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in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.” — When we first met Abel, he smoked a lot of weed. He drank, too, but it was mostly weed. Looking back, I almost miss his pothead days because the weed mellowed him out. He’d smoke, chill, watch TV, and fall asleep. I think subconsciously it was something he knew he needed to do to take the edge off his anger. He stopped smoking after he and my mom got married. She made him stop for religious reasons—the body is a temple and so on. But what none of us saw coming was that when he stopped smoking weed he just replaced it with alcohol. He started drinking more and more. He never came home from work sober. An average day was a six-pack of beer after work. Weeknights he’d have a buzz on. Some Fridays and Saturdays he just didn’t come home. When Abel drank, his eyes would go red, bloodshot. That was the clue I learned to read. I always thought of Abel as a cobra: calm, perfectly still, then explosive. There was no ranting and raving, no clenched fists. He’d be very quiet, and then out of nowhere the violence would come. The eyes were my only clue to stay away. His eyes were everything. They were the eyes of the Devil. Late one night we woke up to a house filled with smoke. Abel hadn’t come home by the time we’d gone to bed, and I’d fallen asleep in my mother’s room with her and Andrew, who was still a baby. I jerked awake to her shaking me and screaming. “Trevor! Trevor!” There was smoke everywhere. We thought the house was burning down. My mom ran down the hallway to the kitchen, where she discovered the kitchen on fire. Abel had driven home drunk, blind drunk, drunker than we’d ever seen him before. He’d been hungry, tried to heat up some food on the stove, and passed out on the couch while it was cooking. The pot had burned itself out and burned up the kitchen wall behind the stove, and smoke was billowing everywhere. She turned off the stove and opened the doors and the windows to try to air the place out. Then she went over to the couch and woke him up and started berating him for nearly burning the house down. He was too drunk to care. She came back into the bedroom, picked up the phone, and called my grandmother. She started going on and on about Abel and his drinking. “This man, he’s going to kill us one day. He almost burnt the house down…” Abel walked into the bedroom, very calm, very quiet. His eyes were blood red, his eyelids heavy. He put his finger on the cradle and hung up the call. My mom lost it. “How dare you! Don’t you hang up my phone call! What do you think you’re doing?!” “You don’t tell people what’s happening in this house,” he said. “Oh, please! You’re worried about what the world is thinking? Worry about 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.
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Copyright © 2016 by Trevor Noah Al
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IMMORALITY ACT, 1927 To prohibit il
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RUN Sometimes in big Hollywood movi
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like bouncers at a club, and hold t
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failed her she’d use her wits. If
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you stealing our customers? Why are
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there, this little boy and his mom,
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BORN A CRIME I grew up in South Afr
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Many of the prostitutes in town wer
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he hadn’t, but once I existed he
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Traveling around the world today, I
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TREVOR, PRAY I grew up in a world r
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That’s all she did, all day, ever
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speakeasy. The shebeens were where
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using sonar. Every time she called
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praying continued. It went on for s
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CHAMELEON One afternoon I was playi
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As a kid I understood that people w
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was an ocean of black, like someone
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Before apartheid, any black South A
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and uncles had gone off to the citi
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through those. My books were my pri
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If we weren’t at school or work o
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Apartheid, for all its power, had f
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at school used overhead projectors
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She shrugged again. “So sad. I ho
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“What?” “Look, did you or did
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When I was seven years old, my moth
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I grew up in a black family in a bl
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oth. She brought them home, and I w
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They went back and forth. This woma
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ROBERT My father is a complete myst
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dad’s, where we’d watch Formula
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A bottle of Sprite. Custard with ca
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W hen Dutch colonists landed at the
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your grandfather couldn’t keep hi
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Things like that happened a lot. I
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Revenge truly is sweet. It takes yo
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A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCA
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Valentine’s card and the flowers
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OUTSIDER After finishing primary sc
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work for it—and I still get my br
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me the digits one by one as I wrote
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COLORBLIND At Sandringham I got to
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pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I
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“Is it David?” “No.” “Ria
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I got up onstage and Tom did some t
Page 106 and 107: There was a red Mazda that we’d h
Page 108 and 109: hair and started painting this crea
Page 110 and 111: “Are you ready?” I said. “Let
Page 112: I’d been dating a girl for over a
Page 115 and 116: GO HITLER! When I was in grade nine
Page 117 and 118: Business was booming. By matric I w
Page 119 and 120: Back then, most DJs could spin for
Page 121 and 122: someone must be the toughest guy of
Page 123 and 124: My mind was racing, trying to figur
Page 125 and 126: THE CHEESE BOYS My friend Bongani w
Page 127 and 128: settlement going on. Third, Fourth,
Page 129 and 130: In the hood, even if you’re not a
Page 131 and 132: “But who did this belong to?” I
Page 133 and 134: “Hey, let’s make a deal. We’l
Page 135 and 136: Everyone must know that your succes
Page 137 and 138: e a whole lot harder for an investm
Page 139 and 140: O nce, when I was ten years old, vi
Page 141 and 142: lesson, and now that lesson is the
Page 143 and 144: me aside and told me what I was in
Page 145 and 146: first night, everyone was giving me
Page 147 and 148: couldn’t afford anything but a st
Page 149 and 150: “I-I’m not fine, Your Honor. I
Page 151 and 152: M y favorite thing to eat as a kid,
Page 153 and 154: could lift car engines and gearboxe
Page 155: Xhosa woman no less, a culture whos
Page 159 and 160: She gives and gives and gives; that
Page 161 and 162: on it as well. Clients were getting
Page 163 and 164: Bramley, three neighborhoods away,
Page 165 and 166: wouldn’t happen again, but it was
Page 167 and 168: “This is all I can do,” she sai
Page 169 and 170: “Where are you now?” I said.
Page 171 and 172: times he pulled the trigger, and fo
Page 173 and 174: emergency room to give us an update
Page 175 and 176: W hen my mother was shot, so much h
Page 177 and 178: For my mother. My first fan. Thank
Page 179 and 180: ABOUT THE AUTHOR TREVOR NOAH is a c
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