Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible

“Oh my stars, oh goodness, you’re too kind,” Mother kept saying, as Celine brought out one thing after another and put it into our hands. “Oh, I can’t thank you enough.”

I was of a mind to slip them a note, like a captivated spy girl in the movies: “Help! Get me out of here!” But that loaded-down little boat of theirs already looked like it was fixing to sink if you looked at it wrong. All the canned goods they gave us probably helped them stay afloat.

Mother was also taking stock of things. She asked, “How do you manage to stay so well supplied?”

“We have so many friends,” Celine said. “The Methodist Mission gets us milk powder and vitamins to distribute in the villages along the river. The tins of food and quinine pills come from the ABFMS.”

“We’re terribly interdenominational,” said Brother Fowles, laughing.”! even get a little stipend from the National Geographic Society.”

“The ABFMS?” Mother queried.

“American Baptist Foreign Mission Service,” he said. “They have a hospital mission up the Wamba River, have you not heard of it? That little outfit has done a world of good in the ways of guinea-worm cure, literacy, and human kindness. They’ve put old King Leopold’s ghost to shame, I would say. If such a thing is possible. It’s run by the wisest minister you’ll ever meet, a man named Wesley Green, and his wife, Jane.”

Brother Fowles added as an afterthought, “No offense to your husband, of course.”

“But we’re Baptists,” Mother said, sounding hurt. “And the Mission League cut off our stipend right before Independence!”

Mr. Fowles thought this over before offering, tactfully, “For certain, Mrs. Price, there are Christians and then there are Christians.”

“How far away is this mission? Do you get there on your boat?” Mother was eying the boat, the canned goods, and perhaps the whole of our future.

But both Brother and Mrs. Fowles laughed at that, shaking their heads like Mother had asked if they take their boat to the moon frequently to fetch green cheese.

“We can’t take this old bucket more than fifty miles down the Kwilu,” he explained. “You run into the rapids. But the good road from Leopoldville crosses the Wamba and reaches this river at Kikwit. Sometimes Brother Green comes up in his boat, hitches a ride on a truck and meets us at Kikwit. Or we go to the airfield at Masi Manimba to meet our packages. By the grace of God, we always seem to get whatever it is we really need to have.”

“We rely very much on our friends,” Celine added.

“Ah, yes,” her husband agreed. “And that means to get one good connection made, you have to understand the Kituba, the Lingala, the Bembe, Kunyi,Vili, Ndingi, and the bleeding talking drums.”

Celine laughed and said yes, that was true. The rest of us felt like fish out of water as usual. If Ruth May had been feeling up to snuff she’d have already climbed aboard and started jabbering with the Fowles children in probably all those languages plus French and Siamese. Which makes you wonder, are they really speaking real words, or do little kids just start out naturally understanding each other before the prime of life sets in? But Ruth May was not up to snuff, so she was being quiet, hanging on to Mother’s hand.

“They asked us to leave,” Mother said. “In no uncertain terms.

Really I think we should have, but it was Nathan’s decision to stay.”

“Sure there was quite a rush for the gate, after Independence,”

Brother Fowles agreed. “People left for a million reasons: common sense, lunacy, faintness of heart. And the rest of us stayed, for the very same reasons. Except for faintness of heart. No one can accuse us of that, can they, Mrs. Price?”

“Well…” Mother said uncertainly. I guess she hated to admit that if it was up to her we’d be hightailing it out of here like rabbits. Me too, and I don’t care who calls me yellow. Please help, I tried to say to Mrs. Fowles just with my eyes. Get us out of here! Send a bigger boat!

Finally Mother just sighed and said, “We hate to see you go.” I’m sure my sisters all agreed with that. Here we’d been feeling like the very last people on earth of the kind that use the English language and can openers, and once that little boat went put-put-put up the river we’d feel that way again.

“You could stay in Kilanga awhile,” Leah offered, though she didn’t tell them they could stay with us. And she didn’t say, You’d have some explaining to do to Father, who thinks you’re a bunch of backsliders. She didn’t have to. Those words were unspoken by all present.

“You’re very kind,” Celine said. “We need to go to my mother’s family. Their village is starting a soybean farm. We’ll be back this way after the end of the rainy season, and we will be sure to visit you again.”

Which, of course, could be any time from next July to the twelfth of never, as far as we knew. We just stood there getting more and more heartbroken as they gathered things up and counted their kids.

“I don’t mean to impose on you,” Mother said, “but Ruth May, my little one here-she’s had a high fever for more than a month. She seems to be getting the best of it now, but I’ve been so worried. Is there a doctor anywhere we could get to easily?”

Celine stepped over the side of the boat and put a hand on Ruth May’s head, then stooped down and looked in her eyes. “It could be malaria. Could be typhus. Not sleeping sickness, I don’t think. Let me get you something that might help.”

As she disappeared back into the boat, Brother Fowles confided to Mother in a low voice, “I wish we could do more for you. But the mission planes aren’t flying at all and the roads are anyone’s guess. Everything is at sixes and sevens. We’ll try to get word over to Brother Green about your little one, but there’s no saying what he could do, just now.” He looked at Ruth May, who seemed to have no inkling they were discussing the fate of her life. He asked carefully, “Do you think it’s a matter of great urgency?”

Mother bit her fingernail and studied Ruth May. “Brother Fowles, I have no earthly notion. I am a housewife from Georgia.” Just then Celine appeared with a small glass bottle of pink capsules. “Antibiotics,” she said. “If it’s typhus or cholera or any number of other things, these may help. If it’s malaria or sleeping sickness, I’m afraid they won’t. In any case we will pray for your Ruth.”

“Have you spoken with Tata Ndu?” Brother Fowles put in. “He is a man of surprising resources.”

“I’m afraid Nathan and Tata Ndu have locked horns. I’m not sure he would give us the time of day.” “You might be surprised,” he said.

They really were leaving, but Mother seemed just plain desperate to keep the conversation going. She asked Brother Fowles while he wound up some ropes and things on the deck, “Were you really on such good terms with Tata Ndu?”

He looked up, a little surprised. “I respect him, if that’s what you mean.”

“But as a Christian. Did you really get anywhere with him?” Brother Fowles stood up and scratched his head, making his white hair stand on end. The longer you watched that man doing things, the younger he looked. Finally he said, “As a Christian, I respect his judgments. He guides his village fairly, all things considered. We never could see eye to eye on the business of having four wives…”

“He has more than that now” Leah tattled.

“Aha. So you see, I was not a great influence in that department,” he said. “But each of those wives has profited from the teachings of Jesus, I can tell you. Tata Ndu and I spent many afternoons with a calabash of palm wine between us, debating the merits of treating a wife kindly. In my six years here I saw the practice of wife beating fall into great disfavor. Secret little altars to Tata Jesus appeared in most every kitchen, as a result.”