White Dog Fell From the Sky (6 page)

When he had a job, he would buy paper and a
pen, an envelope and a stamp and tell his mother that all was well. But these days, all
was not well, and he wouldn’t write to her, not yet. His old life felt farther
away than the moon: his family’s faith in him, the chemistry lab with its
gouged wooden tables, his cell biology teacher, who walked with his
wide feet splayed, his tie stained, his mind brilliant. The heat had already begun to
travel off the pavement through the soles of his shoes. Where was the Old Village? A
Toyota pickup truck came by, followed by a three-ton Chevy with people hanging out of
the back. At last, he came to a small grocery store on a corner. He knew what would be
on the shelves: oranges, a half sheet of newspaper folded around a half loaf of brown
bread, chips, sweet bananas, Coca-Cola. Everything a person could want.

Boitumelo was to have been his wife. They
were going to have four or five children. At work, he would have cured the sick,
delivered babies, put his younger brothers and sisters through school. What you expect,
though, is not what will be. When you’re a baby, moving down the birth canal into
the world, about to take your first breath, a young animal eager for life, you
don’t know that you’ll come out into a dimly lit dwelling into the arms of a
midwife, a woman with shriveled breasts and tired shoulders who’s brought
thousands like you into the world. You don’t know that there’s black and
there’s white, and you’ve arrived on the wrong side of the fence, boy.

He stood outside the store for several
minutes, watching people come and go. Africans and Europeans were using the same door,
and when he looked inside, a white woman at the counter was waiting on a black African
man. It stunned him. Outside, someone had discarded the
Botswana Daily News
. It
had been trampled upon, but it was still legible. He sat under a tree, cross-legged, and
read the caption of a picture on the front page. “The Minister of State for
Foreign Affairs, Archie Mogwe, greets the U.S. Ambassador, Donald Norland, on arrival in
Gaborone.” The two men were shaking hands. Another article began: “Water
alight? Unbelievable, but villagers at Keng, some 125 kilometers west of Kanye, are
convinced that they have witnessed a case of burning water and look on the incident as a
sure case of ‘super-witchcraft.’”

Inside the paper was a picture of a handsome
man standing next to a white woman. To his astonishment, Isaac read that this man was
the president of Botswana, His Excellency, Sir Seretse Khama, standing
next to his wife, Lady Khama. They were holding a pair of scissors together, cutting a
wide ribbon, presiding at the opening of an agricultural fair. Sir Seretse Khama had a
large head, a black mustache, and a regal bearing. His wife was rather plain looking
with a strong, kind face. She was pale and wore a small white hat. He’d heard a
rumor of this marriage back home, but he’d dismissed it as an impossibility.
Nowhere could a black man marry a white woman, surely. But here it was, the two of them,
their hands touching. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket to study
later. He felt dazed and disoriented. Not only Sir Seretse Khama and his European wife,
but a newspaper full of the news of African people.

The trees grew larger down here in the Old
Village. Vines spread over shaded patios. The servants’ quarters were larger, with
stoops to sit on. Chickens scratched in a yard. He turned down a small road, where three
huge jacaranda trees grew beside an old colonial-style house with whitewashed walls and
a wraparound porch. An odd noise, like an untuned radio, came from the rear of the
house. He walked farther down the road to see what the noise was. Birds babbled in
vine-shaded cages that hung from the back and side of the house and from the shade
trees. Bee eaters in blues and yellows and greens sat in cages, parrots behind bars
shrieked into the trees, parakeets twittered next to their mates. It was a carnival of
birds, an amazement, although truth be told, it was sad to see them in cages. What is a
bird if it can’t fly? It might as well be a cockroach.

