Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible

“If you are counting your enemies, you should not count me among them, sir,” Anatole said. “And if you fear the rivals of your church, you should know there is another nganga here, another minister. People also put their trust in him.”

Father loosened his tie and the collar of his short-sleeved Sunday shirt. “First of all, young man, I do not fear any man in Kilanga. I am a messenger of God’s great good news for all mankind, and He has bestowed upon me a greater strength than the brute ox or the most stalwart among the heathen.”

Anatole calmly blinked at that. I reckon he was wondering which one Father had him pegged for, brute ox or stalwart heathen.

“Second,” Father went on, “I’ll point out what you clearly must know, which is that Brother Ndu is not a minister of any kind. His business concerns the governing of human relations, not matters of the spirit. But you are quite right, there is another preacher aside from myself guiding my own right hand. The Lord is our Shepherd’’ Naturally Father had to give the impression he knew who, or what, Anatole was talking about, even if he didn’t. What with him being the Father Knows Best of all times.

“Yes, yes, of course, the Lord is our Shepherd,” Anatole said quickly, like he didn’t believe it all that much and was just getting it out of the way.”But I am speaking of the ngangaTatu Kuvudundu.”

We all stared at the middle of the table like something dead with feet had just turned up there. Why, we knew Tata Kuvudundu. We’d seen him babbling and walking cockeyed down the road, leaning over so far you keep thinking he’ll plumb fall over. He has six toes on one of his feet, and that’s not even half the battle. Some days he sells aspirins in the market, all dignified like Dr. Kildare, yet other days he’ll turn up with his body painted top to bottom (and I do mean bottom) in some kind of whitewash. We’ve also seen him squatting in his front yard surrounded by other old men, every one of them falling over from drinking palm wine. Father told us Tata Kuvudundu conducts the sin of false prophecy. Supposedly he and his grown-up sons tell fortunes by throwing chicken bones into a calabash bowl.

“Anatole, what do you mean by calling him a preacher?” Mother asked. “We kind of thought Tata Kuvudundu was the town drunk.”

“No Mama Price, he is not. He is a respected nganga, a priest of the traditions, you might say. He is quite a good advisor to Tata Ndu.”

“Advisor, nothing” said Father, raising halfway up out of his chair and starting to get his Baptist voice. His red eyebrows flared above his scowling eyes, with the bad one starting to squint a little from the strain of it all. “He is a rare nut, is what he is. A nut of the type that never falls far from the tree-Where I come from, sir, that is what we call a witch doctor!”

Anatole took one of Mother’s cloth napkins and blotted his face. Dots of perspiration were running into the little ridges along his nose. My sisters were still staring at him with all their might, and no wonder. We hadn’t had any company since Mother vanished Mr. Axelroot from our table way last summer-merely because he spat and cursed; we didn’t even know yet that he was a criminal element that would charge us for our own things. Since that time we hadn’t heard word one of English at our dinner table from any mouth but a Price’s. Six months is a long time for a family to tolerate itself without any outside distractions.

Anatole seemed to be getting ants in his pants but was still bound and determined to argue with Father. In spite of the seven warning signals of “You’ll be sorry” written all over Father’s face. Anatole said, “Tata Kuvudundu looks after many practical matters here. Men go especially to him when their wives are not getting children, or if they are adulterous.” He glanced at me, of all things, as if I in particular were too young to know what that meant. Really.

Mother suddenly snapped out of it. “Help me out, girls,” she said. “The dishwater is boiling away on the stove, I forgot all about it.You all clear the table and start washing up. Be careful and don’t get burned.”

To my surprise, my sisters practically ran from the table. They were curious, I’m sure, but the main consideration had to be Father. He was as frustrated as it gets and looked like he was fixing to throw a rod. I, however, didn’t leave. I helped clear the dishes but then I sat back down. If anybody presumed I was too young for a conversation about adulters and not getting babies they had another think coming. Besides, this was the most exciting occasion that had happened to us since Ruth May fell out of a tree, which goes to show you how fascinating our life was. If big Daddy-O was going to blow his stack over a witch doctor, here’s one cat that wasn’t going to miss it.

Anatole told Father he ought not to think of Tata Kuvudundu as competition. He said barrenness and adultery were serious matters that probably ought to remain separate from Tata Jesus. But he assured us that many people in Kilanga remembered the missionary times, when Brother Fowles had gotten practically the whole town praying to Jesus, and it was their recollection that the gods hadn’t been too angry over it, since no more bad things had happened in Kilanga than usual.

Well, that did it. Remembered the missionary times? This was a nerve shock even to me, to hear that the villagers thought Christianity was like some old picture show that was way out of date. What did that make Father then, Charlie Chaplin, waddling around duck-footed, waving his cane and talking without any sounds coming out?

Mother and I watched him, expecting the dreaded atomic blowup. Father actually did open and close his mouth like a silent-picture version of “What!” or “Waaa!” and his neck turned red. Then he got very still.You could hear Ruth May’s creepy pet mongoose scurrying around under the table looking for somebody to drop something. Then Father’s whole face changed and I knew he was going to use the special way of talking he frequently perpeturates on his family members, dogs that have peed in the house, and morons, with his words saying one thing that’s fairly nice and his tone of voice saying another thing that is not. He told Anatole he respected and valued his help (meaning: I’ve had about enough of your lip, Buster Brown) but was disappointed by the villagers’ childlike interpretations of God’s plan (meaning: you are just as big of a dingwit as the rest of them). He said he would work on a sermon that would clear up all the misunderstandings. Then he announced that this conversation had come to an end, and Anatole could consider himself excused from the table and this house.

Which Anatole did, without delay.

“Well, that puts a whole new outlook on things, doesn’t it?” Mother asked, in the very quiet silence that followed. I kept my head down and cleared off all the last things except the big blue-flowered platter in the middle of the table, which I couldn’t reach without crossing into Father’s atomic danger zone.

“I wonder what outlook you might think that to be,” he said to Mother in that same special voice, for bad dogs and morons.

She brushed her hair out of her face and smiled at him as she reached across for the china platter. “Well, for one thing, sir, you and the good Lord better hope no lightning strikes around here in the next six months!”

“Orleanna, shut up!” he yelled, grabbing her arm hard and jerking the plate out of her hand. He raised it up over her head and slammed it down hard on the table, cracking it right in two. The smaller half flipped upside down as it broke, and lay there dribbling black plantain juice like blood onto the tablecloth. Mother stood helplessly, holding her hands out to the plate like she wished she could mend its hurt feelings.