White Dog Fell from the Sky

13



After the water explosion, Isaac ran into the bush, afraid that the police would find him and deport him. Toward nightfall, he crept out and walked back to Amen’s house. He knew the gardening job was finished. One of the first things he’d been told was, “My husband does not like water to be wasted.” It was a misfortune that her husband should have come home and seen the water shooting into the sky. And there she was, shouting at her husband and his friend when the person she should have been shouting at was himself.

He did not respect people who ran away, and now he’d done it twice—once from his country, and once from his job. Fleeing was like lying: you do it once, and you’ll do it again. But, he told himself, I will not do it again.

Every day now, Amen was saying, “You must go for training in Angola. You are doing nothing now. Think of the country where you were born. Your country is like your mother. You would not turn your back on your mother.”

He needed to find somewhere else to live, away from Amen’s badgering, but he had nowhere to go. He did not want to train with the MK, of that he was sure. And he would not turn his back on his own mother who’d given him life and breath and suckled him and taught him what was right and wrong. He had disappointed her, he could not embrace her, maybe not for many years, but he would keep her and his sisters and brothers in his heart. Several weeks ago he’d bought a pencil and paper and an envelope and posted a letter to ask her forgiveness and to tell her that he was safe in Botswana. Before he’d sent it, he asked she who must not be called madam if he could use her post office box address. Any day now, he was expecting a return letter from Pretoria.

After he’d stayed out of sight for ten days, he thought, I will not hide any longer. What happens will happen. On a Saturday morning, he set out for the Old Village to inquire about the letter and to say again that he was sorry.

All along the road, people were making their way here and there. He thought of the divided stairways back home, the divided bus and train stations, the divided public toilets. All the time, all the time, you were watching for where black people were forbidden. Heaven help you if you set your black foot on sacred white ground. Even after you died, you’d go to a nie blank cemetery: no one wanted your black ass anywhere near a white person, even though everyone was dead. Here, he could see no signs, not one, but the watchfulness had not died in him.

When he came to the house in the Old Village, the great hole he’d dug was as he’d left it. The water was gone and the mud looked like cracked china. Some of the dirt he’d shoveled out and taken to the top of the hole had slumped down after the water had poured over the top. To see this hole gave him a great sense of shame. It felt to him that White Dog even hung her head. The garden was empty of any person. He called “Koko?” No sound came from inside, and just as he was at the point of going away, Itumeleng came out of the servant’s quarters. “Ijo!” she said, surprised.

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.