Summary
Patricia
It was on a wet night like this when one of the workers came to Patricia and told her the baby was on the way. Looksmart’s mother was in tremendous pain when she arrived, and she told her the pain was her friend, that she needed to embrace it. When the baby came out, she could tell there was nothing weak about it. The mother said to call him Looksmart.
Patricia would have left, but she sat by the bed, keeping watch over the mother and child. It was a good night to be born, with soft rain.
Patricia went to the hut every day to look at the child, who stared deep into her eyes. She did not tell Richard about the child. This was a place where Richard was not; everything in the opposite direction from Richard was life.
Richard
Richard knows it was always Patricia’s house, her father’s house, and he was there on good behavior—which is why he chose bad behavior. He is surprised to see now, though, that the driveway is gone. Where is his house? He thinks he must be dead. Yet the house is filled with guests and there is a massive bonfire.
When he looks at his old boots, he realizes he must be dead. He is tired and it is hard to see in the dark and the rain. He can feel his way back into the house. He wonders if he is just another guest; no one will know that his wife owned the place. He takes a drink from a trough of rainwater. He does not understand these guests and how they choose to live.
He makes it to his bedroom, but there is half a wall and the room is empty.
Beauty finishes reheating the biscuits, hoping they will be a distraction from what is going on in the room—two people feeling too much.
Looksmart is saying his name is Phiwayinkosi Ndlovu, and he is here to talk about Grace. Beauty serves the two their tea and biscuits and answers UMesis’s question that Richard is still missing but Bheki is looking for him.
She notices the pared apple with its skin unraveled, and wonders where the knife is.
Looksmart
Looksmart says that when he thinks of Richard, he thinks of a “soft, white moth: small, weak, without any blood” (109). He was once told he could be a poet, but even as a boy, he felt words were not to be trusted.
Patricia says she hopes he is not here to make a serious mistake. He replies that he can see everything clearly and he needs her to tell him everything she remembers about Grace.
It was late afternoon, and they heard a faraway cry from the direction of the dairy, then silence.
Looksmart asks if she wonders why Grace’s clothing was in tatters. She recollects the girl was half-dressed. Looksmart remembers Patricia told him to investigate the cry when they saw Grace, running. He thinks of how there are so many things Patricia does not know about him and Grace, but he is here to tell her as much as he can bear to say and as much as she can bear to hear.
He says he was expecting Grace that afternoon, and that she wanted to get married. Patricia is confused. It seems like for her, Grace was a complete other entity, something slightly less than human. To Looksmart, this undoes all acts of kindness Patricia ever performed.
He continues, saying he saw Grace screaming and Baas’s dog was racing after her. Grace was half-woman, half-dog with her cry. Farmworkers came running, mute with terror. She kept wailing.
Patricia asks if he is okay, and it is because he is howling now.
Patricia
Of course, Patricia has not forgotten that scene but she does not remember Looksmart being there. She can remember being irritated with the girl; Richard said Grace provoked it. She remembers the workers standing around, and how she was the one who got the dog off of Grace finally. She would have shot the dog but Richard said no, it was just doing its job. Later, though, they found the dog poisoned. That seemed to be the last of the affair.
Patricia knows Looksmart must be the one Grace wanted to marry, and asks him.
Bheki
He sees a man bursting onto the veranda, “gulping in the night air as if the whole house is on fire and a dead man’s shadow is managing to escape” (115).
Looksmart
He runs outside and vomits in the rosebushes. He was a fool for coming here, he thinks; no one changes. He sees Bheki looking at him. He remembers how long ago he realized how much Bheki loved the car, and he learned to despise Bheki as a puppet in Madam’s front seat.
They say hello, and Looksmart keeps it to English, as if to enforce the distance between them. He knows it is rude but Bheki does not seem to care.
After a bit of conversation, in which Looksmart says he wanted to see the old woman one more time, he offers Bheki a cigarette and asks if he has found the Baas yet. Bheki is scornful, and Looksmart decides they are not so different.
Bheki converts to isiZulu, talking about why he has agreed to go to Durban, something with his child. Looksmart can hear Patricia in his rationale. He suddenly tells Bheki that if he does not want to go to Durban he can stay here on the farm, and he will help his son.
Beauty
It is silent now, and Beauty hopes Looksmart has gone. He was always a boy with too many words in his head, too clever.
She ventures in to UMesis and asks if Looksmart is still there. Patricia asks her to see if the car is there, and, disappointed, Beauty replies it is.
Beauty can feel a question coming from Patricia, who finally asks it. She asks if Looksmart was in love with Grace. Beauty slowly says she does not know. For a moment it seems as if Patricia wishes she could see the world through Beauty’s eyes, but this is impossible. Patricia says Looksmart says he was here that day, and Beauty affirms. Patricia asks what she remembers of that day, but Beauty says not much. She knows she could say anything, lie, but she does not use words the way Looksmart does.
She explains she was there when they put Grace into the car, and Looksmart was the one who drove her to the hospital. It seems like the two of them are looking down a long tunnel to a day that they never wanted to think about again. Patricia states that Beauty was near the dairy and thus didn’t see anything, and Beauty does not correct her.
