The Butterfly Heart (13 page)

Sometimes, when there’s no time to think about things over and over again, it is better. When I was small I used to think too hard about everything until my head became sore. As if it was going to burst. My granny would take leaves from the banana tree and wrap them round my head to cool it down, then she would make me sit quietly out of the sun and tell me to think about the way that the trees grow. She said that my headache was caused by too many thoughts jamming hard against each other, and that if I thought about things that were very slow then I would feel better.

A tree grows so slowly that you cannot see it move, so I would think carefully about how each tree comes from a small seed and then about how many rainy seasons and dry seasons it would take for the tree to grow its branches and leaves and fruit. Then one small fruit would fall or one pod would burst and scatter its seeds and the tree-growing starts all over again. That kind of thinking would send me to sleep.

Now I don’t have time for fast or slow thinking, all I have time for is doing. The time is coming soon, and I will be ready.

I
saw Ifwafwa today but he didn’t see me. Or I don’t think he did. Maybe he’s like Fred’s great-granny. Madillo says she sees without seeing: sees through hedges and walls, across roads and rivers for miles and miles. Madillo has decided that that is the great-granny’s special witch gift.

Madillo has a thing about gifts. She doesn’t question whether there is such a thing, her only problem is deciding which one to choose. At breaktime today I was the one who had to listen to her theories because Winifred is not around. Normally it would be Winifred on the receiving end, or Fred, because both of them find it funny. Fred believes about half of it and Winifred normally pretends to but you can see her laughing underneath. Madillo doesn’t always see her laughter, because when she’s spinning a tale she doesn’t notice anything apart from how amazing her own story is.

So today there I was wondering if we were going to have a maths test and Madillo was deciding whether she wanted a turning-people-into-things gift or a seeing-into-people’s-heads gift.

“It’s hard not to want the gift of turning people into other things,” she said. “That’d be fun. You’d have to be careful, though – if, for example, I turned Sister Leonisa into a tapeworm, she’d need a host. And knowing her, she’d find me, wherever I was, and creep down my throat. I couldn’t change her back once she was comfortably settled in my stomach, so I’d have to do the saucer-of-milk trick and I think I’d rather live with a tapeworm inside me than pull it out through my mouth.” As she said this she opened her mouth wide by way of demonstration and I found myself imagining Sister Leonisa being changed back into herself while she was still inside Madillo. Gross.

“With the seeing gift, on the other hand, there’s no downside that I can think of,” said Madillo thoughtfully. “Except that it might turn out to be a bit much. If all the thoughts were floating around for you to look at, the air would be so crowded you’d probably forget a lot of them. And you wouldn’t be able to think straight. I find it hard to talk straight anyway, because my head is filled with more thoughts than I can actually say. It’s not that there are so many of them, I suppose – it’s just that they would sound funny to other people. So I keep them to myself. Are you like that, Bul-Boo?” she said, as if she had suddenly remembered that she wasn’t the only one who could speak.

“I suppose so,” I said, “but I think I keep even more of mine inside than you do. And I wouldn’t like to see what people think but don’t say. I wouldn’t like anyone peering into my head, so I shouldn’t be peering into theirs.”

“Maybe,” Madillo said. “I suppose it’s different for Fred’s great-granny. She was born that way – she can’t help it. She didn’t ask to be seeing things, so you can’t call her nosy. I think I’ll choose the turning-people-into-things gift. I just won’t use it too often.”

“As if you’ll get any gift at all,” I said. “Even if there was such a thing you’d be at the end of a long queue, and seeing as there isn’t, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“So you’re saying Ifwafwa doesn’t have a gift?” She knew I wouldn’t have an answer for that.

The bell rang then, which made it easy not to answer. The difference between Madillo and me is that I wouldn’t call what Ifwafwa has a
gift
, like some spooky thing. I think he just knows snakes much better than anyone else.

When I saw Ifwafwa, he didn’t look like himself. He was pushing his bike, his snake bag was empty and he didn’t notice anything or anyone around him. I wondered what was wrong. I didn’t call him over because he would think I was going to ask him what he had done about Winifred (I wouldn’t do that) and then he’d know that I’m impatient with him – which I am, it just seems as though time is passing by and nothing is happening.

We’ll just stick with the cupboard plan. If he does something too then that’s fine, but I can’t depend on it, gift or no gift. It was horrible to see him looking so sad, though. It makes me feel bad for asking him to help us.

We
had the day off school today for Zambian Independence Day. Dad said that when he was little they never got the day off. But the way he talks you would think he never got a day off school ever: that it was just 365 days’ hard slog, no messing, no fun. Mum says he exaggerates everything. She says that when she met him he told her he came from Zambia, “the butterfly-shaped heart of Africa, a land of poets and princes”. I don’t think that’s a particularly good example of him exaggerating, because Zambia
is
the butterfly-shaped heart of Africa, and the bit about poets and princes was just him trying to put it into words that Mum would understand. Because at that stage she knew nothing about Africa at all, so she wouldn’t have understood if he had said it was a land of chiefs and tellers of tales and all sorts of wondrous things. Which it is. (But I agree that he exaggerates about what school was like.)

