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Book One: Genesis
Leah Price
We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle. My
sisters and I were all counting on having one birthday apiece during our twelve-month
mission. "And heaven knows," our mother predicted, "they won't have Betty
Crocker in the Congo."
"Where we are headed, there will be no buyers and sellers at all," my father
corrected. His tone implied that Mother failed to grasp our mission, and that her concern
with Betty Crocker confederated her with the coin-jingling sinners who vexed Jesus till he
pitched a fit and threw them out of church. "Where we are headed," he said, to
make things perfectly clear, "not so much as a Piggly Wiggly." Evidently Father
saw this as a point in the Congo's favor. I got the most spectacular chills, just from
trying to imagine.
She wouldn't go against him, of course. But once she understood there was no turning back,
our mother went to laying out in the spare bedroom all the worldly things she thought we'd
need in the Congo just to scrape by. "The bare minimum, for my children," she'd
declare under her breath, all the live-long day. In addition to the cake mixes she piled
up a dozen cans of Underwood deviled ham; Rachel's ivory plastic hand mirror with
powdered-wig ladies on the back; a stainless steel thimble; a good pair of scissors; a
dozen Number 2 pencils; a world of Band-Aids, Anacin, Absorbine Jr.; and a fever
thermometer.
And now we are here, with all these colorful treasures safely transported and stowed
against necessity. Our stores are still intact, save for the Anacin tablets taken by our
mother and the thimble lost down the latrine hole by Ruth May. But already our supplies
from home seem to represent a bygone world: they stand out like bright party favors here
in our Congolese house, set against a backdrop of mostly all mud-colored things. When I
stare at them with the rainy season light in my eyes and Congo grit in my teeth, I can
hardly recollect the place where such items were commonplace, merely a yellow pencil,
merely a green bottle of aspirin among so many other green bottles upon a high shelf.
Mother tried to think of every contingency, including hunger and illness. (And Father
does, in general, approve of contingencies. For it was God who gave man alone the capacity
of foresight.) She procured a good supply of antibiotic drugs from our Grand-Dad Dr. Bud
Wharton, who has senile dementia and loves to walk outdoors naked but still can do two
things perfectly: win at checkers and write out prescriptions. We also brought over a
cast-iron frying pan, five packets of baker's yeast, pinking shears, the head of a
hatchet, a fold-up Army latrine spade, and all told a good deal more. This was the full
measure of civilization's evils we felt obliged to carry with us.
Getting here with even the bare minimum was a trial. Just when we considered ourselves
fully prepared and were fixing to depart, lo and behold, we learned that the Pan American
airline would only allow forty-four pounds to be carried across the ocean. Forty-four
pounds of luggage, per person, and not one iota more. Why, we were dismayed by this bad
news! Who'd have thought there would be limits on modern jet-age transport? When we added
up all our forty-four pounds together including Ruth May's--luckily she counted as a whole
person even though she's small--we were sixty-one pounds over. Father surveyed our despair
as if he'd expected it all along, and left it up to wife and daughters to sort out,
suggesting only that we consider the lilies of the field which have no need of a hand
mirror nor aspirin tablets.
"I reckon the lilies need Bibles, though, and his darn old latrine spade,"
Rachel muttered, as her beloved toiletry items got pitched out of the suitcase one by one.
Rachel never does grasp scripture all that well.
But considering the lilies as we might, our trimming back got us nowhere close to the
sixty-one pounds, even with Rachel's beauty aids. We were nearly stumped. And then,
hallelujah! At the last possible moment, saved. Through an oversight (or else probably, if
you think about it, just plain politeness), they don't weigh the passengers. The Southern
Baptist Mission League gave us this hint, without coming right out and telling us to flout
the law of the Forty-four Pounds, and from there we made our plan. We struck out for
Africa carrying all our excess baggage on our bodies, under our clothes. Also, we had
clothes under our clothes. My sisters and I left home wearing six pairs of underdrawers,
two half-slips and camisoles; several dresses one on top of the other, with pedal pushers
underneath; and outside of everything an all-weather coat. (The encyclopedia advised us to
count on rain). The other goods, tools, cake mix boxes and so forth were tucked out of
sight in our pockets and under our waistbands, surrounding us in a clanking armor.
We wore our best dresses on the outside to make a good impression. Rachel wore her green
linen Easter suit she was so vain of, and her long whitish hair pulled off her forehead
with a wide pink elastic hairband. Rachel is fifteen--or as she would put it, going on
sixteen--and cares for naught but appearances. Her full Christian name is Rachel Rebeccah,
so she feels free to take after Rebekah the virgin at the well, who is said in Genesis to
be "a damsel most fair" and was offered marriage presents of golden earbobs
right off the bat, when Abraham's servant spied her fetching up the water. (Since she's my
elder by one year, she claims no relation to the Bible's poor Rachel, Leah's younger
sister, who had to wait all those years to get married.) Sitting next to me on the plane,
she kept batting her white rabbit eyelashes and adjusting her bright pink hairband, trying
to get me to notice she had secretly painted her fingernails bubble-gum pink to match. I
glanced over at Father, who had the other window seat at the opposite end of our entire
row of Prices. The sun was a blood-red ball hovering outside his window, inflaming his
eyes as he kept up a lookout for Africa on the horizon. It was just lucky for Rachel he
had so much else weighing on his mind. She'd been thrashed with the strap for nail polish,
even at her age. But that is Rachel to a T, trying to work in just one last sin before
leaving civilization. Rachel is worldly and tiresome in my opinion, so I stared out the
window where the view was better. Father feels makeup and nail polish are warning signals
of prostitution, the same as pierced ears.
