The Witch Doctor's Wife by Tamar Myers Read Free Book Online

well?”
    “Only through the sixth form. That’s as far the mission school went in those days.”
    “What about English?” she asked.
    Cripple shook her head. “I wouldn’t mind learning it, if mamu is willing to teach. But frankly, it sounds like just so much gibberish to me. Monkey talk, some in the village call it.”
    Amanda tried in vain to keep a straight face. “Well, now that you are hired,” she said, switching back to Tshiluba, “you will want to know what to call me. In language school I was given the name Mamu Hurry Up, because I was always rushing through the lessons. Frankly, I do not care for that name. Can you think of a better name?”
    Cripple nodded thoughtfully. “ Eyo . I think Ugly Eyes would be more appropriate.”
    “Appropriate for what?”
    “Your name, of course. Mamu Ugly Eyes—yes, that is a good name.”
    “Are my eyes that ugly?”
    “You must admit, mamu , that they are very pale, almost like water. They really are not in the least bit attractive.”
    “Cripple,” Amanda said, allowing herself to use the word for the first time, “in America, where I come from, Ugly Eyes would be an offensive name.”
    “But we are not in America, are we?”
    No, Amanda thought, not by a long shot. And we aren’t inKansas anymore, are we, Dorothy? We aren’t even in South Carolina. You could study about Africa until the cows came home, but without actually spending time there, you didn’t know a thing. Not one bloody thing.
     
    Unless it was raining or he was experiencing another bout of malaria, Husband loved the walk home from the post office. Although it was an uphill walk most of the way, the thought of home and hearth—the embrace of little arms, a proper supper, and above all Cripple—supplied him with the necessary energy.
    Although his days were long, they were quite tolerable when compared to those of Husband’s friends. The mine workers were locked away behind brick walls for three months at a stretch, cut off entirely from their families for the duration. Those not skilled enough to be sorters had backbreaking jobs such as shoveling gravel onto conveyor belts. Husband was lucky to have an easygoing boss like Monsieur Dupree. Every day between the hours of twelve and two in the afternoon, the post office was shut down so that the M. Dupree could have his main meal of the day at his house, perhaps even take a nap.
    The two-hour hiatus was not long enough to accommodate a trip home for Husband, so he spent his time snacking on bananas and mangoes (fruit did not count as food), and napping on a malala mat in the shade of a mango grove. More often than not, he skipped the nap in favor of reading one of the books M. Dupree was forever giving him.
    These strange books were called novels and written in French. Unlike the Bible or the geography and history books he’d studied in school, each novel was entirely the product of someone’s mind. “Works of fiction,” M. Dupree called them, “meant only to entertain.” But without a religious doctrine to impart, or a science lesson to be taught, they were books without a purpose. They spoke of luxuries almost unfathomable, and of people sountouched by everyday problems that they had the time to do foolish things, such as squander their goods or commit indecent acts with, or upon, their neighbors. Yet Husband could not wait to share the stories with Cripple around the evening fire, while Second Wife muttered to herself across the flames.
    Second Wife had no tolerance for foolishness, which was a very good thing in its own way, as she kept everything running. If not exactly smoothly, at least on course. If Second Wife had been one of the characters in these books—well, then it could not have been written.
    Tonight Husband paused on the bridge, as he often did, to admire the view. To his right was the broad, red-brown Kasai River. It was an important river, one that formed a region and shaped its people. To his left was a gorge into