White Dog Fell from the Sky

46



She’d been standing on the platform since half past three. The train was already over an hour late. The heat rose up through the soles of her sandals, and her stomach turned over. She felt that whatever was coming down the tracks would change her life irrevocably. She thought of Ian, ready for anything, heart wide open. Next to him, she felt cautious, slow to trust. It was one of the things she’d loved about him—how he’d made her unafraid.

All at once, it seemed the activity around her increased. Porters appeared, an old man with a large metal container of milk tea shuffled onto the platform. She felt the train’s presence at a distance before she saw it. Then the single light far down the tracks. She stood up a little straighter and took a step back. It was closer, and then very close. People crowded the platform, and the noise of the steam engine and huge pistons engulfed the crowd. The brakes screeched, the steam spread out over them like a vision from hell. As the steam cleared, passengers began to pour down the steps of the train carrying suitcases, paper bags, boxes wrapped with string, chickens in crates. She peered into faces, searching for a person with a question mark to match hers. A pair of lovers embraced, weeping, and Alice’s eyes pooled to see their happiness.

The platform began to clear. She walked up and down searching for Isaac’s name among the parcels that railway workers had loaded into the large-wheeled iron carts. The hubbub subsided. A couple of skinny boys came and pushed the iron carts toward the freight office, and she was left standing on the quiet platform. She was thirsty, exhausted. There was nothing here. She’d go home and call Hendrik Pretorius.

Just then, she caught sight of a boy and girl huddled together beside a wooden coal bin. The boy, who appeared to be about seven or eight, had an arm protectively around the girl. His legs were spindly and looked dusted with ash; his eyes were bright as a bird’s. The girl’s hair was neatly plaited in a dozen or more sticking-out braids, each one finished off with a different colored plastic barrette. She looked a year or two younger than the boy. Her blue dress was faded almost to white at the shoulders, too small for her, so the fabric was rucked across her chest. She’d lost a shoe and stood on one foot, her bare instep resting on the top of a white plastic sandal.

As Alice approached them, she saw that the girl was trembling.

“Isaac?” she asked them. “Isaac? A o itse Isaac?” Do you know Isaac?

“Isaac o kae?” the boy asked eagerly. Where is he?

“Ga ke itse,” Alice said. I don’t know.

The girl began to cry.

“Isaac,” Alice repeated. “Come with me. Tla kwano. Come.

“Come,” she said again.

The boy took the girl’s hand and pulled her along.

The girl nearly refused to get into the truck, and she whimpered all the way down the road to the Old Village. Alice sat them both down at the big wooden table in the kitchen and scrambled four eggs, thinking that might be a familiar food. They ate it. And toast with butter and jam. Then she made mealie meal porridge, and they ate that and drank two glasses of milk each.

When they’d finished, Alice pointed to herself. “Alice. Leina la gago ke mang?”

“Moses,” said the boy.

“Moses,” she repeated. “Moses.” He smiled.

She asked the girl her name. There was no reply.

“Lulu,” said the boy.

“That’s a nice name,” said Alice. “Lulu.”

“Isaac o kae?” asked Moses. Where is Isaac?

“Ga ke itse.”

“Isaac o kae?” Moses asked again.

“Wait a moment.” Alice walked out behind the house to Itumeleng’s servant’s quarters. “Itumeleng?!” she called. “Can you come?”

Lulu would not close her eyes. The chair felt hard on her bottom, and her heart beat wildly. She felt she might be sick. It would have been better not to eat that white woman’s food. She had gone outside calling to someone, but what would she come back carrying? Back home she had heard stories of enchantresses who lure children to their homes and put them in the stove and eat them. They fatten children with food that cannot be resisted, and when they are fat … zoop! The enchantresses are sweet, like the food. They find children wandering in the desert without their mothers, in trouble, and they are kind and smile like this white woman.

Moses was not clever. If something glittered, he took it in his hand without thinking, but there are things that glitter that you must never take in your hand. She would not eat any more food in this place.

She understood now that her mother had lied to them. She told them that Isaac was not far away, that he was working in a place near where they would go to school. They would not have to speak Afrikaans at this school, and the teachers would be kind and not beat them. They would live with Isaac during the week, and they would come to their granny on the weekends. The place was not far away, she said. They would like it there. The night before they were to leave, Lulu heard her mother weeping. She had come from Pretoria to see them in Bophuthatswana. “Never mind,” she said when Lulu asked her why she was crying. “You will get a good education.”

