White Dog Fell from the Sky

5



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.”