Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [65]
When we reach the permanent camp on the banks of the Turgwe River, Dad skins the impala and hangs it from the bush pole that holds up the tarpaulin under which we keep food, dishes, and the drums of water for washing. Dad points to the drums. “Don’t ever drink this water,” he tells Vanessa and me. It comes from the shrinking, slime-frothed pools of water, warm and green with stagnant life, that are all that remains of the Turgwe River’s last flood.
During the day, Dad and the men drive to the fence lines and continue to set stakes in the ground, stretching wire into which they will one day herd the wild Brahmans. Some days, Dad drives all day with maps to find the old, decaying dips and kraals. He leaves a span of men at these old cattle camps to fix the holes in the concrete walls and reinforce the old races. He leaves them with food, cigarettes, matches. “I’ll be back in two days,” he tells them, “you fix this place by then?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Then faga moto!”
Dad wants to dip the wild cattle before the rains come in October–November.
Vanessa and I stay in camp and read, or climb the boulder that overlooks the Turgwe River and sing into microphone–baobab pods, “If you think Ah’ m sexy and you want my body, come on baby let it show.”
“Those aren’t the words.”
“Okay, then.” I stick out thin hips and rock back and forth: “There’s a brown girl in the rain, tra-la-la-la-la! There’s a brown girl in the rain, tra-la-la-la-la-la. Brown girl in the rain. Tra-la-la-la-la. She looks like sugar in your bum. Tra-la-la!”
“I’m telling Dad.”
“What?”
“You said ‘bum.’ ”
I climb higher on the boulder until I am balanced precariously on the thin-shouldered top. “Bum!” I shout into the stunned midday heat. “Bum! Bum!”
Vanessa says, “You’re so immature.” She goes back into camp and I am left with my bad word echoing around in the dusty quiet bush. Bum.
That is a day Dad has gone with old maps to find a kraal and he is late coming back into camp. We have been in camp for two weeks and the drinking water is running low. We must use the drinking water carefully, only for brushing teeth and drinking. When the plastic containers of drinking water have run out we will have to turn to the tanks of river water pulled from the Turgwe. We are already making tea from boiled river water—boiled for ten minutes and strained to get rid of the lumps of dirt, hippo shit, the worst of the silt.
Vanessa is reading under the tree. She has set Shea up as a pillow and is lying on Shea’s belly.
I say, “I’ll make a cake.”
Vanessa doesn’t answer.
“Do you want to make a cake with me?”
“No.”
I make a cake out of dirt, leaves, bark, and water. I decorate it with stones and sticks, sprinkle it with shiny white sand. I put it on a rock to bake in the dying light of the sun. Then I am bored. I lie on my stomach in the flat dirt, poking pieces of grass into ant lion traps. I catch ants and drop them into the tiny funnel-shaped traps and watch the ant lions scurry up, minute claws waving, to catch the scrambling ants. I lie on my back and squint up at the sky, watching blue through the fronds of the ivory palm tree.
I roll back onto my knees. “Should we have tea?” I ask Vanessa.
Vanessa has fallen asleep over her book. Shea is sleeping, too. I watch their stomachs rise and fall in soft, warm slumber.
The fire has gone out. I soak a teabag in the tepid water from the drum which sits under a fresh impala carcass. This is river water for tea and washing. Powdered milk dropped into my cup floats on top of the water in lumpy obstinance. I take a few sips before the taste of it swells in my throat and I grimace. “Yuck.”
By the time Dad comes into camp, Vanessa is holding me up over a fallen log, rear end hanging over one side of it, head hanging over the other. I am naked; all my clothes are in a bag in the tent, soiled with frothy yellow shit. Vanessa has a grip on my shoulders; there is shit streaming from my bum, vomit dribbling into a pool between Vanessa’s feet.
“She drank the wrong water,” says Vanessa when Dad comes.