The young woman despised being cold. Each year, when winter arrived, she felt as if her soul had curled up along with the leaves that had turned brown and lay uncollected, caught in the naked shrubbery around campus. The icy winds that penetrated her coat blew down from Canada—not directly—but came screaming across the stubble of Indiana cornfields to the west. The border between Ohio and Indiana did nothing to stop the cold, and when it was funneled through the valleys between the steep hills of Cincinnati, it seemed to emerge magnified. It seldom snowed in Cincinnati, Ohio. At least not enough to make up for all the gray skies, with trees silhouetted against them like the claws of dead crows lying on their backs.
The young woman’s name was Buakane, and she was an African from the Congo; more specifically, she hailed from a highborn clan of the Bashilele tribe. Her mother’s name was Grasshopper Paddle, and her father’s name was Bad Odor. At one time, when she was but a girl of ten—or thereabouts—Buakane was sold in marriage to a powerful chief named Eagle. That very night the girl who married Chief Eagle ran away, setting into action a chain of events, like dominoes, that would eventually land her on the frozen campus of the College of Nursing at the University of Cincinnati.
What was a child of the Southern Star, a young woman with the constitution of a tropical flower, doing in such a distant, inhospitable place as this? Ah, that is a fair question. But the Americans are fond of a saying that goes something like this: “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question . . .” That is, the complete story of just how Buakane of the Bashilele, that once-fierce tribe known for their headhunting, came to be shivering on an Ohio campus would fill an entire book. Or it would take many nights around a hearth to even scratch the surface of such a story, and Buakane had neither the time nor the inclination to dwell on her past.
All that must be known is that after the Congo became independent, terrible tribal wars raged over much of the Kasai, but it was famine that was death’s closest companion. Shortly after independence all the missionaries evacuated, although a year later, Tatu Henry and Mamu Julia (who were now married) returned, along with Clementine, to resume work at Mushihi Station. There they discovered that both of Buakane’s parents, Paddle and Bad Odor, had perished in the famine.
The Hayes family remained in the Congo for only one more year. When they returned to the United States to stay, they took Buakane with them. They settled in Dayton, Ohio, not too far from Oxford where Julia had grown up, and Dayton is where Buakane came into her own. It was there that she learned how to speak English and about the strange American ways. Through hard work, and thanks to her formidable intellect, she was able to graduate from an American high school when she was just eighteen.
At one time Buakane had thought that all whites were rich beyond measure, far richer than even a thousand village chiefs. Now that she lived in their world she could see that wealth was a relative thing, and even knowledge came at a price.
The Hayes family was not wealthy. Tatu Henry was currently a pastor of a very small congregation, but did the occasional carpentry job on the side. Mamu Julia worked as a teacher. Clementine was a second-year student at Harvard University—which everyone said cost an “arm and a leg.” However, that was only an American expression, not something to be taken literally.
Buakane’s dream of becoming a nurse seemed like an impossible dream until she spoke it aloud. For the Bashilele had a saying: “Words spoken aloud catch the wind and turn into action.” Now this Child of Beauty, Goodness, and Excellence, She Who Was Worthy in All Things was a first-year student at the College of Nursing at the University of Cincinnati. Who back in Mushihi Village could have imagined that? No one. But eyo, the words of Buakane’s spoken dream had caught the wind, and “out of the blue,” as it is said, a secret benefactor had stepped forward to pay for her entire course of study.
Earlier on this particular day, under feeble sunlight, Tatu Henry and Mamu Julia had dropped the young woman off at her dorm following her first Christmas break. Now the sky was as black as a zebra’s mane, and the weather bitter in her mouth. Yet the girl had to go out, for she’d found a note slipped under her door, inviting her to meet with her benefactor at the student union. The signature on the note was illegible, giving the poor girl no information other than the time and place to meet. This unexpected appearance of her benefactor caused Buakane’s heart to beat so fast that it felt like it might leap from her chest, and then gallop away like a giant kudu.
When at last Buakane stumbled into the tall brick building where her benefactor waited, she was so cold that her fingers clutching the note were stiff and her eyes immediately began to tear up. At first Buakane could see only students—most of them white—and a low moan escaped her lips. Was this yet another cruel trick played on her by fate? Or perhaps even a curse placed upon her by Nanabuka, the witch doctor of Mushihi Village? For despite her ten years in the United States of America, and her informal adoption by the Hayes family, the Mushilele prodigy remained a heathen.
