The little girl stood just inside the doorway, a tattered soft toy in her hand, an ancient threadbare dog or cat—it was hard to tell, so loved and cuddled had it been. She was watching them with that intense, unremitting gaze of the young child, and her eyes now fixed on Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Ramotswe turned to Mma Tsepole. She raised an enquiring eyebrow, and Mma Tsepole nodded.
“That is little Daisy. She has a Setswana name, but the older children decided to call her Daisy. I think they had seen the name in a school book.”
Mma Potokwane smiled encouragingly at the child. “Daisy,” she said. “You say hello to these aunties.”
But the child, for all the boldness of her stare, was too shy to speak.
“She is learning words,” said Mma Tsepole. “I think I was telling you about that the other day, Mma Potokwane. Her words are coming at last.”
Mma Potokwane nodded. “Sometimes children are too traumatised to speak when they get here,” she explained. “Sometimes it takes months and months before there is anything. Then suddenly you hear the first dumela, the first hello, and it is like the coming of the dawn. You know, that moment when the sun first comes up over the trees and makes everything gold. Like that.”
“She is talking to the other children now,” said Mma Tsepole. “Just single words—you know how it is. Water. Sun. Hot. Words like that, but you can hear them.” She paused. “And Mama too. You hear her say that.”
Mma Ramotswe caught her breath; that the child should say that which she did not have: the missing bit of her world.
Mma Tsepole lowered her voice; this was her habit when talking about her charges, even if they were too young to understand.
“Her mother was ill,” she said. Her voice lowered further. Now it was a whisper. “With that illness.”
Mma Ramotswe knew what she was talking about. It had cut like a scythe through the land, and now, although there were pills that could keep it at bay, there were still those who were beyond the reach of medicines, or who were visited with other complications, and fell.
“Yes,” continued Mma Tsepole. “The mother was ill, although it was not the illness that killed her. And the father…”
Mma Potokwane took over. “The father was no good. He drank, and he ended up in prison for a while. Then they lost sight of him. The village headman’s wife tried to find somebody to take the little girl, but nobody could. That happens more and more. Too busy. Gone away. Too many children on their hands already—I’m not blaming them, but it’s hard. It’s hard for everybody.”
“But this child’s mother,” said Mma Tsepole. “Now that is very sad. They lived up north, near Maun. You know how it is up there, Mma Ramotswe. There are elephants—too many elephants, many people say. And they walk past the villages sometimes and destroy their crops.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. She knew about this—Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been discussing it the other day. “It is not the elephants’ fault,” he said. “Where are they to go? If they go up north they will be shot. They feel Botswana is their place too.” Now she said, “Yes, it is hard for everybody—people and elephants.”
Mma Tsepole continued, “The mother of this child—she was working in the fields, although she was ill. She was still working. And the child was with her, playing, when the elephant came. There was another woman there, on the other side of the field, and she saw the elephant coming and she shouted to warn this child’s mother. But she did not hear, and the elephant was angry because it had that condition that elephants get, where their eyes water. And the people up there know to keep well away from an elephant when it is like that.”
Mma Ramotswe was silent. She saw the scene: the field, the sun, the struggling crops, the woman tending them. And the elephant, a grey shape that came out of nowhere, as elephants can do, and that could move with such swiftness and agility, like a great dancer, when angered or afraid.
“The elephant killed the mother,” said Mma Potokwane. “The other woman saw it all happen—and so did the little girl. The elephant picked the mother up and threw her, as those creatures do, and then trampled her. The child saw it happen.”
Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes. “The poor child.” It was not much to say, she knew. The poor child.
“They shouted at the elephant and banged an old tin bath they had at the fields,” said Mma Tsepole. “That made it turn away. Sometimes they lose interest, you see. It turned and went away before it could kill the child too.”
Mma Potokwane shrugged her shoulders. “She will not remember it in the future. I think she remembers now—maybe that is why she says Mama sometimes—but she will forget. Children forget. They forget the most terrible things, Mma, if they are young enough.”
“But later, when they are older, Mma,” said Mma Tsepole. “I think it is different then.”
Mma Potokwane nodded gravely. “Yes, it can be very different.”
Daisy had moved. Now, a few hesitant steps later, she was beside Mma Ramotswe’s chair, looking up at her. Mma Potokwane smiled. “See, Mma, she has come to you.”
Mma Ramotswe turned in her chair and gazed down at the little girl. “She is very pretty,” she said.
“Yes,” said Mma Tsepole. “I think she is, Mma. She has those eyes—you know the eyes that some of them have. She has those.”
Daisy now reached out and took hold of Mma Ramotswe’s hand that had been half proffered to her. The tiny hand fastened onto a finger and gripped tight.
“She’s holding your hand,” whispered Mma Potokwane. “Look, Mma. She is holding on to you.”
Mma Ramotswe moved her hand slightly, but the child did not relinquish her grip. She leaned over and picked her up, taking her to her bosom. The child held on. She buried her head in Mma Ramotswe. She clung to her.
The two other women were silent. There was nothing that they could say.
“Yes,” Mma Ramotswe whispered. “Yes, my little one.”
