White Dog Fell From the Sky (12 page)

He greeted her, and told her he wanted to
see the madam.

Itumeleng pointed next door.
“She’s living there once again,” she said in Setswana. “She
returned here when the master was away. Now he’s back and she is gone there
again.”

“I see.”

“So you have returned.”

“
Ee, mma.
”

“I was thinking you were not going to
return.”

“I only came to see the
madam.”

“Why did you not come back?”

“Because my job is finished.”

“The madam told you not to come
back?”

“After what happened, I know it is
finished.”

“You don’t know this.”

“Yes, I know it.”

He did not want to go to ask for her next
door. He squatted by the old half dead tree, looking in that direction, then told White
Dog to wait and walked into the yard next door and knocked on the door. An older woman
answered. He greeted her and told her that he was looking for the madam. She did not
appear to be a friendly person. Only with reluctance would she tell him that madam had
gone to the prison farm for vegetables. “I will wait outside on the road,”
he told her.

He thought of the moment when he’d
raised the pickax over his head and it had fallen on the water pipe with a crunch. More
and more, his life seemed to move like this, punctuated by events that changed things
forever. He remembered in secondary school, the same school where he’d met Amen,
an English teacher had said that when you write, you should be sparing of exclamation
points. This was good advice, not only for writing but for life itself. It was best to
let commas and periods carry you. If he and Kopano had not become friends, if he had not
been persuaded to go to that first meeting of the South African Students Organization,
if he and Kopano had not traveled together on that particular day …

Her truck was coming up the road. He stood
in the road and waved as she drove toward him.

“Where on earth have you been?”
she asked, leaning out the window. “I’m glad to see you.”

“And you, madam. I am truly sorry to
have caused you trouble.”

“Where have you been?” she asked
again.

“I thought the police would deport
me.”

“That’s why you left?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It never occurred to me. You
weren’t in danger of deportation.”

“You don’t know this,
mma.
” It came out sounding harsher than he’d meant it.
“What I mean is that it is different for me than for you.”

He saw something flicker over her face, a kind
of sadness.

“I’m sorry for causing you
trouble,” he said.

“It could have happened to
anyone.”

“It was my responsibility,
mma,
” he said. “That’s why you pay me. Please let me be
sorry.”

When he looked back at her, she was smiling.
“I won’t stop you from being sorry. I’m sorry for not understanding.
Several people stopped by asking for work, but I told them we already have a
gardener.”

“You were speaking of me?”

“Of course I was speaking of you.
After you disappeared, I went looking for you in Naledi, but I didn’t know your
last name.”

“Isaac Nkosi Muthethe is my full
name.”

“Isaac Nkosi Muthethe. Now I know. Who
are you staying with in Naledi?”

“I am sorry,
mma,
but I am
not at liberty to say.”

“I see.”

“It is only for reasons of their
safety.”

“Why is that?”

“Please, I can’t say more than
this.”

She nodded.

“I didn’t come to plead for my
job. But I wanted to ask if my mother has written.”

“No, she hasn’t written. Your
job is still here, unless you’d rather find other work.”

“I wasn’t wishing for anything
but this work,
mma.
However, perhaps your husband wouldn’t wish to see me
again. I’ve wasted more water than ten hippos.”

She smiled. “It doesn’t matter
what my husband thinks. I hired you, and you are still hired.” He started to thank
her, but she interrupted. “This is your job until you find something more in line
with your abilities. I don’t want you to leave, but I hope for your sake, it
won’t take you long to figure out something else. I’ll help however I
can.”

“Thank you,
mma.
I have no
other plans. Perhaps someday, but not for now.”

“All right then.”

“There’s one thing I wish to
ask.”

She waited.

“I wish to fill the hole.”

“After all that work?”

He couldn’t imagine her and her
husband sitting there in the cool of shade trees, in peace. “It was not such a
good idea after all, and the sight of it is painful. I’ll fill it and plant
vegetables.”

