My Father Before Me

Chapter 11 The Attack Gladys and her husband came to visit. With them were their son Ike and their newborn baby Mia. The little girl was about two months old. She seemed to suffer from stomach pain. She was crying most of the time. My brother in law, Harry was this slow thinking, slow talking man. he introduced me to fishing. He made a fishing rod with a line for me. The two of us went to fish from our little dam. There was mainly catfish and sardines in the murky water. Harry caught lots of sardines, which he put in a big mug. I was impatient; I really wanted to catch a fish with my new rod. I went to the mug full of Harry’s fish, got one live one and walked far away from him so I could put the fish on my hook cast and “catch” a fish. As soon as I cast the already caught fish, I felt it trying to escape, I pulled my line out and there I was pretending to have caught my first fish. I acted happy and ran to Harry to show him the fish I had caught. He was happy for me. After that I put a worm on my hook and sat nearer to Harry than I was when I was cheating. All of a sudden, there was some fish hooked by me. I pulled my line out. I was so excited and Harry wondered how I was more excited catching my second fish. He would have expected me to react that way with my first one. I never told him that the first one was actually his catch. In embarrassment I kept it to myself. Harry, my sister Gladys and children used what was the girls’ room. Bornie slept in the boys’ room by himself. Our elder brothers were all away. They must have stayed away or they were in boarding schools. Norgie and I slept in the lounge/dinning room. We were in separate beds. She had finished school ready to go for a course. She had grown to be a big girl about sixteen years of age and had for a long time stopped wetting her bed. The last thing she wanted was to sleep in the same bed with me. The spot I made my bed was that in front of my parents’ bedroom door. My feet were almost touching the main entrance to the house. I was sharing that bed with my little niece Privilege. My sister made hers at the far end between cupboards. To the east she’d a window and to her feet or to the north, she had a bigger lounge window. I remember this one night that the moon was shining bright. The owls and night jars singing, crickets were also making their presence heard. Bush babies were crying like little human babies. I was so awake listening to the music of the night. I remember it was late in the night when I heard two men’s voices and their footsteps. They were definitely wearing boots. They walked past the house, walked towards our lemon tree. I thought they had gone away but then I heard them walk back towards the house on the side were Bernie’s window was. One of them called Bernie’s name twice. There was no answer from my brother. The two people then walked round to the veranda door, which my feet almost touched. One of them banged the door with his fist. It was a very aggressive knock. “Who is it?” my father answered while he was getting up and putting his shirt on. “We are the fighters from the underground, throw your gun out through the window and come out.” My father told them he had no gun. While my father was still talking to them, I got up and dragged my niece to the other entrance opposite and behind the wall into the little corridor. She did not wake up. I then walked back to the lounge, walked straight to where my sister was sleeping. I grabbed he upper blanket and slid into it. She did not send me away. We both were lying in there listening to the conversation between the so-called underground fighters and our father. Our father’s door opened and all of a sudden there was no response from him. The men got impatient and one of them hit the window with something hard. The glass shattered and we stayed put knowing we were in danger. The men opened the big window wide and climbed in through it. The first one stepped into my mother’s butler’s tray and broke it. The two me were actually dressed in some army kind of clothes. They had head torches that helped them to see us. Now the men were above us, point guns at us. Our bodies were covered up to just above our noses leaving just our eyes out to see what was happening. “You, where is your father?” they asked. I kept quiet and Norgie went, “ I don’t know, you are the one who was talking to him you might have a better clue than us” One of them said, “Just leave them they are sleeping!” They walked past us to look for our father. As one approached the wall behind which I had dragged my niece to, was where my father hid waiting to attack his attackers. As soon as one of them came close enough, he grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground making sure the barrel was not directed to him. All of a sudden several gun shots. That freaked me out. I could not sit or lie down. I stood up and was jumping up and down calling; Baba! Baba! Baba! I climbed out through that broken window and as soon as I landed on the veranda floor, I climbed back in. Inside, There still was that commotion and more people. My brother in law and my sister Gladys were now involved in that fight. In that darkish room, Harry touched the heads of the two people to identify the one who was not my father. He decided the one with long hair wasn’t and with his little axe, he repeatedly chopped it. The other armed men was aiming and shooting down where the two were fighting. I jumped out and was back inside again. At some point the attackers left. They opened the door and left. I concluded they left with my father because even he had disappeared. My mother stood in front of her door most of this time. My sister Gladys lit the gaslight. The walls were full of holes. We counted ten holes on walls, three on the floor where I was sleeping before the two men came and one hole in my parent wardrobe in their room. There were empty cartridges all over the floor. A hand grenade was also lying there, fortunately safe with its pin in. The room smelled of gunpowder. There trails of blood in the room and out through the door. We were sure my father was wounded, dying or dead. We all stood in the room speculating who these people were and if my father was alive where is he or whether we could help him. We did not know where he was so we decided we needed to stay away from the house until we knew what was really happening.. We walked about half a kilometer to my grandmother’s kitchen that had not been used since she had died some five years before. Each one of us had grabbed one blanket each, found somewhere to sit and covered ourselves to keep warm until morning. None of us slept but were quiet right through that night. Little Mia did not cry all night there was no sound from her. In the morning is when I realized I just had my home sewn panty on. It was the one that made me look like I was wearing a pumpkin. The front was bulging just like the behind. I covered myself with my blanket until we got home where I quickly wore a dress. Coming home, there still was no sign of my father. We made a fire and made some tea and cooked porridge. We looked at the holes in the walls and those in the floor and still wondered why and how we survived the gunshots. While we were in the room my father walked in. He also had survived and had no wounds on him. There was happiness again. We all went to the kitchen and had our tea.