Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [21]
“What then?”
“I call up the army guys and they go and rescue whoever it is.”
“What if they’re all dead by the time the army guys get there?”
“Don’t ask silly questions.” She goes back to her book.
So I go outside and stare at the jail, which is behind the police station. It is a small gray two-celled building. The cells don’t have windows but there are little slots on the door and in front of the door there are two fenced off yards, like the yards at the SPCA where we sometimes go to rescue dogs to add to the pack. I squint against the sun long enough and peer deeply enough into the doors, and I am rewarded by the startled eyes—very white and staring from the depths of the jail—of an actual prisoner. I smile and wave, the way some people try and get a reaction from a bored animal at a zoo, to see if anything will happen. The eyes blink shut. The face disappears.
I sit under the frangipani tree on the spiky, drying police station lawn with its ring of whitewashed stones and aloe vera flower beds, and I poke pieces of grass into ant lion traps to see the little ant lions leap up with sharp claws in anticipation of an ant meal, which I, and my little piece of grass, are not. Then one of the African sergeants comes out of the police station with trays of food for the prisoners. I lower myself onto my belly, flat against the speckled shadows of the frangipani tree. I don’t want to be told to “go inside now.” The sergeant opens the dog-run gate and bangs on the gray cell doors. The hatches open. The sergeant slides the trays halfway into the mouths of the slots, and they are swallowed into the police cells.
And then Mum comes out and says, “Bobo!” And then, “There you are. Look, you’re all dusty.” She glances toward the prison cells. “Come inside now. It’s time to rest.”
I have to lie down on the prickly gray army-issue blanket for rest time. Mum puts her feet up on the edge of the bed and reads her book. The sound of her breathing, her nylon-covered-foot-rubbing-foot, her gently shuffling pages, and the gathering force of hot-yellow sun are stupefying. And then I am asleep.
In the late afternoon, Mum has finished her book and still no one has been attacked, although I have woken up from my afternoon sleep (dry-mouthed and eyes stinging) and lain on my side for ages staring at the little lights on the map, hoping. The flies are buzzing hotly against the windows and the sun has sunk below the level of the corrugated-tin roof and is sliding breathlessly against the wall with the army alphabet on it (fading Alpha through Golf and Hotel). There is a knock on the door and the police station’s maid comes in with the tea tray (a plate of Marie Biscuits, two chipped mugs, sweet powdered milk reconstituted in a plastic jug, a tub of white sugar, and a small government-issue metal pot for the tea so that Mum immediately asks for more, in anticipation of her second cup).
Mum pours out the tea into the two chipped mugs. Their handles are greasy.
“I hope the prisoners haven’t drunk out of these cups.”
“I’m sure they have their own plastic mugs.”
“What about the other Affies?” I mean the black policemen, the police station’s maid.
“I’m sure they are not allowed to drink out of the same mugs as us.”
“Good.” I dip my Marie Biscuit into my tea and watch crumbs float on the hot, greasy surface.
When we have drunk our tea, Mum reads to me. I lie on the cot under the army alphabet chart. She reads C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lucy is in the land where it will never be summer, snow crunches underfoot. The sultry afternoon, pale with light-washing sun and the faint hum of traffic from the road that passes the police station all wash into the background. I am transported to a cool snowy world with fawns and witches and Peter and Susan and Edmund and Aslan. I shut my eyes and spread myself out so that my sweating skin can cool; the world of Narnia is more real and wonderful than the world I am alive in.
“Olé!” Mum sings at the club on Saturday night. “I’m a bandit. I’m a bandit from Brazil. I’m the quickest