White Dog Fell From the Sky (20 page)

“
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 the outside but open on
the inside.

When they were out under the open sky, he
felt Ontibile’s body relax into his. She could not understand anything. She
thought he was taking her to Kagiso. He wished with all his heart that his breasts could
pour out milk for her. He didn’t know what to do, where he would go. His legs took
him to the post office to mail the letters he had written, and then toward Naledi.
Ontibile seemed to sense that she was headed toward home. Her throat made a little
humming sound, and by and by her head fell onto his shoulder, and she slept as they
walked. He took her on a route around the she-been so the loud music wouldn’t wake
her. By then, the sun was already hot. He put his hand over the top of her head to give
her shade, but still, little beads of sweat formed along her hairline and on her upper
lip, and her springy hair felt moist in the palm of his hand.

A policeman was standing guard outside
Amen’s house, and a few people were watching to see what would happen. Nothing was
happening. It felt like a cursed place. He asked an old woman staring at the house if
she knew Ditsego, a friend of Kagiso’s who had a baby about the same age as
Ontibile. The woman shook her head and moved away from him. He was sure that Ditsego
lived not too far distant. From what he remembered Kagiso saying, she had known her
friend before coming to Naledi.

He went next door. “No,
rra,
” the woman there said, “I do not know Ditsego, but you could
ask Grace Moatihaping who lives just there.” She pointed to a shack made of tin.
“She knows everyone.”

Grace was not home, and he sat on her stoop
to wait. Ontibile was still sleeping and growing heavier in his arms. He looked into her
face, so peaceful in her dreaming. Grace did not come. Ontibile woke and was hungry. He
fed her the biscuits the nurse had given him and gave her the bottle of milk to suck. He
asked other people whether they knew Ditsego, and he asked them when Grace would be
coming. By then it was afternoon. No one knew anything, or perhaps because of the
shooting, they were afraid of him, a stranger.

At the end of the afternoon, Grace returned.
She was a large woman who smiled easily. Her complexion was ash colored like the side of
a cooking pot, and her teeth were very white. He told her the story, all of it. She had
known Kagiso. She reached for Ontibile and took her onto her lap.

“You know Ditsego?”

“I will take you there,” she
said. But first she offered him tea and bread, which he refused. They set off toward
Ditsego’s house as the sun was setting. Dust from the day’s labors had risen
all over Gaborone and caused the sun to glow huge and orange. And then the day’s
furnace was gone in a blur, and the sky turned a fury of red. Ditsego’s house was
not far distant from Grace’s but it was difficult to get there, the paths twisting
this way and that. They found her sitting outside with her baby, who was nursing
drowsily. The baby’s mouth moved a little, and then it was still for some time
until she remembered the breast and sucked once or twice more.

Ditsego listened and wept, her tears falling
into her baby’s hair. She rose, took the baby inside, and came out without her.
When she lifted Ontibile from Isaac’s arms, it was as though she’d been born
for that moment. She sat back down on the stoop and offered her breast, and Ontibile
took it and sucked eagerly.

It became dark before she took Ontibile
inside and laid her down on the mat beside the other baby. As the half moon rose with
its ragged edge, Isaac talked with Grace and Ditsego about what to do. Yes,
Ditsego knew Kagiso’s family in Mochudi. She did not know
whether they yet knew about their daughter’s death. But she said she would take
Ontibile there by bus tomorrow or the next day. Isaac offered to go with her, but she
said her husband would be returning from Francistown on the morning train and he would
come.

She said she would offer to the family to
nurse Ontibile until she was not needing the breast any longer, and then Ontibile could
live with her granny in Mochudi. Or if living with her granny was not possible, Ditsego
would raise her as her own child.

“Go,” she told Isaac.
“Don’t worry.” Isaac went inside and watched Ontibile sleeping. He
went down on his hands and knees and kissed her cheek and whispered, “
Sala
sentle, ngwanyana.
” Stay well, little one.

He walked a little way with Grace and asked
her the way back to Amen’s house; he was turned around and had no idea where he
was. He felt sick from hunger, and his head swam with sorrow. When at last he knew where
he was, he thanked Grace, and they parted ways.

Later, he understood that he should have
returned to the Old Village. He might have considered that the house would not be
guarded forever. In a week or two weeks, he could have walked in. Because what was there
to guard? No one would want anything there: the blood-stained sleeping mats, the few
clothes, the cooking pots filled with ghosts. But he imagined the bulldozers coming. The
more his head swam, the less he could forget the money that was sitting under the chunk
of concrete in the floor of that house.

He found his way to the main path and
doubled back. His thought was to wait until the guard left, or at least to wait until he
went to sleep. He had never met any all-night guard who did not sleep. While he slept,
he would slip into the house, take the money, and be on his way.

