White Dog Fell from the Sky

54



The Sister who’d months ago refused Isaac entrance was the first person to meet them at the front doors of Princess Marina Hospital. Her mouth pursed when she saw him, and her nose twitched with distaste. Alice explained that Isaac had been in a South African prison and needed immediate care. The Sister looked him up and down quickly and said, “All right then, come.”

Alice started to follow them, but the nurse turned to her and said, “You must go now, madam. You will return tomorrow.”

“I won’t get in the way, I promise.”

“Madam, it is not possible.”

Alice touched Isaac’s hand and murmured something he couldn’t understand. It startled him. It was the first kind touch he’d felt in longer than he could remember. He watched her turn and leave, then followed the Sister down the hallway. Halfway to the ward, he collapsed. He couldn’t recall how he’d ended up on the floor, only that things had gone dark.

The Sister put him in an isolation room with green walls and a small, high window. Another Sister came and offered him water. He drank a little and fell back onto the pillow. One moment he shivered, and the next moment he was on fire. “Forty point two degrees Celsius,” he heard the nurse say.

“Typhoid,” he thought dully. Every joint in his body ached. His head was a large bass drum that some maniac was pounding. The first Sister returned. He began to shake uncontrollably. Her pale lips reminded him of Number Four.

“Have you been in a place where hygiene might have been compromised?” she asked.

He laughed bleakly. “An … an understatement.”

“We will begin treating you with antibiotics, and then see what else.”

“An invasion of the mesenteric lymph nodes. Chloromycetin?”

She covered her surprise. “Yes, that’s the antibiotic of choice. Who are you?”

“An undesirable.” He didn’t want to give her any information.

She put a cold hand on his forehead. The Hand of Death.

“Ah!” He pulled away.

“Tomorrow we will move you to the ward. Tonight you will stay here. You must have a bath. You’re filthy.” She went away. When the other Sister returned, she urged him to drink more water. She bathed his head and neck and arms in cool water and made him swallow the first dose of the antibiotic. He recognized the beginnings of a feverish terror he’d had several times as a child. His head seemed to grow large and hard, and the room slowly revolved. He fought the horror. And then it erupted like lava flowing down a hillside, fiery, engulfing. He tried to get out.

The lights of the room flickered and went dark. When the generator kicked in, the light was duller. He had no idea whether it was day or night, or what country he was in.

Across town, the lights gave notice before they finally went out. Moses and Lulu were in the bathtub. The last of the bird songs were gone from the air. Lulu had wet a washcloth and laid it over her tummy. Moses pushed a plastic truck up the sides of the tub and down, brmm brmmming underwater and then up and out again. The lights flicked off, then on for thirty seconds, then off for good.

The sky had the smallest remnants of light in it, enough for Alice to find her way to the kitchen, where she felt with her hands across the big wooden table to the kerosene lamp. The glass sides of the lamp were slick with spilled kerosene, and the fragile shade clattered lightly against its restraining metal cup as she pulled it toward her. The matchbox should have been next to the lamp, but it wasn’t. She felt her way into the living room, pawed along the mantel, and found the box. All was quiet in the bathroom. A small stab of worry crossed her mind, and then she heard a splash. She made her way back toward the lamp, and at the kitchen threshold, slid the matchbox open and took out a match. She heard laughter, the darkness full of children.

Lulu laughed again. Her voice was strange for a child’s. Deep, gravelly, like sand thrown against a windowpane. Alice struck the match, and the kitchen sprang to life. She lifted the lamp chimney, lit the wick, and adjusted the flame, dark at its center, bright at the edges.

“I’m coming,” she called to the children, replacing the chimney. Her knee knocked against the wall as she turned, and her mind bumped against Isaac. The Sister in charge had seemed neither kind nor unkind. Full of business she was, with her capable hands and long, stern backbone. Healing was her job, her face said, like any other. But it was not like any other job. It dealt with the mysteries of the human soul. Isaac could come back to the world, or he might not, and who on Earth knew why one person returned and another didn’t?

She moved toward the bathroom with the lamp, momentarily blinded by the flame. At the doorway, she paused. Lulu was sprawled back against the tub and Moses sat between her legs leaning into her, the back of his head on her chest; his little willy floated placidly on the surface of the water. She wanted to tell them that Isaac was in the hospital, very near, but it felt too cruel. They wouldn’t be allowed to see him. She set the lamp on a shelf above the sink and grabbed a towel. “Come,” she said, and Moses scrambled up and let himself be wrapped up and dried. Then Lulu. Alice helped them brush their teeth and find their nighttime T-shirts. They climbed into bed together, and she sat next to them.

“Story,” said Moses.

She sat on the bed, where she usually read to them, but she didn’t pick up a book. “Isaac is in Botswana,” she said, feeling suddenly that she couldn’t keep this from them after all. “Isaac is in Gaborone. He’s very sick. O a lwala thata. You can see him when he’s better.” The lamp flickered.

“Where is Isaac?” asked Moses in English.

“He’s in the hospital,” she said. “Sepatela. O ile ngakeng. He had to see the doctor. O a lwala. He is not well. The nurses are helping him get better. Baamusi. You understand?”

She felt something in her hair, a hand stroking from the top of her head down her neck. And then there were two hands stroking. First one, then the other. She held one small wrist lightly, followed the arm up to Lulu’s shoulder and began to cry. “Isaac is in Botswana, my darlings.”

“See him?” asked Moses.

Alice scrubbed away the tears with the back of her hand. “Not now. Isaac, o a lwala. Itumeleng will explain more tomorrow. Lie down now and go to sleep.” Their eyes were wide. She tucked a sheet around them and kissed them both. “Robala sentle, Moses.” Sleep well. “Robala sentle, Lulu.”

She walked back to the kitchen with the lamp, set it on the table, and blew out the flame. As she headed outdoors, her hair still felt the imprint of Lulu’s hands. The door was open, no boundary between dark and dark. White Dog was there, sitting on the threshold. “You haven’t had dinner, have you?” She stumbled around in the dark and brought out dog food. White Dog’s tail wagged. “Isaac is back.” Was it her imagination, or did the tail stop a moment, her stance become more alert? Alice set the dog food down, and White Dog’s head bowed to her dish, her tail still wagging. She heard Isaac’s voice telling her never to walk in the garden at night, and she moved only a few steps away from the house, enough to see the Southern Cross.

In her head, she spoke to her mother across continents. If you could see these children, she told her, you’d understand. I’ve told you nothing about Isaac. I didn’t want to worry you. But there’s Isaac too, who may come back and may not come back to the world.

And there’s Ian who will never return, but this is where I can find him. He would never come to Cincinnati. It’s not his sort of place. You would say the dead can find you anywhere, but it’s not true. She felt his presence there in the dark, but tonight it seemed dimmer, as though he were slipping away. There was a shattering inside her like the chimney of a lantern, the flame freed, and then darkness.