A Father’s Dogsbody
My bare feet skipped through the thick, nighttime air, insensible to the encompassing zizz as hordes of malaria laden mosquitos hovered and buzzed, attacking in fierce, airborne squadrons. The mouth of the African giantess, known as the Cuanza River, lay silently to my left, like an immense, sleeping body whose toes stretched all the way to Chitembo, in Angola’s interior. Nocturnal creatures sang their nightly lullaby with their croaks and screams, cries and howls, and the occasional invisible splash. I trotted down the Cuanza Lodge boardwalk to bungalow number one, the largest and best positioned of them all. It was really a small house, with the outer trappings of a rustic bungalow, positioned on modest stilts to cater for the Cuanza’s ever-changing moods and fluctuations. I knocked tentatively on the door and waited, focusing my attention on the surrounding palms that, like luscious dancers, swayed rhythmically to the Cuanza’s slumbering breaths.
The door swung open and Rico glared forth from inside, as a blizzard of freezing air- conditioning streamed out, cutting through the pregnant nighttime air like an icy knife and covering my legs and arms in chicken skin. His once black hair, now peppered with white and grey on the sides of his head, was slightly disheveled; his sharp eyes, which were difficult to meet for more than a second or two, looked me up and down. As I stood outside his door, awaiting my instructions and tasks for the next day’s work, he seemed to be evaluating me, this father of mine whom I barely knew. I listened to his words and watched his hands and fingers, so foreign yet entirely familiar in their structure and boniness, the nails shaped just like mine. He loomed in the doorway, a lanky figure with his skin, once pale, stained dark by sixteen years under the blighting Angolan sun. As he talked, a peculiar scent entered my nostrils … sweet and sickly, faint but detectable.
Rico spoke deliberately and with authority: “You need to be at my door by 7:30 a.m. tomorrow—there is no shortage of work for you! My house needs a thorough cleaning and I want you to make sure to empty out the freezer this time; you city people have no grasp of hard work.” I dwelled on the words, “you city people,” suddenly ashamed of the upbringing my single mother had so lovingly provided for me over the course of my seventeen years of existence … There was that odor again. Rico barked, “Are you listening to me?”
I looked up at his face, but not into his eyes, and nodded, “Yes, Rico.”
“Could have fooled me!” he continued. “So, I want you to clean out my freezer because the last time the generator cut out, all of my meat defrosted and that must be where this disgusting smell is coming from! And once you’ve finished with that, clean up after that damn dog—no one has seen it in three days, so stop putting food out for it!”
Later that night, I lay in bed, listening to the eerie, Cuanza lullaby and wondering what I had come here for. A mosquito whizzed by my ear and then another. Perhaps Rico was right and I was simply a useless, city person, weak and unfit to be his dogsbody or his daughter. Eventually, my mind ebbed from wakefulness, and I dreamed of Lovely, the gentle, doe-eyed favela dog who had wandered into the lodge one day and never left. Lovely wagged her tail, almost apologetically, and her yellow face beamed as I fed her from the palm of my hand: juicy slices of tender lombo fillet; chunks of salty pargo fish, pulled from the Cuanza that day; and a handful of thick, Angolan funge. She ate daintily and then scampered off, her uneven kilter carrying her scrawny frame slightly sideways until she vanished into the dark mangroves.
Like the sleeping giantess herself, I awoke the next day with the dawn. Outside my bungalow, the sun exploded like a broken egg yolk, spilling golden light across the shimmering river. A palm nut vulture flapped awkwardly overhead, and the yellow rays of an African sun staked their claim on the day. I sat in silence on the edge of my bungalow’s veranda and wondered why
Lovely had, once again, not come to join me for our morning routine of sunrise and then the walk to bungalow number one. Dejected, I rose and my legs carried me off, down the boardwalk and back towards that sickly air that clung to Rico’s house.
There was no need to knock––he met me at his door. “I thought I told you 7 a.m.! Do they not have clocks where you come from?” I knew better than to correct him and waited for him to continue. “Hurry up and come inside,” he ordered, “you’re going to let all of those horrid flies in!” He seemed more agitated than usual on this morning and, as a matter of fact, so did the flies.
