Precious and Grace (5 page)

Mma Makutsi's eyes went to the wall where her framed certificate from the Botswana Secretarial College hung in pride of place.

Susan followed her gaze. “That's your certificate up there, Mma?” she asked politely.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” said Mma Makutsi, her voice dropping in modesty.

“Ninety-seven per cent,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Mma Makutsi was their most distinguished graduate, you see. Ninety-seven per cent. That grade has never been…” She stopped. There had been that talk of somebody since then getting ninety-eight per cent, but now was not the time to mention that.

Mma Ramotswe decided to steer the conversation back to the client. Mma Makutsi, she had noticed, had a tendency to introduce her own agenda into a discussion, and although this was sometimes interesting, it could make it difficult for the business in hand to be transacted.

“So, Mma,” she said. “You went off to live in Canada?”

Susan nodded. “Yes, we went to a place called Saskatoon. My father had trained with a person who ran a hospital there, and she offered him a job. My mother was not too keen, as she did not know that part of Canada and thought that it was too far away from anywhere else. It's a very big country, Canada, and the distances can be—”

“Very big,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “Canada is a very big place.”

“That's what the lady has just said,” observed Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Makutsi seemed indifferent to the censure. “I've looked at maps,” she went on, “and, oh my, there is so much space there. It goes on and on, just like the Kalahari, but even bigger. No lions, of course.”

Susan laughed. “No lions. At least not the sort of lions you have here.”

Mma Makutsi looked interested. “You have other lions in Canada, Mma?”

“There are mountain lions in the Rockies,” said Susan. “They're big cats, all right. They're called cougars.”

“That is very interesting, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “Are they smaller than the lions we get here? More like leopards?”

“They're certainly smaller,” said Susan. “I've never actually seen one, as it happens. I believe they're rather secretive creatures.”

“And would they attack a person?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“They might. There certainly have been cases of people being killed by mountain lions. Mauled, I suppose.”

“That is very bad,” said Mma Makutsi.

“Yes,” said Susan. “It's very sad.”

Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “I think perhaps we should—”

“Of course there are many bears in Canada, aren't there?” said Mma Makutsi. “You have that very big sort of bear…”

“The grizzly. Yes, we have those. Once again, those tend to be up in the mountains. You won't get those down where most people live.”

Mma Makutsi had more to say. “They say that most of these cases where people are attacked by bears—and other animals—happen when the person has surprised the animal, when they have given it a shock.” She paused, but not long enough for Mma Ramotswe to get the conversation back on track. “That is often the case with snakes, you know, Mma Susan.”

“I can well believe it,” said Susan. “We used to get snakes coming into the house sometimes when we lived here in Gaborone. I distinctly remember it.”

“Oh, that is very common, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “But when you meet a snake in the bush—when you're walking, for instance—it's often because you are walking too softly. You have to take firm footsteps so that the snake feels the vibration in the ground. That way it has a warning and it gets out of your way.”

Mma Ramotswe tried again. “I think we should talk about snakes some other time, Mma Makutsi. Mma Susan was telling us—”

“I was not the one who raised this subject,” protested Mma Makutsi.

Mma Ramotswe was placatory. “It's not a question of who started what,” she said. “It's just that we need to hear what Mma Susan has to tell us.”

Mma Makutsi sniffed. “I am listening, Mma Ramotswe. I have been listening all along.”

Susan made light of it. “I'm happy to talk about snakes,” she said. “I love talking about anything to do with Botswana—even snakes.”

“There,” said Mma Makutsi, glancing at Mma Ramotswe.

There was a brief silence before Susan continued. “You can imagine what a shock it was for me,” she said. “We went straight up to Saskatoon after we came back to Canada—and it was the beginning of winter. My visits to Canada before that had all been in the summer and I had never seen snow before. I couldn't believe that such cold could exist—that unremitting, merciless cold of the Canadian winter. My parents told me that I would get used to it and that there were all sorts of things you could do in the winter—skating, snow-shoeing, and so on. But I think I must have been in a state of shock—I just sat at the window and gazed out on the white landscape, wondering how it could ever be warm again.

