Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [68]
Dad pulls up under a baobab tree and switches off the engine. The sounds of the bush suddenly flood in on us. Hot, crackling, dry-bush sounds: crickets, doves, grasshoppers. Vanessa unpacks the picnic basket while I run around trying to find intact baobab pods so that we can crack open their hairy shells and suck the sour white powder off the seeds. The baboons have beaten me to it.
We each find a rock to sit on and a patch of shade to sit under. The cover of the baobab’s leafless branches is sparse. We eat quietly, dipping our peeled boiled eggs into the twists of salt and biting off hunks of buttered bread. Dad pours the coffee and hands us each a tin cup. The coffee is sweet and strong. We eat and drink without talking and then silently pack up the debris of our picnic before the mopane bees and wasps and ants are attracted. Dad lights a cigarette and Vanessa and I breathe deeply to catch the first, fresh breath of newly fired tobacco. He sits back down on his rock. Vanessa and I sit next to him. Vanessa is mindlessly drawing designs in the sand, tracing patterns. I lean my chin on my knees and watch ants bump against my bare toes, scuttle across the tops of my feet. I stroke a small stick in their path to watch them jolt out of their busy line, the line leading toward the few spare crumbs dropped on our picnic. I sigh happily.
The world looks better when your belly is full, brighter and more hopeful.
After Dad has done all the shopping and we are sweaty, sticking to the seat where flesh meets vinyl, he says, “Let’s see how Mum’s doing, hm?” Which is what Vanessa and I have been hoping for.
Mum is in bed, looking pale, almost gray, and too old to be having a baby. There is a woman in the bed next to her who had a baby girl the day before and the little girl is covered from head to toe in thick black hair like a baboon.
Afterward, in the car, Vanessa says, “Ohmygod, all that hair!”
“It’s called lumbago. It’s normal,” I say.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is. I read it in a medical book.”
Dad says, “Lumbago is what old men get.”
“See?”
“Or something like that. Anyway, it’ll fall out.”
“How do you know?”
“I read it.”
“Maybe the mother’ll shave it.”
“I promise you, it’ll fall out.”
Vanessa says, “I hope our baby isn’t a hairy baboon.”
Mum holds us close to her, a woman thirsty for her children, and breathes deeply, almost drinking us. And then she wrinkles her nose and says, “Whew! When was the last time you two washed your hair?”
Vanessa and I look at each other. Dad hates hospitals and he’s self-conscious about the woman with the new baby in the bed next to Mum’ s. He’s terrified she might start breast-feeding.
He says, “Grub all right in here, Tub?”
Mum says, “When was the last time the girls washed their hair?”
“I don’t know. They’re old enough to wash their own hair, aren’t they?”
“You have to supervise them.”
“In the bath?”
“Yes, Tim. In the bath. Or get Judith to stay late.” Mum sighs and presses herself back on her pillows.
Vanessa says, “It’s okay, Mum, really. We’ll wash our hair. Dad doesn’t need to watch.”
Vanessa has boobs now. She stands in front of the only mirror in our house, which is in the bathroom, and jumps up to catch fleeting, bopping glimpses of them. Once she stood on the washing basket, to get a glimpse of her boobs in the mirror without having