And I read:

Joseph Hyman Weiss, anti-apartheid activist and lawyer, member of the ANC and its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and colleague of Nelson Mandela, died in Pretoria Central Prison in South Africa on September 17, after a short illness. He was forty-three years old. He had been in prison since December 1973, convicted of charges under South Africa’s Sabotage and Terrorism Acts. Full obituary to follow.

And I held Howard, he held me, we cried and cried, and were inconsolable there, on our bed, my rumpled sheets, in the dimness of our bedroom, for a long time.

I WAS OUT WALKING TODAY, and as I turned the corner onto my street, I caught a reflection in a glass window.

I saw there an old woman, slight, in a dark coat. Her hair was smooth against her head, and snow-white. And then there were the dark hollows of her eyes. I stopped, and looked. You could mistake her for someone else, for some other old woman.

But it was me. It was, unmistakably, me. Reflected in the glass. It is me. Everything that happened, everything I did, everything I’ve told you, is me. All of it.

And I am old, now.

I HAD STARTED AGAIN on my large painting only when I saw freedom was actually coming, it was going to come, to South Africa. That was around 1990. I didn’t plan it that way, but I felt a freedom within myself, a loosening, slowly, so slowly.

I started to work on my painting, and then . . . I finished my painting. That’s the story, really. That’s all it is. And it’s only a painting after all, it’s not a life.

It’s not a human being’s life.

On the other hand, perhaps I made, in my painting, something good, that is also incorruptible. Because outside of a painting, anything is corruptible. You know that.

AND PERHAPS you’ve wondered about something else?

In my bedroom, next to the dresser where only I see it, is a painting. It’s the painting I gave Joseph for his room. I rescued it from there, long ago.

The painting . . . is the Vaal River. Nobody knows it’s the Vaal River, because it’s an abstract. But I know it’s the Vaal River. And it’s Joseph’s painting.

I look at it every day.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Deborah Willis, Kelsey Attard, and Freehand Books, for embracing this book, editing it, and bringing it into the world with such skill and care. I thank Antanas Sileika, Karen Smythe, Terry Grogan, Leslie Shimotakahara, and Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, for insight, help, and friendship; and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Chester, for time to write in the beautiful space. I thank the Ontario Arts Council. And I thank my husband and two children, for their belief in this book from the beginning.

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

This book was typeset in Prospectus, designed by Dave Bailey. It’s paired with Sweet Sans, designed by Mark van Bronkhorst.