“It’s your garden, Isaac. You do
what you like. Can you grow tomatoes and lettuce?”

“If there are seeds and water, they
will grow.”

She looked down the road. “I’m
not living here at the moment. It’s just my husband and Daphne.” She looked
as though she was going to say more, but a bicycle came by, ridden by an old man. It was
wobbling, and Isaac moved out of the way. “I’ll still pay you at the end of
this coming week on Friday.”

“You must deduct the time I did not
work.”

“I’ll pay you as usual. Please
don’t argue. I’m glad you’re back, Isaac Nkosi Muthethe.” She
started the truck suddenly and drove up the road toward the neighbor’s house, and
he walked back to the garden.

Starting that day, he began to fill the hole
slowly, one shovelful at a time, time for sweat and humility to run down his backbone,
to moisten the waistband of his pants. As he worked, he pondered his conversation with
her. It shocked him that she’d come to look for him. He did not understand her.
Sometimes she was like a small child, wild and clumsy and unsure. At other times, her
words came out with sharp, angry edges. Then again, she might be full of kindness and
wisdom. Of these three people, he was never sure who would be speaking.

At noon, her husband drove up the driveway.
He walked to the hole, hands on his hips. “Quite a mess, hey?”

“
Ee, rra.
” There was
something in Isaac that did not want to apologize to this man.

“What are you doing?”

“Filling in the hole,
rra.
I
have told the madam I wish to plant vegetables here.”

“Whatever she says.” But his
eyes said something else. “Well, carry on.”

He didn’t need to be told to carry on. He
watched the man’s back cross the threshold and enter the house. He was a handsome
man, and aware of it. He’d seen him several times before, and always, it seemed,
he preferred not to say much. That was one way to have power—to let others stumble
around while you remained watchful, without words. It didn’t seem that she who
must not be called madam would be happy with this man.

If he had married Boitumelo, he believed
they would have been happy for their whole long lives. He didn’t believe, though,
that his mother would ever again be happy with his father—even if his father returned.
Perhaps his mother had loved him early on, but then troubles fell on their heads. They
blamed each other for things beyond their control: the Pass Laws, no money, the roof
falling in chunks during the heavy rains and smashing their crockery. It was a mystery
why men and women loved and why they did not, a mystery he would perhaps never
understand.

“She’s back now,”
Itumeleng told him the following morning. “But they’re not sleeping in the
same bed. I know because of the sheets.”

“
Ijo!
Don’t tell me
these things,” Isaac said. He threw another shovelful of dirt into the hole.
“You’re like a chicken picking up every piece of dirt in the
yard.”

“You would like
mabele
?” She curtsied as though he was Sir Seretse Khama.

He smiled. “
Ee, mma.
”
She brought out a bowl of porridge and poured milk into it. He sat on his heels eating
while Daphne and White Dog romped around the yard, nipping at each other’s
backsides. Daphne’s mouth was upturned as though she was laughing.

From inside, he heard them talking: the
husband’s hardly audible shadow-words and the madam’s lighter, more musical
voice. It didn’t sound like fighting but it didn’t sound like love, either.
He didn’t believe this man would beat her. Not physically. But from her face, he
could see that he’d hurt her.

He finished the porridge, rinsed the metal
bowl and spoon at the outside faucet, and placed them just outside the door. No one
could
say now that his hands were not the hands of a gardener. He
rubbed them together and heard a rough, dry sound they’d never made before.

The madam and her husband got into the truck
and drove off. You could see that their hearts were not beating together, the blood in
their veins wanted to flow toward different oceans. He walked to the hole, picked up the
spade, and threw in another shovelful of dirt.

The madam came home alone after work. She
inspected the hole and told him she noticed a difference. Itumeleng had just gone into
the house, having taken four sheets off the clothesline. Her little girl was sitting on
the stoop at the servant’s quarters. Isaac couldn’t have said what caused
him to look up when he did, but he suddenly dropped the spade. White Dog was down on her
haunches, ready to spring at something. “Come!” he called sharply.
“
Tla kwano!
” At first White Dog ignored him, then backed like a
stealth soldier away from a six-foot snake. Itumeleng’s daughter started to toddle
from the servant’s quarters toward the house. “No!” he screamed.
“Stay!” She began to cry and ran back into her house.

