The party was on a patio under the stars, and next to a swimming pool, glinting blackly under the lights. There were drinks, and canapés. Music. I remember my shoulders were bare, it was summer still. I would have been drinking a glass of white wine, perhaps a lime and soda, I imagine its coolness, its ice, the glass against my hand.

And then Jack Benator was in front of me. I smiled at him, briefly, hello. He nodded. Then he looked into my face searchingly, and said, how are you? I understood at once this to be a question about Joseph, a veiled question, and I felt a stab — now familiar — of alarm. Oh, fine, thanks, I said. Then I added, as he continued looking at me, everything’s just fine. No problem. He nodded. Then he turned away.

We had communicated about our secret. That’s how it was.

There were other things that went on at those parties, they interested me not at all. A particular man I remember came over to me, his wife was across the patio. Beautiful dress, dear, he said to me, looking down at my shoulders. I even remember my dress, which was plain white, its straps were green. It was a dress my mother had made, I’d worn it many times. Have I said how my mother made dresses? She would have made many more dresses for me, had I let her. The man said then, in a very low voice, so that only I could hear him, pretty girl, he said, pretty girl. I was filled with revulsion; I turned away. I went to find Howard. Please, please, can we go home, I said. We did, we did go home. I didn’t even tell Howard what happened, but Howard understood me, as I’ve said many times.

WE WENT, OCCASIONALLY, to spend a weekend with my parents in Villiers. We’d leave Josias at the white garage door, hauling it shut as he waved goodbye, then Howard would drive — out of the city, to the highway. We’d reach the yellow mine dumps then, that circled the city, perhaps that was the rare time I had a sense of our city, of what it was, what it actually was. A city born on a seam of gold, deep in the earth: a seam of gold. The mines would be there, I couldn’t see them from the car, but I imagined them: black and blacked with coal, with coal fires; iron and massive, and the men, the men, of course, the lines of Black men, many of them, who went down, in black elevators, into the earth. Without those men, the gold would never be mined. Anglo American and the gold shares; the Johannesburg stock exchange; none of them would exist without that manpower, those men.

We’d hear of mine accidents, sometimes they were reported in the papers. Mostly, they were not. I would notice, right away, if there was a small report, a small column in the bottom corner of the third page: Mine explosion on West Rand, Randfontein mine. Eighty-seven dead. Like that. I know, now, that there were many such accidents, many such deaths. The death of a young Black man, newly arrived in Johannesburg to work on the gold mine, one young Black man. I’d put it out of mind. I think about that often now. One young Black man. Dead. Another one. Of course you — you, an American — will know I am reminded of it every day, over here: dead Black men, every day, here. Not in gold mines, not in gold mines. But it comes to the same thing. It’s the same thing.