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

helping us out by eating a few before we got here, but Mama Tataba, I guess, kept them warded off with a stick. It was Mother who decided to contribute most of the flock for feeding the village, like a peace offering. On the morning of the picnic she had to start in at the very crack of dawn, to get all those hens killed and fried up. At the picnic she walked through the crowd passing out thighs and drumsticks to the little children, who acted just as pleased as punch, licking their fingers and singing out hymns. Yet, for all her slaving over a hot stove, Father hardly noticed how she’d won over the crowd. His mind was two million miles away. He just mostly stared out at the river, where no one was fixing to get dunked that day, whatsoever. Just big mats of floating plants going by with stilty-legged birds walking around and around on top, every one of them no doubt thinking he’s king of the world.
    I was sore at Father all right, for us having to be there in the first place. But it was plain to see he was put out, too, something fierce. When he gets his mind set on something you’d just as well prepare to see it through.The picnic was festive, but not at all what he’d had in mind. It was nothing, in terms of redemption.
     
    Ruth May
    IF SOMEBODY WAS HUNGRY, why would they have a big fat belly? I don’t know.
    The children are named Tuniba, Bangwa, Mazuzi, Nsimba, and those things. One of them comes in our yard the most and I don’t know his name at all. He’s near about big, like my sisters, but doesn’t wear a thing on God’s green earth but an old gray shirt without any buttons and baggy gray underpants. He has a big old round belly with his belly button sticking out like a black marble. I can tell it’s him because of the shirt and underpants, not because of the belly button. They all have those. I thought they were all fat, but Father said no. They re hungry as can be, and don’t get their vitamins. And still God makes them look fat. I reckon that’s what they get for being the Tribes of Ham.
    One of them is a girl, because of her dress. It’s purple plaid, and it’s ripped right open on the bodice so one of her nipples shows, but she just runs around a-wearing it anyway like she never noticed and neither did anybody. She has shoes too. They used to be white but now they’re dirt-color. Anything that ever was white is not white here.That is not a color you see. Even a white flower opening up on a bush just looks doomed for this world.
    I only got to bring me two toys: pipe cleaners, and a monkey-sock monkey. The monkey-sock monkey has done gone already. I left him out on the veranda and come the next morning, he was gone. One of those little children stole, which is a bad sin. Father says to forgive them for they know not what they do. Mama says you can’t hardly even call it a sin when they need ever little thing as bad as they do. So I don’t know which one, if it was a sin or it wasn’t. But I sure got mad and had a fit. I accidentally peed in my britches. My monkey-sock monkey was named Saint Matthew.
    The grown-up Congo men are all named Tata Something. That one, name of Tata Undo, he is the chief. He wears a whole outfit, cat skins and everything and a hat. Father had to go see Tata Undo to pay the Devil his do. And the women are all Mama Something, even if they don’t have children. Like Mama Tataba, our cooking lady. Rachel calls her Mama Tater Tots. But she won’t cook those. I wish she would.
    The lady in the little house that’s pretty close to ours is Mama Mwanza. One time her roof caught on fire and fell on her and burnt up her legs but not the rest of her. That happened way back years ago. Mama Tataba told Mama about it in the kitchen house and I was listening. They won’t talk about the bad things in front of my sisters, but me I can listen all the livelong day while I’m getting me a banana in the kitchen house and peeling it. Mama Tataba hangs the whole big family of bananas up