A Girl Named Disaster Read Online Free PDF Page A

nervously. She had been gone for hours. The water pots had been neglected, the pumpkins unwatered, the mealies unstamped. Aunt Chipo would be furious! Nhamo dropped the firewood outside the cooking hut and braced herself.
    But Grandmother came out instead. Aunt Chipo wassquatting inside, her mouth set in a sour line. She didn’t say anything. Ambuya beckoned for Nhamo to follow her. In amazement, Nhamo saw Ruva and the other girls hauling water from the stream.
    “It won’t hurt them to bend their backs for once,” Grandmother remarked. “I need my granddaughter’s company today.”
    “Masvita is your granddaughter, too,” Nhamo couldn’t resist saying.
    “Yes, but she’s off getting her skin oiled and her mouth sweetened with honey. Anyhow, Little Pumpkin, sometimes I find Miss Masvita just a little dull. ”
    Nhamo was astounded by this. It was the first time anyone had hinted Masvita might be anything less than perfect.
    Grandmother took Nhamo into her hut and gave her—wonder of wonders!—lemonade with sugar. Exactly what she had pretend-given Mother.
    “Your mother grew slowly,” said Ambuya , startling Nhamo out of her reverie. “I worried a great deal at the time, but people are like plants. Some shoot up like weeds, and some are slow like fruit trees. In the end, the fruit trees are worth more.”
    That sounded all right to Nhamo: Masvita was a weed.
    “Runako, your mother, was worth waiting for. Did you know she could read?”
    Nhamo shook her head. Things were getting more surprising by the minute.
    “Your grandfather and I used to live at Nyanga in Zimbabwe. It’s cold there. Ice forms on the water in winter.”
    Nhamo tried to imagine it.
    “Grandfather cut trees for a white farmer. Oh, such strange trees! They were tall, with leaves like needles. Every one was exactly alike, and they grew in rows like vegetables. Every week, the farmer’s wife gave us a sack of mealie meal, sugar, cooking oil, and meat. She also gave me cloth once a year and, when your mother and Chipo were old enough, school uniforms. Shuvai was still a baby.”
    “What’s a un-i-form ?” said Nhamo, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.
    “A dress. All the girls at school wore exactly the same thing. It looked very smart to see them lined up with their faces scrubbed and their hair combed.” Grandmother sighed. She didn’t speak for a while, and Nhamo knew she was remembering. Ambuya wept when she thought of Mother, so Nhamo had always been afraid to ask questions. She was excited to learn that Mother had gone to school. Perhaps she ate ice cream, too.
    “Runako was so clever! The headmaster said she could go to university someday. Chipo, on the other hand, forgot everything as quickly as possible. How different things might have been…”
    Grandmother trailed off again. Nhamo sipped her lemonade slowly, to make it last. Outside, crows cawed and someone shouted at them. They must be trying to raid the garden.
    “One day Grandfather was killed by a car as he was walking along a road. The farmer gave me his pay for that month—ten dollars—and turned us out of the house. His wife gave me two old dresses and a photograph of herself—I tore the picture up the minute I was out of sight! We had no house, no money, no work. This village was the only place we could survive. Runako cried when I took her books back to the school.”
    Ambuya fell silent. Quite soon, she began to snore. Nhamo gently helped her lie down and stretched out on the mat herself to think.
    Masvita returned the day of the full moon. Her head was shaved and she wore a new dress-cloth. It was yellow with dark-blue fish and a red border. Aunt Chipo killed a chicken in honor of Vatete , who had returned with her, and several other relatives arrived from the other village with baskets of food.
    Technically, the party was merely a family gathering ona full-moon night, but everyone knew it was really to celebrate Masvita’s new status. She would be a fine