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

to prop the gun up against a wall to shoot it, or its kick will knock me over. I am allowed to shoot my mum’s pistol, but even that cracks my wrist, and my whole arm jolts with the shock of its report.
    Vanessa has to be forced to strip and clean the gun. She is slow and unwilling even when Dad loses his temper and shouts at her and says, “ Fergodsake don’t just stand there, do something! Bunch-of-bloody-women-in-the-house.”
    Vanessa gets her cat-hooded, African deadpan, not-listening eyes.
    “You have to learn how this thing is made,” says Dad. “Come on, take the bloody thing apart.”

    Van
    Vanessa moves slowly, reluctance personified.
    “Now you must put it back together,” says Dad, looking at the gun.
    Vanessa blinks at Dad. She says, “Bobo can do it.”
    “No. You must learn.”
    “I’ll do it. I’ll do it,” I say. I want to do it to show my dad that I’m as good as a boy. I don’t want to be a bunch-of-bloody-women-in-the-house.
    “Vanessa must learn.”
    But Vanessa resolutely refuses to put the thing back together again. She has it in pieces on a sheet in the sitting room and she won’t make it right again. Dad gives up.
    I say, “I’ll do it. I’ll do it.” Dad is as impatient with my overeagerness as he is with Vanessa’s undereagerness. We can’t win.
    Dad says, “Go on, then.”
    I am tongue-sticking-out and trying-to-do-it-right. I put the gun back together.
    Set up at the end of the garden, on the other side of our scorpion-infested pool, is an enormous cardboard cutout of a crouched, running terrorist, kitted out in Russian-issue uniform and brandishing an AK-47; around his heart is a series of rings, like a diagram in a biology book. The baboons that steal the corn and run from the gong in the watchman’s hut look like this terrorist, with a long dog’s nose and a short, square forehead.
    Dad shows Vanessa what to do. He crouches down to her height. “Lift the barrel of the gun onto the wall like this. Steady yourself, legs apart. Hold your chin away from the butt, squeeze the trigger—count one-Zambezi, two-Zambezi—release.” I hold my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. The sound of the gun cracks the air and hits me above the belly. That’s where gun sounds go, thumping the air out of you with their shout.
    Dad hands Vanessa the gun. “The kick will knock your teeth out if you’re not careful,” he says. “Use the wall to hold the gun. All right? Don’t worry about hitting the target, just try not to put a hole in the swimming-pool wall.” We laugh.
    I said, “ Ja, Van, don’t shoot a scorp, hey. Ha, ha. Or a frog.”
    Dad says, “That’s right. Let’s just see if you can fire off a round without falling backwards.”
    Vanessa takes the gun and her eyes go surface-cold.
    “No, not like that,” says Dad. “Here, use the wall.” He moves behind her to adjust her arms. He wants to get the gun onto the top of the wall, but before he can touch her Vanessa squeezes the trigger. Dad steps back, startled. The gun kicks up. Mum says, “The child will break her jaw.” Vanessa is not listening to us.
    She shoots at the target again. She has shot the running baboon-terrorist once clean through the nose and once clean through the heart. She hands the gun back to Dad.
    “Good shot, Van!” we are all shouting at the same time.
    “Where did you learn to do that?” says Dad.
    I am hopping up and down and pointing at the target. “You killed him! Look, you killed him!”
    Vanessa’s expression stays flat and blank, but she looks at the target for a long time. And then she turns away from us with a slight frown and I want to hang on her hand but she shrugs me off, impatient.
    I say, “ Jeez man, Van. You donnered him. You killed him one time!”
    Mum says, “Don’t say that, Bobo.”
    “What?”
    “Don’t say ‘donnered.’ It isn’t proper English. It’s slang.”
    “Okay.” And then, “ Jeez man, Van!”
    Vanessa looks resigned and not at all