Praise Song for the Butterflies Page 11

  “Beautiful!” Taylor squealed.

  Abdula grinned.

  Allen clapped him warmly on the back. “Thank you very much, Abdula.”

  “So we will see you again in the morning, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Allen and Taylor had already renovated the mud hut that came with the land. The space doubled as their sleeping quarters and office. They slept in hammocks instead of beds. Tacked to the walls were photographs Taylor had taken of various trokosi shrines as well as a map of the greater Zolta region where more than seventy shrines were known to exist. The ones Taylor planned to target were circled in red.

  * * *

  Back at the shrine, Abeo carefully slipped her nipple from Pra’s mouth. He was fast asleep, his body twitching with dreams. She laid him down on the mat and covered him with a worn blanket. All she could think of was the woman who’d approached her in Aboão. She replayed the encounter and recalled the details: the woman’s face, her lips, the curl of her hair, her painted fingernails, and the condensation on the jug she’d held out to her.

  Abeo went to the tiny window of her hut and gazed out at the moon. She’d watched it so many times but it had never affected her in the way it did at that moment. Something soft moved in her chest and she brought her hand to her heart. It had been a long time since she’d felt this sensation; even so, she recognized it immediately as the flutter of butterflies. It was, Ismae once shared with her, the joy she’d felt behind her navel when Abeo was just an embryo.

  Abeo still became sad when she thought about her parents, but for some reason on that day, the memory of her mother elated her. And for a brief moment, that joy felt very much like freedom.

  Eden Rehabilitation Center

  Ketak, Ukemby

  28

  The priest popped a kola nut into his mouth and crunched it between his teeth. He studied the bottle of schnapps Allen had given him and then set it down on the ground at his feet. He looked at Allen and used his chin to gesture toward the platter of kola nuts.

  Allen raised his hand. “No, but thank you.”

  In the corner of the hut was a twenty-inch television turned on its side and covered in fine red dirt. The priest saw Allen staring and flung his hand at it. “Heh, it was a gift from a family. What am I supposed to do with it? We have no electricity here. So I use it as a table.”

  “That makes sense,” Allen remarked.

  “So now you want to take a girl? For what?”

  Allen cleared his throat. “To offer her a chance to live freely.”

  The priest laughed. “Freely? Hmmmm, freeness is not always a good thing. Freeness is what brought many of these girls here in the first place, you know. Now they are paying for the so-called freeness of their family members and ancestors.”

  The priest plucked a second kola nut from the platter, thoughtfully examined it, and placed it in his mouth. His eyes moved to the open doorway; he seemed to be pondering something.

  “There is a girl. She is sickly and a poor worker, not worth her weight in gari.” He chuckled at his own wit. “The gods are not happy with her. I will let you have her for . . .” the priest’s eyes rolled up to the thatched ceiling and then back to Allen, “one thousand cendi.”

  “One thousand cendi?”

  “Yes.”

  Allen did a quick calculation in his head. It was nearly seven hundred US dollars. “I don’t have that kind of money.” He was starting to feel nauseous. It was a feeling that always came over him when he was negotiating a price for another human being. To say it was upsetting would be an understatement. To say that it made him angry enough to kill—that would be hitting the nail right on the head. Allen forced the bile back down his throat.

  “Okay, okay, then I will give her to you for eight hundred cendi.”

  “No.” Allen rubbed his cheek. “You told me she is sickly.”

  “Yes, okay, seven hundred.”

  “No.”

  In the end, he paid one hundred and twenty-five cendi for a fourteen-year-old girl named Eshi, who was frail, blind in one eye, and missing a foot.

  29

  With Pra on her hip, Abeo waded into the river. He dug his tiny fingers into her flesh and whimpered. Abeo cooed to him, uttering small words of comfort. When the water touched her knees, she peeled him from her body and lowered him until his toes were submerged. Pra squealed and curled his knees to his chest.

  “No, Mama, no!” he cried.

