Why that small deception? I don’t know why. Perhaps I’m ashamed to be growing old.

IT WAS SOON the Christmas holidays, December of 1972. Joseph had been with us eleven months.

Josias asked for the month off to travel to his family in the Transkei. A month, I remember saying. What will happen with the pool, Josias? Josias opened his arms in a gesture of helplessness. My mother’s sick, ma’am, he said. My mother’s sick. Alright, alright, Josias. I figured out a time for him to go. December 1st? And you come back January 2nd, yes?

I had an idea he wouldn’t come back, that he would vanish, as Tiny had. Perhaps he didn’t like his job here? Perhaps he’d had enough of his small, concrete room, his narrow bed, the dogs, their fly-strewn bowls, Emily, the laundry line. Me. The pool and its filter; the long, slow afternoons with the pool net. His supper at night with Emily, under the green light at the back of the kitchen. And money sent home every month, to the Transkei. But then it occurred to me: how does he send it home? Is that where he goes on Thursdays, his day off, to the post office on Corlett Drive, with an envelope of money? Money from Howard. Not much money.

How had I not wondered this before?

I had seen the post office as I drove along Corlett Drive, its entrance for Blacks with its sign: ‘NIE-BLANKES,’ and a long line, a line of ragged nannies, of gardeners, standing in the sun, or under the awning. Nie-blankes: ‘non-white.’ A definition by negative: saying what something is by saying what it is not. How clear, how clear it is to me now. Here.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, whose exhibition Helena saw in New York: a study of identity defined by a negative. A study of identity defined by someone else. But Marshall’s work is a rebuke, the strongest possible rebuke, of Black identity as defined by someone else. His work claims Black identity back for himself. Such a triumph; such a radical triumph.

I READ, I read a lot here. I don’t paint any more, I gave up my studio a few years ago.

I had that studio for a long time. It was a high-ceilinged space, on the fourth floor. It had an old elevator with brass doors, the kind I know so well. I didn’t use it. I’d walk up the stairs, old stairs, stained tile floors, a yellowed wall. But I was young, then.

I read a lot of non-fiction now, not only the fiction that was my lifelong habit. Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s an obligation, an obligation I feel to read. An atonement.

JOSIAS WENT TO SEE his mother in the Transkei. He left on December 1st, a boiling hot day, he came into the kitchen and had Emily call me, he wanted to tell me he was leaving, leaving now. I hope you’re coming back, Josias, I said. I was only half joking. Yes ma’am, I’m coming back. Howard had given him his pay in advance, he was going to take the train from central Johannesburg. First he had to take the bus to get to the city. Along Corlett Drive, I saw that bus stop every day: crowded, a long line of people, waiting.