The Bride Price: An African Romance (Chitundu Chronicles) (3 page)

Myrna did not want to be here any longer than necessary.  It was over.  She gave her mother and father a cursory hug, then hugged her sister and her brother Thomas. She gathered her belongings and loaded them onto the cart where the presents had already been packed.  Festal was right behind her, helping her keep her balance and steadying her as she mounted the seat of the oxcart. 

The couple headed to Copperfine, the iron pot trussed to the back of the wagon with its three legs in the air, even as the newlyweds wondered who they had joined themselves to, and were afraid for the unveiling.

CHAPTER 4
IN THE MARKET

I am stressing over this wedding of my sister and cannot get it out of my thoughts. It could have been me. I know Myrna never saw it coming. Here I am sitting on a mat of reeds in the market tying onions by their stems into a swag while I wait for my mother to return. The market is smaller today than it is on the weekend, or when the holidays are about to begin. And so is my world. The row where I sit to sell our vegetables is facing the hand pump where most people come to fill their clay water jugs. Our space is back from the puddles of mud that surround the tap, so I can stay dry. Flies hover above the moist ground, and especially near the meat market, which is at the far end of the row.

That must be how it is everywhere in Copperfine where my sister will be living. Each week I see an animal being hauled live in a wheelbarrow or driven with whips to the butchery. Sometimes a goat is held by its hind legs like a wheelbarrow itself and walked to his fate. It reminds me of Uncle Dodge with his forced marriages. When I see the animal go by standing on its front legs, its head nearly touching the ground and the owner holding on to its back hooves making it go where it doesn’t want to, and joking at its helplessness to escape his grip, I want to scream. There are always a couple of sparse-haired dogs with curling tails and dribbling tongues sidling alongside, waiting for a scrap to fall their way when the animal is butchered.  By noon, the meat is finished. If you buy it later than that, it is covered with flies, spongy and sizzling with germs. 

Our spot is sunny and clean.  I used to smell the fish, the open sewers, and the rotting produce when I first came here to help my mother. Myrna would tell me to look at the colors of the people’s clothing, the beautiful fabrics hanging on the rail near the tailors, their machines humming away as they pedaled out a new skirt or shirt, and the textures of all the produce; yam leaves, pinto beans, red peppers, green lentils, and golden rice. Just near the clothing section, the hair dressers sit, plaiting the hair of women. They have a mouth full of hair ties, and various hairpieces hanging behind them. Sometimes on the branches of a tree an old towel hangs frayed, and a woman sitting with her head cocked to one side for hours, is being braided up in an acceptable style. There is always laughter and an audience that encourages her.  That is when I first came up with the idea of sketching what I saw.

At first I just did pencil drawings of the fruits and donkeys with their carts of firewood. I would color them in when I had materials to make paints. It allowed me to take my mind to another place without leaving the market.  In the past year I have started making portraits. They are not complicated, just lines and shadows to recall the features of the people I see. There are many faces in the market, people of all ages and classes, or their servants, looking to secure good prices, or to sell for a profit what they have produced. The face that keeps coming up in my mind is that of Myrna with her large eyes and her trembling mouth. I don’t even want to think of Festal.

The women in our row make little piles of produce on their mats and arrange them to attract attention from the shoppers. My sister used to tell me how magical it was to see brown burlap sacks of beans and lentils change into neat designs of color and texture, encouraging people to notice and buy. It is not so magical when you are the one shucking rotten layers off the onions so someone will choose them. I try to recall people’s names and smile at them so they will remember our stall and come to shop.

After eight hours of sitting in the sun, I am ready to do something else. I have to concentrate to make a sale and count the change correctly. It is easier than taking care of baby brothers, I have to say that. I always hope I will meet someone interesting in the market, but women are the only ones who seem to shop for fruit and vegetables. I stay away from the area where the local beer and fetishes are sold. There are plenty of men and flies hanging out there, but they are not the kind I want to attract. My mother handles the weekend market, where more sellers and buyers come from further away.

