The Headhunter's Daughter by Tamar Myers

some of the more ignorant members of his tribe. Ugly Eyes had taught him that. And as Ugly Eyes learned the ways of the Bula Matadi , she would teach them to him.
    Someday she might even take a Bula Matadi man as one of her husbands, and in the course of time bear that man children— yala ! Would those children also be white? Perhaps so—although most likely not. Ugly Eyes had been living a long time with the Bashilele people, and she was one of them. Her whiteness was but a thin layer that did not extend down to her soul or to her woman parts; of that the Headhunter could be sure. In the meantime, why was he not showing a father’s concern? Was he not afraid for Ugly Eyes? Was she not as much his daughter as if she had been born of his wife? These were silly questions to ease the mind; Ugly Eyes was not only his daughter, she was much more than that! Let it be known that Ugly Eyes was as brave as any son—and as clever as any two sons. Yes, let that be known.
    In the meantime—and this he had made very clear to his daughter—they were not to give the white man the satisfaction of knowing that anything he did, or said, had any effect on them, the representatives of the Bashilele people.
    In the end it was decided that father and daughter should be kept together temporarily in what used to be the woodshed (in the days before the Missionary Rest House was hooked into the boundless electricity supplied by the falls)—no matter how improper it might appear to Mr. and Mrs. Gorman to have a black man spend the night alone with a young, nubile white girl. Normally, this strange girl’s whereabouts would have been of no further concern to Cripple (given that she’d lied about speaking the Bushilele language)—but since the woodshed was where she kept the uniform that the white mamu now required her to wear, it was ordained that the two strong souls should meet again.
    “ Aiyee! ” Cripple cried upon opening the door to the woodshed the following morning. The white Mushilele girl was supine upon a very comfortable-looking sleeping pad on the cement floor, covered by a real blanket. She appeared to be alone; still, Cripple half expected the girl’s father to leap down from the rafters and lop off her head. She glanced up and was vastly reassured by the same cobwebs that had not seemed so friendly the day before.
    Meanwhile the girl jumped to her feet and was hastily attempting to dress in some of the real mamu’ s clothes. Frankly, it was more than Cripple could bear. First the luxuriously soft sleeping pad, and now these rich clothes! Even Cripple had yet to be favored by any of the white woman’s castoffs.
    “What has this wretched creature done to deserve such favoritism?” she cried. “Anyone can be born with a sickly white skin. I too would have been born with such a hideous condition, had but I known the treasures that lay in store for one such as this.”
    “Then truly it is a shame that you did not listen to your mother’s womb,” one of the spiders in the rafters said. “I listened, and as you can see, I have been richly rewarded.”
    Cripple raised a clenched fist. “So now even you spiders mock me?”
    “Oh you silly Muluba woman,” said a voice closer at hand. “How much palm beer did you consume last night?”
    Cripple dropped her fist and stared at the white African. “If it were possible that you could understand me, I would not speak thus; I drank no beer last night, nor did a drop of honey wine pass my lips. I am not a betting woman, but if I were, I would bet the lives of my sister wife’s children that you spoke just now. For either that is the case, or I have crossed over to the land of departed souls and we are both dead.”
    The white girl clapped her hands and laughed. What impertinence that child showed!
    “We are neither of us dead, Mamu ,” she said. “It is me, the wretched white creature that you tore from the bosom of her mother yesterday in the Bashilele