White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,138

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.

55

A day later, lying in bed next to a whitewashed wall, he couldn’t remember the details of when he’d come here. He recalled Alice’s blue dress blowing in the wind at the border, but nothing after that. The wall near his bed had a crack that ran from the top of the window to the ceiling. Halfway up the crack, a mosquito was squashed, desiccated, stuck to the wall. His mind went back to the first day he’d worked for her. He’d dug a square garden. Almost angrily, she’d asked him why he’d made it square. She’d intimidated him. Now he saw who she really was.

X-rays revealed a shattered left kneecap, broken nose, seven broken ribs, and the remnants of a concussion. He needed no one to tell him he had typhoid or that his thumbs were broken. His hunch about TB was confirmed. The wonder was that he’d survived, but he felt no joy at the prospect of life continuing. His heart was filled with emptiness.

Unable to sit in a bath, he was taken into a shower by the only male nurse on the staff. The nurse, Wes, built low and squat, was from the United States. “God, man, you stink,” were his first words. He wheeled Isaac down the hall in a wheelchair, stopped near the shower, and said, “I’ve got to get in there with you.”

“You don’t want to do that,” said Isaac.

“You’ll fall down and hit your head, and then I’ll be in trouble.” He undressed him, and Isaac could see him trying not to gag. He turned on the shower and helped Isaac step in, gripping his shoulder. He took