The Butterfly Heart (2 page)

“You will feel a sudden movement in your stomach: it is your worm realizing there is food near by. It is sitting up now, its mouth open and waiting. But nothing happens. It has become mad with hunger, so it leaves its comfortable home and sets off to look for the food. It creeps up from your stomach into your throat and pops its head out of your mouth.”

All our mouths were wide open. Not a word from anyone.

“As it sees the milk, it bends down and starts lapping it up with its tongue. When you hear the first little laps, you must reach up with your other hand, grab its head and start pulling as fast as you can. Do not close your mouths now, children, or you will bite it in half and it’ll wriggle right back inside you and start growing another head. Pull and pull until you reach its tail.” She paused for breath as she showed us how to do this. “It could be three metres long, depending on how well you have been feeding it, so this part can take a long time. When it is out, stamp on it over and over again till you are sure it’s dead. And that, girls and boys, is that. One dead tapeworm and one happy and healthy child.”

I think Sister Leonisa is a bit mad. I am one hundred per cent sure that worms don’t have tongues or teeth, and I do not think they are able to smell. At least Sister didn’t draw a nose on her worm. I must tell Mum and Dad this story. Or maybe I won’t. They like coming into school to have their say and they’d certainly have something to say about this.

Anyway, it was just as Sister Leonisa was finishing her speech that Winifred arrived. Sister probably didn’t notice her because she was too busy stamping her imaginary tapeworm to death.

I
knew home once, when I was young. I knew my mother. She was tall and her back was straight. She could look into the sun without blinking her eyes, and pass her hand slowly through flames without feeling pain. People said that she had inherited magic ways from my grandmother; that she was a
muloshi
, a witch. She could do things other people couldn’t. Some of the people in our village were scared of her, but others came to her for help. She never lied to them. If she could help, and if the helping was for good, then she would. If there was nothing she could do, she would tell them, “No, this is not for me. This is a sadness I cannot change. I am not strong enough for that.” Those people would leave with their heads hanging, and I think it was they who started the talk against her.

For me, she was just my mother. She was my home. The path back from school was always long and hot, but when I reached the tree on the corner I knew I was close. Always at that tree the hot tasty smell of porridge, the
nshima
, would float towards me on the wind and I would run and leave the dust behind me. On Fridays sometimes she would cook kapenta fish, silvery and salty. In the rainy season there would be mangoes for me, picked from the tree at the back and brought inside to cool.

But it was not my mother who taught me how to talk to the snakes, it was my grandmother. She had lived with us ever since I was born and she told me that she could see I had a gift, a gift that was good.
Her
grandmother had had the same gift and she had been quiet and slow, like me. She told me how her grandmother would sit under the shade of a tree and sing. If there were snakes near by, they would come to her. She would sit still, her small thin legs stretched out in front of her, and the snakes would draw closer. Some would come and rest against her and others on her. She never moved. When she stopped singing, they would leave.

I did not know her, but sometimes she is here with me. Sometimes I hear her singing voice. It says things to me. My grandmother would have been happy to know that the old lady, her own grandmother, visits me. Maybe they are together now. Maybe they are both watching over my mother, who died before she was ready.

We
waited at the gate when we got home so that we would be there when Ifwafwa arrived. He had promised to come, and he never breaks his promises and never lies. Which, if you think about it, is an unusual thing to be able to say about someone. I know there is a difference between small, necessary lies to make other people happy and really large lies that are – well, just big and not very good. But Ifwafwa doesn’t even tell the small ones. Or if he does, I don’t notice.

It was Fred’s great-granny who first told us about him. Fred says that she is a very famous witch and that even Alice Lenshina was scared of her. That is something to brag about. Alice Lenshina started this kind of a church called Lumpa, meaning “better than all the others” in Bemba, which is one of the languages I speak. (I say Bemba, although I am supposed to say Chibemba because that is the proper name – but Dad says it’s OK to use the shortened version.) So Alice Lenshina’s mission was to rid Zambia of sorcery and witchcraft, and if she – with her army of something like 100,000 followers – was scared of Fred’s great-granny, then Fred is right, she must be famous. And very scary. Alice is long dead now, but Fred’s great-granny is still alive. She is the oldest person I have ever seen. You cannot even see her eyes any more because of the wrinkles.

A couple of years ago she told us that if we ever had problems with snakes, we should look out for a kind man on a big black bicycle. We would know him by the sound he makes as he rides around, she said, because he has tied little bits of orange plastic onto the spokes of his wheels, so you can hear him coming. You wouldn’t imagine you could tell that someone was kind just by looking at them on their bicycle, but with Ifwafwa she was right. We did find him, and since that day he has been our friend.

