The Book Keeper. Julia McKenzie Munemo

licking, and, I’d heard, had a habit of sleeping through break-ins.

      Dakarai repeated that the dog was a fucking asshole and, as we passed one another in the wide doorway, he shoved his body against mine, knocking me into the doorframe before rushing back to his cottage. It could have looked like an accident, it could have been an accident, but I saw his wide-open eyes as he neared me, I saw him measure the space between us before his shoulder and hip hit mine. All of my muscles squeezed together as I ran in for the milk and raced back to my cottage quick as I could. The fact was, I was fine. Nothing happened. It could have been an accident. I kept repeating this to myself as I finished making lunch, which I did in a hurry, my eyes darting around the room. Should I tell Ngoni what had happened, or was I being ridiculous? Would Dakarai storm into our cottage in a rage, or had I made the entire thing up?

      When I could quiet myself, I saw Ngoni clearly. He sat with Julius on the floor with a puzzle. He was calm and quiet, maybe quieter than usual. When he looked up at me standing in the doorframe with plates of peanut butter sandwiches in my hand, there were circles under his eyes. He looked as though he had become suddenly exhausted. But I also saw resolve set into his forehead. Ngoni, I realized, knew that Dakarai was having a bad day. He knew what that looked like and was readying himself to wait it out.

      He stood up and motioned me outside, persuading me that eating inside, no matter how much more private, was intolerable with the heat and the ants. I wondered, though, if he just felt better with Dakarai in his sight line. As we ate our sandwiches, Ngoni and I tried to talk and play with the baby. It was hard to ignore, though, Dakarai straddling the back of a wooden chair on the porch of the big house, smoking as he glared at us. I wondered if we reminded him of what his life could have been with Cati, if it was my race that brought about this episode. If he’d have been fine if I’d never come. I thought about my father then, and if he would have been fine, too, if I’d never come. If everything was moving along just great in his family before I was born. I tried to picture Dad’s episodes, plaster this scene in Harare onto a map of State Street to see if they fit. Did my father ever shove someone into a doorframe? Did any of his cousins who struggled with mental illness ever shove someone into a doorframe? And what about here in this family I was now entering? Did Ngoni’s father ever shove someone into a doorframe? If this is what madness looks like, will we recognize it if it comes again?

      A few hours after lunch, Ngoni went to check on Gogo. He knew she suffered during Dakarai’s episodes. And because it was quiet now, because I didn’t expect to see Dakarai at the big house, I squared Julius on my hip and we walked over, too.

      But the kitchen was empty, which was weird. There was normally at least one woman—sometimes a maid, more often Ngoni’s grandmother—in there preparing dinner by that time of day. We walked through the small dining room and no one sat at the table. I took a breath, looked Julius in the eye and smiled, and walked through the doorway into the dark living room, committed now to being there even with these warning signs that something was off. The forest-green couches, the brown carpet, the heavy wood tables all resisted the glare of the sun at the windows. There was a large cross hanging over the doorway I was standing under now, and I thought of it as mistletoe. I wanted it to protect me, or anoint me, or bring me a happy surprise.

      Two nephews of Ngoni’s grandparents—college kids living here while they went to school—were watching a soap opera on the TV under the window. They sat in front of it on the floor like children, awkward smiles on their faces. It took me a moment to see that they were shell shocked. That these boys had seen something I hadn’t, and were scared. They watched this show because they needed to laugh. They needed to look at characters on a screen. When Ngoni headed into the back of the house to find Gogo, I didn’t follow. Though I’d been let into the back bedroom several times by then, it was still a place with boundaries, a place I knew only to enter if invited.

      Julius and I stood behind the kids on the carpet and kept our attention on the stupid show on the TV. We were all laughing when Dakarai walked in.