The Poisonwood Bible (21 page)

want to leave. We were so deprived of company, honestly. I lingered about the room checking my hairdo once or twice in the mirror and tidying up the desk, and finally ended up loitering out on the veranda with my sisters, close enough to the doorway so that we could keep tabs. We stared at the glasses of orangeade, wishing Mother had had the simple confederation to make enough for all of us, while we listened in and tried to get the picture of what had caused them to come out here. Even though I knew before it was over I would probably go bored out of my gourd.

Sure enough, when they’d finished passing around the newspaper article, they dropped the subject of the Underdowns’ criminal-element houseboy and moved onto the subject of everything dull under the blue sky: new sheets, malaria pills, new Bibles for the school. That jazz.

I sashayed in and picked up the newspaper after Father had thrown it down on the floor. Well, why shouldn’t I? It was written in red-blooded English, from New York, the United States of America. I read the page they’d folded back: “Soviet Plan Moves Forward in Congo.” It said Khrushchev wanted to take over the Belgian Congo and deprive the innocent savages of becoming a free society, as part of his plan for world domination. Jeez Louise, if Khrushchev wants the Congo he can have it, if you ask me. The newspaper was from last December, anyway. If his big plan was going so well, seems like we would have seen hides or tails of the Russians by now. The article told how the Belgians are the unsung heroes, and when they come into a village they usually interrupt the cannibal natives in the middle of human sacrifice. Huh. If they came to our village that day they would have interrupted Mother in the middle of scrubbing the floor and about twelve little naked boys having a pee-pee contest across the road. I gave the newspaper to Adah, and Leah read it over her shoulder. They turned some pages and showed me a cartoon: big, fat, bald-headed Nikita Khrushchev in his Communist uniform was holding hands and dancing with a skinny cannibal native with big lips and a bone in his hair. Khrushchev was singing, “Bingo Bango Bongo, I don’t want to leave the Congo!”

I stared out the window, -wondering who
 
wouldn’t want to leave the Congo before you could say Jack Robinson if they had half a chance. The Underdowns and mother were just finishing up with the fascinating subject of quinine pills, and then it went quiet for, as they say, an uncomfortable silence.

 
The Underdowns went “Ahem, ahem” and crossed their legs and got around to what appeared to be their big news: the Congo is going to have an election in May and declare their independence in June. As far as I am concerned you can chalk that one right up with malaria pills and Bibles for a tedulous topic, but Mother and Father seemed to take it as a shock. Mother’s whole face dropped out of its socket. She looked like Claire Bloom in Beauty and the Beast when she finally gets a look at what she’s going to have to marry. I kept waiting for Mother to snap back to her old Everything Is Just Fine attitude, but she stayed blanched out and kind of stopped breathing. She put her hand on her throat like she’d swallowed a shot of Mr. Clean, and that look scared me. I started paying attention.

“This June,” Mother said.

“Belgium won’t possibly accept the outcome of an election,” Father said. Oh, well, naturally he already knew all about it. No matter what happens on God’s green earth, Father acts like it’s a movie he’s already seen and we’re just dumb for not knowing how it comes out. Leah, of course, was about to fall out of her hammock, hanging on his every word. Ever since Father smacked her over the owl, she’s been trying twice as hard to win him back over.

“Belgium absolutely will, Nathan. This is the new official plan. King Baudouin invited eighty Congolese leaders to Brussels to chart a course for independence.” So said Mr. Potato Head, who has no elocution in his voice whatsoever. I am positive he is foreign, or used to be.

“When?” Mother asked.

“Two weeks ago.”

“And might we ask what happened to the old official plan?” Father said. He always has to say, “And might we ask?” Instead of just asking.

“Leopoldville and Stanleyville have been shut down with riots and strikes, in case you haven’t heard. The old official plan did not go over so well.”
        
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“What about the threat of a Soviet takeover?” Mother wanted to know.

