The Bride Price: An African Romance (Chitundu Chronicles) (16 page)

“So,” he said “let’s get married.” We signed the papers and he gave me the ring. But when I tried to make him like me last night, he hit me and said I wasn’t worth the thong on your sandal. She broke into sobs and Myrna poured her another cup of tea.  The twins were both  awake now and loud, so each woman picked up a soiled baby and started to laugh. Myrna thought she could tell the girl some things about what her husband liked, and what he didn’t, but she might also learn a few things about men from this girl. She was not entirely sorry to see the girl had had a rough night.  Myrna would be glad to have help with the children.  They were going to have some bumps in the road ahead—that was becoming clear. Compared to the loss of Lily, the addition of this girl to their family was a small sacrifice.  Maybe the two of them could make sure that all the remaining children were healthy.

After the girl finished cleaning her twin, she straightened her headscarf and looked in the mirror, laughing again at the mess her face was in.  By the time Festal returned from the pastures, the house was tidy, all the children bathed and the wash was ironed and put away.  Gift was wearing a fresh blouse and had her hair brushed and a clean skirt wrapped around her waist.  She smelled of lavender and did not say a word as the man ate his dinner.  After the plates were cleared, she asked if there was anything Myrna or Festal needed, and then excused herself to go and play with the children before bedtime.  Festal looked at Myrna in amazement, and then kissed her fully on the lips for the first time, before going to his rondavel to sleep alone. The Prince of Love was tired. 

Myrna had never been kissed before. What else would they learn from this girl?

Gift could not see well.  Myrna discovered this when she set out some glasses for the girl to wash and dry.  Gift couldn’t tell which were clean and which were not.  She did better with the pots, which only required a swipe with the fingertips to see if the food was still stuck on them. When she cleaned the babies, she placed her nose almost on the child to make sure she had done a thorough job. Myrna tried to explain to her about germs, but the girl thought she was telling her a folk story. She also confessed that she did not really think children were human.

Gift was a huge help with the laundry.  It took two people to twist the towels and bedclothes to get most of the water out of them.  Myrna’s hands had been raw with the work of cleaning the nappies for the twins.  As the days progressed, Gift occasionally was called to Festal’s rondavel for the night.   Myrna would then have the children to mind through the night, and the twins were relentless.  Every two hours one of them needed to be fed.  If she was not quick, the second one would be wakened and screaming and the first one would then start. Because there were two of them, they were not bowel trained as she had done with each of her girls.  This required her to be constantly cleaning diaper cloths, which she now washed twice a day.  Fortunately, the rains had not come, so the cloths dried quickly.  Gift would iron the diapers when she took them down to kill the fly eggs so the boys would not get larva hatching on their bodies. 

It always amazed Myrna how the other children could sleep through the uproar. Both boys together could not reach the pitch that Daisy had managed in her infancy. Festal could not sleep through the crying, as he had many years of living alone in the wilderness of the cattle station, with only the occasional howl of a hyena or the lowing of the cattle.  His separate rondavel made it possible for him to endure the five young children without interruption of his sleep.

CHAPTER 27
GIFT DELIVERS

Six months had gone by and Gift’s pregnancy was evident.  Festal said nothing of this, but Dodge returned two goats that had been gone from the farm about the time the girl came to live with them.  There was no sense of when the baby would come, as Gift had never had periods and no one in the house had a calendar to figure dates.  It was well known that first babies could come anytime.

One afternoon when Festal was away, Gift suddenly experienced sharp pains while she was using the latrine and called out to Myrna. Myrna put a twin on each hip and went out to see what the matter was.  She could see the girl was doubled over in pain and the waters had broken.

“Gift, this means the baby will come very soon. Stay put and do not move. I will hitch up the animals and come for you with the wagon. Festal is in the far pasture today.”

