Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible

But listen, why should we have to put on the Ritz for the Underdowns? They aren’t even Baptists, I heard Father say; they just oversee the financial affairs for the Mission League since so many people have pulled out. They are Episcopotamians, and their real name is actually something foreign like On-tray-don. We just say Underdown because it’s easier. To tell you the truth, the two of them are just a couple of the plainest Janes you ever saw, in their economical home haircuts and khaki trousers. The funny thing about Frank and Janna Underdown is that they look exactly alike except for the accessories: he has a mustache, she has little gold cross earrings and glasses on a chain. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

They sat at our table sweating while Mother ran and squeezed the orangeade and served it. Even the glasses were dripping with sweat. Outside, the sky was getting its regular afternoon storm organized: wind whacking the palm leaves together, red dust ghosts flying up from the road, little kids running like bansheets for cover. Mother was too nervous to sit down with the company so she stood behind Father’s chair, leaning on the windowsill, waiting for him to finish the newspaper they’d brought. All of them passed it around. Except Mr. Axelroot, the pilot, who probably wouldn’t know what to do with a newspaper except wipe his you-know-what.Yes, he was there among our numbers too. He stood leaning in the back doorway and spitting until I thought I would croak. He stared right at me, undressing me mentally. I have said already my parents are entirely in the dark about certain things. I made faces at him and finally he went away.

While Father was reading the latest news, Mrs. Underdown tried to make friends with Mother by complaining about her houseboy in Leopoldville. “Honestly, Orleanna, he would steal anything except the children. And he would have those, too, if he thought he could sell them. If I try to lock things up, he slaps his hands over his heart as if I’ve accused him of murder. Even though I just caught him the night before with four of Frank’s handkerchiefs and a kilo of sugar tucked into the front of his shirt. He always claims he has no idea how they got there.”

“Well, my stars,” Mother said, without seeming all that interested.

Mrs. Underdown stared at Mother, puzzled. “Your stores’?” She always implies we have an accent, by repeating our words and expressions like little jokes. With her being somewhat of a foreigner herself, that’s the pot calling the skillet black if you ask me.

For once, my sisters and I got excused from spending the whole livelong morning playing Ding Dong Schoolhouse with Mother. But we were curious about the Underdown visit and didn’t really

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.”:

“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?”