“And it wasn't just the cold. I felt that all the colour had been drained from my world: I felt surrounded by people who were somehow lonely—quiet people who were frightened to smile and laugh. I felt as if I was in the presence of ghosts. Botswana—Africa—had been full of life; now my life seemed to be full of silence. A silent sky; silent people; a sense of emptiness. You do know,
Bomma,
that people in Canada talk about feeling solitude? They sometimes call it a country of solitudes.”

Mma Makutsi removed her glasses and polished them. “People in Botswana can be lonely too,” she said. “And quiet as well. We aren't noisy people like some of those people over the border. Those Zulu people, for instance…”

“I know that,” said Susan. “Canada is not really like the way I felt it was. The problem was inside me, not in Canada. The Canadians are good people; in fact, I think there are many similarities between Batswana and Canadians…but there are many differences too, and it was the differences that I felt when I went to live there as a young girl.”

“Your heart had been left behind,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is not uncommon—many people who leave Africa feel that way.”

“Yes,” said Susan simply. “My heart stayed here. I went off with my parents, but my heart stayed here.”

“But it would not have lasted forever, surely,” said Mma Ramotswe.

Susan looked up; she held Mma Ramotswe's gaze. “It did last,” she said slowly. “I never got over it. Never.”

“You felt homesick for Africa?” asked Mma Makutsi.

Susan nodded. “I did. I expected to forget it, but I didn't. Even when…”

She broke off. Mma Ramotswe waited.

“Yes, Mma? Even when?”

Susan did not answer directly. “I had something happen to me, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. She had been in this exact place before—and on more than one occasion. She had sat with a client, with Mma Makutsi at her desk behind her, and been told about some dark thing that had happened, and that could ruin the life of the one to whom it had happened. It was horribly, painfully familiar.

“I am very sorry, my sister,” she whispered. “You do not need to talk about it. Not now. You can tell me later, if you wish.”

Susan looked up, seemingly surprised by the gravity of Mma Ramotswe's words. “But it happens to most people, Mma,” she said. “Most people fall in love, don't they?”

Mma Ramotswe stared at Susan uncomprehendingly. “But, Mma, I don't see…”

Susan smiled. “I'm sorry, Mma, I've confused matters. You see, all I meant was that my…well, I call it my Africa sickness, was very strong, and lasted even when something very important took over my life. That was all.”

“I see…and that other thing was falling in love with somebody?”

Mma Makutsi's spectacles caught the light. “Hah!” she said. “That is something that can turn you upside down. Upside down. Like that.”

“Well it did for me,” said Susan. “As I told you, I wasn't very happy when we went off to Saskatoon. And I wasn't happy all through high school there. I didn't fit in, you see—the others had all grown up together, so I was the outsider. And so I was quite happy to go away to college, which I did when I was eighteen. I thought that would be a new beginning and it was, I suppose. I met new people. I made friends. My whole world opened out.”

Mma Makutsi nodded. “When I came to the Botswana Secretarial College…,” she began. But Mma Ramotswe looked at her, and she stopped.

“I went to university in a place called Kingston,” said Susan. “And I was happy there. Then I met a young man and I fell in love with him. I had never imagined what it was like to fall in love, Mma; I had no idea. I could only think of him, just of him, all the time. Nothing else mattered.”

“That is what it is like,” muttered Mma Makutsi. “It is a very strange feeling.”

“You were lucky,” said Mma Ramotswe. She hesitated. “As long as…as long as he loved you back.”

“That is very important,” said Mma Makutsi. “If you fall in love and the other person does not notice you, you can feel very, very sad.”

“He did,” said Susan. “He felt the same way. He told me that. We were very happy.”

