man’s alarm system. You buy a dog
and you keep it out in the yard.
Black people name dogs by their
traits. If it has stripes, you call it
Tiger. If it’s vicious, you call it
Danger. If it has spots, you call it
Spotty. Given the finite number of
traits a dog can have, pretty much
everyone’s dogs have the same
names; people just recycle them.
We’d never had dogs in Soweto.
Then one day some lady at my
mom’s work offered us two
puppies. They weren’t planned
puppies. This woman’s Maltese
poodle had been impregnated by
the bull terrier from next door, a