Born a Crime - Trevor Noah Page 0,99
this world! Worry about what your family is thinking!”
Abel towered over my mother. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t get angry.
“Mbuyi,” he said softly, “you don’t respect me.”
“Respect?! You almost burned down our house. Respect? Oh, please! Earn your respect! You want me to respect you as a man, then act like a man! Drinking your money in the streets, and where are your child’s diapers?! Respect?! Earn your respect—”
“Mbuyi—”
“You’re not a man; you’re a child—”
“Mbuyi—”
“I can’t have a child for a husband—”
“Mbuyi—”
“I’ve got my own children to raise—”
“Mbuyi, shut up—”
“A man who comes home drunk—”
“Mbuyi, shut up—”
“And burns down the house with his children—”
“Mbuyi, shut up—”
“And you call yourself a father—”
Then out of nowhere, like a clap of thunder when there were no clouds, crack!, he smacked her across the face. She ricocheted off the wall and collapsed like a ton of bricks. I’d never seen anything like it. She went down and stayed down for a good thirty seconds. Andrew started screaming. I don’t remember going to pick him up, but I clearly remember holding him at some point. My mom pulled herself up and struggled back to her feet and launched right back into him. She’d clearly been knocked for a loop, but she was trying to act more with-it than she was. I could see the disbelief in her face. This had never happened to her before in her life. She got right back in his face and started shouting at him.
“Did you just hit me?”
The whole time, in my head, I kept thinking the same thing Abel was saying. Shut up, Mom. Shut up. You’re going to make it worse. Because I knew, as the receiver of many beatings, the one thing that doesn’t help is talking back. But she wouldn’t stay quiet.
“Did you just hit me?”
“Mbuyi, I told you—”
“No man has ever! Don’t think you can control me when you can’t even control—”
Crack! He hit her again. She stumbled back but this time didn’t fall. She scrambled, grabbed me, and grabbed Andrew.
“Let’s go. We’re leaving.”
We ran out of the house and up the road. It was the dead of night, cold outside. I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and sweatpants. We walked to the Eden Park police station, over a kilometer away. My mom marched us in, and there were two cops on duty at the front desk.
“I’m here to lay a charge,” she said.
“What are you here to lay a charge about?”
“I’m here to lay a charge against the man who hit me.”
To this day I’ll never forget the patronizing, condescending way they spoke to her.
“Calm down, lady. Calm down. Who hit you?”
“My husband.”
“Your husband? What did you do? Did you make him angry?”
“Did I…what? No. He hit me. I’m here to lay a charge against—”
“No, no. Ma’am. Why do you wanna make a case, eh? You sure you want to do this? Go home and talk to your husband. You do know once you lay charges you can’t take them back? He’ll have a criminal record. His life will never be the same. Do you really want your husband going to jail?”
My mom kept insisting that they take a statement and open a case, and they actually refused—they refused to write up a charge sheet.
“This is a family thing,” they said. “You don’t want to involve the police. Maybe you want to think it over and come back in the morning.”
Mom started yelling at them, demanding to see the station commander, and right then Abel walked into the station. He’d driven down. He’d sobered up a bit, but he was still drunk, driving into a police station. That didn’t matter. He walked over to the cops, and the station turned into a boys’ club. Like they were a bunch of old pals.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “You know how it is. You know how women can be. I just got a little angry, that’s all.”
“It’s okay, man. We know. It happens. Don’t worry.”
I had never seen anything like it. I was nine years old, and I still thought of the police as the good guys. You get in trouble, you call the police, and those flashing red-and-blue lights are going to come and save you. But I remember standing there watching my mom, flabbergasted, horrified that these cops wouldn’t help her. That’s when I realized the police were not who I thought they were. They were men first, and police second.
We left the station. My mother took me and Andrew, and we