Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [23]
“Madam,” says July admiringly, “but you got him one time!”
By now Shea and Jacko’s eyes have swollen up like tennis balls. Mum screams for milk and July brings the jug from the paraffin fridge in the kitchen. She pours the milk into the dogs’ eyes and they yelp in pain. Mum says, “We have to take them in to Uncle Bill.”
We are not supposed to leave the valley without an armed escort because there are land mines in the road on the way to Umtali and terrorist ambushes and Dad is on patrol, so we are women-without-men, which is supposed to be a weakened state of affairs. But this is an emergency. We put the dogs in the car and drive as fast as we can out of the valley, up the escarpment to the dusty wasteland of the Tribal Trust Land and round the snake-body road which clings to the mountain and spits us out at the paper factory (which smells pungent and rotten and warm) so that when we drive past it as a family Vanessa holds her nose and sings, “Bobo farted.”
“Did not.”
“Bo-bo fart-ed.”
Until I am in tears and then Mum says, “Shuddup both of you or you’ll both get a hiding.”
And now we race past the petrol station that marks the entrance into town and we tear past the gaudy string of Indian stores in the Second Class district where we don’t shop. We bump through the tunnel under the railway line which advertises cigarettes, “People say Players, Please,” and hurry through the center of town, the First Class district, where we do shop. Uncle Bill’s veterinary practice is on the other side of town, past the high school. The dogs are crying softly to themselves. Shea is on Mum’s lap and Jacko is on the passenger seat with me.
Uncle Bill says, “You drove in alone?” He sounds angry.
“What else could I do?”
He glances at me, presses his lips shut, and says, “All right. Let me have a look.”
Aunty Sheila says, “Bobo, would you like to come with me?”
I wouldn’t like to go with Aunty Sheila. She has rock-hard bosoms encased in twin-set sweaters. She has hair like a gray paper wasps’ nest.
Mum says, “What do you say, Bobo,” in a warning voice.
So I say, “Yes please, Aunty Sheila,” and she takes me into her perfect sitting room, which leads off the waiting room of the surgery. She tells me to sit-there-and-wait-and-don’t-touch-anything and she goes into the kitchen and comes back with a tray of tea and a plate of food, for which I am grateful, having missed lunch. I am not allowed to eat on the chairs, which are carefully kept clean, with crocheted doilies on their arms. I must sit on the polished floor with the china plate on my lap. Aunty Sheila says, “I don’t have children, I have dogs.”
She has a rash of small spoiled dogs, who are allowed on her beautiful armchairs (unlike me), and some larger dogs who live outside.
I finish my tea and the plate of biscuits and stare at my empty plate meaningfully until Aunty Sheila says, “Would you like another . . .”
And I say yes, quickly, before she can change her mind.
“You’re a hungry little girl,” she says, hardly able to disguise her distaste.
“It’s because I have worms in my bum,” I say, helping myself to a pink vanilla wafer.
We can’t take the dogs home that night. They have to stay with Uncle Bill. When we fetch them a few days later (coming into town in a proper convoy this time), only Jacko is still a little bit blind in one eye.
When Dad comes back from patrol, Mum shows him the pantry and tells him about the snake.
Dad frowns at the shot-up chaos of the pantry, and he says to me, “My God, your mother’s a lousy shot.”
But he wasn’t there to see how wide the snake’s neck was, how it swayed and wove and how its head snapped forward toward the dogs. “I think she’s a jolly good shot,” I say loyally.
Van
VANESSA
Anyway, Vanessa will save us if we ever get attacked. She is the conversation-stopping