So she told her first about Nametso and her inexplicable coolness towards her mother. That behaviour was not uncommon, said Mma Potokwane, and it usually arose when a son or daughter was wanting to cut the apron-strings of an over-possessive mother. “People need to be able to breathe,” said Mma Potokwane. “And parents sometimes stand in the way of that.”
That was possible, said Mma Ramotswe. But what about the Mercedes-Benz?
“That,” said Mma Potokwane, “sounds like shame. That is not an honest Mercedes-Benz.”
“No,” agreed Mma Ramotswe, “I do not think it is.”
They moved on to Poppy, and to the loss of her money. Mma Potokwane rolled her eyes at the mention of the Reverend Flat Ponto. “I have heard of that man,” she said. “One of the housemothers went to a meeting he held and she came back all fired up. She was gabbling away about this man and how he could change sinners into saints. She was so excited she was hardly making any sense.”
“So what did you do?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Potokwane answered in a matter-of-fact way. “I pushed her.”
Mma Ramotswe’s eyes widened. “But you can’t push people, Mma—not these days.”
Mma Potokwane shrugged. “So people tell me. But how else do you get somebody who is hysterical to see sense? I don’t see any other way. So I pushed her and then I persuaded her to stand under a cold shower for ten minutes, maybe a bit longer. And at the end I said to her, ‘Mma, what is all this nonsense?’ and she looked very embarrassed and admitted that she had been a bit excited. So I told her that if she saw that reverend again she would lose her job.” She waited for a moment, aware that Mma Ramotswe was taken aback. “He is not a real reverend, you see. Those people who invent their own churches are not proper reverends at all. That one is a mechanic, I think.”
But still Mma Ramotswe expressed surprise. People could not be fired on arbitrary grounds, she reminded Mma Potokwane. But Mma Potokwane was having none of that: “If you are a housemother, you have to be responsible and keep your head all the time. There are many little children relying on you, and we cannot have a housemother who goes off and becomes hysterical because she has been listening to some windbag of a preacher—bogus preacher, should I say—can we, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe did not argue the point. There was perhaps something to be said for Mma Potokwane’s approach, she felt, even if she herself would find it hard to be so high-handed. “I suppose it was for her own good,” she conceded.
“Yes,” said Mma Potokwane. “It was.” She paused. “And this poor woman who has had all her money taken away from her—what can you do for her? Will you be able to get it back?”
“I don’t think so,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She is an adult. She controls her own money and where it goes. I do not have any authority to act, you see.”
Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. Eventually she said, “Mma Ramotswe, do you think I could do something here? I know I have never interfered in these things that you do, but I think I might be able to help this poor lady.”
“You would do that, Mma?”
“Yes. Why not?”
Mma Ramotswe bit her lip. “I don’t like to be rude, Mma, but I must ask this: Would you respect the limits of what you can do? And by that, I mean: You wouldn’t do anything illegal?”
Mma Potokwane was the picture of innocence. “Certainly not, Mma.”
“It isn’t really a fully fledged case,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am not acting for anybody. Nobody has come to me and asked me to help that woman.”
“No, of course not,” said Mma Potokwane hurriedly. “I can see that you’re acting out of the goodness of your heart.”
“In that case, Mma, it’s up to you,” Mma Ramotswe said. “You may wish to help her.”
“Good,” announced Mma Potokwane. “We’ll sort out that reverend double quick. Bang. Like that. Bang.”
Mma Ramotswe sipped at her tea. What did bang mean? It was the sort of thing that Charlie would say, but this was not Charlie—this was a respectable matron, a pillar (not in the civil engineering sense, of course) of the community. Mma Potokwane was a force to be reckoned with, and the Reverend Flat Ponto might be in for an unpleasant surprise. But if he preyed on vulnerable women, then he could hardly complain. Although he probably would—and vociferously too. The more that people are in the wrong, she thought, the louder their protestations on being brought to book. Clovis Andersen said something about that—possibly—but she could not remember chapter and verse.
* * *
—
THEY FINISHED THEIR TEA and the second slice of fruit cake. Then Mma Potokwane rose to her feet and suggested that Mma Ramotswe might care to visit one of the housemothers, Mma Tsepole, who had been asking after her. “She has been down in Lobatse visiting a sick relative, and I think she might like to be cheered up,” she said.
They walked past the meeting hall and the children’s kgotla. The older children had not yet returned from school, but there were groups of younger ones playing at various games. A small cluster of girls was drawing a hopscotch grid in the sand, watched by a couple of boys who had not been asked to join in but were awaiting an invitation. They stopped what they were doing when they saw Mma Potokwane, and waited for her to encourage them to continue.
“They’ll spend hours on that,” said Mma Potokwane. “Do you remember, Mma? Do you remember doing that yourself?”
Mma Ramotswe did. And there were songs, too, that went with skipping, but she could remember only a few snatches of them, a smattering of words: something about counting goats. It was so long ago, in the playground of the school on the hill at Mochudi, that place where she had started.
Mma Tsepole presided over one of the self-contained houses that lay at the heart of the Orphan Farm’s structure. Each housemother looked after up to ten children, who would form the “family” of that house. She cooked for them, looked after their clothes, and allocated small domestic tasks to each child. If a child had no family in the outside world, then this was the substitute, the housemother being the main anchor in what was in most cases a grossly disrupted young life.
She greeted Mma Ramotswe warmly. “I am glad you have come to see me, Mma,” she said. “And you too, Mma Potokwane.”
“I am not really here,” said Mma Potokwane with a smile. “It is Mma Ramotswe you want to see.”
The housemother invited them in, dusting her hands on her skirt as she led them into the kitchen. This was dominated by a large table, its surface scrubbed bare and laid with a row of white enamel plates. Against the wall on one side was a large range cooker, on the top of which two blackened and capacious cooking-pots sat. A thin layer of white ash from the wood used as fuel coated the floor at the bottom of the cooker; in the air there hung the smell of a bubbling stew and a faint trace of wood-smoke. For Mma Ramotswe it was a richly evocative combination, taking her back to the kitchen of her father’s house in Mochudi, all those years ago, where there had been a wood-burning stove of much the same vintage. There, of course, was where the women who looked after her after her mother died, that succession of cousins on her father’s side, would cook stews from which wafted an invitation as delicious and tempting as the one that Mma Tsepole was conjuring up for the children in her charge. Mma Ramotswe sniffed at the air and smiled. The children who lived in this place had no mother of their own, but they had what was undoubtedly the next best thing—somebody who watched over them and would make the stews that a loving hand produces for those who are loved.