The Poisonwood Bible Sestina

Were the foolish expectations an excuse not to escape while the souls of our world were still alive and well? Our Father who art in this red-soiled hell, do you ignore every prayer? Why is beauty red blood, blue eyes, and white skin? Out to the runway we roll, the victims, the daughters of a man’s transgressions. What is there left to do but hope? Someday we’ll look back and laugh on time in Africa, or so we hope. We wonder when that someday is, but mostly we fear that this memory won’t escape our nightmares. A Reverend brings the Word of the Lord and four daughters to this land, eyes shut tight he’s unwilling to bend. We’ll never tell Father, a model of the only apparent faith, how he rattles the bones under Congolese skin when he tests the waters with the Lord’s Prayer. Congolese shiver in the humidity. “Tata Jesus is bängala!” is his prayer. Time changes perception; time paints itself on a face without shame. If hope looked like a woman, it would be Mama Mwanza. Her and Anatole’s telltale skin illustrate a timeline so tragic you’d wish to help them escape this land of calamity. But they wouldn’t leave behind the love affair of Father Earth and Mother Nature. I thought of this while watching Mama Mwanza and her daughters. Owls visibly perched and the thick air fills with souls of dead daughters. The nsongonya, the nightmare, erupted with a prayer wickedly being screamed from the villagers eaten alive. Take Father was the unanimous plead in the night of a thousand sounds. Anatole had hope that he could rescue the forgotten benduka. She watched her family escape and noticed the pain of a broken, raging heart that forgot to care about scorching, wounded skin. The young do not always outlive the old. The baby’s skin is now eternally marked by the wound of a mamba’s bite. A mother has lost one of her daughters, wrapped her in mosquito netting, and laid her universe to rest. Time to escape this horrific land. The one who remains is found in the trees, hissing a prayer of forgiveness that a broken hearted mother cannot hear nor hope to believe is true. Perfectly frozen pure and innocent to her mother; completely forgotten by her father. The way of father was to stamp our flawed souls prayer by prayer so the skin of our fingers bled. By fleeing the destruction of his brokenness, our story of escape is a message of healing and hope to a world who will never hear of the Price daughters.