And then she kissed the child gently, on her head, and put her free hand on her back and hugged her closer.
“Yes, my little one. Now you have met Mma Ramotswe. That’s who I am. I am Mma Ramotswe.”
She thought of those moments, so infinitely painful to the memory, and therefore not thought about very often, when she had held her baby who died. How small the infant had been—a scrap of humanity—but how vast the chasm of sorrow it had opened in her. She struggled with the memory, and after a short while she put it out of her mind and was back in this room, with her two friends, and this strange little girl who seemed to have taken to her so quickly.
“I must put you down, little one,” she whispered, and began to detach herself from the child. But Daisy was not to be put down, and held on all the tighter, struggling to remain exactly where she was, in the arms of Mma Ramotswe, nestling at her chest.
Mma Potokwane leaned over towards her friend. “They can cling very tight, Mma,” she said. “After they have lost the mother, they can cling very tight.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. She understood, and she stopped trying to put Daisy down. Instead she rose to her feet, still holding the child, and walked over to the other side of the kitchen, to the door that gave out onto the back yard.
“Look,” she said. “Look out there. Can you see the trees? And look, there’s a bird there, on that branch. Can you see it?”
The child looked, but soon turned her head back to Mma Ramotswe and the comfort of her bosom.
“And look—look up there. That’s the sky, you see. It goes for a long way. And out there, not far away, is the Kalahari. And at night there are many stars there, you know. High, high—many, many stars.”
The child uttered a sound that she did not hear very well. It could have been anything, but it was probably nothing, she thought.
“Maybe you’re hungry,” she said. “Maybe that is what it is.”
Mma Ramotswe looked at Mma Tsepole, who reached for a battered tin box and took out a plain rusk. “They love these,” she said to Mma Ramotswe. “Milk rusks. I make them for the children.” She handed the rusk to Mma Ramotswe, who offered it to Daisy. A small hand reached for it but did not put it in her mouth. She held the rusk, which shed crumbs on Mma Ramotswe.
“She’s not hungry,” said Mma Potokwane. “And we should wait a little, I think, so that she can have food with her pill.”
Mma Ramotswe frowned. “Her pill, Mma?”
Mma Potokwane sighed. “The mother was ill, Mma, as we told you.”
It took Mma Ramotswe no more than a few seconds to grasp the significance of this. She gave an involuntary gasp. “Oh, Mma Potokwane…”
“Yes,” said Mma Potokwane. “That is how it is, Mma. It is hard, I know. It is very hard.”
Mma Ramotswe kissed Daisy again, and held her more tightly. She rocked her gently, as if in an effort to calm her—although the child was not upset.
Mma Tsepole turned away. She could not bear it; she could not bear it. And yet she had to, because this was her job and you could not allow your emotions to get the better of you. Others would have to do the weeping, because a housemother in tears was no help to the other children. A housemother had to be brave.
Mma Potokwane lifted her mug and took a sip of tea. “These children have very special needs, Mma. It would be good if we could give little Daisy more attention, but there are so many children. Mma Tsepole has to look after…How many is it, Mma?”
“Eight now,” said Mma Tsepole. “And there are two more coming, you said.”
“Possibly,” said Mma Potokwane. Then, to Mma Ramotswe, “We have a helper for this child, thanks to one of the firms that support us. They have paid for a young woman to look after her. But we have no accommodation for her—the young woman, that is. She has to travel over from the far side of the village every day, and then go back at night.” She paused, and addressed Mma Tsepole again. “Where is that girl, Mma?”
“She has gone to the stores,” said Mma Tsepole. “She’ll be back in an hour, maybe. I am covering in the meantime.”
Mma Potokwane nodded. “You see, Mma Ramotswe, it is a bit hard for us. We have to balance all these needs. This child needs this thing, that child needs that thing, and a third child needs something else altogether. It isn’t easy.”
“No,” said Mma Ramotswe, kissing the top of Daisy’s head again. “It cannot be.”
Mma Potokwane hesitated. She glanced at Mma Tsepole, who intercepted her glance, but said nothing. Then she continued, “Of course, it would be ideal if somebody were to offer to take this child—and the young woman. It would only be for a month or two, because we have found a home for this child. There are some good people who are going to take her, but their new house is still being built and it is not yet ready. In the meantime, it is very hard for the helper to get in here every day at the right time. And she cannot travel back in the dark, so she has to leave early and there is nobody to look after the child.”
Mma Ramotswe understood. “It must be hard—with all these children. I can see that, Mma Potokwane.”
Mma Potokwane brushed a fly away. “If there were somebody,” she continued, “who had unoccupied servants’ quarters, for example, at the back of their yard, where the young woman could live. That would be very good.” She paused. “It wouldn’t cost them anything, of course, because we get money for the young woman from that firm, and the government also gives us some money to support the child. So there would be no cost at all.”
There was a silence. Another fly buzzed against the fly screen on the kitchen window, looking for freedom in that quarter but unaware of the open door behind it.
“It would be a great help, that,” agreed Mma Tsepole. Then, “You foster two children already, don’t you, Mma?”
“I do,” said Mma Ramotswe. “They are with us forever now.”