After placing the large cook pot on the wagon, Myrna put the twins inside on top of a blanket, and then put a cloth over the top, fastening her makeshift pen to the wagon sides.   Myrna rushed out to locate the hobbled donkeys to hitch them to the cart, something she had never done before.  She sent the three girls to the neighbors’ house, all of them holding the corner of a towel as they walked.  Only when she saw Lottie wave, did she turn and lead the donkeys near the latrine and pull the howling Gift onto the wagon, on top of the clean sleeping cloths she had laid out. By this time, Gift and the twins were all making plenty of noise.  Myrna grabbed a knife and a piece of string and a jug of boiled water from the pot in the outdoor kitchen, and then got up in the driver’s seat.  The donkeys set off at a trot for the hospital. 

About halfway to the clinic, Gift shrieked, “It’s coming! I can’t hold back!” Myrna parked the wagon in the shade of a eucalyptus grove, hobbled the donkeys and spread out the sheet, fresh off the courtyard wall, on the wagon floor.  As she saw the water flowing in the wagon bed, she had Gift spread her legs and the head was right there.  The skin was taut and the child tore out of the mother like a fish at the end of a wet silken cord.  Myrna caught the baby midair, a boy who was somewhat shriveled on one side. She dried him off with the edge of the sheet, wrapping him in fabric as she laid him on Gift’s deflated abdomen. His legs were withered and curled up tight against his buttocks. His head was red and bruised with a tangle of wet thin tendrils glued to the top with a white, pasty substance.  Myrna offered Gift a drink of water. Once the placenta was passed, she poured the remainder of the water over the girl’s pelvis. She dropped the placenta into the earthen jar.  As the blood cleared and the adrenalin left Myrna’s system, she noticed that the girl had been excised.  She had heard of this practice, but she had never seen the results.

When the baby came, everything had torn open, and there was a gaping opening that could not easily be closed.  She wrapped the remainder of the sleeping cloths around the mother’s hips, gave her a hug, then put another cloth under her head before heading to the clinic. Myrna felt the milk streaming down her chest as the twins cried out.  She hoped the clinic would have the skill to patch this girl together.

Gift kissed the tiny boy on his head, still panting from pain and the effort of giving birth to him. She fell asleep and the child slid off her stomach. Myrna slowed the donkeys, reached back and pulled the baby to her, opening her blouse and letting him nurse.  He latched on and began to suck. She let him nurse until he fell asleep, then put him back beside his mother in the wagon bed.

The fact that he was small and undernourished had probably saved the girl’s life; the nurses told Myrna when they reached the hospital. They were praising Myrna for saving the girl and her baby.  They said she had the skills that were needed to be a surgeon, or at least a midwife.  To Gift, they presented a tiny knit cap and quickly wrapped the wizened baby in a gown to conceal his legs from the mother.  The nurses placed the baby at Gift’s breast and encouraged Gift to let him nurse as long as he could to get some energy. He latched onto his mother like a honey badger scenting honey.

Myrna was pleased at how they built Gift up, even as they discussed how to mend the fistula the birth had caused, and to make sure her excision was properly mended. It had been a struggle for Myrna to deal with the moaning, the blood, and the sight of torn flesh. For the first time, Myrna wondered if she would have had the aptitude to handle this each day as a doctor, or whether she would want to.

Festal came into the room and all three nurses said, “Another boy.”  Festal was worried at the news of the girl going into labor when she did, and how they had managed to get to the hospital. Myrna had never harnessed the donkeys before.

“I don’t think she has ever been a midwife before, either,” said Gift. “The nurses say she could be a surgeon, the way she saved our baby.” Festal looked at the blood covering the cart, and the makeshift playpen the twins had shared, then thought he was going to be sick. He pulled his babies out of the pot and handed one to Myrna, cradling the second one against his chest. When Reuben was finished nursing, he passed Samuel to her, holding Reuben in one arm as he adjusted the blanket at the bottom of the pot. His head was pounding at the news of another son, and a wife that was so damaged. She would need a year’s care before returning to her duties.  He needed to get his life on track if these children were going to survive. When he saw the tiny boy with his shriveled side and pasted down hair, he felt an immediate and fierce love for this child that his mother had named Royal Festal.

