Alain Mabanckou - Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

But my mother asks me to stay home because on Sundays schoolchildren do their homework for Monday. I’m not ok with that: ‘I’ve already done my homework, I knew we were going to go out this Sunday and…’

‘Well, you’ll just have to check it and see if there are any mistakes!’

I had no answer for that, so I said: ‘Maman, did you know bad men always go out on Sundays? They don’t have public holidays like Papa Roger, they don’t go to church, they’ll catch you and hurt you and take you to a bar where it’s all dark inside and then to a bedroom, to do nasty things to you.’

She laughs, tells me no one’s going to attack her. I don’t agree, and I keep on saying so because the people out there are the ones stopping Maman Pauline from giving me my good night kiss each evening. She can see I’m not going to calm down, that I’m going to follow her.

‘Michel, think carefully: you really want to come with me?’

‘Yes’, I say, in a small voice, like I’m about to cry.

‘Ok, ok, come with me then!’

It always worries me when she says ‘ok’, in that voice that seems to be hiding something really bad that’s going to happen to me. I worry when I see that little smile at the corner of her mouth, as though she’s thinking: ‘You come with me and see what happens, if that’s what you want.’ But I don’t care today, I’m happy, nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m already smiling, I’ll go along with her. We’ll walk out together. I’ll protect her.

I put my hat back on straight again and button up my shirt to the neck, and she comes up behind me and takes me by the shoulders. ‘My, you’re well dressed today! But do you know where we’re going?’

‘No…’

‘To Uncle René’s.’

I take a few steps backwards.

‘D’you still want to come?’

I shake my head. No I do not want to go to Uncle René’s house. I can just picture old bald Lenin. Marx’s beard, too, and Engel’s, and the sideburns of that well-known immortal, Marien Ngouabi. And I picture Uncle René, his wife and my cousins, eating with their eyes on their plates.

No, I don’t want to go to Uncle René’s.

Maman Pauline can see I’ve decided not to come, and off she goes on her own. I stand outside the house, watching her go. I can smell her perfume in the air. I breathe in deeply, with my eyes closed. Then when I open them, I see my mother, walking along the Avenue of Independence. Every now and then she turns around to check I’m not behind her. I want to see which direction my mother goes in. Usually, to go to my uncle’s house, you turn right at the end of the avenue, then carry on straight towards the Savon quartier .

There she is, getting into a taxi further on down. The car sets off but doesn’t turn right, it turns left, in completely the opposite direction to Uncle René’s, and disappears, heading for the Rex quartier . I’m standing in the middle of the road, a car could just come and knock me over because I’m busy thinking. I guess the taxi’s going to turn round and come back, that he’s set off the wrong way.

The cars drive round me, hooting their horns at me. One driver yells at me, says I’m mad, a street child, a son of a proletariat.

Me, son of a proletariat? Sounds like my uncle talking. But coming from Uncle René, proletariat’s a compliment. The proletariat’s someone who’s exploited by a capitalist, a bourgeois. I shouted back at the driver, ‘Opium of the people!’

He didn’t hear. If he had he’d have stopped to punch me in the face.

There’s still no taxi turning round in the street to bring my mother back, but I’m still standing there. I know Maman Pauline didn’t tell me the truth. Sometimes she tells me that the truth is a light and that you can’t hide a light in your pocket. That’s why the sun’s always stronger than the night. Yes, it was her that told me God created the sun so that men would know the truth. But men prefer the night, because it’s easier to cheat people in the dark. I have eyes that can see in the dark. My eyes are torches that never go out. Why did Maman Pauline hide the light and pretend day was night? Has she gone to meet the man with the old moped? Is there another guy, apart from this bad one with the gorilla arms?

I can almost feel myself starting to hate her. I want to destroy everything, like a caterpillar, or a bulldozer, or one of the National People’s Army tanks. I’m deaf to the noise of the street. I’m surrounded by immortals. I’m Superman, I dream that I’m flying over the city of Pointe-Noire to where my mother is. You can’t hide the light from Superman. Superman can light up the sun at midnight, and put it out on the stroke of midday. So I decide I’m going to put the sun out now, to punish Maman Pauline. I close my eyes and spread my arms wide. But nothing happens. I can’t take off like Superman. I close my eyes again and imagine I’m pressing a big red button to put out the sun, which has stolen my mother. I open my eyes, the sun’s still there. It’s shining even brighter now. And it’s very hot.

I know Maman Pauline isn’t going to Uncle René’s house. I know it’s often Uncle René who comes here to shout at her about the inheritance of my Grandma Henriette Nsoko, the fields and animals she’s left to us in the village of Louboulou. Or sometimes he just comes by the house to give me a little plastic truck, a spade and a rake, so I can play at being a farmer. My uncle has told his white bosses that I’m one of his sons, that way the white people give him lots of money at the end of each year. Apparently the more children you have, the more toys and money the white people give you. I’ve even heard that some fathers in this country have children on purpose so the white people will give them lots of presents. And if they haven’t got any children they go and fetch their nephews from the villages and bring them back to town and alter their birth certificates. The white man never checks it, he just hands over the present, without even trying to work out why the faces of the father and child are as different as night and day. It was easy for me because I have the same name as Uncle René. He comes to our house before Christmas, leaves the toys — always the same ones — and a 100 °CFA franc note which Maman Pauline refuses to accept. Uncle René throws the note on the ground, my mother takes it as soon as he starts the car. When they’re arguing, I hear Maman Pauline threatening her brother: ‘If you keep our mother’s inheritance all for yourself I’m going to tell those white bosses of yours that Michel’s not your son, he’s your nephew, and you’ll be kicked out of your job! If you’re lucky they might let you stay on at the CFAO, but you’ll have a tiny little office like the kiosks down the Trois-Cents!’

My uncle replies, ‘What are the Whites going to do to me, eh? Michel’s got my name, I gave it to him! I delivered you from shame, Pauline! You should shut up and be grateful! And while we’re on the subject, why did Michel’s real father run off when he was born, huh? Why doesn’t the child have his father’s name? Simple: he has no father!’

‘Michel does have a father, it’s Roger!’

‘Oh yeah! Roger’s just his foster father! Besides, he’s already got a wife, her name’s Martine! And they’ve got children, real children!’

And they go on arguing like that. They only stop when they hear me cough. Uncle René starts up his car, winds down the window and throws a 100 °CFA note, without even looking at us. It’s me that runs to pick it up.

We’re sitting at the table, eating beef and beans. Maman Pauline and Papa Roger are opposite me. From where they’re sitting they can see everything going on in our lot, because the door’s often left open, but not me, because I’ve got my back to the door. I pass the salt and hot pepper when they want it.