When Ifwafwa arrived he was carrying his bag, and we could see from the bumps that there were snakes inside.

Madillo is always excited if Ifwafwa has snakes with him because he lets her stroke them. I have only tried that once. They do feel soft and dry, not slimy, but I still don’t like the feeling of their muscles moving under their skin. I told Ifwafwa once that that’s what people call him, the Puff Adder, but he didn’t mind. For him, it’s not an insult to be called a snake name, because he loves them.

He sat down on the grass and we sat down next to him, me the furthest away from the snake bag, and he began.

“This is the story of the Bangweulu Swamps, the place where the water and the sky meet and become one, the place where the lechwe live: the red deer with the legs that can leap in the water. It is not near my home, it is in the place of the Kaonde people.”

When the Snake Man tells us a story, he tells it in a very quiet voice so it is hard for us to hear him. He is clever like that; he makes us listen. Sister Leonisa does the opposite, shouting and waving her arms around, sometimes even jumping up and down. With her we have no option but to listen, but with Ifwafwa we want to.

“A long time ago a small child, only a little bigger than you,” he said, nodding his head towards me, “was playing down by the river. She was with her mother, who was drawing water. A black shadow fell across them and the mother looked up into the sky, as they had been waiting for the rains for many months. Then she heard her small daughter scream and turned around.

“The Kongamato, the one they all dreaded meeting, was swooping down out of the sky towards the little girl. Its long beak was wide open and the mother could see its teeth. Its huge wings blocked the sun. It was almost upon them when the mother reached up and grabbed hold of its tail. She held on tight – she did not want her little girl taken from her – but the Kongamato was too strong for her and grabbed the child and flew up into the sky. The mother managed to keep her grip and the creature flew away silently, carrying them both as if they weighed no more than a flake of ash.”

The Snake Man looked at Madillo and me. “Do you know of the Kongamato? The overwhelmer of boats?”

We shook our heads, hardly daring to breathe.

“It is a bird without feathers. A lizard with wings. A creature like no other, with a beak and teeth. It flies slowly and has lived on this earth since time began. Its skin is like a snake’s, soft and smooth. No one knows where it goes to rest, but it always flies around the Bangweulu Swamps. It causes floods by stopping the river and there is no boat in this world that can resist it; no person either, for to look into its eyes is death. The Kaonde people make a potion to protect themselves against it, only this poor mother and her child had forgotten to use it. No one ever saw them again. The Kongamato returned alone.”

Ifwafwa sat back on the grass in silence. Then he opened the top of his sack slightly to check that his snakes were still well. He smiled then closed it again. That’s the downside of him not telling lies: he doesn’t have many stories with happy endings.

“Is it real?” Madillo asked.

He looked at her. “Do you think it is, my dear? People have seen it many times. They all speak of the same thing: of the wings that are wider than I am tall, of the beak that is longer than the tail. It is real when you have seen it, yes. I hope you never will.”

Madillo shivered but did not look worried. She likes getting scared. These kinds of things fly out of her head as quickly as they arrive, but they stay in mine. I will have to try and think very hard about something else, otherwise the Kongamato will visit me tonight in my dreams.

It
is a long life when you are one. One on your own. That is why I tell stories. When I tell stories, my head is filled with other people who talk to me and know me. When I tell stories, my mother and grandmother come back to me. My grandmother scolds me and sends me off to look for eggs. I hear my mother laughing. People whose names have gone from my head appear again and I can look into their faces and know them. I like it when my head is busy like that.

When I was smaller than Bul-Boo and her sister, I started listening to people when they couldn’t see me. I cannot explain why. Crouching low, I sat outside their windows and heard the things they said. Bad things and good things. But it all stopped the day Winston found me and beat me till I couldn’t walk.

He was much bigger than me, a man, and he took a stick to me and beat me as I was lying on the ground, shouting so loudly that everyone came to look. He said he would beat the devil out of me, the witch’s heathen child. It was my grandmother who stopped him. He was afraid of her. She ran out of our house on her thin legs and I heard her voice: “Winston.” Nothing else. Not loud, no shouting. Just that. He stopped and looked around, I think to make sure who was speaking. When he saw her, he moved away from me. He looked scared.

I did not get up; I lay there absolutely still. If I moved, I thought it would start again. I did not even open my eyes or my ears. Then my grandmother came over to me and knelt down in the dust. She put her head next to mine. “Come, little one. You are all right now.” She helped me home and for three days and nights she looked after me, taking away the pain. Winston never touched me again.

But he waited a long time, and then he touched her.