White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse

ten
days.”
    And then she was off, backing her truck down
the driveway. Suddenly she stopped and rolled down the window. “Is this your dog
out here?”
    “Yes,
mma.
”
    “Is it a him or a her?”
    “A her, madam.”
    “They should be all right then. I
don’t mind her as long as she doesn’t fight with Daphne. I think things will
work out fine. I’m glad you came back.”
    Why
wouldn’t
he come back? He
waved until she was out of sight.
    This madam was the tallest white woman
he’d ever seen. She had big bones, like a man’s bones, and although her face
was young, her hair was already becoming gray. She pulled it back from her face witha clip, but it fell back into her eyes. It was halfway between African
and European hair, but an African woman would not have it falling everywhere. Her eyes
were gray like her hair, and large, with a little blue in them. Her nose was not quite
straight, as though it had at one time been broken. In the middle of her chin was a tiny
valley. She was not an unpleasing looking person, but he didn’t really trust her.
Why didn’t she tell him what she wanted? She was the one paying him. Something
different from the usual? He didn’t know what the usual looked like. He felt for a
moment that he had not been born to be someone’s gardener, and then he stopped and
told himself that this thought was nothing more than arrogance. He was no better than
the next man, and you can find happiness in any kind of work. But the thought returned,
and with it the dream in which his father had labored in a vast pit. The waters rose and
still his father stood as though he’d been told to stand still until he died.
Would he too stand still until he died? For as long as he could remember, he’d
felt that you were given one small, precious life, not to be squandered.
    “
Tla kwano.
” Come.
White Dog followed him into the yard, looking for the Alsatian, her hackles raised like
a small brush fire. It wasn’t long before Daphne discovered her cowering beside
the house. She and Daphne circled and sniffed each other under the tail, and White Dog
flopped down with her paws in the air, her mouth turned up in what looked like a smile.
Isaac turned his back and disappeared. Leave them alone and let them work things out in
their dog way.
    He weeded and watered the new citrus trees,
and then he went to the door of the house and called out for Itumeleng. She poked her
head out. At first her face looked almost innocent, but look a little longer, and you
saw something sassy in her eyes. A little girl clung to her skirts.
    “I’m going out,” he said.
“Madam has asked me to look at some other gardens and come up with a
plan.”
    “I’m not your wife,” she
said. “You don’t need to tell me where you’re going.”
    He laughed. “You wouldn’t like
me for a husband?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “I have one
child already. What would I dowith another?” She turned to go
back inside and stopped. “So she hired you?”
    “
Ee, mma.
”
    “Even though you know nothing about
gardens?”
    “How do you know?”
    “The way you are digging yesterday.
Like the spade is your master.” She laughed. “And your hands are
soft.”
    “Is this your child?” The little
girl had her mother’s dark, snapping eyes.
    “What? You think it’s
madam’s? Where are you from?”
    “South Africa.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Working.”
    “Most people find work there, not
here.” She thought she knew why he was here, he could see it in her eyes.
“Are you with the ANC?”
    “
Nnyaa, mma.
”
    “So … if you’re going,
you better go,” she said.
    She reminded him of one of his aunties on
his father’s side, a saucy tongue in her head, hard to love but easy to like from
a distance. He called White Dog out to the road. A neighbor dog slavered and barked and
threw himself at a chain link fence. White Dog followed close behind. They hadn’t
reached the main road before Isaac remembered that she