Finally Patricia thanks her and says they will not talk about this again.
Looksmart
Looksmart comes back to the house and notices the Madam in her wheelchair on the stoop. He is surprised and says she will catch her death out here. She shrugs and says she is used to bad weather. He sighs that he will never understand “her kind,” which irritates her. It seems she wants him to leave.
Beauty has brought them some soup, which Patricia says is not good but she never has the heart to tell Beauty. In Looksmart’s head, Beauty is always Togo, and Grace’s real name was Noma (like his own daughter).
Looksmart takes a spoonful of soup and admits it is disgusting. Neither smile, but it is the first thing they’ve agreed on.
Patricia
Looksmart eats all his soup and leans back against the wall, perched on a box. His tie is off, hanging out of his pocket.
Looksmart
Patricia comments that Beauty told her he took Grace to the hospital—it sounds like a big concession from her—but did not seem to know much about him and Grace. He admits no one knew, though it was sort of a lie, and he kept it from his mother because she would not approve of an educated boy like him marrying a girl like that.
Patricia finally says she still does not understand all this, and he assures her she will.
Looksmart mentions Richard but admits he was only trying to be frightening when he said he bumped into him. Patricia sighs that anything can be frightening if you let it.
Looksmart says all of a sudden that the thing he cannot forgive is how Patricia was concerned with her car’s seats, knowing she did not want Grace to get blood on them. She made him put a lot of blankets down. By the time they got to the hospital, Grace was dead.
Looksmart remained on the farm long enough to bury Grace, then left.
Patricia
Patricia remembers how as a baby Looksmart brought them all together, even the dogs. She never tired of watching him, of being near him. He was both shy and mischievous. Over time, though, his mother seemed to become more resistant toward her; this was not the way things were done. Patricia slowed down her visits, and eventually only asked about him occasionally. Once or twice the mother brought him up to her at the house “like a foal to be inspected, but he was never offered for her to hold, and Patricia never thought to ask for it” (133).
Looksmart
Looksmart says he is going to tell her not what they saw, but what they didn’t see. She is a bit confused but seems to have resolved herself to listen to him. He says it was Richard who caused it. At this, she looks surprised. He continues, saying Beauty saw them—saw Richard holding Grace down and raping her. And then Richard unchained the dog and climbed into his bakkie and drove into the hills. Patricia is still. She asks if he is calling her husband a murderer and he says exactly that.
It is silent: nothing and everything has happened.
Richard
He is out on the land, plunging through darkness and calling for his wife. He is lost, at another house that is not a house. The houses are less and less built. He is dead, but no one else has even been born.
He decides he must pragmatically and carefully build his own new house, starting with a single room.
Patricia
Patricia has had many roles in her life, and wonders which one Looksmart wants her to play. He looks at her with expectancy. She asks if he questioned Beauty, but he says frankly no one would believe her or him. Patricia is still skeptical, and ventures to say her husband was too much of a bigot to—Looksmart interrupts her, and finishes her sentence: “to fuck a black girl? Evidently not” (139).
Patricia remembers how Richard often had affairs throughout the years. He had been very good-looking once, and adept at flattery. This helped her come to her own affair with John Ford. Over time she started taking away things from Richard, too—her body, her bedroom, her friendship, her imagination.
She looks at Looksmart and says that even if Richard slept with Grace, one cannot say he set the dog on her. After all, Grace was taunting it. Looksmart laughs and asks who told her that, and she admits it was Richard.
As she speaks, more of this is coming back to her. She wonders what makes his account more accurate than hers; they are both making up sentences as they go.
He lambasts her again about the blood on the seats, and she hotly argues she did not care. There has always been fighting in this house, she thinks. Even though she and Richard do not do that anymore, their rage is still present. They raise their voices against the vacancy, “reminding themselves that they exist and can still feel something” (141).
Patricia says she does not really know what happened and why it matters now, and wonders why he is wasting time on this when he has a family. He replies that he wants her to understand.
Beauty
It is raining and Beauty feels lost, alone on the farm. She calls for UBaas; she calls for Bheki. She only wants Bheki. There is no sign of him, only rain and mud. She feels she is running in the same way, opposite and away from Grace, since she was a girl.
Looksmart
He remembers aloud how, when he came back from boarding school, he saw the beautiful black puppy and then Grace, his love and fear growing together. He is angry that Patricia did not want not save her.
As for his life now, he tried to leave this place but it was too hard. His wife felt distant from him then grew used to it, but his girls still search for the missing piece of him. They have not yet been disappointed, but it seems they will be.
There are tears on his face now. Patricia is talking, saying yes, maybe she was resentful all of that was happening right in front of them and she could do nothing. She asks why he cannot accept this is all over, all lost. He replies he thinks about it every day.
Patricia
When Beauty returns, covered in mud and telling Patricia she cannot find UBaas, Patricia asks her again about Grace and the day she died. She tells the girl she wants the truth. This word seems to surprise Beauty.