A gardener toiled in the yard, and Isaac
walked on. Three houses farther up the road he asked for work and was turned away. At a
fourth house, he was met by a barking Alsatian. White Dog put her tail down and slunk
off to the side of the road. There was no fence or gate around the yard, and he saw no
gardener. He put his hand out to the barking dog, thinking, she’ll either bite it
or sniff it. She did neither. He walked past her into the yard, wondering whether she
was one of those stinkpot dogs who make you think they’re your friend and then
bite you on the ass. He wouldn’t turn around. He’d make her think he
wasn’t scared, even though a little animal scurried up and down his backbone,
yelping in fear. Alsatians had always spooked him.

A white woman came out of the house. She was
dressed as though she was going to work.

“I am looking for gardening work,
madam.”

“Have you any experience?”

“Yes, madam.” It was the truth,
if it was life she was asking about.

“Do you have references?”

“No, madam. A thief took my suitcase
on the train, but in any case, I am an excellent worker.”

“Your English is not bad. You’re
from South Africa, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Are you here illegally?”

He thought it best not to answer.

“Well, I don’t mind either way.
Our gardener left this past week—his mother took sick in Francistown. I’ll give
you a try and pay you in food today. If you do well, you can come back
tomorrow.”

“Thank you, madam.”

She led the way to the side of the house.
“I’d like a bed of flowers here.”

“Marigolds?” It was the only
flower name he knew in English.

“Not marigolds. There are already too
many marigolds in the world. I don’t know what kind yet.”

“Yes, madam, thank you.”

She handed him a spade, and he set to work.
White Dog sat solemnly near the road, her paws crossed. Isaac dug, squaring the corners
of the garden carefully, turning over the dirt and breaking up the clods with his hands,
sifting it through his fingers so the smallest seed could survive. He worked steadily,
not stopping for anything. When he finished, he paused. The woman came out, as though
she’d been watching him.

“Why did you make it square?”
she asked.

“I thought this is the way you would
like it.” White people were always making square corners.

“Don’t think about what I like.
Think about what’s beautiful. Straight lines look like a cemetery.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Please don’t call me madam. Have
you eaten today?”

“No,
mma
.”

“What do you like?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What do you like to eat?”

To be asked such a question. “I like
meat,” he said quickly, then thought he might have sounded too bold.

She didn’t look bothered.
“I’ll ask Itumeleng to bring you meat at noon when we have it. Have you met
her?”

“No, madam.”

“She’s here every day. If you
have questions when I’m at work, you can ask her. Give this bed some curves and
then please put water on the trees in the back. They’re new, and need watering
every day.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Please don’t call me that. When
you call me madam, I feel like I’m a hundred years old.”

He smiled and then grew serious. “What
must I call you?”

“Call me Alice.”

“Madam, I cannot.”

“Well, then.” She shrugged
helplessly. “Don’t call me anything.”

When she’d first come here, Alice
found that there were no basements in Botswana. Life was lived in the god-eye of light
so bright, it felt as though you could hold your hand up to the sun and look through it
to bone. How huge the sky was, broken by nothing. Birds flew into it and disappeared,
like stones in water.

Lying in bed in the heat next to her
sleeping husband, she wondered whether this was what had happened to the child
she’d hoped to conceive. Would a baby be daunted to come into this world of
interminable blue sky, heat that scoured your brains clean? The sky had been blue for
months, unbroken by the smallest cloud. Some days she felt her throat wanting to scream,
to break the flatness of that blue.

Within the past several weeks, she’d
wondered whether the emptiness of her womb had to do with not loving Lawrence deeply
enough. She blamed herself, and then she blamed Lawrence. She’d not expected to
have to work so hard at love; it had become a kind of hard labor. The word that came to
her when she thought of her husband was “hidden.” She couldn’t tell
whether his emotional vagueness was something peculiar to him with her, or whether
he’d be this way with anyone.

They’d been in Botswana a year and a
half now, brought here from the States because of Lawrence’s job. Alice had begun
looking for work immediately and found a position with the Ministry of Local Government
and Lands, working on land-use policy connected to the San people. She knew she was damn
lucky; it would have taken her ten years to be qualified for a similar job back home.
But she didn’t feel
lucky. She felt like crying. And she blamed
herself for that too. Look around you, she told herself. So you never have a baby. Make
a different life.