He was right about the lilies of the field, too. Somewhere along about the Atlantic Ocean,
the six pairs of underwear and cake mixes all commenced to be a considerable cross to
bear. Every time Rachel leaned over to dig in her purse she kept one hand on the chest of
her linen jacket and it still made a small clinking noise. I forget now what kind of
concealed household weapon she had in there. I was ignoring her, so she chattered mostly
to Adah--who was ignoring her too, but since Adah never talks to anyone, it was less
noticeable.
Rachel adores to poke fun at everything in Creation, but chiefly our family. "Hey,
Ade!" she whispered at Adah. "What if we went on Art Linkletter's House Party
now?"
In spite of myself, I laughed. Mr. Linkletter likes to surprise ladies by taking their
purses and pulling out what all's inside for the television audience. They think it's very
comical if he digs out a can opener or a picture of Herbert Hoover. Imagine if he shook
us, and out fell pinking shears and a hatchet. The thought of it gave me nerves. Also, I
felt claustrophobic and hot.
Finally, finally we lumbered like cattle off the plane and stepped down the stair-ramp
into the swelter of Leopoldville, and that is where our baby sister Ruth May pitched her
blond curls forward and fainted on Mother.
She revived very promptly in the airport, which smelled of urine. I was excited and had to
go to the bathroom but couldn't surmise where a girl would even begin to look, in a place
like this. Big palm tree leaves waved in the bright light outside. Crowds of people rushed
past one way and then the other. The airport police wore khaki shirts with extra metal
buttons, and believe you me, guns. Everywhere you looked, there were very tiny old dark
ladies lugging entire baskets of things along the order of wilting greens. Chickens, also.
Little regiments of children lurked by the doorways, apparently for the express purpose of
accosting foreign missionaries. The minute they saw our white skin they'd rush at us
begging in French: cadeau, cadeau? I held up my two hands to illustrate the total and
complete lack of gifts I had brought for the African children. Maybe people just hid
behind a tree somewhere and squatted down, I was starting to think; maybe that's why the
smell.
Just then a married couple of Baptists in tortoise-shell sunglasses came out of the crowd
and shook our hands. They had the peculiar name of Underdown ---Reverend and Mrs.
Underdown. They'd come down to shepherd us through customs and speak French to the men in
uniforms. Father made it clear we were completely self-reliant, but appreciated their
kindness all the same. He was so polite about it that the Underdowns didn't realize he was
peeved. They carried on making a fuss as if we were all old friends, and presented us with
a gift of mosquito netting, just armloads of it, trailing on and on like an embarrassing
bouquet from some junior-high boyfriend who liked you overly much. As we stood there
holding our netting and sweating through our complete wardrobes, they regaled us with
information about our soon-to-be-home, Kilanga. Oh, they had plenty to tell, since they
and their boys had once lived there and started up the whole of it, school, church and
all. At one point in time Kilanga was a regular mission with four American families and a
medical doctor who visited once a week. Now it had gone into a slump, they said. No more
doctor, and the Underdowns themselves had had to move to Leopoldville to give their boys a
shot at proper schooling-if, said Mrs. Underdown, you could even call it that. The other
missionaries to Kilanga had long since expired their terms. So it was to be just the Price
family and whatever help we could muster up. They warned us not to expect much. My heart
pounded, for I expected everything. Jungle flowers, wild roaring beasts. God's Kingdom in
its pure, unenlightened glory.
Then, while Father was smack in the middle of explaining something to the Underdowns, they
suddenly hustled us onto a tiny airplane and abandoned us. It was only our family and the
pilot, who was busy adjusting his earphones under his hat. He ignored us entirely, as if
we were no more than ordinary cargo. There we sat, draped like tired bridesmaids with our
yards of white veil, numbed by the airplane's horrible noise, skimming above the treetops.
We were tuckered out, as my mother would say. Plumb tuckered out, she would say. Sugar,
now don't you trip over that, you're tuckered out it's plain to see. Mrs. Underdown had
fussed and laughed over what she called our charming southern accent. She even tried to
imitate the way we said "Right now" and "bye-bye." ("Rot
nail," she said. "Whah yay-es, the ayer-plane is leavin rot nail!" and
"Bah-bah"--like a sheep!) She caused me to feel embarrassed over our simple
expressions and drawn-out vowels, when I've never before considered myself to have any
accent, though naturally I'm aware we do sound worlds different from the Yanks on the
radio and TV. I had quite a lot to ponder as I sat on that airplane, and incidentally I
still had to pee. But we were all dizzy and silent by that time, having grown accustomed
to taking up no more space in a seat than was our honest due.
At long last we bumped to a landing in a field of tall yellow grass. We all jumped out of
our seats, but Father, because of his imposing stature, had to kind of crouch over inside
the plane instead of standing up straight. He pronounced a hasty benediction:
"Heavenly Father please make me a powerful instrument of Thy perfect will here in the
Belgian Congo, Amen."
"Amen!" we answered, and then he led us out through the oval doorway into the
light.
We stood blinking for a moment, staring out through the dust at a hundred dark villagers,
slender and silent, swaying faintly like trees. We'd left Georgia at the height of a
peach-blossom summer and now stood in a bewildering dry, red fog that seemed like no
particular season you could put your finger on. In all our layers of clothing we must have
resembled a family of Eskimos plopped down in a jungle.
But that was our burden, because there was so much we needed to bring here. Each one of us
arrived with some extra responsibility biting into us under our garments: a claw hammer, a
Baptist hymnal, each object of value replacing the weight freed up by some frivolous thing
we'd found the strength to leave behind. Our journey was to be a great enterprise of
balance. My father, of course, was bringing the Word of God--which fortunately weighs
nothing at all.
Excerpted from THE POISONWOOD BIBLE © Copyright 1998 by Barbara Kingsolver. Reprinted with permission by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.
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