White Dog Fell from the Sky

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In the middle of the night, Alice woke to Lulu crying herself out of a bad dream. Alice picked her up and held her in her arms and sat on the bed next to Moses, who was curled into a small ball. Lulu’s body was warm from sleep, and her cheeks where she’d been crying, left a wetness at Alice’s breast. If this had been her own child, she would have asked what had frightened her. But all she could offer was her own warm body. “Ke batla Isaac,” Lulu said over and over. I want Isaac. Where is he? “O kae?”

Alice rocked her and crooned, “I know, I know. I’m sorry. He’s coming soon.” She had no words to tell the children why Isaac was close but they couldn’t see him. She’d asked Itumeleng to explain, but they still didn’t understand. Sitting on the edge of the bed with this sobbing child, she decided that she must ask their teacher to talk to them. Lulu was as sensitive as a seismograph to tremors. Life would not be easy for her. She couldn’t escape anything through oblivion, unlike Moses, whose life force could blast through rock. In time, Lulu’s breath evened out, and her body relaxed. Alice laid her gently down beside Moses and tucked the sheet around them both.

She was wide awake now. Someday she’d get to the Tsodilo Hills, where she and Ian had planned to go. If anyplace had been home for him, it was the hill where the First Spirit had left the imprint of his knees. Where was home for her? She didn’t know. And she realized in the asking that she wanted a home as much as she’d ever wanted anything. She had heard it said, We live by hope, but a reed never becomes a mosetlha tree by dreaming. You make what you want, not dream it. A home with Ian would have been a restless, nomadic place, like the tents the Bedouins carry on their backs. He’d said it to her more than once. “I’m no good for you, love.”

“Who are you to say that?” she’d shot back. He was a wild creature in the shape of a man. She’d loved this wildness in him. Somehow they would have made a life together.

Lulu and Moses were now the center of a small, uncertain thing. She guessed she could call it a home: a roof without walls, a hearth with two glowing coals. Not fragile exactly, but unsteady on its feet. She heard a clattering in the kitchen and got up. Moses was standing in a puddle of water in the middle of the floor in his T-shirt holding the aluminum kettle, dented where he’d dropped it.

“Ke tsoga makuku.” I wake up very early. “Tea?” he asked brightly, practicing his English.

“Ee, ke batla,” she said, laughing. “But the sun isn’t shining yet.”

“No problem. The sun she comes.”