Only my mother stood still.There she was, planted before me in the path, rising on thin legs out of the rootless devouring earth. In her arms, crosswise like a load of kindling, Ruth May.
I spoke out loud, the only time: help me.
“Your father...” she said. “I think he must have gone on ahead with Rachel. I wish he’d waited, honey, he’d carry you but Rachel was ... I don’t know how she’ll get through this. Leah will, Leah can take care of herself.” !
She can you can’t you can’t!
I spoke again: Please.
She studied me for a moment, weighing my life. Then nodded, shifted the load in her arms, turned away.
“Come on!” she commanded over her shoulder. I tried to stay close behind her, but even under the weight of Ruth May she was sinuous and quick in the crowd. My heels were nipped from behind by other feet. Stepped on, though I felt it vaguely, already numb from the burning ants. I knew when I went down. Someone’s bare foot was on my calf and then my back, and I was being trampled. A crush of feet on my chest. I rolled over again and again, covering my head with my arms. I found my way to my elbows and raised myself up, grabbing with my strong left hand at legs that dragged me forward. Ants on my earlobes, my tongue, my eyelids. I heard myself crying out loud—such a strange noise, as if it came from my hair and fingernails, and again and again I came up. Once I looked for my mother and saw her, far ahead. I followed, bent on my own rhythm. Curved into the permanent song of my body: left... behind.
I did not know who it was that lifted me over the crowd and set me down into the canoe with my mother. I had to turn quickly to see him as he retreated. It was Anatole. We crossed the river together, mother and daughter, facing each other, low in the boat’s quiet center. She tried to hold my hands but could not. For the breadth of a river we stared without speaking.
That night I could still wonder why she did not help me. Live was I ere I saw evil. Now I do not wonder at all. That night marks my life’s dark center, the moment when growing up ended and the long downward slope toward death began. The wonder to me now is that I thought myself worth saving. But I did. I did, oho, did I! I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom.
Leah
SUDDENLY THEN I was pushed from behind and pulled by other hands into a boat and we were on the water, crossing to safety. Anatole clambered in behind me. I was stunned to see he had Ruth May over his shoulder, like a fresh-killed antelope.
“Is she okay?”
“She is sleeping, I think. Twenty seconds ago she was screaming. Your mother and Adah have gone ahead with Tata Boanda,” he said.
“Praise God. Adah’s all right?”
“Adah is safe. Rachel is a demon. And your father is giving a sermon about Pharaoh’s army and the plagues. Everyone is all right.”
I squatted low with my chin on my knees and watched my bare feet change slowly from dark auburn, to speckled, to white as the ants dispersed and forayed out into the bottom of the canoe. I could hardly feel the pain now—the feet I gazed at seemed to be someone else’s. I gripped both sides of the boat, suddenly fearing I might vomit or pass out. When I could hold my head up again, I asked Anatole quietly, “Do you think this is the hand of God?”
He didn’t answer. Ruth May whimpered in her sleep. I waited so long for his answer I finally decided he hadn’t heard me.
And then he simply said, “No.”
“Then why?”
“The world can always give you reasons. No rain, not enough for the ants to eat. Something like that. Nsongonya are always moving anyway, it is their nature. Whether God cares or not.” He sounded bitter against God. Bitter with reason. The night felt like a dream rushing past me too fast, like a stream in flood, and in this uncontrollable dream Anatole was the one person who cared enough to help me. God didn’t. I tried to see through the thick darkness that clung to the river, searching out the opposite shore.
“God hates us,” I said.
“Don’t blame God for what ants have to do. We all get hungry. Congolese people are not so different from Congolese ants.”
“They have to swarm over a village and eat other people alive?”
“When they are pushed down long enough they will rise up. If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know.”