Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [1]
We aren’t allowed to look at Scope magazine.
“Why?”
“Because we aren’t those sorts of people,” says Mum.
“But we have a picture from Scope magazine on the loo lid.”
“That’s a joke.”
“Oh.” And then, “What sort of joke?”
“Stop twittering on.”
A pause. “What sort of people are we, then?”
“We have breeding,” says Mum firmly.
“Oh.” Like the dairy cows and our special expensive bulls (who are named Humani, Jack, and Bulawayo).
“Which is better than having money,” she adds.
I look at her sideways, considering for a moment. “I’d rather have money than breeding,” I say.
Mum says, “Anyone can have money.” As if it’s something you might pick up from the public toilets in OK Bazaar Grocery Store in Umtali.
“Ja, but we don’t.”
Mum sighs. “I’m trying to read, Bobo.”
“Can you read to me?”
Mum sighs again. “All right,” she says, “just one chapter.” But it is teatime before we look up from The Prince and the Pauper.
The loo gurgles and splutters, and then a torrent of water shakes down, spilling slightly over the bowl.
“Sis, man,” says Vanessa.
You never know what you’re going to get with this loo. Sometimes it refuses to flush at all and other times it’s like this, water on your feet.
I follow Vanessa back to the bedroom. The way candlelight falls, we’re walking into blackness, blinded by the flame of the candle, unable to see our feet. So at the same moment we get the creeps, the neck-prickling terrorist-under-the-bed creeps, and we abandon ourselves to fear. The candle blows out. We skid into our room and leap for the beds, our feet quickly tucked under us. We’re both panting, feeling foolish, trying to calm our breathing as if we weren’t scared at all.
Vanessa says, “There’s a terrorist under your bed, I can see him.”
“No you can’t, how can you see him? The candle’s out.”
“Struze fact.”
And I start to cry.
“Jeez, I’m only joking.”
I cry harder.
“Shhh, man. You’ll wake up Olivia. You’ll wake up Mum and Dad.”
Which is what I’m trying to do, without being shot. I want everyone awake and noisy to chase away the terrorist-under-my-bed.
“Here,” she says, “you can sleep with Fred if you stop crying.”
So I stop crying and Vanessa pads over the bare cement floor and brings me the cat, fast asleep in a snail-circle on her arms. She puts him on the pillow and I put an arm over the vibrating, purring body. Fred finds my earlobe and starts to suck. He’s always sucked our earlobes. Our hair is sucked into thin, slimy, knotted ropes near the ears.
Mum says, “No wonder you have worms all the time.”
I lie with my arms over the cat, awake and waiting. African dawn, noisy with animals and the servants and Dad waking up and a tractor coughing into life somewhere down at the workshop, clutters into the room. The bantam hens start to crow and stretch, tumbling out of their roosts in the tree behind the bathroom to peck at the reflection of themselves in the window. Mum comes in smelling of Vicks VapoRub and tea and warm bed and scoops the sleeping baby up to her shoulder.
I can hear July setting tea on the veranda and I can smell the first, fresh singe of Dad’s morning cigarette. I balance Fred on my shoulder and come out for tea: strong with no sugar, a splash of milk, the way Mum likes it. Fred has a saucer of milk.
“Morning, Chookies,” says Dad, not looking at me, smoking. He is looking far off into the hills, where the border between Rhodesia and Mozambique melts blue-gray, even in the pre-hazy clear of early morning.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Sleep all right?”
“Like a log,” I tell him. “You?”
Dad grunts, stamps out his cigarette, drains his teacup, balances his bush hat on his head, and strides out into the