Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [48]
I startle awake, in the quick, gasping, suddenly alert way of all people who have lived in a war (and for which there is no cure, ever, not even now).
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Dad (who naturally suffers a more extreme version of this where’ s-the-danger response to being shaken awake).
Vanessa is awakened by my quiet panic. “What?” Her urgent hiss reaches across to the jumping black shadow of Dad against candlelight.
“Time to get up.”
“Oh.” She sinks back into her pillow.
“Here’s tea.” Dad props Vanessa up and hands her a cup of hot-milky-sweet tea.
“Come on, Bobo, tea.” But I am already out of bed and dressed.
I have slept with my pajamas pulled over my best-for-the-tobacco-sale-day clothes. All I have to do is drink my tea. I have already put several books into a bag, along with my toothbrush, a change of clothes, and a torch that has ceased to work (the batteries have leaked and killed it). I am sitting in the plastic, damp-dog-smelling car, eyes stinging with tiredness, long before the rest of my family. I kick my feet against the back of Dad’s seat with anticipation.
When we turn onto the main road, Mum will hand us a banana and a boiled egg and we will be allowed sips of tea from her steaming cup (just one sip at the bottom, so we don’t spill) and then we will sleep until we reach Rusape, where the high morning sun will stroke us alert.
Today, we will arrive at the tobacco floors in Salisbury in time for the free breakfast that is provided for all farmers and buyers and Tabex personnel. Today, I will eat until I feel sick. I will eat until my belly bloats with the joyful, unaccustomed nausea of too-much. And the food is egg (fried, scrambled, omelettes), sausage, fried tomatoes, chips, bacon, and dripping-butter toast. There are several varieties of boxed cereals: Cocoa Puffs, Honey Pops, Corn Flakes, Pronutro, muesli. There is Zambezi mud porridge, oats, and mealie meal porridge. There are huge bowls of fruit salad and silver trays of cheese and crackers. I eat some of everything and fill my plate again and I am still reluctant to leave the food but Dad says, “Come on, Chooks, leave it now. You’ll make yourself sick.”
And then we make our way onto the auction floors to our two or three lines of tobacco (soldiered between similar lines belonging to other farmers). The bitter-smelling, hessian-wrapped blocks of leaf-laid-upon-leaf have miraculously made the journey from Robandi to here. They have been graded, tied into hands, and packed: primings, lugs, tips, droughted, spotted, scrap. We stand, ill with food, next to our crop. Mum takes my shoulders in a fierce, ringless grip. She alone did not eat breakfast. She drank tea in quick, nervous gulps and glanced repeatedly at the clock that hangs above the door leading to the wide, airplane-hangar-sized auction floors.
The buyers walk the line of our tobacco.
Mum tightens her clutch. She whispers, “Here they come.”
Dad nonchalantly stands, resting on one leg, like a horse at rest. He looks away, as if the buyers are a common, bland species of bird on an otherwise more exciting safari.
Mum hisses, “Try and look hungry, kids.”
I suck in my belly as far as possible and open my eyes as wide as they will go, so that they will seem hollow and needy. Vanessa sinks her head to her chest and shrinks with not-wanting-to-be-here.
Mum turns a fierce, fixed, terrifying smile on the buyers. Her look says, “Give us a good price and you will be rewarded with my love for all time. Please give us a good price. Please.” Waves of her anxiety sink down into my belly and churn with the too-greasy excess of my recent breakfast.
None of us look at the other farmers and their families, who are also hovering with palpably jittering nerves over their bales.
The bales are torn open, leaves are pulled up and smelled; the thin-veined crop is rubbed between thick fingers (fingers flashing with gold bands, which are among the many things that tell the buyers from the farmers. No farmer I know wears rings). A price is scrawled on a ticket. Dad waits until the