  Abeo ignored his objections and continued to lower him until the water covered most of his body. Pra became outraged—batting her face and kicking at her belly. Abeo made a game out of dunking him quickly into the water and then pulling him up and swinging him through the air. Pra shrieked in terror the first few times, but his squeals eventually turned into giggles and then laughter. Once his fear was forgotten, he paddled his feet and slapped happily at the surface of the water. When Abeo was done washing him, she took him back to the riverbank, set him down on the grass, and gave him two large stones that he clapped loudly together, laughing at the din he made.

  Abeo returned to the river, moving into the deep center where she submerged her head. When she came up for air, three girls were standing on the bank screaming and pointing frantically down the river. Abeo’s eyes went to the place where she’d left Pra, but only the two rocks remained.

  Panic-stricken, Abeo swam toward where the girls were pointing. She caught sight of Pra’s foot bobbing on top of the water; his little toes were stiff and splayed. Abeo lunged forward, screaming his name; she was just millimeters away from him when the current swept him out of her reach, pulling him farther downstream where the river bent left, creating a whirlpool that sucked Pra under.

  Abeo dove, her eyes searching frantically for her son, but all she could see was a wavy wall of darkness. She came up and then dove again.

  On the riverbank, the girls who’d first sounded the alarm now stood silent, staring mournfully at the dark, swirling water.

  The current wrapped its fingers around Abeo’s calves and tugged.

  The muddy bottom slipped beneath her feet and she crumpled into the water. Abeo opened her mouth and allowed the river to drain in.

  30

  Taylor looked in the mirror and saw a gray hair. It didn’t upset her; in fact, it made her happy because she took it as a reminder of all the life she had lived thus far.

  She had recruited quite a few volunteers who shared her revulsion for the practice of ritual servitude, as well as her vision for Eden. Donations of food, clothing, and furniture trickled in from the surrounding communities and finally, after years of writing letters and making phone calls, a small Wisconsin newspaper ran a story about the plight of the trokosi. That story was picked up by the Chicago Tribune and then the Daily Mirror.

  Back in 1996, Taylor had accompanied a congregation of religious leaders and women’s-rights advocates to Port Masi to address Parliament about the practice of ritual servitude. Two years later, the Ukemban government passed a law banning all forms of it.

  Taylor expected the government to put together a task force. She imagined groups of men dressed in black, brandishing automatic weapons, swooping down on the shrines, arresting the priests and freeing the girls. But that expectation turned out to be a fantasy, because the practice remained alive and well. Apparently, the law was just a few words on a piece of paper that the government had no intention of actually enforcing.

  The Eden Rehabilitation Center, as it was known, was home to twenty girls under the age of eighteen. They’d all arrived physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally damaged. Some of them wept day and night, others wet the bed and experienced night terrors. One girl walked in her sleep—Taylor often found her standing in a nearby field unable to explain how she’d gotten there.

  Their experiences with the opposite sex had been vile and terrifying, and had left them with a deep fear of men. Because of this, all the on-site volunteers at Eden were women. Allen was the exception, because
he was somewhat effeminate and not at all intimidating.

  During their stay they were provided with medical care, three well-balanced meals, and lessons on language, spelling, arithmetic, cloth weaving, sewing, cooking, and hairdressing.

  No matter what job Taylor assigned a volunteer to do, it was understood that it was everyone’s responsibility to shower constant praise, encouragement, and love onto the girls in order to allay their fears and rebuild their self-esteem. Taylor made it her personal business to tell them each and every day that she loved them.

  Not everybody in Ukemby was happy with what Taylor and Allen were doing. Some people saw it as sacrilegious. Rocks had been pelted through the dormitory windows and foul words spray-painted on the walls of the buildings. The tires on Taylor’s truck had been slashed several times, and threatening letters arrived almost daily.

  “This is what happens when you interfere with tradition,” an officer warned when Taylor called the police after vandals had set fire to one of the huts.