Patricia mentions the dairy and asks what she saw before the attack. Beauty looks more and more frightened. Looksmart approaches Beauty, trying to tell her not to be scared, but she is derisive; the thing to be scared of is not him, but what she keeps inside. Beauty says she cannot utter it aloud. Patricia tells her that Richard is sick and if she is the only one who can say what happened, she has to.
Beauty seems resigned. It is as if it is a familiar story she is telling. She explains she heard the noise and went to the dairy. As she talks, Looksmart butts in to help her be precise. She says Richard and Grace were on the floor and he had his hand over her mouth. Grace got away, and Richard undid the chain and the dog went running. Looksmart looks expectant, triumphant, but the scene is already fading for Beauty. She knows Looksmart will never be free of this burden; all he has done is shift some of it to Patricia.
Patricia asks why she said nothing to the police, and she says she was young and no one ever looked at her and she was afraid of UBaas. Patricia quietly asks if he ever tried anything with her, and she says no in a fierce tone.
The two women seem as if they are alone. Patricia was used to thinking of Beauty as her friend and that she knew everything about her, but that was only “vanity, or laziness, or wishful thinking” (149). Patricia tells her they are actually done talking about this now.
Beauty asks if she still wants UBaas.
Analysis
This section is centered on the conversation between Looksmart and Patricia, a conversation that vacillates in tone and emotion as the characters confront their shared past and the things they agree and don’t agree on. The major memory in question concerns the death of Grace, and we can track Patricia’s remembering as Looksmart unfolds what he remembers happening.
When Looksmart first brings up Grace, Patricia is surprised, wondering at how “it happened such a long time ago” (110). When Looksmart says that Grace was running from the dog, all Patricia reductively recalls is that she was “half-dressed” (110). She seems to then and now want to distance herself from the terrible event, responding to Looksmart’s query as to if she wondered why Grace was half-dressed by commenting “It was the police’s job—to wonder about that” (111). Thus from the beginning, Looksmart is aware that this is not going to be an easy task to get Patricia to really face what happened, because “for Patricia, Grace was in another category: like that cry of hers, she was slightly less than human” (111).
As Looksmart continues, Patricia starts to sense the gaps in her memory of the event—she does not recall Looksmart being there, for one—and she foregrounds her own feelings about the event. She does not recall seeing Looksmart as part of the picture because in her mind she “was alone, and had to deal with the whole sorry affair herself” (113). In fact, rather than feeling any sympathy for the girl’s terrible death, Patricia recalls “her irritation with the girl. The dog never would have bitten her had she not provoked it—isn’t that what Richard said?” (113). This lack of sympathy is also seen in Looksmart’s accusation that Patricia cared more about her car’s seats being clean rather than the fate of the bleeding girl being taken to the hospital, something that Patricia cannot completely recall but does not fully deny.
Patricia brings Beauty into the conversation, forcing the young woman to remember these events. It is clear Beauty knows more than she lets on, but she is aware of the disruptive power of memory and only says the bare minimum in this first conversation with Patricia. Patricia can only see Looksmart in the memory when Beauty confirms he was indeed there, and Looksmart realizes this is Patricia thinking she is offering a “huge concession, like she’s big enough to admit when she’s wrong” (128).
Looksmart’s final revelation is that Richard was responsible for Grace’s death because he raped her and then set the dog on her so she would not tell. Patricia hears this in shock, and her mind begins to cycle through various refutations. Looksmart might be having his own doubts and needs her doubts to feel better; he did not question Beauty, which could be problematic because maybe he is wrong about the events; Richard is too much of a bigot to sleep with a black girl; Grace was taunting the dog. The problematic nature of memory continues to manifest itself here, with Patricia realizing that what she is saying becomes truer as she says it—“For what’s to make his account more accurate than hers? She knows that he is doing exactly what she is doing: making up sentences as he goes along, bridging whatever gaps he encounters as he encounters them” (140). While Patricia might have a point here in terms of the human propensity to try to will truth into being, she is also trying to dispute Looksmart’s claims to preserve herself; it is easier to imagine him playing fast and loose with memory than just telling the truth.
Patricia also has another tactic—denying that the past is worth fixating on. She tells Looksmart that she does not remember what happened and why it matters now, “Why you’re wasting time on this, me, on things that are dead. You have a wife, children—a bloody splendid suit!” (141). Because this isn’t Patricia’s trauma, she dismisses it. Because she comes from a place of privilege, she cannot see why this matters to Looksmart. Though she has had her own traumas that have weighed on her throughout her life, she cannot extend that same recognition to someone else.
One of the final steps in this saga is to bring Beauty back in and force her to admit she saw what had happened between Richard and Grace and that Richard set the dog on her. This memory correlates with the truth, but as we will learn later, even this is not the entire story; there are still gaps, elisions, secrets. Furthermore, this “whole truth” does not exactly comfort Looksmart, who wonders that “he will never be free. All he has achieved is to hand some of his burden across to Patricia” (149). So, Higginson asks us, what is the benefit of excavating memory? Does it outweigh the cost?
