The Headhunter's Daughter Read Online Free Page B

Protruding Navel about to do? Not serve them coffee!
    The young woman, a new missionary of only a few months’ standing, ran for the kitchen and the large bell affixed to the back-door frame. She may as well have taken baby steps and stopped to nap along the way; that’s how long it took Protruding Navel to respond to the bell’s deep metallic clang—a sound that, by the way, could be heard all the way across the river.
    “Eh, what is it, Mamu ?” he asked with studied casualness, as if she’d caught him reading, and he was looking up from a book. Reading! Ha, now that would be the day.
    “Protruding Navel, what are the bakalenge doing on the west terrace? Is that where we breakfast?”
    “Forgive me, Mamu , but I do not recall where it is that we breakfast.”
    Amanda managed a weak smile. “You are skillful at playing word games, Protruding Navel, but that is not what I am paying you for, is it?”
    “No, Mamu .”
    “Please set new breakfast things on the east terrace while I speak to the bakalenge .”
    “ Eyo ,” Protruding Navel said.
    Amanda watched him saunter off as if he had all the time in the world. Well, that was Protruding Navel for you. He didn’t like women; he especially didn’t care for women issuing him orders, even if they were his employer. But the two of them had an understanding; at least that was a start.
    “That houseboy is too cheeky,” Mr. Gorman said. When he spoke, his ears moved and his jowls quivered. “If it were up to me, I’d fire him. Allowing that sort of attitude—especially now —is just asking for trouble. And it reflects badly on the rest of us missionaries as well. It makes us come across as weak. Just because we’re missionaries, that doesn’t mean we have to put up with abuse.”
    “ Harry ,” Mrs. Gorman said, “take it easy on this poor thing; she’s only just arrived.”
    “I’ve been here two months,” Amanda said. She’d foolishly made it sound like she was trying to come across as an “old-timer.” What a joke. It only felt like she’d lived in the Belgian Congo for most of her life. It was the Gormans who were the real “old-timers.” Twenty-one years in May, they’d said. Tomorrow they were going to catch the plane to Leopoldville, the capital city, and from there another plane back to the United States, where they were due a year’s furlough. Every five years one was supposed to get a furlough . . .
    “Hey, is there any other kind of jam except marmalade?”
    “Hay is for horses,” Mrs. Gorman said, with a twinkle in her eye, to their fifteen-year-old daughter. “Now ask Aunt Amanda nicely if she has another kind of jam.”
    That was another thing! Aunt Amanda! In the Belgian Congo the children of missionaries had to call every female missionary “Aunt,” and every male missionary “Uncle.” It didn’t matter if the two parties weren’t related, or if they were almost the same age.
    Amanda turned to the girl. “I’m awfully sorry; I haven’t any other kind of jam. It has to come all the way up from South Africa by ship, then up the Congo River by boat, and I was late getting in my order—”
    “I told the home office to send someone more experienced,” Mr. Gorman said.
    “Leave her alone,” the woman named Dorcas said gently. Dorcas was an unmarried woman, a self-proclaimed “old maid” who had already served in the Belgian Congo almost fifty years. In a year she would retire. Now she had come to use the rest house for its primary purpose: as a place of rest. Tomorrow she would drive across the river and visit the Belgian town of Belle Vue, where she had many friends, and where there was limited shopping.
    “I was only stating a fact,” Mr. Gorman said. He turned his head, an act that set a considerable amount of flesh into motion. “Boy! Boy! I want more coffee!”
    Amanda rang a small brass bell next to her cup. The overall shape was a Southern belle. It had been a gift from the previous manager of the rest