He stood at a distance and watched. The
guard was sitting in such a way that Isaac could see only one side of his face. He was a
large, serious man, about Isaac’s age, with clear skin and bushy eyebrows. From
the way he held his chin, from the way his eyes moved, Isaac thought he was not a mild
man. And he thought further that he would have no chance if it came to a physical
contest between them.

While he waited, he looked at the place
where he’d been standing when he first met Kagiso, the spot where he’d sat
on the front stoop with White Dog. He thought Kagiso’s breasts would have been
plump with milk when she died. This made him so sad he could hardly see or hear or
think.

He walked away so he wouldn’t arouse
suspicion and then returned when the darkness was deeper. All the time, his legs would
hardly move because of the hunger in them. Although he had not gone to the she-been, he
was drunk on an idea that wouldn’t let him go. When Isaac came back, the guard
walked behind the house to relieve himself. When he returned to his post, he ate some
jerky that he took from his back pocket. Inside the neighboring lean-to shacks, oil
lamps were going out. People had become quiet, although the dogs had not. Isaac thought
of White Dog waiting for him in the dark. When he returned, she’d be in the same
place where he’d left her.

He walked away and came back. He sat on his
haunches just out of sight and waited several hours more. When the guard finally slept,
it was fortunate that he did not go to sleep across the threshold. He slept a little to
one side. So when Isaac saw that he was snoring soundly, he
came from
his hiding place and made his way to the door. He knew the place well even in the dark,
but it was one thing to know a place, and it was another to feel, crawling on your skin,
the evil that lingered there.

As fear crept up the back of his neck, he
thought, if you run from things that frighten you, you will never do anything. And very
quietly, with his heart pounding into his eye sockets, he crossed the threshold into the
house. He felt his way to the room where he had put the money, went down on his knees,
and lifted the chunk of concrete. All the time, the hair on the back of his neck was
shouting,
Run!
But the money was still there, and when his fingers closed
around it, he felt triumphant. What he did not realize was that someone had moved the
only chair, a metal chair, to a different place. Where it had been against a wall it was
now in the middle of the room. In his haste to leave, he ran into it, and it scraped
across the floor with a loud noise. Before he could get out the door into the night, the
guard was blocking his way.

The light of a torch flew into his face.
“
O mang?!
” the guard shouted loudly.

Isaac gave him his name.

“
O tswa kae?
” He
sounded almost as frightened as Isaac.

It didn’t seem wise to say where he
came from, and he remained silent.

“
O tswa kae?
” the guard
repeated, louder still, and Isaac told him he was from the Old Village.

“What is in your hand?”

He showed him the money.

“Where did you get it?”

“There,” Isaac said,
pointing.

He grabbed Isaac’s wrist and said,
“Show me.” He had not put the concrete back for fear of making noise, and it
was clear, once they were inside the room, where he had found it. “You knew it was
here.”

“Yes.”

“Give me the money.” Isaac put
it in his hand. “You are with the ANC.”

“No. I am not with them.”

“Then how did you know the money was
here?”

“I lived in this place.”

“Then you are with the ANC.”

“No,
rra,
I am not with
them.”

“Your speech is South African. You are
not from Botswana.”

“No,
rra,
I am not from here.
May I explain to you?”

“You may explain to my superior. We
will wait here until morning when I will be relieved, and then I will take you to the
station. Do not try to escape. Do you understand?”

“Yes,
rra,
I do understand.
But please let me tell you. I was living here …”

“
Rola ditlhako.
”

“My shoes?”

“Take them off.”

“But they are my brother’s
shoes.” He was crazy with hunger and fear, or he would not have said such a
thing.

“I don’t care if they are your
grandmother’s shoes. Take them off.” He had the fiery zeal of a young man
doing his first work.

Isaac took them off, and the guard closed
the door of the house, with himself and Nthusi’s shoes on the outside and Isaac on
the inside. It was suddenly very quiet. Isaac felt the man’s presence just outside
the door, alert. Sitting on the floor in the darkness, terror entered his bones and
traveled the river of his blood and beat in his head. He imagined his friends waking to
the explosion of guns. He wished to be out of that place, but he also wished that dawn
would never come. He was like a monkey cornered by a lion. He had always been told how
clever he was. He had begun to believe that his life was charmed. But he thought,
sitting on the concrete floor in utter darkness, that he had been stupider than
stupid.

After the sun rose, he heard voices speaking
outside, and then the door opened. There was the young policeman and an older policeman
who’d come to relieve the young one. They looked him up and down. The older
man’s eyes were puffy and full of sleep. His skin was slack, and his tummy
large.

“What is your name?” he
asked.

Isaac told him.

“You are South African?”

“
Ee, rra
.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I am a refugee.”

“You are with the ANC?”

“No,
rra,
I am
not.”

“Where are you working?”

“I am a gardener in the Old
Village.”

“What were you doing in this
house?”

“I was getting some money I had saved.
I was living here with an old school chum and his family.”