Let the Stick Dance

‘‘ Sometuine has happened to the child. What is the matter with her?”’

The speaker, Mimosa’s mother, was angry. And when that mother was angry the stick danced.

‘Look at her, not a vestige of the holy ashes has she smeared on her forehead.”’

‘What will the neighbours say?’’ It was an aunt who was speaking now.

‘“Come, thou little ingrate, come here this moment!’’ The child came, but she stood silent.

Then the mother, the aunt, the older sisters, and anyone who happened to be passing, talked to her. They talked all at once, and they all talked loudly. The house was full of their clamour. They talked promiscuously to each other and to her, and hurled proverbs like little pellets at her head.

‘““The child is bewitched. Look at her! She has drunk of the magic medicine of the white people.”’

‘“Yea, she is charmed. There is a charm in the white people’s talk. Charmed? She is spoiled.

14 “The spoiled child fears not the word,’ as the saying is. Let her taste the rod.”’

“Like the help of the rod what help is there?”’ Then all together: ‘‘ Will the child that fears not the reproving eye fear the chastening hand? Nevertheless feel it she must.”’

“‘ The twig unbent within five.years, will it be bent at fifty?”’

“The unbeaten bull, will it be broken to its work?”’

“The undisciplined and the untwirled moustache, will they attain prosperity?’’

At last, exasperated by the child’s silence, for Mimosa did not know what to say, having already said all she knew, the mother carried her off and administered the correction so urgently required. And the little girl cried softly to herself and wondered at the strangeness of everything. She had tried to tell them, and they could not understand.

What had she tried to tell them?

It is difficult to say, just because there was not much to tell. But something had happened on that afternoon when she heard for the first time about a living, loving God, whom we had called Father, who had made everything in the world, and the sun and moon and stars. She had understood that He loved her. And a strange thing had happened. Though there was no time to tell her much of the Lord Jesus Christ, some sense as of seeing a Great Love, feeling it indeed, as one does feel love without being able to explain it, had come upon her, so that she loved this loving One, knew He loved her, though of what had been done to reveal that love to man she knew just nothing; there had not been time to tell her. Only she knew somehow that just as the blue air was round about her that afternoon as she walked back with her father, so that when she looked up she could see blue beyond blue, so the love of this wonderful God was about her and above her, and everywhere was love. Tell it in terms of ordinary speech and you find yourself floating off into shoreless, soundless, timeless seas — what that child had seen that day was as much as a child could see of the Eternal Love. Charmed? Yes, they told the truth who said it. This book is the tale of a soul that was charmed.

The question of rubbing Siva’s ashes on her forehead, or refusing to rub them, had, of course, not been touched upon at all that afternoon. But when she went home, and as usual the basket containing them was handed to her in the morning as the family custom was, she shrank back, feeling instinctively that she could not rub those ashes on now. They meant allegiance to Siva. Siva was not her God now. She had another God, even the Loving One.

It was this unaccountable refusal which had first perplexed, then enraged her family. The basket, with the ashes which the father brought once a month from the temple, was hung from a beam in the living-room. Every morning the father and his sons smeared the ashes on brow, arms, and breast. And the mother and daughters smeared them on their foreheads. To go out of doors without that mark on was disgrace.

The family bore it for a day or two, then, in the more tolerant father’s absence, the women determined to end it. Mimosa had struggled through a lame little explanation, but she could not show them what she had seen, and her faltering words had failed. She had stood among them

‘Dumb to their scorn, and turning on their laughter Only the dominance of earnest eyes.”’

But that dominance was too spiritual to appeal just then. The day came when it did. At that moment it was sheer naughtiness or bewitchment, or both mixed. Anyhow, there was only one thing to do. ‘‘As the stick dances, the monkey must dance. Let the stick dance.’’ And it danced.