Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [58]
Suddenly, Puncho leaps off the bed, his hackles up, barking in high excitement, and I can hear the other dogs scrambling off the veranda and bursting outside with a volley of barking. An instant later I hear Dad shout, “You bloody baboons!”
I spring off my bed and run onto the veranda. Mum comes running out of her bedroom, still pale and holding her stomach. “Quick,” she says, pressing herself against the front door, a simple wooden affair on a hook latch, but without a lock or bolt, “lean on the door.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, pinning my shoulder up against the door.
“Shhh,” Mum hisses. She looks around wildly to see what dogs we have inside. “Hey Puncho!” Puncho is whining, his nose pressed to the bottom of the door. “Hsss,” she says to Shea and Sam, “bark! Sound fierce.”
I can hear Dad shouting on the other side of the door but I cannot hear what he is saying.
“Who is it?”
“Soldiers,” says Mum.
“Army guys?”
“No, not army guys. Soldiers.”
Mum and I are losing the battle of the door. There are two of us leaning with all our might against the door, but it is being pushed from the other side by three grown men. Suddenly, our resistance proves too feeble and the door collapses inward, sending Mum and me sprawling and a clatter of soldiers in on top of us.
I fall as I have been taught. Curl into a ball and cover your head. I bring my arms up and close my eyes. I take a deep, shaky breath.
I am going to die now. I wait. Does a bullet feel red hot coming into you? Do you feel it slicing into your flesh? Will I be dead before I feel pain?
Mum says, “Fergodsake, Bobo, get off the floor.”
I open my eyes.
The Zimbabwean army soldiers are standing with their backs against the door. They are staring down at me.
I sit up and find that I have not been shot. The soldiers’ eyes are blazing red, and they smell strongly of ganja and native-brewed beer. Now that they have pushed our feeble wooden door open and have us at gunpoint, they look a bit sheepish.
Mum says, “Up!” And then she looks at me strangely. “Bobo, where’s Vanessa?”
“Making a cake.”
“Vanessa!” Suddenly Mum is screaming, “Vanessa!” and pushing her way past the three soldiers at the door. “Get out of my way you stupid bloody— Vanessa!”
Vanessa is still in the kitchen, where fright has turned into her habitual seeming-calmness. Two soldiers are observing her from a polite distance, guns aimed casually at her belly, while she pours batter into a cake tin, scrapes the side of the bowl, puts the cake in the oven.
“Are you all right?” screams Mum, rushing toward Vanessa.
“Fine.” Vanessa points to the cookbook lying open on the greasy-topped kitchen table. “It says forty minutes in a medium oven for the cake.” The woodstove is belching smoke. “Would you say that is a medium oven?”
“Oh, God,” Mum says. She catches her breath sharply and holds the edge of the table.
“Are you all right, Mum?”
Mum nods. The soldiers look from Mum to Vanessa and back to Mum, uncertainly. They wave their guns. “Come on, come on. Outside,” says one of them. They herd Vanessa and Mum out onto the veranda.
“Don’t let me forget. Forty minutes,” says Vanessa.
Dad is negotiating with five or six more soldiers on the veranda. They are the new Zimbabwean army, fresh out of guerrilla troops. They are still war-minded. They are still war-trigger-happy.
“You called us baboons.”
“You jumped into my bedroom window. That is not a civilized thing to do, that is a baboon thing to do.”
The soldiers stare belligerently at Dad. There is a long, shuffling silence.
At last Dad says, “Look, either shoot me or put your fucking guns down and let’s talk about this sensibly.”
I want to say, “Dad was only joking about shooting him. And don’t be touchy about being called a baboon. I’m their kid and