“That’s very good,” said Mma Tsepole. “Children like security. They like to have one person who is just theirs, you see.”
“I understand,” muttered Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Potokwane put down her cup. “You don’t by any chance have unoccupied quarters at the back of your yard, do you, Mma?”
* * *
—
LATER, AS SHE LAY IN BED and contemplated what she had done, Mma Ramotswe thought: it was the tea that did it. It was the tea that had made her say what she said. It was the tea.
But she had never once regretted what she had done under the influence of tea, and would not start doing so now. And what was there to regret? Motholeli had been so pleased to discover Daisy, and Puso, although usually indifferent to younger children, had listened carefully as she told him how Daisy had lost her mother. “That’s very sad,” he said at the end. “I shall try to make her happy.”
“We all shall,” said Mma Ramotswe, dispelling there and then the last of her doubts as to her admittedly impetuous decision. If you could not help in a case like this, when you had been given so much, and when your friend, Mma Potokwane, spent every minute of her working day trying to make life better for these poor children, then what could you do? Of course you had to do it. Of course you had to say to Mma Potokwane, “Well, as it happens, Mma, we have the room and the young woman will be able to look after her during the day when I am at the office, and yes, Mma, there is always enough love for some of it to be given to a little girl who has had these things happen to her.” And Mma Potokwane, for her part, had to say, “Well, Mma Ramotswe, it’s good that you should say that because I thought this might just be the right thing for this child, and we can sort out the paperwork later on—not that I am a great believer in paperwork. Why wait, when she so obviously wants you to look after her; see how she still holds on to you? See that? That is a sign, I think.”
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had been uncertain what to say. He wondered whether he should ask Mma Ramotswe why she had not consulted him, but decided against it. If husbands started to question their wives’ decisions, then where would it end, and what purpose would it serve? You could not undo what your wife had done. Some men tried it, he knew, but they almost always failed, because women so often did the right thing, and the right thing may be beyond undoing. It was far better to accept what had happened and make the best of it. It was also the case, he reflected, that Mma Ramotswe usually got her way. She was so nice about it, so disinclined to be insistent or pushy, but she usually got him to do what she wanted—and he was happy enough about that when all was said and done.
And in that spirit he had crept into the room at the back of the house to be shown where Daisy was asleep in a cot borrowed from a Zebra Drive neighbour. And there, seeing the sleeping child’s head upon the pillow, he had unexpectedly found himself in tears. A handkerchief was pressed into his hand by Mma Ramotswe, who said, “There, Rra, there.” And then they had closed the door quietly and made their way back to the kitchen and their waiting dinner. It was always the strongest men who were the first to cry, thought Mma Ramotswe. Some people said it was the other way round, but they were wrong, she told herself; they were simply wrong.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ROUTINE ARM-WORK (FOR LEGS)
AT MORNING TEA TIME the next day, Mma Ramotswe outlined to Mma Makutsi and Charlie what she had in mind to do about Nametso. Charlie, she suggested, should take up position in the van, discreetly parked, ready to follow Nametso when she left work that evening.
“People leave that sort of office at five on the dot,” she said. “They are always ready to pack up and go the moment the clock says the working day is over.”
“Unlike us,” said Mma Makutsi. “We self-employed people are always working odd hours. If the work is there, we do it.”
Mma Ramotswe agreed, refraining from pointing out that both Mma Makutsi and Charlie had always had a very keen sense of when it was five o’cl
ock.
“I shall come too,” offered Mma Makutsi. “I think this is a sensitive matter, Mma, and…” She looked at Charlie. “I think there is a need for a senior operative.”
Charlie looked to Mma Ramotswe for support. “That’s very kind, Mma Makutsi,” he said. “But I am sure I shall manage.”
“No,” said Mma Makutsi. “You do not need to thank me, Charlie. It is for the best.”
Mma Ramotswe made her decision. There was something about this case—if one could call it a case—that made her uncomfortable, and she wanted to watch over it carefully. Diamonds were involved, and you did not tread lightly with diamonds—not in a country that prided itself on the careful regulation of the industry. Diamonds were sensitive, and Charlie and Mma Makutsi might easily wander into something that would have to be handed over to the authorities. “I shall come too,” Mma Ramotswe announced. “That way there will be many eyes watching her.”
“Six,” said Charlie. “Six eyes, Mma.”
“That’s correct, Charlie,” she said. “Six eyes. Three pairs.”
At four-fifteen, in time to beat the traffic that built up after five, the three of them left the agency in the tiny white van, with Charlie at the wheel, Mma Makutsi in the middle of the ancient bench seat that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had installed in the cab, and, up against the passenger door, its uncomfortable broken handle pressing into her side, Mma Ramotswe. They were so squashed that in unspoken agreement their breathing fell into a sequence, with Charlie breathing in first, while Mma Makutsi breathed out, and this gave room for Mma Ramotswe to fall into synchronicity with Charlie. In this way they drove slowly along the street that approached the diamond-sorting office and found, more or less exactly where they had expected it, a gleaming silver Mercedes-Benz parked in between a pick-up truck and a modest, somewhat battered car bearing a large Be Careful sticker.
To the Land of Long Lost Friends Page 15
