White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse Read Free Book Online Page B

bothered.
“I’ll ask Itumeleng to bring you meat at noon when we have it. Have you met
her?”
    “No, madam.”
    “She’s here every day. If you
have questions when I’m at work, you can ask her. Give this bed some curves and
then please put water on the trees in the back. They’re new, and need watering
every day.”
    “Yes, madam.”
    “Please don’t call me that. When
you call me madam, I feel like I’m a hundred years old.”
    He smiled and then grew serious. “What
must I call you?”
    “Call me Alice.”
    “Madam, I cannot.”
    “Well, then.” She shrugged
helplessly. “Don’t call me anything.”

5
    When she’d first come here, Alice
found that there were no basements in Botswana. Life was lived in the god-eye of light
so bright, it felt as though you could hold your hand up to the sun and look through it
to bone. How huge the sky was, broken by nothing. Birds flew into it and disappeared,
like stones in water.
    Lying in bed in the heat next to her
sleeping husband, she wondered whether this was what had happened to the child
she’d hoped to conceive. Would a baby be daunted to come into this world of
interminable blue sky, heat that scoured your brains clean? The sky had been blue for
months, unbroken by the smallest cloud. Some days she felt her throat wanting to scream,
to break the flatness of that blue.
    Within the past several weeks, she’d
wondered whether the emptiness of her womb had to do with not loving Lawrence deeply
enough. She blamed herself, and then she blamed Lawrence. She’d not expected to
have to work so hard at love; it had become a kind of hard labor. The word that came to
her when she thought of her husband was “hidden.” She couldn’t tell
whether his emotional vagueness was something peculiar to him with her, or whether
he’d be this way with anyone.
    They’d been in Botswana a year and a
half now, brought here from the States because of Lawrence’s job. Alice had begun
looking for work immediately and found a position with the Ministry of Local Government
and Lands, working on land-use policy connected to the San people. She knew she was damn
lucky; it would have taken her ten years to be qualified for a similar job back home.
But she didn’t feellucky. She felt like crying. And she blamed
herself for that too. Look around you, she told herself. So you never have a baby. Make
a different life.
    Lawrence stirred next to her. Because it was
summer, they began work every day at seven and finished at five, with a big chunk out of
the middle for napping. She touched him on the shoulder and then shook him gently.
“It’s time.”
    “You don’t need to tell
me.”
    “I thought you were asleep.”
    “I wasn’t.”
    “Why are you grumpy?”
    “Who said I
was
?”
    They got out of opposite sides of the bed,
dressed, and drove back to work together in her truck. His Toyota was being repaired.
Before she let him out at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, he said he
needed to work late that night, not to wait for him. “How will you get
home?”
    “I’ll find a ride.”
    “And if you don’t?”
    “I’ll walk.”
    “You could call me.”
    “Alice, stop.”
    “What?”
    “Just don’t.”

6
    It took Isaac three quarters of an hour to
walk to the Old Village, White Dog at his heels. She who must not be called madam was
outdoors when he arrived. “I need to go,” she said. “I’m late
for work. Please water the trees, and make a plan for the garden. As you can see,
it’s not had much attention. Could you make a garden plan, something different
from the usual? Do you understand?”
    “Ee, mma.”
Why did
white people always have to ask,
Do you understand?
    “Walk around the village,” she
said. “Or take the bicycle at the back of the house. Look at other gardens, and
tell me what you think would work well. We’ll pay you thirty rand a month. And my
husband doesn’t like water to be wasted. He’s traveling for the next