“Frankly, I think Belgium is more concerned about the threat of an African takeover,” he said. Reverend Underdown, whose name is Frank, says “Frankly” a lot, and he doesn’t even see the humor. “The Russians are a theoretical threat, whereas the Congolese are quite actual and seem to mean business. We say in French, if your brother is going to steal your hen, save your honor and give it to him first.”

“So they would just hand over independence to the Congolese?” Mother leaned forward over Father’s head to speak. She looked like Father’s guardian angel with iron-poor tired blood. “Frank, what leaders are you talking about, getting invited to Brussels? Who on earth around here is eligible for a thing like that?”

“Tribal chiefs, heads of unions, and the like. They say it was a pretty motley assembly. Joseph Kasavubu wavered between boycotting and trying to run the show. Lumumba got out of jail just for the occasion. They settled on a parliamentary system of government. Elections will be mid-May. Independence day, June thirtieth.”

Methuselah had sidled up into the bougainvillea bush right behind us, muttering, “Lubberlubberlubber.” I swear it was like he was trying to listen in on the conversation, too.

“Belgium has never been willing to discuss independence before,” Father declared.

“That’s true, Frank,” Mother added. She had both hands on her hair, pulling it back from her face like a skinned rabbit and fanning her neck in the back. It wasn’t at all becoming. “We discussed this with the mission people in Atlanta before we ever decided to come. They said the political advisors in Belgium had mapped out a plan last year that would grant independence in, what was it, Nathan, thirty years? Thirty years’ time!”

Mother had raised her voice a little, and Mr. Potato Head looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry to have to remind you that you were advised not to come,” he finally said.

“That’s not exactly true,” Mother said. She looked at Father, and Mrs. Potato Head looked at Father. Father stared at Mr. Potato Head, who didn’t have the nerve to look him in the eye.The whole thing was out of this world.

Finally Mr. Potato Head dared to speak. “No offense intended,” he said. “Your work here certainly has the blessings of the Mission League, Orleanna.” He may have meant no offense but he pronounced my mother’s name like a bad word. “And I would also say it has the admiration of many people who lack your family’s... boldness.” He looked at the button on his sleeve, probably sewn on upside-down or something by the handkerchief-stealing houseboy. Then he started turning his wet empty glass around and around on its damp ring on the table.

Everybody waited for what else Frank Underdown might have to say with no offense intended. Finally he allowed, “But you do know your mission here was not sanctioned.” He glanced up at Mother, then back to his spinny-go-round glass.

“Well, whatever does that mean?”

“I think you know.You didn’t get the language in-service or any of the ordinary kinds of training. I’m afraid the Mission League thinks of your stipend as an act of kindness on their part. I would not be too surprised to see the end of it now.”

Well! Mother’s hand hit the table, bang! “If you think my family is living in this moldy corner of hell for the fifty dollars a month!” she practically shouted at him. Man oh man, if the porch could have opened up and swallowed us all.

“Orleanna,” Father said. (Dog peed on the carpet voice.)

“Well, Nathan, for heavens sake. Can’t you see you’re being insulted?”
  

Usually Father doesn’t have to look twice to see when he’s being insulted. Usually he can see insults as big as a speck when they’re hiding under a rock in the next county over. We all crossed our fingers.

“Now everyone simmer down,” said Mr. Potato Head, trying for a fake friendly laugh. “Nobody is being insulted. We don’t have any control over the decisions of the Mission League, you know that.

We are just humble administrators for the SBML and a lot of other organizations, who are all giving similar advice right now. We came here to talk with you personally, because we are deeply concerned about your witness for Christ and your precious children.”

My mother, who had just said the word “hell,” was about a million miles from her witness for Christ at the present time. I would say at the present time she looked ready to bean somebody with a baseball bat. She turned her back on the Underdowns.”Why in the world did they even let us come here, if it was dangerous?” she asked some birdy outside the window.

Father had not spoken up yet. My theory was he didn’t know who to jump on first, the insulting Underdowns or his cussing wife, so he just stood there brewing like a coffeepot. Only with a coffeepot you know exactly what’s going to come out of it.

