There were the visits to Mrs. Hanekom’s shop: to Mrs. Hanekom, who made those dresses. She made most of my dresses, and had taught my mother to make other, simpler ones for me too.

Mrs. Hanekom’s shop was small and crammed with hats, many hats, the hats women wore to church, in Villiers.

I’d never set foot in a church.

THERE WAS A SMALL SYNAGOGUE in a town near Villiers. We went on the holidays, although my father went more often, sometimes on Saturday mornings. The synagogue was in a low building, its small Star of David centred on the roof above the front door. Inside, there were stained glass windows, like jewels, deep blues and reds and gold, which glowed deeply when the sun shone through them. There were gilt-and-velvet canopies, and crimson velvet cloths, and Hebrew lettering, and men in their blue-and-white shawls, praying, in a low murmur of that old language.

The women sat upstairs, I’d sit next to my mother, wearing a dress she or Mrs. Hanekom had made, sometimes with a small, white jacket that I remember. My mother would glance down at me approvingly, as I sat holding the dark blue prayer book, its Hebrew, black script, pages and pages of it, inside. The other women and girls whispered, like birds, I felt we were observers only, as we looked down on the men below, the tops of their heads, their blue-and-white prayer shawls, their murmurings.

When you stepped out of the small, jewelled interior of that synagogue, you were standing on a wide grey street, under a pale blue sky, with nothing, and no one there. A Black man loitering on a corner, that’s all.

A FEW WEEKS AGO I had occasion to be in a synagogue in New York, and as I sat holding a dark blue prayer book, closed, I deciphered the Hebrew lettering on the glowing windows at the front: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Asher, Naphtali, Gad. Judah. The twelve tribes. Their brother, you know, is Joseph.

I read, the Hebrew letters were within me, I could read them, still. My father had taught me to read Hebrew, and I remembered, suddenly, his face, his glasses, that glinted as he turned, turned the pages of the book, and had me repeat, repeat, the words, the letters, until I knew them.

THE HATS IN Mrs. Hanekom’s shop came in every shape, and in every colour. There were pastels, some adorned with nets and others with glossy bows. The hats festooned that space like flowers. Mrs. Hanekom also had shelves of fabric, shelves and shelves, she had to stand on a ladder to reach them.

Mrs. Hanekom, always with her tape measure. And I, a slight, pale figure, standing at the mirror at the back of the shop.

A customer, an Afrikaans woman in dress and heels, coming in, the bell above the door clanging as it opened, interrupting us. And I’d have to stand at the mirror, waiting for Mrs. Hanekom to be done with the customer, dankie mevrou, baie goed mevrou, okay, totsiens, totsiens mevrou. And my mother then too, a few words in Afrikaans with the customer, whom she knew: Lekker om jou te sien, groete aan die familie, Anneline.