Eight months ago I watched my sister Myrna go off to boarding school, wondering at the time how she could find it so interesting to sit in class all day reading books. I know she has wanted to be a doctor ever since our sister Eunice died, so she worked hard at her studies. She learned to read when Stephen was in school because she made him teach her. She saved food from her breakfast, or biscuits from the market to give him in trade for teaching her everything he learned in class. As soon as he got home from school she would borrow his books, making use of the late afternoon light to read the assignments.  Soon she was doing his essays, and the teachers were remarking how good they were, and questioning who had written them.

A tutor finally visited the house to encourage my father to let Myrna attend class. Then the government stepped in with a scholarship after she received the highest marks in the region on her exams. But this time Myrna has left for good. It’s final. Finished. She married that man Festal that Uncle Dodge dreamed up for her, and she is on her way to the cow town of Copperfine. I am not lonely. There are sellers to gossip with. I have worked in the market with Mother since Myrna started boarding school. I have friends in the market and I have my brothers to keep me company. Not Stephen, though. He is tied up with Esther day and night.  My friends in the choir always want me to come visit them and sing for their events. My mother and father are at home in the evening, Dad counting up the receipts for the day, Mother mending the boys’ clothes.  We could talk about what is going on in our family or our country. I could get a newspaper and read it to them. But we don’t.  We usually just get ready for the next day, as there is always more work to be done. We don’t talk about Myrna. My father would cut that off pronto. What I want to understand is how Myrna married that man Festal. He is way out in the bush, he’s old, and he can’t even read.

When he was here, he didn’t even talk. I watched how he used his hands to eat his food, picking up pieces of meat and sauce with his long slim fingers, and wiping the drips off with his pointer finger. I saw how he looked at Myrna as she used her napkin and her cutlery, ignoring him.  She was so proud of her school uniform and wore it every day, even when she was home. It meant she was somebody going somewhere. I think she felt safe in it. Invincible.

I am in charge of the market stall today while Mother attends a funeral.  She makes the most money on onions, although she doesn’t grow them. Our brick yard is slow right now because people can’t afford bricks that are fired. We have stopped adding any cement to them and even the tailings that we burn to fire them are hard to come by.  Tobacco is not selling well and people are raising less of it. When people have no money they just cut mud bricks out of earth and use them.  If we had more money, Myrna would still be here and she would be in the school studying biology and critical thinking. She said she wanted to learn how to think and make important decisions. I asked her, “Don’t you think we know how to think already?”

‘“No,” she said. “We just hear something enough times and we think it is true, or even our own idea. We don’t question it and we repeat what we are told. We learn by rote method.  We are a nation of clichés. I want to learn the truth about life and how to decide for myself. Right now, we don’t even know what we have or what we are missing. We are like the termites that turn up precious stones and heave them out of their towers of mud.”

Myrna is two years older than me. She is very strong and not afraid to say what she thinks and what she wants to do.  When we played together she could come up with a hundred games, while I was still thinking what I wanted to do.  So how could she marry that man?  I just didn’t see it coming. She was happy when she came home for Christmas break.  We were having a good time, just sleeping in our special room, or sitting on our carved stools in the courtyard near the kilns, shucking the hard corn from its cob and spreading it on mats to dry. We roasted groundnuts on a sheet of roofing and sketched out fashions we could make out of scraps from our mother’s sewing.  Even taking care of the little brothers was fun when there were two of us. Little did we know, Ma and Uncle Dodge were hatching plans to marry Myrna off.

I think our brother Stephen knew about the plan because he was so flattering to Myrna, asking her advice and getting her to like his girlfriend Esther, and totally ignoring me, even though I am just about as old as Myrna, and I certainly have a better fashion sense. So why were they just asking Myrna what she thought about their bridesmaid dresses? She won’t even be one.

I don’t think my Dad knew of the plan to marry Myrna off, because Myrna has always been his favorite.  Ever since my sister Eunice died of the runs, Dad has wanted there to be a doctor in our village and Myrna was on her way to becoming one. He backed her when she won the government scholarship and stood up to my mother, even though he worried about Myrna going to a school that was all boys.

Here comes a customer, poking at the tomatoes.  She’s not a regular. No one comes this late to the market, when all the good produce is picked over and what is left is going limp. There, she has bought some and some of the onions as well. I saved our paper and just dropped the vegetables into her basket. I’m going to use it to make drawings.  I will wrap the money in the corner of my cloth, as I have already counted out the cash for today.  Mother should be back by now.