A week later, his family was together again at the rondavel. Gift could not have relations for a year, and she was to report back to the hospital within a month to check on her fistula repair.  She was flattened and tired looking; with great breasts that poured out milk whenever she looked at the tiny boy she named Royal Festal.  Festal was afraid to pick him up as his skin looked so fragile.  Neither of the wives remarked on how quick the baby had come, or that he looked nothing like the other children.  It was enough that he was alive and that Festal had another son.

Joseph was most impressed by Myrna. On his travels to Copperfine to buy beef and hides, he had heard about the good wife from the villagers and learned they were talking about his sister-in-law, as the woman of virtue from the Bible.  Myrna was living it out. Joseph asked himself how she could tolerate being uprooted from her schooling. Formal learning had never appealed to Violet, but Joseph had yearned for an education—and he could feel what a loss this must have been to the girl. Violet had said that Myrna was brilliant, and from the scholarship she received, the government had clearly identified her as one in a million.

What surprised Joseph the most was that Myrna was not bitter about her situation. No one in the family had ever heard her complain, even when she lost her first child, and later when Festal took a second wife half her age. How could she allow her husband to take in an orphan child and then allow him to marry her? 

CHAPTER 28
UNDER THE MANGO TREE

Gift gathered the women into groups of four, handing each of them a slate and chalk.  She brought the toddlers into the courtyard of the rondavel and pulled the gate shut.  She had arranged small pots of water for the children to pour and cups to measure it with. There were drums and sticks for them to bang together.  For the children who were able to walk, there was a small ladder and a hollow piece of wood that would one day be a bee’s nest.  Until then, it would serve as a toy they could squirm through or make into a see-saw.  She watched the twins copy the older children, her little Royal swaying along on his bowed legs, laughing and clapping his hands. As they played, she wove her endurance baskets from the grasses she had gathered.

It had only been a year since Myrna and Gift started the women’s co-op. They were now meeting weekly.  Women were learning their letters and sums, and two work projects had been started.  At first, the cattlemen were suspicious about their women gathering together at midday to attend the meetings.  The women met once a month at the beginning, and the first order of business was to learn to write their husband’s names and surnames. At each meeting, the women would bring a small gift, or food to share. At the end of the meeting, they would take home a simple recipe and a Bible text, neatly penned out to hang on the wall of their parlor.  For many, these were the first written words they had ever had in their home. 

Myrna and Gift then taught them to write the names of their children.  They would mark the box with an “x” whether the child was a girl or a boy.  The first lessons were spelled out in the sand underneath the mango tree that spread over 60 feet in width and provided deep shade from the noonday heat.  Once the women could write their own names, they learned the alphabet in English, and each woman helped the others to learn letters she had mastered in her own name.

The government heard of their teaching and provided some small gifts to encourage the women to attend.  Lessons were on basic health issues such as well-baby care, correct nutrition for toddlers, and simple first aid.  Myrna would also share pictures from her biology book to let the women who were pregnant see what was going on in their bodies. She loaned the women her mirror so they could look at their genitals in the privacy of their home, then return it at the next meeting. It was the first time most women had seen themselves, or learned the names of their body parts.   Myrna asked the health department to bring them a scale so they could weigh the babies and chart their progress.   It was Violet’s husband, Joseph, who first brought a scale for them to use. Two years later, the first government scale arrived.

Gift knew how to make baskets from the grasses that grew near the river bed, and taught the women the patterns to weave them into.  Merchants from the larger town took the baskets to sell for the women.  Women learned to make new recipes and how to dry fruits, as well as how to keep their food from spoiling.  The biggest benefit of the co-op was the friendship and trust that built up between the women, and the knowledge of childcare the co-op provided. Women who had once left newborns alone the first day without nursing them, learned it was good to hold them and feed them breast milk right away. They were told how important it was to boil water for formula. With the Phiri twins, they learned that multiple births could result in healthy children.  Sam and Reuben were robust and it was clear there was no demon stunting their growth.  Some babies who had been sickly began to thrive as the women compared what worked. Royal Festal was disabled, but the community saw how he was loved and able to learn.