I spent the rest of my South Africa visit playing with one of my other cousins: My Twin Cousin had an Older Brother and a Younger Brother. The Younger Brother was the one I played with, because he was home, and he was close enough to my age that we could find fun things to do.

The Older Brother didn’t really hang out with us, being old enough that our games were no longer interesting to him. He was older, and very smart, and seemed very mature to me.

The playroom next to the children’s bedrooms was mostly taken up by one thing, a model train set that belonged to the Older Brother, and only to him. It was very large, and sat on a special table so that everything was the right height. The tracks went every which way, taking the train past perfect miniature trees and houses and villages.  I would have wished for a dollhouse as detailed and precise as his train set, if I could have imagined such a thing and then imagined not being afraid to play with it.

My mother and I stayed in South Africa for six weeks. We visited Kruger Park and a rhinoceros preserve; my mother went to Capetown with my grandmother.

But it could not be vacation all of the time: my cousins had to go to school, and one day, I was sent with my Twin Cousin.  She attended a private school, and an extra uniform was found for me to wear. My Twin Cousin wore a lightweight, white sweater with her skirt, as she was supposed to, but she only had one white sweater, so there wasn’t one for me. I only had the sweater I had brought: heavy, electric green, with big buttons up the front.

It’s a sweater, said my mother. It will do.

It was all wrong, and I didn’t want to wear it. I was supposed to wear was something white and soft, like my cousin.

My Aunt agreed: We’ll buy her another sweater.

My mother said, No you won’t, but my Aunt gave me a look that said, tomorrow will be different, just wear the green sweater once. We had to leave for school, so I did as I was told, but was afraid to get out of the car when I got to the school, the only girl in a green sweater. My Aunt and my mother spoke to the teacher, and I heard my mother laughing.

Class started, and I sat next to my cousin, sharing her desk and hoping I would do nothing else wrong. The teacher wrote a word on the blackboard, MOON, and then erased it, and we were supposed to remember the word and write it down on a piece of paper. As soon as she erased it, I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do anymore and then my cousin was saying, don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s okay.

My Wisconsin grandparents’ house was nothing like my Johannesburg Aunt’s house, but my South African grandparents’ house was: Small, and with a kitchen table where meals were both made and eaten.

The reason we went to South Africa, I was told, was to meet my Grandfather: He had cancer and wanted to meet the child of his lost son. We seemed to spend much more time doing things with my cousins and Aunt, but then again, they were much more able to do things. This Grandfather was frail, and had large hearing aids, because he was nearly deaf.

He could still sing though, and although he only sang me one song, he knew every word of it and sang it to the end, every time: Oh, Susannah.

My Twin Cousin and I would stand on the other side of the kitchen and whisper so he couldn’t hear, but he knew what we were saying and chimed in anyway. He told me secretly that he knew what we were saying because he could read lips. I thought it was a wonderful trick.

This grandparents’ house had a tree in the yard, with low but sturdy branches. It was the first tree that ever let me climb it.