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I’ve been arrested. They’re listed under Samuel Davidson. If he’s not home, he’ll be in his dental office.”
    “You know this young woman?” one of the officers asked.
    “Of course I know her,” I said. “What’s going on? Where are you taking her?”
    Both officers looked at me, scowled, and stepped forward to stand at her sides. They took her by the elbows and began to pull her along. “Call my parents, Lenny,” she shouted over her shoulder, struggling to release the grip on her elbows. “They’re taking me to the prison at Marshall Square. Michaela…” she shouted again, “Michaela Davidson.”
    I was paralyzed at first, mortified that I had neither the bravery or physical resources to help her. The policemen hustled her into the back of their wagon and drove off. I rushed home to call her parents.
    Their home was in Cyrildene, an older suburb outside Johannesburg, and her father’s office was at the same address. He was listed as a Doctor of dental medicine. I called the house and the housemaid answered the phone. Dr. Davidson was in his surgery seeing patients, she said, but she could take a message for me.
    “This is an emergency,” I answered. “Please get him. Michaela’s been arrested.”
    I heard the slap of her slippers echoing on the stone floor as she ran from the phone, calling to Dr. Davidson. There was a brief silence, and then the sound of his shoes approaching on the flagstones.
    “Hello?” he demanded. “What’s this about my daughter being arrested?”
    “I was just at the university with her—”
    “This better not be a joke,” he said, angrily. “Who are you, young man? What’s your name?”
    “Lenny,” I said,” flustered by his tone. “Lenny Green. I wouldn’t joke about this. Michaela asked me to call you.”
    “This isn’t the kind of news one expects from strangers,” he said.
    “I’m not a stranger, sir,” I said. “I’m a friend of Michaela’s. I’m in the school of engineering at the University. As I was leaving there this afternoon, four policemen were escorting her out of the building. She called to me, asked me to phone you and let you know that she’s been arrested. She’s being taken to the prison at Marshall Square.”
    “How was she?” he asked. “Did she seem all right? Had she been mistreated?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. I thought of the way she walked, her shoulders held straight and high, her flushed face revealing both her fear and her fury. The idea that they might have treated her badly hadn’t crossed my mind. In the 1950s the opposition was still largely peaceful, and white middle class women were treated respectfully, even if they were protesting.
    “It must be that editorial she wrote about Sophiatown,” he said anxiously. “I told her she was crossing the line.” He paused, as if at a loss. “Lenny, was it? Green?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Thank you for the phone call, Lenny. I’d better make some enquiries and get over to Marshall Square. Good bye.”

    I spent the evening thinking about the way she held herself, the dark hair framing her face as she looked back at me. Walking between the muscular officers whose authority gave even more weight to their already substantial bulk, she seemed diminutive and fragile, but there was a way in which her sense of resolution and grace were made even more powerful for being housed in so slight a body. I kept hearing her voice calling my name, and realized that I wanted to hear her say it again. She had referred to me as her friend, and I wondered whether she had done so because she wanted the officers to think we were friends, or because there was indeed a possibility that we might be.
    The next day when I was through with classes I walked by the newspaper office to see what had happened to her, but she wasn’t there. None of the other students in the office had heard from her. I was surprised by my disappointment as I left, and went home, planning to call her that