Mma Ramotswe shifted in her seat. She was beginning to feel anxious about this story. Was Susan expecting her to find this young man who had disappeared from her life? If so, how did Botswana come into it? Had the young man come here for some reason?

“You were very fortunate, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi.

“I was,” said Susan. “But I'm afraid it did not work out as I hoped it would. We went to Toronto together and we lived there for a few years and then…well, then, I'm afraid he went off with somebody else. And that was that.”

“I'm very sorry,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“And I'm sorry too,” said Mma Makutsi.

Susan turned to smile at Mma Makutsi. “You're very kind. Thank you. But that is not what I've come to see you about. I haven't come here to tell you about that.”

They waited. Through the wall, from the garage, there came the sound of metal striking metal.

“There is a garage next door,” explained Mma Ramotswe. “It is my husband's. Sometimes they make a noise.”

“Sometimes a very big noise,” added Mma Makutsi. “This is not much of a noise.”

The metallic sound stopped.

“There,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We can talk again.”

Susan took her cue. “I decided to come back to Botswana,” she said, “because I'd been so happy here. I wanted to see the place I loved so much. I wanted to see some of the people.”

Mma Ramotswe wrote on her pad:
Place. People.

“May I show you a photograph, Mma Ramotswe?”

Susan dug into the handbag she was carrying and extracted a black-and-white photograph. It was a large print, the size of a paperback book, and its edges were scuffed. As she passed it to Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi rose from her chair and came to look over her shoulder.

“That is me when I was about seven,” said Susan. “And that lady was the nurse my parents engaged to help look after me. She was called Rosie. She had a Setswana name, but I'm afraid I don't know what it was.” She looked apologetic. “I wish I could ask my parents—they might have known, but my mother died, you see, a few years back and my father…well, his memory is very weak now—he's in a home. He can't remember much about Botswana.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded sympathetically. “It is very sad to lose your world.”

Susan pointed to the photograph. “You see her face?”

Mma Ramotswe peered at the photograph. A young girl wearing a faded frock, barefoot, stood beside a woman somewhere in her late twenties—or so it seemed; it was difficult enough, even in the flesh, to tell ages with faces that did not line; harder yet with a photograph such as this, which was blurred. It was as if a filter had been placed across it, softening the edges, draining definition. Mma Ramotswe could tell that the woman was a Motswana—there was something familiar about the face, the bone structure, that enabled her to recognise a kinswoman.

The woman was smiling—not in the strained way in which people may smile in photographs, told to do so by the photographer, but in the natural way of one who wants to smile; who is happy; who is with somebody she loves.

“You were fond of that woman?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“Very,” said Susan. “Very, very fond. She was like a second mother to me.”

“That can happen,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is why it is a fortunate thing to have a nursemaid. You have one mother, and then you have another mother.”

Susan reached out to touch the photograph. Mma Ramotswe noticed the gentleness—the reverence—with which she did this. And she thought of the photograph that she kept in the living room at Zebra Drive—the photograph of her late father, Obed Ramotswe, and of what it meant to her. The photographs of late people had a power beyond that of the photographs of those who were still with us…She stopped. This woman, this Rosie, was not necessarily late; and that, Mma Ramotswe realised, was why Susan was here.

“You want me to find this lady?” she asked, tapping the photograph. “That is why you are here, Mma?”

Susan reached out to reclaim the photograph. “If you can, Mma. But I also want you to find out other things. There was a girl I was at school with—I have her full name. And the house we lived in—I don't have an address for it, and when I went to look for it I couldn't work out which one it was. I'd like you to find that. And a few other things too.”

“Your life in Botswana?” said Mma Makutsi. “You want us to find the life you lost? Is that it, Mma?”

Susan took a few moments to answer. Then she said, “I suppose it is. I suppose that's exactly what I want.” She paused, and looked anxiously first at Mma Ramotswe and then at Mma Makutsi. “You don't think that foolish, do you? You don't think it ridiculous to come here and try to find a past that took place a long time ago? Thirty years, in fact.”