White Dog Fell from the Sky

51



Workmen had been banging on the roof of the Ministry of Local Government and Lands all morning when the phone rang. “Hello!” Alice yelled into receiver.

It was Heavenly Mosepe. The nurse had found an egg on Moses. “You must come get the children.”

There was silence on Alice’s end.

“Hello?”

“Yes, hello.”

“You must wash everything made of cloth in the house, then they will stop.”

“They will never stop.”

“They will stop, madam.”

She slammed out of work and picked up the children. “Still?” asked Ari Schwartz. He pulled out another bottle of vile brown liquid. One of his eyes wept easily. When Alice first knew him, she thought he was grieving for his wife. He held out the bottle, dabbed at the corner of his eye, and shoved his handkerchief back in his pocket.

“Don’t you have anything else? That stuff doesn’t work.”

“I have one more thing. Surefire, but you must use it very carefully. Not a drop in the children’s eyes.” He went behind a curtain and came back with a cork-stoppered bottle filled with black liquid. “The instructions are written on the back. Follow them closely.”

“It won’t hurt them?”

“No, just keep it out of their eyes. Use it every day for three days. By the end of that time, the lice will be dispatched.”

“I’ll make you a cake if it’s true.”

“Chocolate is my favorite,” he said, pulling out his handkerchief again. “Looks like rain.”

“Let’s hope.” Alice paid him, and he wished her luck.

The wind was blowing low and steady, sweeping dust across the length of the mall. The title of the movie at the cinema was obscured by brown haze. The dust clung to everything: windshields, foreheads, shoes, the umbrellas under which the Mbukush women sat in their stalls. They were folding them now, gathering their wares, taking cover. The wind seemed to increase in ferocity as they walked back to the truck. It tossed hats. A can rolled across a flat expanse between the electrical shop and the road. White Dog put her ears back, and Lulu covered them with her hands.

“Pula e kae?” said Alice. Where’s the rain? There’d been so little, and soon winter would come, with no possibility of more.

“She is coming,” said Moses, practicing his English.

Alice drove home while the wind nudged the truck sideways. In the driveway, a few drops fell. “Hurry!” she said, gathering her papers. A lightning bolt rent the sky, followed by a jolt of thunder. She took Lulu’s hand and ran toward the house. Moses had already ducked inside.

White Dog refused to cross the threshold. “Come!” but she planted herself outside, her body shaking. “Come on!” yelled Alice, but she was too frightened to move. Another burst of thunder shook the air. Never had Alice in her childhood been afraid of thunderstorms, but here people actually died from lightning strikes. Often. Alice tried to pick White Dog up to bring her in, but she ran away, then came creeping back toward the threshold. “Don’t then.”

Alice felt the storm enter her. She ran from room to room, furious, gathering sheets and towels and hurling them onto a mounting pile on the living room floor. Pillows, dish towels, every stitch of clothing in the house. The rain pelted down now, lightning blanched the sky, and the wind screamed and shrieked and shook branches loose and threw them to the ground. The children watched wide-eyed as she grabbed things and threw them onto the pile. After a time, she sat down on the mound, spent. Outside it was just rain now.

“Ke batla borotho,” Lulu said suddenly.

“We have no bread. Do you want to make it?” She mimed stirring.

“Ee, mma.”

“You know how to make it?”

“Ee, mma.”

Alice got out yeast and mixed it with water, set a five-kilo bag of flour, a large bowl, and a bread pan on the wooden table.

“Do you want me to help?” Alice pointed to her, and then to Lulu.

Lulu pointed to herself.

Alice went to the living room and carried a huge load of clothes to the bathtub, turned on the hot water, added soap, and filled the tub half full. She took off her sandals and climbed into the tub and pounded the clothes with her feet. She pulled out the plug and let the soapy water drain, replaced the plug, and filled up the bathtub again. She rinsed the clothes, let out the water, and wrung each item with her hands.

She went to the kitchen to find buckets for the clothes and put on her brakes at the doorway. The large bag of flour had fallen to the floor. Lulu and Moses were rolling in it and laughing. Flour had drifted around the front legs of the table and the stool. Lulu’s hair snowed onto the red concrete floor. Where Moses was wet from the rain, his skin had turned to a white paste. The two of them looked up suddenly, and stopped. Alice laughed, threw a little flour onto their heads, and left them to it. She grabbed a couple of buckets, thinking, If I were a real mother, I’d stop them. But when in their lives will they ever get to do this again?

The rain ended. She hung clothes and sheets and towels on the line out by the crested barbet’s tree, and draped clothes over aloe plants and bushes all over the yard while Moses and Lulu swept and scrubbed the kitchen floor. Alice hosed them off by the backdoor, the two of them screaming and running over the muddy ground.

That night the phone rang. “I’ve spoken to him.” Hendrik’s voice sounded deeply exhausted, old. It took her a moment to understand he meant the deputy minister of correctional services. “He said he’ll look into it and get back to me. If he frees him, Isaac will be permanently expelled from South Africa. You would need to find a way to secure political asylum in Botswana. That could be tricky, considering why he was thrown out.”

“Is he safe?”

“No one’s safe where he is.”

“You sound tired.”

“I’m an old man.” He paused. “My wife’s been ill. I haven’t told you. She has lung cancer. Never smoked a day in her life.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“We’ve been married fifty-three years.”

“I’m sorry, Hendrik.”

“She went into the hospital yesterday for treatment. I’m going there overnight. I’ll sleep on a cot in her room.”

She was quiet a moment and then told him she’d pray for them.

The children were in bed. Itumeleng’s little house in back was dark. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Perhaps Isaac was alive, perhaps not. The deputy minister wouldn’t have known, either way. He would have reassured Hendrik, told him what he wanted to hear. Or maybe he’d only said he’d look into it but was lying. Someone in that role would not be trustworthy. A superthug with blood on his hands, a great deal of blood.