“How will we get home?”

“You will come by train. Don’t worry. It is not far. Isaac will put you on the train.”

“But why have you given me a knapsack? The children who go to school have only small sacks.”

“You are going to a special school. Now be quiet and listen to me. These are the papers that you must give to the conductor when you are going on the train … Moses! Tla kwano! … I am giving these papers to Lulu not to lose them. If the conductor asks where you are going, say you are going to stay with your brother in Gaborone. If the conductor asks if you are from South Africa, you must say, ‘No, I am from Botswana, I have only been visiting my granny in South Africa.’ Can you remember this?”

Lulu nodded her head.

“Moses, where are you from?”

He grinned. “From Bophutatswana.”

She cuffed him on the side of his head. “It’s not a funny joke. You are not from Bophuthatswana.”

“Lulu, where are you from?”

“I am from Botswana,” she said.

“Do you know where in Botswana you are from?”

“No.”

“You are from Gaborone. This is where you must get off the train.”

“Where are you from?” she asked Moses.

“I am from Botswana in Gaborone.”

“No, you are from Gaborone in Botswana. Lulu, where do you come from?”

“I am from Gaborone in Botswana.”

Moses asked her why they must say these things, and their mother told him to stop with his questions, that he must only remember what to say. “Otherwise they will throw you off the train.” Lulu imagined the two of them sailing through the air while the train laughed down the tracks with its white smoke. Her mother had told her that they must get off the train in Mafeking and find a Motswana to ask the way to the train that left for Gaborone. “Do you understand? Tell me it back.” Lulu told her. Moses was a year older than she, but her mother knew that she wouldn’t forget. She had given her the papers because she had more sense.

But she knew now that they’d been tricked. She didn’t understand why her mother would send them to this white woman. And where was Isaac? She turned in the chair and looked at the stove behind her. The door was large enough to shove her in. Their mother had put them on the train, and it was only when they had been traveling from the time the sun rose until it was high in the sky that she knew that Gaborone in Botswana was at such a distance that they would not be traveling home on the weekend to see their granny and that maybe they would never see her again. She didn’t want to cry because crying makes the spirit come out of you her mother said, but the tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped her nose with the back of her arm, and the snot dried in a streak like the trails the snails left on the wild spinach her grandmother gathered after the rains.

The white woman came back and with her came a black woman with a little child holding her mother’s skirts. The black woman asked in Setswana, “Where are you from?” And before Lulu could warn him, Moses said, “Bophuthatswana.”

Lulu said, “Gaborone in Botswana.”

“That is where you are now,” the black woman said in Setswana. “You are in Gaborone. Lo tswa kae?” Where are you from?

“Gaborone in Botswana,” Lulu said again.

“Isaac o kae?” Moses asked. Where is he?

“He’s not here,” Itumeleng said in Setswana. “We don’t know where he is. He has disappeared.”

Lulu began to whimper.

“You must sleep,” the black woman said. “It’s late now. Isaac will come back.”

“Ke batla Isaac!” I want Isaac! She was wailing now, her spirit pouring out where it could be scooped up, but she couldn’t stop herself. Itumeleng picked her up in her arms, and Lulu felt the hands of Itumeleng’s little girl rubbing her bare leg where it dangled. That little girl had not yet been eaten. Even though Lulu was a big girl and old enough to carry important papers, Itumeleng jostled her in her arms the way a mother does a young child, and Lulu felt herself giving in to the deep crooning that came from the stranger’s throat.

Alice woke before six, tiptoed to the room where the children slept, and paused at the door. Lulu was invisible, under the sheet. Moses slept on his back, arms flung out to the side as though he’d fallen backward into tall grass.

Outside, the crested barbet sang in the tree. Small bits of white paper floated in the air, lit in the tree, fluttered on in the breeze. Her eyes were still full of sleep, and it took her a moment to realize that the white butterflies were migrating. She’d asked Will about them once and learned that one of their host plants was the shepherd tree. They traveled up Africa toward Madagascar, maybe as far as India. Here were a few dozen forerunners, but there would be more coming, and more behind them. Their wings were edged with a soft brown, but she remembered the effect when they traveled in the tens of thousands: a sea of white, the air alive, wind made manifest.

