White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,122

her. She’d said the words to her daughter, her voice shaking. A wall of the mine had collapsed. Nthusi was buried and dead. Dirt filling his nostrils. Laughing Nthusi. And Isaac in prison, Oh. Her mother said she must have courage now more than ever. She was a clever girl. She and Moses must learn everything they could learn, and one day they’d be able to go home, when things were better, because they would get better, things could not stay this way forever.

But that was not true. They could stay this way forever. She’d heard in her mother’s voice that she missed her children. She’d thought about asking her mother why she’d lied to her, but there were bigger things to be said.

Lulu put her arms around Moses. “Wake up,” she whispered. “We must go back. Wake up.”

Moses opened his eyes, grumbled, and closed them again.

When Nthusi left for the mines, he told Lulu that she would go to school with the money he sent to their mother. She would go to college like Isaac. She was a good girl. She mustn’t cry for him. He was to meet a truck that would take him to the mines. She watched him walk down the road carrying his clothes in a plastic sack and imagined him standing in the back of the truck as it roared away, his hands hanging onto the wooden slats. The dust of the road would have swirled up, and he would have smiled as though he were going on holiday, but inside he would not have been smiling.

What was she doing in this place? This foreign place without her mother, without her granny, with Tshepiso far away, with Nthusi dead, with no Isaac.

She got out of bed. The concrete floor, polished with red wax, looked black in the moonlight. It was cool on her feet. She opened the door to the outside and nearly fell over White Dog. Her bare feet took her out toward the road. The trees made a canopy over her head. The stars twinkled between the branches, cold and far away. They did not look friendly, those stars. She turned when she saw White Dog following her. “Go home,” she told her. She knew the way to the train tracks. Straight up the road, then she wasn’t sure, but her feet would take her.

White Dog followed close behind. She took hold of Lulu’s shirt and yanked. She barked and ran around her in circles, barked and barked. Lulu kicked out. The dog ran ahead, faced her and refused to move. Lulu stepped around her and continued on. When she’d walked halfway to town, she heard footsteps behind her. She ran away from them as fast as she could. The footsteps behind her pounded the soft shoulder, closer, and then her brother’s voice called out her name.

She stopped. “Dikgopo tsame di botlhoko,” she said. My ribs hurt.

“What were you going to do?” he said in Setswana. “Walk back to Granny’s? Gaetsho re fa.” This is our home now.

“Tsamaya,” she said. Go away. She sat on the ground.

He told her that she’d scared him, that she must not ever leave him like that again.”

Lulu looked at her feet.

“A o bolailwe ke letsatsi?” Are you thirsty?

“Ee.”

“A re tsamayeng.” Let’s go.

White Dog led the way, her tail high. It was still dark when they reached the house and crept through the door and into bed.

The moon reflected off the whitewashed wall in the room. Her eyes were wide open. Her family had fallen to pieces. Only Moses and his snoring were left. Her mother had said that her father had found another woman, that he was never coming back, but Lulu didn’t believe this, not when she’d felt the strength of her father’s love. She didn’t remember him well, but she remembered that he had love in his eyes for her mother. They had fought and sometimes the fighting was loud, but at the end of it, there was the look in his eyes, still there.

But now that was finished, and he was gone. And Nthusi was dead. And her baby sister gone. And Isaac in prison. And Tshepiso would not come on the train with her and Moses. Her mother said Lulu was the smartest one, after Isaac, although she did not feel smart. If she was so smart, what was she doing here? And why had she not seen that her mother was lying? She said that Isaac would be there to meet