But my childhood was filled with those books, I’d be reading, reading, I’d lie on a blanket outside. I had a wool blanket, I remember its roughness. I’d drag it out onto the grass, with my book.

Or I’d have with me a sketch pad and pencil.

When I was small I was always scribbling with one of those old yellow pencils I carried around. I’d scribble on any scrap of paper, or discarded label, or the newspaper. And then I’d keep the scraps in the pockets of a cotton dress I was wearing, or in a drawer in my room. I was trying to write something; or draw something. My mother bought me a sketch pad finally, as the torn-up pieces of paper all over the house annoyed her. The sketch pad wasn’t large, and it became my habit to hide it: under my bed, or in a drawer, or under a chair in the living room. If I carried it around I’d hold it close to me, wrapped in a cardigan. Why did I do that? I always did that. I felt the wish to draw as a subversive thing, and secret.

AS I LAY on the grass, there’d be no sound, a buzz of cicadas, that’s all. The hot sun. A cotton dress. My bare feet.

One of my dresses was white with tiny blue flowers. Cornflowers. I’d never seen real cornflowers, they didn’t grow naturally in South Africa.

My books, too, were filled with things I’d never seen. Snow. White Christmases. English muffins. Boarding schools. Green, green fields, and mist. I had an idea those things were in the real world, and where we were was a lesser, less important, less impressive world. It took me years to understand and recognize that this outpost of veld was beautiful, too.

I’d have a snack with me on the blanket: a peach, or an apple.

And sometimes as I lay there through the long afternoons my mother would come out, she had a rose garden. She’d had a Black man from my father’s shop come to dig it out for her once. Over here, over here, she’d said to him. Careful, careful now! Not too much, just this size is fine. Careful, boy! Yes ma’am, yes ma’am, he said, and he pushed his spade into the earth, and stood, leaning on it, for a moment. And then he’d carried on. I remember his spade, his tattered shirt, his thin legs. The earth wasn’t dark and rich, it was pale and hard and cracked, it must have been a challenge to make a rose garden there.

My mother and the Black man spent an afternoon creating a space for the roses. The Black man said nothing, just yes ma’am, yes ma’am, once every while, as she stood there, on the grass in her low heels, her stockings, her small-patterned dress, there were her pale hands.

Soon enough my mother became irritated, ah, let’s leave it now, just leave it. Leave the spade, just leave it, she said. Yes ma’am, he said.