Born a Crime - Trevor Noah Page 0,39

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.”

“So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.”

Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. It was a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’t cheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest. Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her other relationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent.

I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I have so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll come to