Anyway, Mum exaggerates too, so she can’t talk. She was at a convent in Ireland and the way she tells it we are lucky to have Sister Leonisa, because at least she doesn’t hit us or twist our ears or make us stand in dark corners until we “forsake the ways of the devil”. Which is a relief.

Since we were all off for the day – Madillo, Fred and I – we decided to spend it at Fred’s house. I only agreed because the great-granny was out. Fred said she’d gone to visit the graves of her ancestors and would not be back until late that night. I cannot imagine her going out, she looks too old to go anywhere. If I was her family, I’d be worried she’d just disappear, fall down a pothole or something. Her supposed witchly powers wouldn’t do her much good then.

I found myself wondering the other night – when I had started thinking she might actually be a witch – that if she was, why had she let herself get so old and weak. Dad is her doctor and he often goes over there to give her medicines. I have never heard him say she’s a witch. Surely a proper witch, if such a thing exists, would heal herself.

When we got to Fred’s house, he said that because everyone was out, even his mother, he would take us into the great-granny’s room – maybe we would find something we could use to help Winifred. Madillo was really excited and I agreed to go along with it because I wanted to see what the great-granny’s room was like. It’s not part of their house, it’s a small house by itself round where the mango trees grow. Fred knows that she keeps her key under a stone near the back door. I asked him why she needed a key if she was a witch, but he just hushed me up. When Fred is in his own house he gets a lot bossier.

He opened the door and called us to follow. When we got inside we just stood and looked around us. The room was quite dark and Fred couldn’t find a light switch, but we could make out a very tall bed in the corner.

“How does she even get into that?” I said. “Does she fly?” I giggled, which is not something I normally do. I laugh; Madillo giggles. But there I was, giggling.

“No, I don’t,” said a voice that definitely wasn’t Fred’s or Madillo’s. Fred, by this stage, had found the light switch and I saw a familiar small head tucked up in the bed. I screamed. Madillo screamed. And Fred just ran out of the room.

I couldn’t move; it was as if my feet were stuck to the ground.

“I don’t fly. I don’t even run or jump. But I do climb.” I saw it then: a small ladder at the end of the bed.

I couldn’t speak, and I turned to discover that Madillo had mysteriously abandoned me as well.

“What do you want, little girl, with your scared eyes? Come here so I can see you,” she said.

I moved towards the bed – there was nothing else I could do.

When I got closer I could see her hands holding onto the sheet. They were like the claws of a bird we’d once rescued. It was a small bird with yellow on its wings – Dad said it was a weaver bird. When it started getting better, it used to grab hold of my finger with its feet and wouldn’t let go. That was what her hands looked like. Thin and grabby.

“I’ll tell you something, little girl. You have asked my friend, the one who knows snakes, for his help – for your friend who is young and clever. That’s right?”

I nodded.

“My friend, the man who rides the bicycle, will help her. He is a good man. You must not make him rush. He needs time to think. Do not be impatient, it will not help her. Now go. And tell Fred I will move my spare key from under the rock because he must ask me when he wants to come here. I will say yes, but he must not go through doors that are not his to open.” She lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

I walked out backwards, slowly, in case she changed her mind, then turned as I reached the door and dashed out, closing it behind me.

Fred and Madillo were waiting behind the bougainvillea creeper.

“I have a message for you, Fred,” I said in my calm but irritated voice.

“Yes…?” he said.

“Do not go through doors that are not yours to open. Ever again. And the key to that door has gone, she will not leave it there for you to find. Do not bother looking for it; it will be far, far away. And if you do try to look for it, things will be hard for you.” (OK, so the last bit was pure embellishment. Whenever Madillo is trying to explain something, Mum always says, “Madillo, if you left out the pure embellishment you’d be able to say what you wanted to say in one sentence.” Which is true, but now it was my turn to embellish a little and I was enjoying it.)

“She said that? I don’t believe it. I’m her favourite – she doesn’t mind what I do. You’re lying,” Fred said.

“I’m not,” I told him. “And the last thing she said was that you must never take anything for granted. You’ll find that if you do, it will disappear before you know it. Maybe you
were
her favourite, but things change. And Madillo, she had a message for you, too.” Now that I’d started, it was hard to stop. It must have been the Madillo in me coming out.

Madillo actually looked scared. I almost felt sorry for her.

“She said that you shouldn’t always believe everything that Fred says. Think for yourself. She also said that Ifwafwa will help Winifred and we must not worry—”

“I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen!” Madillo said. “And I do think for myself.”

“Fred, was it you who told your great-granny about Winifred?” I said.

“No.”

“Then who did? Ifwafwa?”

“No, he doesn’t come here because my mum is scared of snakes, so Dad has to kill them all. She is also scared of him – of Ifwafwa – because she says he lets the snakes out of his bag and then pretends he’s found them in the house. She thinks his bag is full of the same snakes, all the time, and that they are tame and just do what he tells them to do.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. How does your great-granny know about us asking Ifwafwa?” I didn’t really want an answer and I didn’t get one, anyway, because Fred’s mum and dad came back at that moment and I didn’t want to wait around to hear what they had to say. Or rather what his
dad
had to say – because all we would get from the mum would be a silent scurrying past us.