White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,38
save himself. He imagined the hope in Nthusi’s heart now dead, working in sneakers too big for his feet, laboring until his body broke.
When he walked home that night, he could hardly drag his body up the road. He knew what he would find at Amen’s house. Amen was away training new recruits, and there was not enough money for food because Kagiso’s mother was sick, and she had to send all her money to Mochudi for medicine. For a week, the meal at the end of the day had been mealie meal, the same food that started the day.
When he arrived, Ontibile was crying for milk. Kagiso was cooking over the fire and paying no attention to the baby, but she looked happy. Her brother had come to Gaborone from Mochudi and brought with him a bag of dried beans and the leg of a goat. Her brother had returned home, and the smell of meat was coming from the three-legged pot.
Ontibile put her arms around Isaac’s neck, and he picked her up. She made little singing noises as he rubbed her back, and then her head sank onto his shoulder. Later, after they’d eaten the meat and beans, he watched Ontibile lying on her back, asleep, peaceful, her arms outstretched as though no harm would ever come to her. Ontibile. God is watching over me. This was a good name. If he ever had a little girl, he would call her by this name.
He went outside where the still air held the heat of the day. He walked to the water pump and brought water back in a tin and washed his face and body behind the house. Only the poor die from malaria. If his mother had not been poor, his sister would be alive. He said nothing to Kagiso. Let her enjoy her full belly and be happy for once. White Dog would not leave his side. She knew his grief, this dog who was more than a dog, this dog who had fallen from the sky.
Kagiso was asleep next to their baby when Amen returned home.
In a dream, her brother had been holding two goats, lashed together with a rope around their necks. The sky turned black and the birds flew for cover and the rains pelted down. She and her brother tried to shelter under a tree, but the rain poured from the branches, down their necks, into their shoes.
Amen climbed onto the mat beside his wife, and for a moment she didn’t know what was dream and what was husband, and then her arms found their way around his neck, and she pulled him to her. She smelled the night on him and his own smell she’d recognize anywhere, even if she couldn’t feel the fringe of beard pressed against her cheek and feel with her tongue his one front tooth standing behind his sweet-tasting lips. She pulled his head to her breast like a child and felt his breath go out all at once, in a great torrent of relief as though he was now free to breathe the air that surrounded both of them, as though the work he needed to do was done forever. Their child stirred on the other side of her and moved into the curve of her back.
15
Isaac had heard Amen come home in the night, but he didn’t wish to see him. Before the sun rose, he left for the Old Village. On his way to work, he stopped to see the old man who’d made the sunken garden. He told him he’d dug a similar one but was now filling it in. When the old man heard the story, loud laughter poured out of him. He bent over double to catch his breath. And then he laughed again, barking and coughing.
The old man dug up a tomato plant and wrapped it in a plastic bag. His hands were old, turned on themselves sideways, as though they were asking a question.
As he left the yard, Isaac heard the old man’s laughter again. He turned to wave, and the old man was gesturing for him to come back. “I have something for you,” he said. He walked Isaac to the shade of a tree on the opposite side of the garden. Inside a cage were two young cats. “Do you want them? The master says I must find a home for them or else I must drown them.”