Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [71]
On the morning of the fourth day Charlie says, “Your mum and dad have gone on a little holiday.”
“With the baby?”
“Without us?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Charlie clears her throat. She says, “Just to Inyanga.”
“They’re going fishing?”
“Without us?”
“With the baby?”
Vanessa takes me by the hand in such a violent grip I protest, “Owie man, let go.”
She says in a dangerous voice, hissing like we’re going to be in trouble, “Let’s empty the baby’s room.”
“What?”
“Let’s take everything out.”
“Why?”
“Shut your trap, Bobo. Can’t you shut your stupid trap?”
I shut my stupid trap and try to stop the tears squeezing out from under my eyelids.
We spend the next two mornings emptying the baby’s room.
“But where will he sleep?”
“He’s not coming home.”
“Then where’s he going?”
“How can you be such a doofus?” says Vanessa.
“I’m not a doofus.” I start crying.
“Bring the tins back from the kitchen.”
Vanessa replaces the tinned vegetables, the oil, the toilet paper. She puts the stuffed toys away in a trunk, which she pushes under her bed. She folds up the crib. She tears the pictures off the wall and crumples them into the dustbin.
When Mum and Dad come home, Charlie says, “I’ll just go for a walk.”
Mum and Dad look pale when they climb out of the car. I run up to Mum.
Dad says, “Careful.”
Mum is walking hunched over, as if she has suddenly grown very old. She puts up her hands to stop me, like I’m one of the dogs, liable to jump up: “Gently,” she says. She leans over and I can kiss her cheek. She has dyed her hair, dark over the gray.
“Where’s the baby?”
Vanessa says, “Oh jeez.”
“Come inside,” says Mum. She takes me by the hand to her bedroom and makes me sit down on the edge of the bed. It’s only then I notice that her eyes are shiny and half-mast, but not in a drunken way. This is a more profound half-mast; deep enough to slow the way she moves and talks, but not so deep as to make her slur and sing. She hands me a new brown canvas satchel. “Look what we bought you.”
I look inside the satchel and start crying. “But where’s Richard?”
“Who?”
“The baby.”
“He’s not here. He . . . went away.”
“Where?”
Mum shrugs helplessly. She says, “That’s what happens when you have a baby in a free African country. A government hospital . . .” Her voice is tight and cold, brittle like thin slides of glass.
I say, “What happens?”
Vanessa is standing at the door. She says, “He’s dead, Bobo.”
The sob that comes out of me is racking, like vomiting. I feel my face and hands and the skin on my arms go cold.
Mum looks away as if I disgust her.
“How did it happen?” I am screaming.
Vanessa says, “Shhh.”
I turn on Mum. “How do you think I feel?” I ask her.
She looks at me astonished. “Well, how do you think I feel?” she asks. She sinks down onto her bed; I can see from the way she goes down like that, suddenly, that she has lost the strength in her legs.
Vanessa says, “Come, Bobo. Let’s leave Mum alone.”
Mum is lying down now. She says, “I’m very tired.”
I am still crying noisily but Mum has closed her eyes and she is either asleep, or she is pretending.
Vanessa pulls me away.
“Then why didn’t we have a funeral? If he’s dead we would have had a funeral.”
“Dad just buried him.”
I shake my head. We had a funeral for Olivia. We have funerals for all the dogs and horses that die. We would definitely have a funeral for a baby. “Maybe they gave him away.”
“No, they didn’t.”
“Then where’s his grave?”
“It’s unmarked. He’s buried with all the rubbish from the hospital.”
“You’re lying,”
“Think what you like.”
The next day Charlie hugs Vanessa and me and