“Now, please, Orleanna,” Mr. Potato Head crooned. “This is not the fault of the Mission League. No one could have predicted the move to independence would come so suddenly.”

She turned around and faced him. “Wasn’t it somebody’s darn business to predict it?”

“How could they?” he asked, opening his hands wide. “Last year when De Gaulle gave independence to all the French colonies, the Belgians insisted this had nothing to do with us! No one even took the ferry across to Brazzaville to watch the ceremony. The Belgians went on speaking of rule with a fatherly hand.”

“A fatherly hand, is that what you call it!” She shook her head from side to side. “Using these people like slaves in your rubber plantations and your mines and I don’t know what all? We’ve heard what goes on, Frank, do you think we’re simpleminded? There’s men right here in this village with tales to make your hair stand on end. One old fellow got his hand whacked off up at Coquilhatville, and ran away while he was still spurting blood!”

Father shot her a look.

“Well, honestly, Nathan. I talk to their wives.” She looked at Mrs. Potato Head, who was keeping mum on the subject.

“We had no idea,” Mother said quietly then, like she’d just figured the whole thing out. “Your King Baudouin is living off the fat of this land, is what he’s doing, and leaving it up to penniless mission doctors and selfless men like my husband to take care of their every simple need. Is that how a father rules? Hell’s bells! And he didn’t expect trouble?”

She glanced back and forth between Mr. Underdown and Father like a nervous child herself, unsure which of the two men was entitled to give her a licking.

Mr. Underdown stared at Mother like he suddenly had no idea where she’d come from—like that houseboy that didn’t know how the sugar got under his shirt. Man oh man, that made me nervous. Every grown-up in the room, including my mother, the Cussing Lady, and Mrs. Underdown, who kept rubbing her neck and craning her chin to the side, you could have mistaken for a mental psychiatry patient right then. Except for Father, and of course he is the one who is really mental.

The Reverend Underdown flung out his fist, and Mother flinched. But he wasn’t aiming for her at all. It turns out he just meant for them all to admire his hand. “That is the relation of Belgium to her Congo,” he said. “Look there! A strong hand, tightly clenched. No one could have predicted an uprising like this.”

Mother walked straight out of the room, out the backdoor toward the kitchen. No one mentioned her absence. Then in a minute she came back, having just remembered, evidently, that she couldn’t go hop on the Greyhound Bus to Atlanta.

“What’s he really saying?” she asked Mrs. Underdown. “That there’s going to be no transition at all? No interim period for—I don’t know-a provisional government-in-training? Just wham, the Belgians are gone and the Congolese have to run everything on their own?”

Nobody answered, and I was scared Mother would start swearing about the King again, or crying. How embarrassing. But she didn’t do either one. She pulled on her hair for a while and then tried out a new, improved Let’s Get This All Straight voice.” Frank. Janna. Not a soul among these people has even gone to college or traveled abroad to study government. That’s what Anatole tells us. And now you’re saying they’ll be left overnight to run every single school, every service, every government office? And the army? What about the army, Frank?”

Reverend Underdown shook his head. “I can’t tell you how, Orleanna. I can only tell you what I know.”

Home, home, home, home, I prayed. If the problem was big enough, we’d just have to go home. We could get on that plane tomorrow and fly right straight out of here, if only he would say so.

Father got up and came to stand in the doorway, facing out toward the porch. I shuddered, both hoping and dreading that he’d read my mind. But he wasn’t looking at us girls. He just stared right past us, to make a point of turning his back on the present company of Underdowns and Mother. I slouched back into my hammock and attended to my cuticles while Father spoke to the great outdoors.

“Not a television set in this whole blessed country,” he announced to the palm trees. “Radios, maybe one per hundred thousand residents. No telephones. Newspapers as scarce as hen’s teeth, and a literacy rate made to match. They get their evening news by listening to their neighbors’ drums.”