The grown-up Congo men are all named Tata Something. That one, name of Tata Undo, he is the chief. He wears a whole outfit, cat skins and everything and a hat. Father had to go see Tata Undo to pay the Devil his do. And the women are all Mama Something, even if they don’t have children. Like Mama Tataba, our cooking lady. Rachel calls her Mama Tater Tots. But she won’t cook those. I wish she would.
The lady in the little house that’s pretty close to ours is Mama Mwanza. One time her roof caught on fire and fell on her and burnt up her legs but not the rest of her. That happened way back years ago. Mama Tataba told Mama about it in the kitchen house and I was listening. They won’t talk about the bad things in front of my sisters, but me I can listen all the livelong day while I’m getting me a banana in the kitchen house and peeling it. Mama Tataba hangs the whole big family of bananas up in the corner all together, so the tarantula spiders that use it for their house can just move on out when they take a notion. I sat real still on the floor and peeled my one banana like Saint Matthew would if he was a real monkey and not gone, and I heard them talking about the woman that got burned up. The roofs burn up because they are all made out of sticks and hay like the Three Little Pigs. The wolf could huff and puff and blow your house down. Even ours. It’s a right smart better than the other ones, but it’s not bricks. Mama Mwanza’s legs didn’t burn all the way off but it looks like a pillow or just something down there she’s sitting on wrapped up in a cloth sack. She has to scoot around on her hands. Her hand bottoms look like feet bottoms, only with fingers. I went over there and had me a good look at her and her little girls with no clothes on. She was nice and gave me a piece of orange to suck on. Mama doesn’t know.
Mama Mwanza almost got burnt plumb to death when it happened but then she got better. Mama says that was the poor woman’s bad luck, because now she has got to go right on tending after her husband and her seven or eight children. They don’t care one bit about her not having any legs to speak of. To them she’s just their mama and where’s dinner? To all the other Congo people, too. Why, they just don’t let on, like she was a regular person. Nobody bats their eye when she scoots by on her hands and goes on down to her field or the river to wash clothes with the other ladies that work down there every day. She carries all her things in a basket on top of her head. It’s as big as Mama’s big white laundry hamper back home and seems like she’s always got about ten hundred things piled up in there. When she scoots down the road, not a one of them falls out. All the other ladies have big baskets on their heads too, so nobody stares at Mama Mwanza one way or another.
What they do is, they all stare at us. They look at Rachel the worst. First Mama and Father were thinking it might do Rachel some good to be cranked down a notch or two. Father said to Mama: “A child shouldn’t think herself better than others because she is blonde as a white rabbit.” He said that. I told it to Leah and she laughed out loud. I am blonde too but not as much as a white rabbit. Strawberry blonde, Mama says. So I hope I don’t have to get cranked down a notch or two like Rachel. I like strawberries about better than anything.You can keep a rabbit for a pet or you can eat it. Poor Rachel. Everwhen she goes out, whole bunches of little Congo children run after her on the road a-reaching and a-yanking on her long white hair to see if they can get it to come off. Sometimes even the grownups do too. I reckon they think it’s a right good sport. Leah told me it’s because they don’t believe it is her hair and think she’s got something strange draped over her head.
Rachel gets her the worst sunburns, too. I get burnt but not like her. Pink is Rachel’s favorite color and it’s a good thing because that’s what she is. Father says it is the lot of every young woman to learn humility and God plots for each her chosen way.
Mama says, “But must they look on us as freaks of nature?” Rachel was Miss Priss and now she is a freak of nature. Used to be, Adah was the only one of us in our family with something wrong with her. But here nobody stares at Adah except just a little because she’s white. Nobody cares that she’s bad on one whole side because they’ve all got their own handicap children or a mama with no feet, or their eye put out. When you take a look out the door, why, there goes somebody with something missing off of them and not even embarrassed of it. They’ll wave a stump at you if they’ve got one, in a friendly way.
At first Mama got after us for staring and pointing at people. She was all the time whispering, “Do I have to tell you girls ever single minute don’t stare!” But now Mama looks too. Sometimes she says to us or just herself, Now Tata Zinsana is the one missing all the fingers, isn’t he? Or she’ll say, That big gouter like a goose egg under her chin, that’s how I remember Mama Nguza.
Father said, “They are living in darkness. Broken in body and soul, and don’t even see how they could be healed.”
Mama said, “Well, maybe they take a different view of their bodies.” Father says the body is the temple. But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly. She was sewing us some window curtains out of dress material so they wouldn’t be looking in at us all the time, and had pins in her mouth. She took the pins out and said to him, “Well, here in Africa that temple has to do a hateful lot of work in a day.” She said, “Why, Nathan, here they have to use their bodies like we use things at home-like your clothes or your garden tools or something. Where you’d be wearing out the knees of your trousers, sir, they just have to go ahead and wear out their knees!”
Father looked at Mama hard for talking back to him. “Well, sir,” she said, “that is just what it looks like to me. That is just my observation. It appears to me their bodies just get worn out, about the same way as our worldly goods do.”
Mama wasn’t really sassing back. She calls him sir the way she calls us Sugar and Hon, trying to be nice. But still. If it was me talking back that way, he’d say, “That is a fine line you are walking there, young lady.” And he appeared to be fixing to say just such a thing to Mama. He was debating about it. He stood there in the front doorway with the sun just squeaking by him on all sides. He is so big he near about filled up the whole doorway. His head almost touched. And Mama was just sitting down short at the table, so she went back to sewing.
He said, “Orleanna, the human body is a sight more precious than a pair of khaki trousers from Sears and Roebuck. I’d expect you to comprehend the difference.”
Then he looked at her with his one eye turned mean and said, “You of all people.”
She turned red and breathed out like she does. She said, “Even something precious can get shabby in the course of things. Considering what they’re up against here, that might not be such a bad attitude for them to take.”
After that Mama put pins back in her mouth, so no more talking.
He didn’t say anything,Yes or No, just turned his back and went on out. He doesn’t approve talking back. If that was me, oh, boy.
That razor strop burns so bad, after you go to bed your legs still feel stripedy like a zebra horse.
I’ll tell you one thing that Father has sure wore out bad: his old green swivel rocker in the living room of our house where we live in Bethlehem, Georgia.You can see white threads in the shape of a bottom. It doesn’t look very polite. And nobody but him did it, either. He sits there of an evening and reads and reads. Once in a while he reads to us out loud when we have our scripture stories. Sometimes I get to picking my scabs and think about cartoons instead of Jesus, and He sees me doing that. But Jesus loves me and this I know: nobody can sit in that green swivel rocker but Father.