to learn: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job had lost his seven thousand sheep, his three thousand camels, his five hundred yoke of oxen, his five hundred she asses. A wind had come and smote the four corners of a house where his seven sons and three daughters were eating and drinking wine. The house had fallen, killing them all. And still Job said, “… blessed be the name of the Lord.” It was a story of God’s unbearable cruelty, a story of testing a man to the outer limits to see what he was made of. What kind of a God would do that to a faithful man?
The lilac-breasted roller flew again. She thought it must be the most beautiful bird ever created, with its shining wings, aqua tipped with deeper blue, its lilac throat and breast, white feathered forehead, and perfect dark eye. She thought of God speaking out of the whirlwind, how He reminded Job (as though he needed reminding by then) who had caused the morning stars to sing, who shut up the sea with doors and commanded the proud waves to come only this far, no farther. If He could harness the stars and the ocean, why could He not harness cruelty? Was it more powerful than all the stars and oceans?
She turned back toward the house. In the children’s room, Alice found Lulu back under the sheet. “Isaac wants you to go to school,” she said to the lump. She had no words but English. “Goddamn it, I can’t make you understand, but you’ll have to get used to being here.” She sat on the foot of the bed. The sheet quivered. “Isaac wants you to go to school.” Every time she said “Isaac,” the sheet grew still. “Your brother Isaac loves you. That’s why you’re here. But Isaac is in trouble. This is what you can do to help your brother. You can go to school. This is what he wanted for you. Do you understand?” The lump in the sheet moved away, closer to the wall.
Hendrik called just after two in the afternoon and put the children’s mother on the line. Alice said a few words to her in Setswana and heard a few soft words back. When she’d exhausted her Setswana, she said in English how sorry she was about Nthusi and Isaac. And added that she’d do everything in her power to take care of the children. Their mother said, “Ee, mma. Ee, mma,” over and over and thanked her, although Alice had no idea how much she’d understood. She called Lulu and Moses to the phone and left the room while they spoke. Later, Itumeleng told her that the children now knew where Isaac was. They also knew that their oldest brother had died in the mines.
By day, Ian was like the stars, there but not there. At night was when the beasts of grief came for her. Grief was like a pig that had once scared her as a child. It ate everything in sight, and as she sat on a fence looking down on it, tried to pull her into its pen by her shoelaces, drawing her toward the smelly slop of itself.
She wondered whether Ian had time to know he was leaving the Earth, or had he died instantly? She wanted him to have had time to make peace with himself. She woke with the moon shining outside the window thinking, He cared more for his principles than he cared for love. His passion reminded her of those early explorers, a Shackleton at the South Pole, a Livingstone searching for the source of the Nile, a doomed Mallory on Everest. How many men had lost their lives trying to be heroes?
On the other side of the house, Lulu opened her eyes to darkness. What came to her was the time Nthusi tried to walk the tightrope. A rope tied to the bumper of an old car, the smell of sweat. “Like this,” said Nthusi. “Hold the rope high, straight.” She and Isaac held on to their end and Nthusi put one foot on the rope and then the other. Lulu and Isaac slid toward the bumper. “Flying Wallenda!” Nthusi shouted, falling to the ground. The smell of the rope was dusty, sharp, like ants.
Today on the telephone, her mother had told