Lawrence stirred next to her. Because it was
summer, they began work every day at seven and finished at five, with a big chunk out of
the middle for napping. She touched him on the shoulder and then shook him gently.
“It’s time.”

“You don’t need to tell
me.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Why are you grumpy?”

“Who said I
was
?”

They got out of opposite sides of the bed,
dressed, and drove back to work together in her truck. His Toyota was being repaired.
Before she let him out at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, he said he
needed to work late that night, not to wait for him. “How will you get
home?”

“I’ll find a ride.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I’ll walk.”

“You could call me.”

“Alice, stop.”

“What?”

“Just don’t.”

It took Isaac three quarters of an hour to
walk to the Old Village, White Dog at his heels. She who must not be called madam was
outdoors when he arrived. “I need to go,” she said. “I’m late
for work. Please water the trees, and make a plan for the garden. As you can see,
it’s not had much attention. Could you make a garden plan, something different
from the usual? Do you understand?”

“Ee, mma.”
Why did
white people always have to ask,
Do you understand?

“Walk around the village,” she
said. “Or take the bicycle at the back of the house. Look at other gardens, and
tell me what you think would work well. We’ll pay you thirty rand a month. And my
husband doesn’t like water to be wasted. He’s traveling for the next ten
days.”

And then she was off, backing her truck down
the driveway. Suddenly she stopped and rolled down the window. “Is this your dog
out here?”

“Yes,
mma.
”

“Is it a him or a her?”

“A her, madam.”

“They should be all right then. I
don’t mind her as long as she doesn’t fight with Daphne. I think things will
work out fine. I’m glad you came back.”

Why
wouldn’t
he come back? He
waved until she was out of sight.

This madam was the tallest white woman
he’d ever seen. She had big bones, like a man’s bones, and although her face
was young, her hair was already becoming gray. She pulled it back from her face with
a clip, but it fell back into her eyes. It was halfway between African
and European hair, but an African woman would not have it falling everywhere. Her eyes
were gray like her hair, and large, with a little blue in them. Her nose was not quite
straight, as though it had at one time been broken. In the middle of her chin was a tiny
valley. She was not an unpleasing looking person, but he didn’t really trust her.
Why didn’t she tell him what she wanted? She was the one paying him. Something
different from the usual? He didn’t know what the usual looked like. He felt for a
moment that he had not been born to be someone’s gardener, and then he stopped and
told himself that this thought was nothing more than arrogance. He was no better than
the next man, and you can find happiness in any kind of work. But the thought returned,
and with it the dream in which his father had labored in a vast pit. The waters rose and
still his father stood as though he’d been told to stand still until he died.
Would he too stand still until he died? For as long as he could remember, he’d
felt that you were given one small, precious life, not to be squandered.

“
Tla kwano.
” Come.
White Dog followed him into the yard, looking for the Alsatian, her hackles raised like
a small brush fire. It wasn’t long before Daphne discovered her cowering beside
the house. She and Daphne circled and sniffed each other under the tail, and White Dog
flopped down with her paws in the air, her mouth turned up in what looked like a smile.
Isaac turned his back and disappeared. Leave them alone and let them work things out in
their dog way.

He weeded and watered the new citrus trees,
and then he went to the door of the house and called out for Itumeleng. She poked her
head out. At first her face looked almost innocent, but look a little longer, and you
saw something sassy in her eyes. A little girl clung to her skirts.

“I’m going out,” he said.
“Madam has asked me to look at some other gardens and come up with a
plan.”

“I’m not your wife,” she
said. “You don’t need to tell me where you’re going.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t like
me for a husband?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I have one
child already. What would I do
with another?” She turned to go
back inside and stopped. “So she hired you?”