White Dog stretched out her front paws, shook herself awake, and pressed her snout into Alice’s hand. Alice brought out food and water and set it down for her. It was nearly an hour before the children woke. Moses found her in the kitchen, and Lulu trailed behind.

“Dumela, rra,” Alice said. “A o bolawa ke tlala? Are you hungry?”

“Ee, mma.”

Lulu ran away and hid under the covers. It annoyed Alice, and then she was annoyed with herself for being annoyed. Had Lulu ever talked to a white woman? She filled a bowl with porridge and added milk. Moses ate what she’d given him, and a second bowl.

“Lulu o kae?” she asked Moses. He shrugged and put a napkin over his head to communicate to Alice that his sister was shy.

“Take her this, please?” She said it in English, and he began to eat the porridge she’d dished up for Lulu.

“For Lulu.” He laughed and disappeared with the bowl. And came back.

“You’d like more?”

“Ee, mma.” He ate with enormous concentration. When he’d finished, he said, “Isaac o kae?”

“Ga ke itse.” He asked again, as though she hadn’t understood. “Ga ke itse. I’m sorry. I don’t know.” She sat down at the table next to him and they were quiet for a while. His smile melted her heart. She walked into the small bedroom, Moses following.

“Dumela, mma,” said Alice to the sheet. “Lulu, come out, I want to see you.”

“Lulu, come out, I want to see you,” Moses repeated.

Alice tugged at the sheet gently. “Lulu, please come out.”

“Lulu, please come out,” the echo said.

A small hand held fiercely to the sheet.

That night, she called Hendrik Pretorius after the children were asleep. “I’ll call you back,” he said. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang.

“I tried calling you last night but couldn’t get through,” she said. “I found the children. They’re here, asleep in the other room.”

“Thank god.”

It sounded as though the phone had gone dead. “… Hello, are you there?”

“Yes, yes, I’m here. First let me say I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to happen this way. Isaac wrote to his mother asking that we send the children to Botswana. He said it was a good place, a safe place, and he wanted them to have a chance at a different life. He mentioned you in the letter and said he was working as a gardener at your house. I was in favor of them going. His mother was reluctant. It would mean losing them, maybe forever. What tipped the scales was Nthusi’s death.”

“Nthusi?”

“Isaac’s older brother. He worked in the mines. There was a collapse. He died last month. Isaac’s mother said if that was the fate awaiting her children, then they should go. Tshepiso, another one of Isaac’s brothers, couldn’t be persuaded to go. He’s still with the grandmother in Bophuthatswana.”

“Isaac never said anything …”

“Perhaps he thought you wouldn’t agree.”

“I don’t know what he thought, and I don’t know what’s to be done now. Lulu won’t speak, won’t look at me. She’s very unhappy and wants to go home. Moses keeps asking where is Isaac, where is Isaac?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Can their mother call? She works for you? During the day, could she call?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I could drive them back home.”

“Where?”

“To their mother.”

“That’s impossible. They can’t live there.”

“To their grandmother?”

“You wouldn’t be allowed there.”

“What about putting them back on a train?”

“How would they explain themselves at the border? It’s one thing getting into Botswana. The children said they were going to visit their brother. It appears there was no problem. Going the other direction, I can’t imagine what would happen.”

“Perhaps Isaac will be back.”

“He won’t be back. I made some inquiries today. He’s in prison.”

“Oh, dear god.”

“They’ve taken him to Number Four in Jo’burg. The place is unspeakable. My wife and I are completely torn up over it. Many don’t get out alive … we’re devastated.”

She was stunned, appalled. “You’re a lawyer?”

“In a country where the laws of the land are rotten to the core. I would move heaven and earth to help this young man. If you could keep the children until … Hello? Is that possible?”

She couldn’t imagine how it was possible. “Yes, of course I will.”

“I’ll call again in a few days. I think it’s best that I call you, not the other way around.”

She hung up and went outside. Her throat was dry, her hands shaking. Out in the pool of light spilling from the kitchen, she felt a flash of anger. What was Isaac thinking? Would he even have told her before they arrived? But it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except getting him out. She could hardly bear to think about what they’d do to him, what they might have already done. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of white. The moon was bright. More butterflies had come.