Rico’s freezer had indeed defrosted, and I had failed to notice its thawed out contents during my previous cleaning day; a careless mistake that only a silly, city person would make, one accustomed to life on an electrical grid. As penance, I dragged the heavy chest down to the river’s edge and opened the lid. The stench was overwhelming. It was compounded by the warm sun that beat down on me and on the decomposing packages of rancid flesh that I unceremoniously flung into the Cuanza River. An audience of bottom feeders and spiny barbel fish gathered before me in appreciation, while a few scraggly gulls sang my only praises. I retched as I reached into the bottom of the freezer but did not stop scrubbing—perhaps if I could just get this one task right, acceptance would be mine—bits of rotten chicken stuck to my fingers.
Another egg yolk smeared itself across the vast sky and still no Lovely appeared by my side.
I stood before Rico’s door at 7a.m., repulsed by the growing hoard of black flies that now commanded its surrounding airspace—the smell had worsened, and the air was putrid. Visibly angered, Rico’s words spewed from his mouth; “I thought I told you to fix this horrible smell! What did you do all of yesterday? Do I really have to do everything myself?”
I began, “I’m sorry, I cleaned out your freezer … I can’t understand why …”
“Never mind!” he interrupted. “It must be coming from the kitchen sink. You need to unscrew the pipes and clean out any blockages from the trap area beneath. And for God’s sake, close the damn door! Anyone would think you enjoyed the company of disgusting flies!”
I crouched down on my knees and began to fiddle with the plastic piping beneath the sink. One by one, I unscrewed the pieces. A fly landed on my hand, and then another on my shin; they crawled along slowly, stifled by the frigid temperature within the bungalow. Perhaps I was the one attracting this plague of flying pests. No! I shook them off and focused on the pipes—they were empty. Once more, I had failed to find the source of the now vile reek. I slouched slightly, accepting my status as foolish city person who enjoyed the company of flies, and stared brainlessly into the opening of the dislocated pipe. Suddenly, a black fly the size of a raisin popped out of the opening before me, probably startled by its cold new world. And then came another, and a third. I abruptly plugged the drainpipe with the palm of my hand and thought, that’s it! They must be coming from underneath the bungalow—I was going to solve the problem all on my own.
Eagerly, I darted out of bungalow number one, making sure to shut the door behind me, and dropped to my knees for a better view of the crawl space afforded by the short stilts separating the bungalow from the earth. The smell was noxious and left an imaginary gooey residue on my skin as I lay flat on my belly and prepared to drag myself beneath the structure, where the air itself seemed to be vibrating with the buzzing of a million tiny wings. Louder and more powerful it became, as I slithered deeper towards what could only have been the source. Several meters ahead, a writhing black mass of compound eyes, stick like legs, and beating ailerons lay before me, clinging tightly to an indiscernible form. I pressed forwards, through the dirt and the suffocating stench, and began to wave my hands at the distorted, fly infested mass. Seemingly as one, like a grotesque black quilt, the mob of flies levitated and relinquished the distorted form beneath it. I gasped, cupping my mouth with my filthy hands, as I recognized the once kind and docile face of Lovely, now twisted
into a tortured and ungodly grin. Her sweet eyes, turned blue and swollen, were like oversized marbles jammed into her decaying head while her limbs jutted out of her bloated body, as if each one was violently repelled by the other three.
Within seconds, the disturbed swarm of flies began to descend, blanketing Lovely once more in its sick frenzy. I felt a tickle on the back of my neck and then on my face, as tiny legs and feet traded a dog’s body for my own. Frantically, I recoiled backwards, squirming on my belly like a deranged beast, as the flock of blackness pursued my eyes and mouth with relentless accuracy.
Meters felt like kilometers before I reached the edge of the bungalow and ejected myself from the dark crawl space. Like a berserk animal, I rolled out onto the grass before bungalow number one’s door, swatting at my face and head with wild hands. A whoosh of frigid air blew over my trembling body and I sat up to see Rico crouched next to me, peering into the crawl space beneath his house. He shook his head with disdain, although something closer to pleasure was betrayed by his voice; “I told you to stop putting food out for that damn dog!” I clamored to my feet and began to dust off my filthy face and belly in silence. Looking up, I met his scornful eyes by mistake. He scoffed, “What are you doing now? You still have to fix this disgusting smell … that dog certainly isn’t going to drag its own body out from underneath my house.”