Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood(29)

That’s when we realized that their whole lives the one dog had been telling the other dog what to do somehow. The smart, hearing one was helping the dumb, deaf one.

Fufi was the love of my life. Beautiful but stupid. I raised her. I potty-trained her. She slept in my bed. A dog is a great thing for a kid to have. It’s like a bicycle but with emotions.

Fufi could do all sorts of tricks. She could jump super high. I mean, Fufi could jump. I could hold a piece of food out above my own head and she’d leap up and grab it like it was nothing. If YouTube had been around, Fufi would have been a star.

Fufi was a little rascal as well. During the day we kept the dogs in the backyard, which was enclosed by a wall at least five feet high. After a while, every day we’d come home and Fufi would be sitting outside the gate, waiting for us. We were always confused. Was someone opening the gate? What was going on? It never occurred to us that she could actually scale a five-foot wall, but that was exactly what was happening. Every morning, Fufi would wait for us to leave, jump over the wall, and go roaming around the neighborhood.

I caught her one day when I was home for the school holidays. My mom had left for work and I was in the living room. Fufi didn’t know I was there; she thought I was gone because the car was gone. I heard Panther barking in the backyard, looked out, and there was Fufi, scaling the wall. She’d jumped, scampered up the last couple of feet, and then she was gone.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I ran out front, grabbed my bicycle, and followed her to see where she was going. She went a long way, many streets over, to another part of the neighborhood. Then she went up to this other house and jumped over their wall and into their backyard. What the hell was she doing? I went up to the gate and rang the doorbell. This colored kid answered.

“May I help you?” he said.

“Yeah. My dog is in your yard.”

“What?”

“My dog. She’s in your yard.”

Fufi walked up and stood between us.

“Fufi, come!” I said. “Let’s go!”

This kid looked at Fufi and called her by some other stupid name, Spotty or some bullshit like that.

“Spotty, go back inside the house.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “Spotty? That’s Fufi!”

“No, that’s my dog, Spotty.”

“No, that’s Fufi, my friend.”

“No, this is Spotty.”

“How could this be Spotty? She doesn’t even have spots. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This is Spotty!”

“Fufi!”

“Spotty!”

“Fufi!”

Of course, since Fufi was deaf she didn’t respond to “Spotty” or “Fufi.” She just stood there. I started cursing the kid out.

“Give me back my dog!”

“I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but you better get out of here.”

Then he went into the house and got his mom and she came out.

“What do you want?” she said.

“That’s my dog!”

“This is our dog. Go away.”

I started crying. “Why are you stealing my dog?!” I turned to Fufi and begged her. “Fufi, why are you doing this to me?! Why, Fufi?! Why?!” I called to her. I begged her to come. Fufi was deaf to my pleas. And everything else.

I jumped onto my bike and raced home, tears running down my face. I loved Fufi so much. To see her with another boy, acting like she didn’t know me, after I raised her, after all the nights we spent together. I was heartbroken.

That evening Fufi didn’t come home. Because the other family thought I was coming to steal their dog, they had decided to lock her inside, so she couldn’t make it back the way she normally did to wait for us outside the fence. My mom got home from work. I was in tears. I told her Fufi had been kidnapped. We went back to the house. My mom rang the bell and confronted the mom.

“Look, this is our dog.”

This lady lied to my mom’s face. “This is not your dog. We bought this dog.”

“You didn’t buy the dog. It’s our dog.”

They went back and forth. This woman wasn’t budging, so we went home to get evidence: pictures of us with the dogs, certificates from the vet. I was crying the whole time, and my mom was losing her patience with me. “Stop crying! We’ll get the dog! Calm down!”

We gathered up our documentation and went back to the house. This time we brought Panther with us, as part of the proof. My mom showed this lady the pictures and the information from the vet. She still wouldn’t give us Fufi. My mom threatened to call the police. It turned into a whole thing. Finally my mom said, “Okay, I’ll give you a hundred rand.”

“Fine,” the lady said.

My mom gave her some money and she brought Fufi out. The other kid, who thought Fufi was Spotty, had to watch his mother sell the dog he thought was his. Now he started crying. “Spotty! No! Mom, you can’t sell Spotty!” I didn’t care. I just wanted Fufi back.

Once Fufi saw Panther she came right away. The dogs left with us and we walked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time for my whining.

“Why are you crying?!”

“Because Fufi loves another boy.”