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Excerpted Inspirations #192

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • Aug 17
  • 0 min read
[Domino shares some of the medical knowledge from her African roots.] [...] Domino unexpectedly slapped her on the arm. Jade stared, too astonished even to slap back. “Kill he,” said Domino with satisfaction, and displayed the corpse of a mosquito. Jade giggled. The militant Domino’s fear of mosquitoes was so incongruous. “Don’t you have them in Africa?” she asked. “I do think you believe they’re evil spirits or something.” Domino nodded. “Yes. You think silly, but not. Bad devils. Make sick.” “Sick?” Jade shook her cropped head. It felt so light! “Nonsense. They only itch a little.” Domino glared. “Sometimes make sick. Very sick. Make die. Yellow-eye sickness.” “Yellow-eye? You don’t mean yellow fever? Yellow jack?” Domino indicated impatiently that she didn’t know or care what pink-faces might call it. “First very hot, hurt in head and back,” she explained. “Then not hurt, eyes yellow, get cold, soon die.” It was a perfect description of yellow jack. “Well, but it hasn’t got anything to do with mosquitoes, silly,” said Jade, intrigued by such superstition. Really, the ideas people had! “They bring,” said Domino firmly. “Bad devils ride on tooths. Bite sick people, get devils. Bite well people, devils jump off, make well people sick. My people know ... knew.” Her face darkened as she remembered the small African city where she had grown up – now wiped out forever by a massive raid. Its arts and developing sciences were vanished, its streets and buildings and central square already being swallowed by an insatiable jungle, so that in a few years no trace would remain of a proud little civilization. A hundred years of slave-trading was already plunging Africa back into savagery; in another hundred ... Jade saw her slave’s lips tighten, and she guessed at something of the unspoken misery. But she couldn’t show pity, for Domino defied pity. She wasn’t pitiable. Her voice was cool and matter-of-fact when she went on. “My people knew this thing, killed devil-bugs. No devil-sickness except when monkeys come, bring many new devil-bugs.” Jade firmly subdued another giggle. “And what do the devils look like?” she challenged. “Not know. Very small devils, not can see.” And that was that. Domino narrowed her beautiful eyes, daring Jade to mock. “You not believe. All right, but kill devil bug anyway,” she advised with forthright practicality. “Believing not matter if get yellow-eye.” “All right,” agreed Jade, this seeming fair enough. Sally Watson, Jade (1969), pp. 87-88

 
 
 
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