“Buakane! Life to you, Buakane.”
The young woman whirled. Standing within striking distance of her elbow was Mamu Snake, the great white healer, she who had sewn the deep gash opened by the hyena the night that Buakane, the girl, had married an eagle. Buakane had not seen the missionary for ten years; what’s more, not once had she even asked after the old woman.
“Mamu,” Buakane said with her first breath. “E, life to you.”
Mamu Snake motioned to the nearest empty table. “May we speak in English, Buakane? I only have a few minutes before I have to leave for the airport, but I wanted to hear it for myself.”
“Hear what?” Buakane asked in English.
“I heard that you spoke without an accent. It has been much remarked upon. Please, say something else.”
“Now I am embarrassed,” Buakane said, “so of course I can’t think of anything to say. Well—except to ask why it is that you pay for my nurse’s training. What I mean to say is, you don’t even know me, except for that one night when you saved my life. Which isn’t to say that I’m not grateful, because believe me, I am, but I didn’t do anything for you after that, except bring you trouble. Loads and loads of trouble.”
“Praise God in his highest heaven,” Mamu Snake said. “You do speak English without an accent! You speak it perfectly, just like a native.”
The old woman had a very deep, raspy voice, and she’d spoken loudly. Everyone was staring at them now, not that Buakane cared one whit—or one stick of manioc, as she would have said in her previous life. Back in Africa, where life was fraught with constant danger, old age was something to be revered, and Mamu Snake was surely the oldest woman that Buakane had ever talked with face-to-face. Even after having lived in America for half her life, Buakane found that she still could not estimate the age of a white person with any sort of accuracy. As for Mamu Snake, her age was incalculable, given that it was undoubtedly between fifty and infinity, a totally unfamiliar range in which few Bashilele women ever found themselves.
“Are all your expenses being covered?” the ancient missionary asked.
Buakane nodded as she struggled to hold back more tears. These fresh tears were different from those caused by temperature. As the daughter of Paddle, She of the Highborn Clan, it was not fitting that she succumb to such a public demonstration of emotion.
“Mamu, my heart overflows with gratitude.”
Mamu Snake grunted. “How is your leg? Do you still feel the scar?”
“Eyo. It is twice felt.” By that Buakane meant that her fingers could immediately zero in on her scar, even if she wasn’t looking at her leg, as well as the fact that she sometimes dreamed about the night the hyenas attacked her.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Mamu Snake said. “I did the best I could. I’m only a nurse; I’m not a surgeon. I’m not even a doctor.”
“You did a great job,” Buakane hastened to assure her. “The doctors here all say so.”
“Good. Buakane, I must ask you a question: Why do you wish to be a nurse?”
“Mamu, isn’t that obvious? I want to do what you did; I want to return to my village and help my people. You know what it’s like there; they must be hurting even worse now.”
“Then why not go as a doctor?”
Buakane was flabbergasted. How was she supposed to respond to such a ridiculous question from someone who was being so kind to her? It was one thing to ask the wind to pay for nurses’ school, but quite another to dream of medical school. Was this old woman playing a game of some kind? What was Buakane to think? After all, this was the same woman who had been so unkind to her friend and American “sister,” Clementine.
Just when enough words had formed in Buakane’s mind to come tumbling out of their own accord—perhaps in an unpleasant arrangement—the old woman spoke first.
“Yes, of course, you are right. You can receive your bachelor’s degree in nursing in just four years. Medical school would take twice that long, including college, and then you’d have to complete your internship. You can go back to medical school later if you wish. In the meantime, go back to Africa and tend to your people. I’m going to arrange it so that funds are available for you to use whenever you’re ready.”
“We laugh and we cry!” Buakane said, without realizing that she was no longer speaking English. “Mamu, why do you do this for me?”
The old woman, she of the indeterminate age, looked away. “My husband, Reverend Arvin Doyer, passed away three years ago. I thought that he came from a very poor family—one that didn’t have two nickels to rub together—but apparently that was not the case. There was some family money, not a huge fortune, but something that the reverend could have been spending on missions over the years and didn’t. It is my intention to correct this oversight.”
Then just like that, as the wind comes and goes, as fortunes wax and wane, Mamu Snake disappeared through the blur of Buakane’s tears. Whether she stepped out into the bitter cold or melded into the throng of returning students, Buakane was unable to determine. But where once there was a girl who married an eagle, there was now a woman who would someday be a nurse.