White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,60

the leg of the goat. He could imagine the smell of the meat coming from the three-legged pot, see Kagiso’s legs straight as she bent from the waist, stirring the stew. He could not believe she was gone.

The sadness told his belly not to eat, that it would only make him sick. He drank some water, left the pot of mabele on the table for when he returned home, picked up the two letters to mail, changed to a clean shirt, and went outdoors. He set a bowl of water on the ground for White Dog and told her to stay. She tried to follow him, and three times he had to chase her home.

He went straight to Princess Marina Hospital. He thought if he went early, perhaps he could listen at the windows to know where the babies were. The road was still fairly empty and the light hazy, as though the day was half asleep. When he reached the grounds of the hospital, he walked around the building. At first, all was quiet. He waited. And finally, at the far corner, he heard the sound of crying. It was not Ontibile’s voice, but the cries of the child told him where she would be if she was still alive.

Food, he saw, was delivered through a door to the kitchen, and instead of walking in the front, past that Sister who could smell a lie, he decided to walk through the backdoor. If you look as though you know who you are and why you are there, with complete confidence, people usually do not ask you questions. He remembered what his grandfather had told him: hold your head high and expose your throat and chest to danger, and people will think you are not afraid. If you hang your head low like an old donkey, people will say, “Hey, what are you doing here? Get out!” He lifted his head and put his chest out, not puffed out like a silly guinea fowl in mating season, but just enough, and entered.

“Dumela, rra,” he said to a man stirring a large pot on a stove. “O kae?”

“Ke teng.” I am well.

“Sister is waiting for me.”

“Ee hee.” Ah, yes.

He passed out of the kitchen into the hall, and from there, he quickly turned in the direction from where he’d heard the child’s cry. There was no one in the hall outside the kitchen, but directly he came to a place where mothers were crouched in the hall with special food for their little ones. Worry lined their faces. He greeted them and said quietly that he was visiting his niece. A young nurse came to him inside the room and still with his head high, he greeted her and said, “Sister at the front desk said that I could find my niece here, Ontibile Thebe.”

“She is over there, sir.”

“How is she doing?”

“You are … ?”

“Ee, mma, I am her uncle. I have traveled here from Mochudi.” Meanwhile he was searching searching for her, and then he saw her sitting on a little cot in the corner. She was quite still, but her eyes were watching.

“She is ready to be released but we have no family member.”

Amen had not been here. Either he was dead, or alive in Angola, or staying somewhere nearby, knowing that he would be picked up if he came for his daughter. “I’m here to take her to her grandmother. I will be returning to Mochudi this evening.”

“Ee hee,” said the nurse. She was fresh-faced, and young enough not to know the rules. Ontibile put out her hands to him. He picked her up and held her close, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her cheek against his ear.

“She was not wounded,” said the nurse. “She was found under her mother. The police brought her here because they didn’t know where else to take her. She has been asking for her mother. I am very sorry for your loss.”

His eyes filled.

“Where did you say her granny is?”

“Ee, mma. She is in Mochudi.” He was lying and lying. He knew nothing about the granny except that Kagiso went to see her now and then.

The nurse brought a discharge paper, and he signed it, using a name that he thought up while he was writing. The nurse gathered up Ontibile’s blanket and gave it to him along with a bottle of milk and some biscuits, and he walked out the side door, which was locked from