AFTER DINNER I’d call my mother. I’d hear her voice, faint across the line. I’d picture the thin black telephone wire that connected us, from Johannesburg where I was, across and between the pale yellow mine dumps, through Vereeniging, Vanderbijlpark, into the Orange Free State, its brown plains and the brown Vaal River snaking, to her, to her black telephone in the dim hallway, her wooden floor. You wouldn’t know those black telephones, that’s what phones used to look like — dinosaurs — you see them in antique shops now. I pictured my mother’s small hands, pale, and her wedding ring, almost as old as her.

I have that ring, here in New York, but I don’t wear it. I have an idea my mother would’ve liked me to wear it, but I cannot wear someone else’s ring. This is true, too.

We’d make arrangements on the phone for her and my father’s next visit. They’d bring cling peaches, she said, they’re just ripening now. I pictured the fruit trees behind her house, many of them, they stood next to the circle washing line, idle in the sun, and near the tall swing with creaking ropes, where I had swung, swung, as a girl, through the years. There were the rocks and stones nearby with cacti planted, and the lizards which lay and baked, and which I’d see startle and disappear, in a moment. A rustle, only.

The peaches will be lovely, I’d say, thank you. I imagined the cardboard crate loaded into the back of their Peugeot, Klaas the driver would have done that, and the crate arriving in our driveway, unloaded then by Josias. A mound of dusky orange fruits, so many. Holding within them the Free State sun, that warm and warming sun. Their round perfection: a Cézanne.

IN 1972 the political situation continued in a terrible stasis. We were deeply aware of our peace, and what it concealed and cost. Nelson Mandela was in prison — it was already ten years — we dared not say his name where we could be heard. We fretted about the disgrace of millions of Black people, disenfranchised, and underfoot.

Then we lived our days on, as before.

THERE WERE THE three domestic workers in our yard. We called them servants. Howard paid them, as well as he could, I assume. Do I know how much he paid them? I do not. I had nothing to do with money. I also had no interest in money. I bought the maids their uniforms, Emily gained weight every year and needed a new one, almost every year. She and I laughed about that, it was a minor inconvenience to me. Once she said, okay ma’am, I will just wear the smaller one, it’s just tight, doesn’t matter. I said, no, no Emily, I’ll buy a new one. And I did. Of course. Why did she gain weight? She liked food I suppose. She was susceptible. She ate a lot of mieliemeel, that’s what I thought. I bought the three of them their own meat at the butcher, for their stews, it was stewing beef. Stephen loved those stews, he would eat a plate himself at night if Howard and I were out, while he sat with them in the kitchen. How do I know that? Emily told me, she laughed when she told me, and I laughed too. We laughed a lot about small things like that. The truth of it is I loved Emily: her solidity of character; her sense of humour. Her intelligence.