  She realized right then and there that her complaints would be filed in the trash, the assailants would never be pursued, and possibly they would even be encouraged. And after that realization, she bought a gun.

  31

  The shrine was four miles off a secondary road, tucked behind a thicket of plantain trees. Allen pulled the truck over to the side of the road, grabbed the bottle of schnapps from the passenger seat, and climbed out. He raised his hand in greeting to a man who stood watching him from the opposite side of the road. When the man did not respond, Allen offered a smile, took a deep breath, and made his approach.

  “Good day, my name is Allen and I’m looking for the priest,” he offered in his practiced Wele.

  The man scrutinized him before asking, “What is your business with him?”

  This part was always tricky. “My family has suffered some misfortunes as of late . . . I have a daughter . . . she is nine years old.”

  The man turned and called to a group of women who were squatting down on their haunches weaving mats. One scurried over and Allen was instructed to follow her, but instead she fell into step behind him.

  She directed him down an uneven footpath. When Allen turned around to check that she was still behind him, she urged him onward.

  When Allen reached the hut, the woman hurried around him and rushed inside. A moment later, she reappeared and beckoned him in.

  To Allen, the priests had all started to resemble one another. He supposed that this was his own fault. He’d stopped seeing their faces ages ago. This one, however, seemed younger than the others.

  Allen handed him the bottle of schnapps. The priest took it and offered him a seat.

  Allen reeled off the monologue he had committed to memory: “Let me first apologize for obtaining an audience with you under false circumstances. The truth is that I am coming to you to ask if you might find it in your heart to release one of your girls. Maybe someone who is no longer of use to you, someone who is more of a burden than an asset . . .”

  Duma listened to the black American drone on. He had heard about this man who traveled from shrine to shrine, relieving priests of their trokosi. He’d heard there was a white-looking American woman as well.

  “What do you do with them after you bring them to this center of yours?”

  “We educate them, teach them a skill, ease them back into society, and find them work.”

  Duma chuckled. “Why?”

  They always asked this. “Because our god has asked us to do this.”

  Duma didn’t have an ounce of respect for Allen or his god. As far as he was concerned, this American was nothing more than a garbage collector there to relieve him of his damaged and useless goods.

  “I have one girl . . .” He paused for a moment and then said simply, “Her mind is gone.” He looked at Allen for a reaction, but there was none, so he continued in a matter-of-fact tone: “She will probably die soon. She’s stopped eating and barely works her weight in gari. You buying her will save me the trouble of having to bury her. I will sell her to you for one hundred cendi and,” he pointed to Allen’s wrist, “that watch.”

  32

  Not even death wanted her, so it sent the devil to pull her from it. Duma had dragged Abeo to shore and pumped her chest until she spewed water.

  After that, there was coughing and then darkness.

  That was some years ago, but the loss of her son had left Abeo hollow; now, when she breathed, the air rattled around inside of her like gravel in an empty can.

  When Allen presented Abeo to Taylor, she looked at Abeo’s emaciated, sore-covered body and thought that she was the most pitiful thing she’d ever seen. Taylor had to turn her face away because she didn’t want Abeo to see her tears.

  She took Abeo by the hand and led her to the bathhouse, where she removed the young woman’s dress and guided her into the shower stall. When Taylor turned the silver knob on the wall, the water gushed out and Abeo’s head snapped up, her arms shooting into the air; she opened her mouth and the scream that boomed out stood Taylor’s hair on end.

  Taylor then took Abeo to the sink and spent the next hour gently removing the layers of dirt from her body. When she was done, Abeo was a different color. Taylor applied salve to the sores, parted Abeo’s lips and carefully brushed her teeth, and then dressed her in a new nightgown and put her to bed. She thought about Abeo all through the night and went to the dormitory before sunrise to check on her. Fatuma, a fourteen-year-old girl who had been at Eden for over a year, met Taylor at the door.

