic, Nhamo automatically grabbed it before it could fall into the water—

  —in the bottom of the boat. She was still in the boat! She wasn’t drowning. It had only been a dream. Nhamo was flooded with relief. She had been soaked by the water that seeped in overnight, and that must have been what gave her the nightmare. “It was so real, Mai,” she told Mother. “Those girls…and Crocodile Guts…”

  The sun was nearly overhead. “Maiwee! I’ve slept a long time!” she said, shielding her eyes from the glare.

  She lay on the soggy grass bed and went over all she had heard about njuzu. They lived in bodies of water and kept these from drying out. They were far wiser than humans. For this reason, they often instructed ngangas in their craft. Occasionally, they pulled unwilling people into their pools. Sometimes they took the shapes of humans, and sometimes of snakes or fish or, if they were bent on evil, crocodiles. They could melt from one form to the other.

  If the njuzu offered you food, you must refuse it or be doomed to stay forever in their watery realm. Nhamo shivered. She had come that close to eating the sadza and relish.

  She sat up and looked around. A mist lay over the horizon. Only a few yards away, the river faded into a haze. She dipped her calabash over the side and noticed that the water didn’t look quite the same. The stream by the village had been clear. The Musengezi was dyed the color of tea, although it tasted perfectly clean. This water was blue-green. Or perhaps it was only the hazy light.

  Nhamo remembered tying up to the reeds the night before. She crawled to the stern and pulled on the rope. It came up easily. The loop at the end had a single broken reed still attached.

  Nhamo stared at the rope and then at the water. She was drifting! The motion had been so gentle, she hadn’t noticed it. I must have crossed the sandbanks into a side channel, she thought. She began to paddle against the current, but the movement was so slight she couldn’t keep track of the direction. For all she knew, she was traveling away from, not toward, Zimbabwe. “It’s better to wait until I can see the shore,” she decided.

  Nhamo drank water and munched a few of the fish she had dried at the guinea-fowl camp. The clear area around the boat gradually widened out, and still she couldn’t see the edge of the river. She listened for birds, but there was only the light slap of water against the hull. The air was empty of the smell of plants or flowers. Nhamo became uneasy.

  Presently, a breeze stirred. The haze dispersed, and Nhamo realized she was in a far worse situation than she could ever have imagined. The shoreline had completely vanished. This was no side channel. This wasn’t even the Musengezi. The boat had been scooped up and dropped into a boundless ocean. It had to be the country of the njuzu. “I didn�
�t eat the food. I didn’t!” she told the water spirits. But perhaps by merely accepting a bowl from them, she had fallen into their power.

  As the breeze freshened, small ripples became wavelets; the wavelets grew into swells. Nhamo yelled when the boat began to sway. “Oh, njuzu, I didn’t mean to insult you by screaming,” she cried. “I’ve always been afraid of snakes. Please forgive my rudeness!” She begged and wept, but the boat continued to pitch, with Nhamo clinging to the sides.

  When the craft leaned over, she could see right into the water. It was deep, so deep! The njuzu girls were coiled up in the depths, watching her with bright, human eyes. Mother’s pot rolled; the mealie bag shifted. Nhamo desperately opened the bag with one hand as she clung to the boat with the other. She retrieved the pot and stuffed it inside.

  “I think your pool is beautiful, Spirits of the Water. I am so lucky to be allowed to see it. Please don’t drown me!” she cried. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask permission to use your boat, Va-Crocodile Guts. I didn’t know how.”

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

  “You’re already dead,” Nhamo wailed. “You don’t have anything to be afraid of!” But her mind began to work very fast. What would Crocodile Guts do in this situation? He must have encountered it. People said he went everywhere, even Lake Cabora Bassa. She grabbed the oar. Every time the boat tipped, she tried to push it back. This didn’t work very well. Eventually, she discovered she was in less danger of capsizing if the prow faced into the waves.

  Now she could slide up and down the swells without tossing the contents of the boat around. It was hard work, and the waves made her queasy. If she tried to rest, the craft swung sideways with a terrifying seesaw motion. On and on Nhamo forged, not knowing where or for how long, only that she had to keep going or die. Her head swam with fatigue; the sunlight glittering off the water made her eyes ache. She noticed a patch of whiteness ahead.