Read Online The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Free Book Online Page B

don’t stare!” But now Mama looks too. Sometimes she says to us or just herself, Now Tata Zinsana is the one missing all the fingers, isn’t he? Or she’ll say, That big gouter like a goose egg under her chin, that’s how I remember Mama Nguza.
    Father said, “They are living in darkness. Broken in body and soul, and don’t even see how they could be healed.”
    Mama said, “Well, maybe they take a different view of their bodies.” Father says the body is the temple. But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly. She was sewing us some window curtains out of dress material so they wouldn’t be looking in at us all the time, and had pins in her mouth. She took the pins out and said to him, “Well, here in Africa that temple has to do a hateful lot of work in a day.” She said, “Why, Nathan, here they have to use their bodies like we use things at home—like your clothes or your garden tools or something. Where you’d be wearing out the knees of your trousers, sir, they just have to go ahead and wear out their knees!”
    Father looked at Mama hard for talking back to him. “Well, sir,” she said, “that is just what it looks like to me. That is just my observation. It appears to me their bodies just get worn out, about the same way as our worldly goods do.”
    Mama wasn’t really sassing back. She calls him sir the way she calls us Sugar and Hon, trying to be nice. But still. If it was me talking back that way, he’d say, “That is a fine line you are walking there, young lady.” And he appeared to be fixing to say just such a thing to Mama. He was debating about it. He stood there in the front doorway with the sun just squeaking by him on all sides. He is so big he near about filled up the whole doorway. His head almost touched. And Mama was just sitting down short at the table, so she went back to sewing.
    He said, “Orleanna, the human body is a sight more precious than a pair of khaki trousers from Sears and Roebuck. I’d expect you to comprehend the difference.”
    Then he looked at her with his one eye turned mean and said, “You of all people.”
    She turned red and breathed out like she does. She said, “Even something precious can get shabby in the course of things. Considering what they’re up against here, that might not be such a bad attitude for them to take.”
    After that Mama put pins back in her mouth, so no more talking.
    He didn’t say anything,Yes or No, just turned his back and went on out. He doesn’t approve talking back. If that was me, oh, boy.
    That razor strop burns so bad, after you go to bed your legs still feel stripedy like a zebra horse.
    I’ll tell you one thing that Father has sure wore out bad: his old green swivel rocker in the living room of our house where we live in Bethlehem, Georgia.You can see white threads in the shape of a bottom. It doesn’t look very polite. And nobody but him did it, either. He sits there of an evening and reads and reads. Once in a while he reads to us out loud when we have our scripture stories. Sometimes I get to picking my scabs and think about cartoons instead of Jesus, and He sees me doing that. But Jesus loves me and this I know: nobody can sit in that green swivel rocker but Father.
    Mama says there’s another man and lady with two little girls and a baby living in our house in Bethlehem, Georgia. The man is the minister while we’re gone. I hope they know about Father’s chair
    because if they sit in it, oh, boy. They’ll get it.
     
    Adah
    IT WAS NEITHER DIABOLICAL NOR DIVINE; it but shook the doors of the prison house of my disposition; and like the captives   of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. So feel I. Living in the Congo shakes open the prison house of my disposition and lets all the wicked hoodoo Adahs run forth.
    To amuse my depraved Ada self during homework time I wrote down that quote from memory on a small triangular piece of paper and passed it to