  “The smaller girls are afraid of her,” Fatuma whispered. “She sleeps with her eyes open.”

  * * *

  Three months later, Abeo still remained mute and indolent. The other girls tried hard to include her in their hand-clapping games. They demonstrated the clapping for her, and then picked up her hands and brought them together. But when they released them, Abeo’s arms dropped back down to her sides like weights. In the classroom, she either gazed unblinking at nothing or pressed her forehead against the desk and stared at the grooves in the wood.

  * * *

  One day Allen went into town for supplies and came back with an old VCR and a fifteen-inch color television. The casings around both were scratched and dented. He also had a box of dusty videotapes.

  “Where did you get all this?” Taylor asked, amused.

  “Shiloh gave them to me.”

  “Shiloh? The man who takes donated clothes and sells them on the black market?”

  “The very same.”

  “I love it,” Taylor laughed. “A criminal with a heart of gold.” She started digging through the box of tapes. “The Sound of Music, 101 Dalmatians, Snow White. This is great, Allen. The girls are really going to enjoy this.”

  Some of the girls had been born into villages that were so isolated, they’d never seen a television, or white people, and so they watched the movies in amazement as Taylor did her best to translate the dialogue.

  One night they gathered in the classroom to watch The Wizard of Oz. Taylor popped the cassette into the VCR and pressed play. A few moments later, the screen exploded in Technicolor accompanied by the movie studio’s introductory music.

  Minutes into the film, Taylor looked over to find that Abeo was watching intently. Eyes wide, the girl had inched her bottom to the very edge of the chair, her fingers slowly gathering the material of her skirt until it was a ball in her clenched fists. In the darkness, Taylor could see Abeo’s lips moving soundlessly along with the dialogue.

  An idea sparked in Taylor’s mind. While she had never been educated on the mysterious workings of the human mind, she did believe in following her instincts and they had rarely led her down a wrong path.

  So the next day, Taylor removed Abeo from the regular roster of classes, took her into a quiet room, and set her down to watch the movie that had brought the only bit of light in her that anyone had seen since her arrival.

  Over the following week, Taylor played th
e movie so many times that the plastic cogs of the cassette squealed. But with each viewing, Abeo showed more signs of life and Taylor could barely contain her excitement.

  One morning, as the girls sat enjoying their breakfast of kenkey and fish, Abeo—who until that moment had to be fed, washed, dressed, like an infant—pushed away the fork of food that hovered inches from her mouth, and stood up.

  Taylor was in her office when she heard Halima, the cook, yelling for her to come quick.

  When Taylor laid a cautious hand on her shoulder, Abeo flinched, turned a bashful eye in her direction, and asked in a childlike voice, “Where am I?”

  “You’re at Eden. Don’t you remember coming here?”

  Abeo offered her a vacant look.

  Taylor took the young woman to her office and sat her down in a chair. “I am Taylor Adams and this is the Eden Rehabilitation Center.”

  Abeo glanced around, squeezed her eyes shut, and tried to remember, but she couldn’t.

  “What do you remember?”

  “I remember . . .” she started in a faint voice, “my house. My parents and baby brother.”

  Taylor asked her a series of questions and Abeo was able to recall in vivid detail her life before she was taken to the shrine. The shrine and the years she’d spent there, however, had fallen into a black well in her memory.

  “Do you know how old you are?”

  Abeo thought about it and then responded: “Nine.” What her mind could not handle, it had simply erased.

  “I’m not sure exactly how old you are, but you’re certainly not nine.”

  Abeo was perplexed.

  “Come with me.”

  Abeo followed Taylor across the office to a full-length mirror propped up against the wall.

  “See?” Taylor pointed at Abeo’s reflection.

  A grown woman stared back at her. She was tall, dark, and thin, with wide, dull eyes. Abeo moved closer, reached her arm out, and touched the hand of her mirrored self. “That’s me?” she whispered in wonder.