Nab'hia - Part 3: How Beautiful are the Feet

Read Part 1 here and Part 2: Secrets and Silence, here.

After that, Nab’hia began to come back to our house regularly again.  How strange her presence was!  It was as if some shift in her cosmic force amongst us had taken place.  She visited with my mother still, but now I could sense her watching me, and I felt as if she were only biding her time.  And every time those yellow eyes would turn my way, that scar on my chest would burn.  It had never hurt before.  Even when I had watched Nab’hia’s hand go right into my chest it hadn’t hurt.  But something was different now, and more and more I felt this dull, pulling ache under that scar where I knew a piece of my heart should be.  To make matters worse, I knew that Nab’hia wanted to see Gécy.  She asked about my daughter every time she visited, which was a lot.  But by some strange turn of chance, Gécy never happened to be at home when Nab’hia came. 

            The new thing in our village was this missionary school, and some Christians from the United States had come and opened it up.  It really wasn’t much, just a couple of palm branch thatched huts at the bottom of the mountain, but the children couldn’t seem to get enough of it.  Some of the older or more devout Vodouissants in the mountains refused to let their children attend and chose instead to keep them at home, helping around the house.  I had never been particularly devout, and did not even serve any gods in our house.  The school was less a symbol of religion to me, and more a symbol of freedom.  I thought that perhaps if Gécy should become educated, she could break free of the life of poverty that had always served as the background to our family portrait.  And it seemed like the more time Gécy spent there, the more time she wanted to spend there.  Apparently the missionaries were kind to her.  They spoke to her in our own language, and seemed to know it well.  They did not patronize her, but taught her difficult lessons like those that little girls in the United States learned, and she even learned to speak English with the missionary’s children.  When school was out, there was often some sort of children’s group in the evening, and on the weekends, Gécy went to Sunday school and to church in the village.  I did not go, but she seemed to enjoy these things, and they took her out of the stench of poverty that permeated our little house and farm yard, so I let her go. 

            Sometimes the missionary’s wife would come to visit me and mother and she would bring us things from America that I had never seen before.  She was a smiling woman with a round, pink face and a laughing voice, and when she would come walking up the mountain road, to see her coming was like the opposite of everything that seeing Nab’hia was.  She didn’t come often, but when she did, she always had a big wicker market basket covered in red gingham, and I always knew that underneath it were exotic treasures that I couldn’t even guess at.  One time she came and brought us shampoo in a bottle.  It made foamy lather like a cushion and smelled like summer berries.  She laughed and laughed as I put it on my hands and used cold water from the wash pail to make a lather.  The hard, grey tallow soap that we made for ourselves never made such a pure white foam like that, and I had never imagined that something that could get you clean would ever smell so good.  Another time she brought us a box of little chocolate cookies with white cream in the middle.  She said they were called Oreos.  When I asked her why, she just laughed and said she didn’t know.  When she visited, mother and I never argued.  It was almost as if we were friends.  And when the time came for her to leave, it was always a sad time.  The moment she was out our door, we longed to see her again.  Her visits never lasted long enough.

            This night, when Nab’hia visited, I wished Gécy was with that missionary’s wife.  I wished that she was as far away from my house as I could wish her.  I felt like Nab’hia had finally come to make good on her promise.  She had not yet seen Gécy, but somehow I knew that tonight was the night she would insist upon it, and old Norberte’s just didn’t seem far enough away to keep my girl safe.  I remembered how Nab’hia’s quick hand had latched onto my mother’s shoulder that one time.  Almost as if one moment it was in one place and the next it were in another – she didn’t even have to move it between the two.  I thought, if she really wanted to take Gécy, it would be quick like that and I wouldn’t even know it.  I would do whatever I could to keep my daughter from her.

To be continued in Part 4:  Time to Pay the Piper (coming 14 May)