The natives would not touch it, and only approached it after some days,
and then only when it was held by Miss Slessor or me. If either of us
wanted to do or get something, and we handed over the bundle to one of
the house children to hold, there was a stampede of men and women off
the verandah, out of the yard, and over the fence, if need be, that was
exceedingly comic, but most convincing as to the reality of the terror
and horror in which they held the thing. Even its own mother could not
be trusted with the child; she would have killed it. She never betrayed
the slightest desire to have it with her, and after a few days' nursing
and feeding up she was anxious to go back to her mistress, who, being
an enlightened woman, was willing to have her if she came without the
child.
The woman's own lamentations were pathetic. She would sit for hours
singing or rather mourning out a kind of dirge over herself: "Yesterday
I was a woman, now I am a horror, a thing all people ran from.
Yesterday they would eat with me, now they spit on me. Yesterday they
would talk to me with sweet mouth, and now they greet me only with
curses and execrations. They have smashed my basin, they have torn my
clothes," so on, and so on. There was no complaint against the people
for doing these things, only a bitter sense of injury against some
superhuman power that had sent this withering curse of twins down on
her,
The surviving infant, Susie, was not commonplace in feature like the
other black children; she was not in reality a negress, but fair,
shapely, and clean-skinned, with a nose like a white child's and a
sweet mouth--a mouth which Miss Kingsley called the "button-hole."
Every one loved her, and she was queen of the household.
When she was fourteen months old Miss Slessor one day went to the
dispensary and left her in charge of Mana, who put down a jug of
boiling water on the floor beside her. Susie thought it a plaything,
and, seizing it, pulled it over upon herself. Instead of calling for
"Ma" Mana ran with the child to the bathroom and poured cold water over
the wounds. For thirteen days and nights she was never out of Mary's
hands. Fortunately Miss Murray, a lady agent who, at her own request,
had been stationed at Okoyong for a time, and whose companionship she
valued, helped her greatly. "She was like a sister to me," she wrote.
Thinking more might be done by a medical man she started off with the
child in her arms, arrived at Creek Town at midnight, and woke up the
doctor, who, however, said he could not do more than she had done. She
returned at once to Ekenge, and again watched the suffering babe by day
and night. In the darkness and silence, when all were asleep, she would
hear the faint words, "Mem, Mem, Mem!"--the child's name for her--and
the wee hand would be held up for her to kiss. Early one Sunday morning
she passed away in her arms. Robed in a pinafore, with her beads and a
sash, and a flower in her hand, she looked "like an angel child."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account