many years, but he would keep her and his sisters and brothers in his heart. Several weeks ago he’d bought a pencil and paper and an envelope and posted a letter to ask her forgiveness and to tell her that he was safe in Botswana. Before he’d sent it, he asked she who must not be called madam if he could use her post office box address. Any day now, he was expecting a return letter from Pretoria.
After he’d stayed out of sight for ten days, he thought, I will not hide any longer. What happens will happen. On a Saturday morning, he set out for the Old Village to inquire about the letter and to say again that he was sorry.
All along the road, people were making their way here and there. He thought of the divided stairways back home, the divided bus and train stations, the divided public toilets. All the time, all the time, you were watching for where black people were forbidden. Heaven help you if you set your black foot on sacred white ground. Even after you died, you’d go to a nie blank cemetery: no one wanted your black ass anywhere near a white person, even though everyone was dead. Here, he could see no signs, not one, but the watchfulness had not died in him.
When he came to the house in the Old Village, the great hole he’d dug was as he’d left it. The water was gone and the mud looked like cracked china. Some of the dirt he’d shoveled out and taken to the top of the hole had slumped down after the water had poured over the top. To see this hole gave him a great sense of shame. It felt to him that White Dog even hung her head. The garden was empty of any person. He called “Koko?” No sound came from inside, and just as he was at the point of going away, Itumeleng came out of the servant’s quarters. “Ijo!” she said, surprised.
He greeted her, and told her he wanted to see the madam.
Itumeleng pointed next door. “She’s living there once again,” she said in Setswana. “She returned here when the master was away. Now he’s back and she is gone there again.”
“I see.”
“So you have returned.”
“Ee, mma.”
“I was thinking you were not going to return.”
“I only came to see the madam.”
“Why did you not come back?”
“Because my job is finished.”
“The madam told you not to come back?”
“After what happened, I know it is finished.”
“You don’t know this.”
“Yes, I know it.”
He did not want to go to ask for her next door. He squatted by the old half dead tree, looking in that direction, then told White Dog to wait and walked into the yard next door and knocked on the door. An older woman answered. He greeted her and told her that he was looking for the madam. She did not appear to be a friendly person. Only with reluctance would she tell him that madam had gone to the prison farm for vegetables. “I will wait outside on the road,” he told her.
He thought of the moment when he’d raised the pickax over his head and it had fallen on the water pipe with a crunch. More and more, his life seemed to move like this, punctuated by events that changed things forever. He remembered in secondary school, the same school where he’d met Amen, an English teacher had said that when you write, you should be sparing of exclamation points. This was good advice, not only for writing but for life itself. It was best to let commas and periods carry you. If he and Kopano had not become friends, if he had not been persuaded to go to that first meeting of the South African Students Organization, if he and Kopano had not traveled together on that particular day …
Her truck was coming up the road. He stood in the road and waved as she drove toward him.
“Where on earth have you been?” she asked, leaning out the window. “I’m glad to see you.”
“And you, madam. I am truly sorry to have caused you trouble.”
“Where have you been?” she asked again.
“I thought the police would deport me.”
“That’s why you left?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It never occurred to me. You weren’t in danger of deportation.”
“You don’t know this, mma.” It came out sounding harsher than he’d meant it. “What I mean is that it is different for me than for you.”
He saw something flicker over