Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [41]
One of the cows tries to run out of the herd and break for the bush. I dig my heels into Burma Boy’s sides and spin him around, catching the cow before she can escape.
“That’s it,” says Mum. “That’s better. Keep it up.”
It takes until late afternoon to get the cows down to the home paddocks, by which time the cows’ flanks are wet with sweat, their horn-heavy heads are low and swinging; they are tripping forward without thought of a fight. I have stopped sniveling, but am hunched over the front of my saddle trying not to think about how thirsty I am.
“There,” says Mum, wiping the sweat off her top lip as she shuts the gate behind the wild cows, “that’s not a bad day’s work.”
I shrug miserably.
“Don’t you think?”
“I s’pose.”
Mum swings up on Caesar again and pats him on the rump. “You know, we’re descended from cattle rustlers, you and me,” she tells me, her eyes shining. “In Scotland, our family were cattle rustlers.”
I think, At least Scotland is cool. At least there are streams of fresh water to drink from. At least Scottish cows don’t lead you into buffalo bean.
The next day Mum sends the cattle boys into the nearby villages. She says, “Tell the villagers I have their cows. If they want their cows back, they can come and get them.” She pauses. “But they’ll have to pay me for grazing,” she says slowly. “Understand? Lots and lots of money for grazing and for taking care of their cows. Hey? Mazvinzwa?” Do you understand?
“Eh-eh, madam.”
No one comes to collect their cows. Mum dips the cows, deworms them, brands them with our brand, feeds them up on the Rhodes grass until their skins are shiny and they are so fat it seems as if they might burst, and then sends them on the red lorry into Umtali, to the Cold Storage Corporation, to be sold as ration meat. With the proceeds, she buys an airplane ticket for Vanessa to visit Granny and Grandbra in England and she pays for the rest of us to drive down to South Africa on a camping holiday where we are flooded out of our tent on the second night on the West Coast and subsequently spend a damp, drunken fortnight in a gray fishing village trying to avoid hostile Afrikaners and waiting for the sun to come out.
That is the year I turn ten. The year before the war ends.
Violet
VIOLET
Pru Hilderbrand is like a mum out of a book. When we go to her house we get homemade lemonade and slices of homemade whole-wheat bread with slabs of homemade butter on it. Her three little boys do not have itchy bums and worms and bites up their arms from fleas. Pru doesn’t like to drink beer or wine and she hates the Club. Her children have finger painting and Lego and the house smells of disinfectant and clean sheets. There are always fresh-cut flowers from her soft-green, rocky garden in the summer and dried flowers cut from the highlands in the winter. Next to the fireplace, there are clay pots with newspapers and magazines and big, cushioned chairs, and there are soft, secret places in that house for a child to feel comfortable and safe. There are quilts on the beds and tea is a proper meal on the veranda with a bowl of brown sugar and the salt is in a little pottery pot in the middle of the table and it is in little granules, not grains, and you sprinkle it on your food with a tiny wooden spoon. Pru plays cricket with us on the lawn.
So, we have spent all afternoon at the Hilderbrands, who have a squash court and a pool which is in the belly of some rocks and held in by a small concrete wall which is invisible because the pool is fed by a small spring and the water is allowed to slosh over the concrete wall like a waterfall. After we’ve been swimming, Pru makes us dry ourselves (she has fresh-smelling crisp towels in the changing rooms, which rub our skin raw) and she lets us play on the lawn until it is almost time for the sun to set and then she says to the mums and dads that we should leave now because of the curfew.
We have the farthest to drive, all the way to the other side of the valley, so no