Isaac picked up a long limb that he’d
sawed from the crested barbet tree that morning, his eyes on the mamba the whole time.
Its skin was silvery in the sun, like metal. The snout was square, the head coffin
shaped. He didn’t need to be told this was the fastest snake in the world. You get
bitten. Fifteen minutes later, you’re dead. It opened its mouth. Black inside. The
blackest cave. When a black mamba shows the inside of its mouth to a herd of Cape
buffalo, the sight is so fearsome, the animals stampede from it. Now there was a
stampede in his chest, the hooves beating hard.

The snake hissed. It flattened its neck and
stood up high. He threw a rock on the other side of it to make it turn.

Madam screamed for him to get away, get
away! But he brought the limb down on the snake’s back with all the force in him.
The snake twisted and turned to strike, and he struck again, closer to the head. It was
one fast muscle, a muscle that could do anything. Again and again, he brought the limb
down on the writhing body until finally it twitched, jerked, and went still.

He dropped the tree limb and went into the
undergrowth and was sick.

That snake had only wanted to live. When he
came out, she who must not be called madam thanked him, although something else was in
her face. A kind of horror.

The letter from his mother had taken two
weeks to be delivered from Pretoria. He sat on the flat rock under the large aloes and
opened the envelope. As he read, he heard his mother’s voice among the trees. Her
voice was a deep one, almost like a man’s, with a roundness like the sound of a
large gourd, a vessel for holding things. He read the words quickly, turned over the
page and read the words again. And a third time. White Dog sat next to him, with her
legs crossed in front of her. On the fourth time through, he wept. White Dog put her
nose under his arm and pushed upward. She made a sound in her throat as though she
wanted to offer comfort. When his tears were finished, he folded the letter, replaced it
in the envelope, and put it in his pocket.

He remembered the last time he’d
kissed his mother’s cheek, softer with age every time he kissed it. This letter
started the longing in him again, a longing that roared inside him the way a fire moves
across the veldt, consuming grass and trees and termite hills and all the living
creatures that run before it. One morning, he thought, he would wake and not care about
his safety and return to his family. His mother pulled him like the Earth pulled the
moon: the thought of the years and troubles piling up in her, until one day she’d
be gone, with an emptiness beside her where he should have been. Someday, his sister
Lulu would have breasts that would flood her with surprise. Day by day she’d
become a woman, and he would not be there to protect her from harm. He’d be a
stranger to her, and to Moses and Tshepiso.

On his own, he might make his way to the
border, walk along the fence and find a way under or over when the moon was dim. But
then
what? He’d have no passbook. He’d need to walk at
night and hide during the day, steal food, run from everything. Dogs would pursue him.
His mind would weaken. He wouldn’t know north from south, east from west.
He’d have no money, no friends.

He walked around to the front of the house
and was surprised to find the madam waiting for him.

“Is everything all right?” she
asked.

“No,
mma
, everything is not
all right. My baby sister has died from malaria.” He turned away. “She was
so young, she hardly knew life. Now my mother is alone.”

“Where are your other brothers and
sisters?”

He stopped a moment. Surely she must know.
At first he didn’t want to speak. His heart was angry that you can be this close
to South Africa and be so blind. But then he asked himself how was she to know? Even if
she went there, she wouldn’t be allowed to see the things that all Africans see
and know.

“Of course you must have a pass at all
times,” he told her, “and if you’re not working, you are not permitted
to live in Pretoria. My father is missing and there is no money. My mother must work in
the city and send money to the children who are living with their grandmother in the
homeland, which is not our homeland. The government calls it the homeland, but the land
is poor, there is nothing there, the schools are poor, everything is poor and
shabby.”