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’clock.