Myrna should have figured out what Dodge was up to. Maybe if we could have talked about it in the dark, like we did with our dreams and so many other things, maybe we could have figured it out.  I was supposed to stay with my cousins a week, but it must have been a month or more, because when I returned, the winter break was over and Myrna was back at school.

I am glad I have my diary to write down what is going on.  I write in it before I go to market.  This morning I wrote about the baby brother or sister that is coming any day.  I am hoping for another girl, as now there is just me in the family. Stephen is away with his girlfriend and Thomas is back in school. The others boys are small and know nothing of grown-up matters.

Uncle Dodge found my father for our mother, and that was years ago when he was only my brother Stephen’s age. Dodge gets paid when he works out a marriage contract, but Dodge also likes poking around and getting people excited.  Well, it isn’t going to happen that way for me.  I am not going to marry anyone he suggests.  I have to like the way the man looks first. Then he has to agree that we will stay in Blancville and not go off to some god-forsaken cattle station filled with flies and snakes and people we don’t know. My husband has to agree that we will have friends over and visit my parents whenever we feel like it, and that we will have lots of children and never be alone. My husband can’t be that old to start with; just old enough to earn money. I do not want to travel and see the world.  If my husband wants, he can bring it to me, because I do like nice things, I won’t deny it.  I want all my children to be born in the hospital. I will need a nanny for them.

I miss Myrna to death.  We slept together since we were little. So where is she sleeping now?  They probably have a hut made of dung with a sick calf in the front room tied to the big kettle Ma gave them.  She should have given the Dutch oven to me, because at least I won’t have to sell it to buy medicine for a cow. It is the first thing I will have my husband buy for our house. After the bed. I am not going to sleep on a mat forever. It makes lines on my skin.  I also could use a satin pillow so my hair stays smooth and doesn’t frizz up or break off.

Uncle Dodge bragged in town that he got the highest
lobola
for my sister that has ever been given in our district.  I bet that is true.  How he convinced that old man to pay such a high bride price is beyond me, even though Myrna is beautiful. But she never dressed up for him, or paid him any attention. She is really smart and kind as well, much kinder than I could ever be. She seems to always have a purpose in her life. Sometimes she is so busy seeing the big picture, she might forget the smaller details. Like me. Her only sister. So how did Dodge get her to marry the man?  She wanted to be a doctor so much and she could remember anything. Dodge must have put a hex on her, that’s all I can think.  I wouldn’t let him near me, even if he was giving me gifts and lining up a suitor.  No, I am going to find a man who loves me and wants my parents close by, and who can make sure we never go hungry.

It was tough when Stephen was afraid of losing his girlfriend Esther, and Father could not come up with the money to help him.  Stephen and Esther will be getting married this month and it will be a nice celebration with a whole roast goat.  I am going to have a new dress and dance with everyone in my store-bought shoes. Everyone except Uncle Dodge.  He is slippery as cow guts. If I see anyone talking with him, they will have my good riddance.  It worked out for Ma and Father, but that is the exception to the rule.

Myself, I will be courted and make up my own mind. I remember how Joseph looked at me at Myrna’s wedding.  I didn’t know his name then, but I saw that he was looking for something. I was afraid that Uncle Dodge had gotten involved in my business. I miss Myrna so much, but I don’t think she could give me any advice because look where she ended up.  I have not been to see her. I haven’t asked to go. I am afraid of what her life must be and that the same thing could happen to me. She was so much smarter, but she couldn’t avoid the bride price. I am more practical.  Festal makes me nervous. It seems he can see inside a person, even though he says nothing. If Festal is the lion waiting to feed, Dodge is the hyena. Myrna must be even more lonely than I was when she left for boarding school. Maybe she even had a boyfriend there at the school, and now it is over. I can’t imagine Myrna sleeping with Festal. Those long greasy fingers.  Now I am going to get out my drawing pencils and make a little sketch for my diary. It is the nicest thing I have owned. I wonder how Myrna found it. Probably when she was away at school.