Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

speckled with nuggets of red mud. We are sitting behind the big brothers and sisters—we minor offspring—and we are using them as a shield against the slinging flicks of mud and the fat, humid wind, which grows colder as the evening comes.
    “Sing,” Dad shouts at us, threatening to catapult us from the roof by steering the car into a sliding halt, “sing!”
    We are hilarious with half-fright, half-delight, the way Dad drives. Olivia is on Mum’s lap in the front seat, screaming with excitement. Her sweet, baby happiness comes up to us on the roof in snatches.
    “He’s penga !” says one of the big brothers.
    And then someone starts, “Because we’ re” —pause— “all Rhodesians and we’ll fight through thickanthin!” and we all join in.
    And Dad shouts, “That’s better!” and presses the car forward, freckling the big brothers and sisters with newfound mud.
    We throw back our heads. “We’ll keep this land” —breathe— “a free land, stop the enemy comin’ in.” We’re shout-singing. We’ll be Rhodesian forever and ever on top of the roof driving through mud up the side of the mountain, through thick secret forests which may or may not be seething with terrorists, we’ll keep singing to keep the car going.
    “We’ll keep them north of the Zambezi till that river’s runnin’ dry! And this great land will prosper, ‘cos Rhodesians never die!”
    The spit flies from our mouths and dries in silver streaks along our cheeks. Our fingers have frozen around the roof rack, white as bones. We are ecstatic with fear-joy.
    The second half of my childhood is now. After Olivia dies.
    After Olivia dies, Mum and Dad’s joyful careless embrace of life is sucked away, like water swirling down a drain. The joy is gone. The love has trickled out.
    Sometimes Mum and Dad are terrifying now. They don’t seem to see Vanessa and me in the back seat. Or they have forgotten that we are on the roof of the car, and they drive too fast under low thorn trees and the look on their faces is grim.
    We are not supposed to drive after dark—there is a curfew—but the war and mosquitoes and land mines and ambushes don’t seem to matter to Mum and Dad after Olivia dies. Vanessa and I sit outside at the Club while Mum and Dad drink until they can hardly open the car door. We are on the tattered lawn, around the pond where Olivia drowned (fenced off now, and empty for good measure). Mosquitoes are in a cloud around our ankles, and Mum and Dad do not care about malaria. We are sunburnt and thirsty, bored. We lie back on the prickling grass and watch the sky turn from day to evening.

    Dad
    We drive home in the thick night through the black, secret, terrorist-hiding jungle on dirt roads and Dad has his window down and he is smoking. The gun is loaded across his lap.
    Vanessa and I have not had supper.
    So Mum and Dad buy us more Coke’ n’ chips for the drive and tell us to sit in the back seat with the dog, who has been forgotten about in the car all afternoon and who needs a pee.
    We let Shea out for a pee.
    Mum is fumbling-drunk and Dad, who is sharp-drunk, is getting angry.
    “Come on,” he says to Shea, aiming a kick at her, “in the bloody car now.”
    “Don’t kick her,” says Mum, indistinctly protective.
    “I wasn’t kicking her.”
    “You were, I saw you.”
    “Get in the bloody car, all of you!” shouts Dad.
    Vanessa and I quickly climb into the car and start to fight about where Shea should sit. “On my lap.”
    “No, mine.”
    “Mine. She’s my dog.”
    “No, she’s not.”
    “ Ja, she is. Mum, is Shea my dog or Bobo’ s?”
    “Shuddup or I’ll give both of you a bloody good hiding.”
    Vanessa smirks at me and pulls Shea onto her lap. I stick my tongue out at Vanessa.
    “Mum, Bobo pulled her tongue at me.”
    “I did not.”
    Mum turns around and slaps wildly at us. We shrink from her flailing hand. She’s too drunk and sad and half-mast to hit us.
    “Now another sound from either