Praise Song for the Butterflies by Bernice L. McFadden

Author:Bernice L. McFadden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2018-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

27

At one hundred and four years, the old priest finally died, leaving his eldest son as his successor.

Under Duma’s rule, the shrine became a brothel, with men from the surrounding villages paying Duma to have sex with the girls.

Those men would slither into the huts, drunk with beer, calling through the darkness, “Sweet girl, sweet girl . . .”

They’d force their fingers into the young mouths. “Start with this,” they’d murmur, “and work your way down.”

Sometimes fathers brought their sons—schoolboys who barely understood the workings of their own bodies, never mind that of a woman’s.

They were all the same to Abeo: fathers, sons, old men, young boys, Duma—all deplorable, all despicable.

So no, Abeo didn’t know who had fathered her son, a son who looked a lot like her baby brother—but the not-knowing didn’t make her love the child any less.

* * *

With baby Pra secured safely to her back, Abeo hoisted the basket filled with roasted corn into the cab of the truck and climbed in. The vehicle belched smoke as it rumbled down the narrow rutted road that emptied into a wider artery pocked with craters.

Their destination was the busy town of Aboão, which sat on the border between Ukemby and Togo. The streets of Aboão bustled with travelers, most of whom were young white foreigners armed with Bradt travel guides, strapped with colorful backpacks. Money hawkers stood on every corner bellowing the exchange rates for the day. They were often drowned out by the noise of the vans that inched through the streets blaring funeral announcements from loudspeakers.

With the baskets atop their heads, the girls joined the bedlam of street hawkers. They moved fluidly between the automobiles. Ambivalent to the blistering sun, the burn of exhaust smoke against their calves, and the watching eyes of their overseers. They shouted out the day’s prices:

“One cendi!”

“Fifty pese!”

“Two cendi!”

“Eighty-five pese!”

Money and product exchanged hands until the baskets were empty.

* * *

Taylor Adams sat at a roadside café sipping a Coke. Her eyes ping-ponged between the girls and the men who watched them.

“Penny for your thoughts?” said her friend Allen.

Taylor barely glanced at his nutmeg-colored face. A wisp of a smile bloomed and died on her lips.

Allen followed her eyes with his own. “Yes, I know.”

“It’s disgusting,” she spat. “They haven’t had a drink of water in . . .” she looked down at her wristwatch, “at all!”

Allen eyed the glass jug of water on the table between them.

“It’s ninety degrees in the blasted shade, for goodness sakes,” Taylor continued angrily.

Taylor had first traveled to Ukemby in 1994 with her then-boyfriend and his church and had become instantly smitten with the people and the culture. It was during that trip that she first learned of the practice of ritual servitude in Ukemby. These innocent children, almost always female, were known by a variety of names, but the most common term was trokosi. As far as Taylor was concerned, this practice was just slavery by another name.

During that trip, Taylor had attended a church service where the minister spoke passionately against the practice.

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