Yet she was determined that when she married she would not forget who she was and who her people were. She would not affect any airs. When she had gone to the Botswana Secretarial College she had been given a form to fill out, and there had been a question in it about parental occupation. She had written Peasant in response to that question, and she would write that again if she had occasion to answer such a question on any of the intrusive forms that various bureaucrats liked people to fill in. I am the daughter of a peasant, and that is what I shall always be.
She stirred the stew, glancing at her watch. Phuti was usually punctual, but every so often there would be some crisis at the furniture shop that required him to stay late at work; this might be holding him back now-some argument over invoices or a discrepancy in the till receipts, or any one of the many minor things that could interrupt the smooth workings of a furniture shop. It did not matter too much: stew did not spoil-indeed, Mma Ramotswe had once suggested to her that the older a stew the better, although within reason, of course.
But at seven o’clock she began to worry. Phuti had a mobile telephone, but Mma Makutsi did not. He had offered to buy her one, but she had declined the offer on the grounds that she did not want to impose too much, and if she had a mobile phone, she would get no peace from various relatives who had one and who would pester her with requests. So even if he had wanted to let her know that he was going to be late back, he would not have been able to do so.
The minutes passed slowly. She moved the pot to the side of the stove, where it could simmer peacefully, and untied the strings of the apron she was wearing. Then she opened the kitchen door and stepped out into her small yard. Her pawpaw tree, which had never grown straight, was outlined at its drunken angle, a dark shadow against the glow of the night sky. The light from her neighbour’s uncurtained window spilled out onto the bare ground of the yard, a square of yellow; and through the window itself, a glimpse of a family seated around a table-the father, who was something in the Ministry of Telecommunications, an engineer, she thought; the mother, who worked in some lowly capacity at the diamond sorting office; and the three children, whose heads bobbed up and down above the level of the windowsill. They were never still, those children; they were always running about and throwing things and behaving as children should behave.
The lights of a car came up the road. She felt a surge of relief: she knew it was Phuti’s car because one of the lights shone at a slightly different angle to the other, casting its beam more upwards than downwards. My car needs glasses, he had joked, and she had laughed, not because she felt that she had to, but because her fiancé said some very amusing things sometimes, and this was one of them.
The car drew to a halt outside her yard. Mma Makutsi went forward and began to open the gate, and to say, “I thought that you must be busy…” But then she stopped; it was not Phuti in his car but his assistant manager, Mr. Gaethele, a man with a damaged left ear.
“Phuti?” Mma Makutsi’s voice was low.
Mr. Gaethele looked down. He held his hands palm outwards; a curious gesture, apologetic more than anything else; the gesture of one who has broken something, or brings news of breakage. “There has been an accident, Mma.”
She stood quite still.
“He is all right, but he is in the Princess Marina. His leg is bad. You must not worry too much, Mma.”
She waited for him to say something more. She could not speak. Where? How? When? There were so many questions to be asked, but she could give voice to none of them; not now, here under the pawpaw tree, to this man whom she did not know very well, who was trying to be sympathetic but was awkward in his attempt.
“I want to go and see him,” she said at last, moving towards the car.
He shook his head. “No. The doctor said that we can see him tomorrow, but not until four o’clock. There is going to be an operation on his leg. His aunt is waiting at the hospital. She says that nobody else must come yet.”
She stared at him, struggling to take in what had happened. She dug her fingernails into her palms, a trick she had learned at school; one pain might cancel out another, might make the world different.
“How did this thing…”
Mr. Gaethele shook his head. “It was one of the delivery drivers. He reversed the truck into Mr. Radiphuti. He was standing in front of small wall, and it caught his leg against the wall. Like this.” He made a crushing movement with his hands.
Mma Makutsi held her hands up to her face. There would be tears, but not until she was ready to cry.
MMA RAMOTSWE did not hear about the incident at the Double Comfort Furniture Shop until the following morning. When she arrived at the office, Mma Makutsi was already there, sitting at her desk, sorting papers. As her employer entered, she did not look up, as she normally would. She was preoccupied with her work, Mma Ramotswe thought; there was nobody who could become quite as absorbed in filing papers as Mma Makutsi. Filing, she had once pronounced, is the greatest of the secretarial arts. And then she had said…
But something seemed not quite right, and Mma Ramotswe, about to open the window, turned round. “There is something wrong, isn’t there?”
Mma Makutsi shook her head-vigorously; so vigorously, in fact, that Mma Ramotswe’s suspicions were immediately confirmed.
“There is nothing wrong. Nothing.”
Mma Ramotswe left the window and crossed the room to Mma Makutsi’s desk. She laid her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, gently. “Mma, you can tell me.”
It must be Phuti, she thought, something to do with him. There had been that problem over the negotiation of the bride price, and she did not think that it had been resolved yet. That greedy uncle from Bobonong, that man with the broken nose who had sniffed the presence of money in the Radiphuti family and had travelled all the way down from the north like a greedy vulture. It was something to do with that, obviously.
But then Mma Makutsi looked up at her and said, “Phuti is in hospital. There has been an accident.” And she began to weep, dropping her head onto her forearms and rocking backwards and forwards in that curious motion that is perhaps a subconscious attempt to mimic the movement that brings comfort to a tiny baby. That we should in moments of sorrow seek to return to a time when the harshness of the world could be forfended by the simple reassurances of our parents; that we should do that…
“Oh, Mma Makutsi…”
“He is having an operation. Now, I think.”