But the shouting early that morning: we knew what it must be. Police, raiding backyards, with their own dogs, in search of people without passes, in the rooms. This happened all the time, we knew it. The sound of it was savage. Dogs, dogs snarling. We’d hear a woman shrieking. They were sounds we knew, in a distant way: the sound of our nights, as we slept in our own bedrooms, in peace. We knew no one would look for us — no police, no dogs, would come for us.

On that morning, in the small hours, we went back to sleep. Perhaps I, myself, did not go straight back to sleep. Perhaps, that is true, I did not.

But first thing, a few short hours later, at eight o’clock, Emily came to my bedroom, my bedroom door. I was still dressing. Ma’am, they took Albert, they took Albert last night. She’d already told Howard, when she served him breakfast at seven, before he left for work.

Albert had no pass to be spending a night in Johannesburg, in the suburbs where we were. Albert, Emily’s husband, father of her children. Albert, a tall, gentle man who spoke softly and wore an old-fashioned man’s hat with a brim, like my father did.

And that evening, when Howard was home from work, he took Emily in his car and drove to the police station, to bail Albert out of jail. How much did it cost Howard? I have no idea, perhaps very little, perhaps thirty rand — where do I get a number like that? It’s lodged in my mind as a memory, a memory of what the bail was. I don’t know. Albert was released. He took the bus back to Alexandra township, Howard told me how he dropped him at the stop on Corlett Drive, Albert carrying a small package of his things, his belongings. He wore his hat, as always. Perhaps in his package was some food from Emily, that Emily had taken from our kitchen. I don’t know. I remember Howard’s face, as he told me.

But this — this was a common occurrence, as I say. It happened all the time. The violence and savagery happened daily, but on our periphery. I mean we, white people: on our periphery.

Emily and Howard drove home from the police station, from the bus stop, Emily sitting in the front — as though they were friends, ordinary friends. Oh, if only to be friends. How do I know Emily sat in the front? I know because that’s how it was, how it was with Howard. That, also, is how it was.

AND THERE WAS TINY. Tiny was younger than Emily. She didn’t talk much, but she told me that she had two children, they lived in Alexandra too. I think she and Emily helped each other with their families in Alexandra. Taking things for each other, delivering things, passing messages along, on their days off. Now, or here, you would call that a sisterhood, a community, a support system, something like that. I was only vaguely aware of it, I’d hear something between them said in English, or they would tell me.