She went inside. The two foster children, Puso and Motholeli, were good at getting themselves up and did so without any prompting by Mma Ramotswe. Motholeli was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table in her wheelchair, her breakfast of a thick slice of bread and jam on a plate before her. In the background, she could hear the sound of Puso slamming the door of the bathroom.
“He cannot shut doors quietly,” said Motholeli, putting her hands to her ears.
“He is a boy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is how boys behave.”
“Then I am glad that I am not a boy,” said Motholeli.
Mma Ramotswe smiled. “Men and boys think that we would like to be them,” she said. “I don’t think they know how pleased we are to be women.”
Motholeli thought about this. “Would you like to be somebody else, Mma? Is there anybody else you would like to be?”
Mma Ramotswe considered this for a moment. It was the sort of question that she always found rather difficult to answer—just as she found it impossible to reply when people asked when one would like to have lived if one did not live in the present. That question was particularly perplexing. Some said that they would have liked to live before the colonial era, before Europe came and carved Africa up; that, they said, would have been a good time, when Africa ran its own affairs, without humiliation. Yes, it was true that Europe had devoured Africa like a hungry man at a feast—and an uninvited one too—but not everything had been perfect before that. What if one had lived next door to the Zulus, with their fierce militarism? What if one were a weak person in the house of the strong? The Batswana had always been a peaceful people, but one could not say that about everybody. And what about medicines and hospitals? Would one have wanted to live in a time when a little scratch could turn septic and end one’s life? Or in the days before dental anaesthetic? Mma Ramotswe thought not, and yet the pace of life was so much more human then and people made do with so much less. Perhaps it would have been good to live then, when one did not have to worry about money, because money did not exist; or when one did not have to fret about being on time for anything, because clocks were as yet unknown. There was something to be said for that; there was something to be said for a time when all one had to worry about was the cattle and the crops.
And as for the question of who else she would rather be, that was perhaps as unanswerable. Her assistant, Mma Makutsi? What would it be like to be a woman from Bobonong, the wearer of a pair of large round glasses, a graduate—with ninety-seven per cent—of the Botswana Secretarial College, an assistant detective? Would Mma Ramotswe exchange her early forties for Mma Makutsi’s early thirties? Would she exchange her marriage to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni for Mma Makutsi’s engagement to Phuti Radiphuti, proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store—and of a considerable herd of cattle? No, she thought she would not. Manifold as Phuti Radiphuti’s merits might be, they could not possibly match those of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and even if it was good to be in one’s early thirties, there were compensations to being in one’s early forties. These were…She stopped. What precisely were they?
Motholeli, the cause of this train of thought, now interrupted it; there was to be no enumeration of the consolations of being forty-ish. “Well, Mma,” she said. “Who would you be? The Minister of Health?”
The Minister, the wife of that great man, Professor Thomas Tlou, had recently visited Motholeli’s school to present prizes and had delivered a stirring address to the pupils. Motholeli had been particularly impressed and had talked about it at home.
“She is a very fine person,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And she wears very beautiful headdresses. I would not mind being Sheila Tlou…if I had to be somebody else. But I am quite happy, really, being Mma Ramotswe, you know. There is nothing wrong with that, is there?” She paused. “And you’re happy being yourself, aren’t you?”
She asked the question without thinking, and immediately regretted it. There were reasons why Motholeli would prefer to be somebody else; it was so obvious, and Mma Ramotswe, flustered, searched for something to say that would change the subject. She looked at her watch. “Oh, the time. It’s getting late, Motholeli. We cannot stand here talking about all sorts of things, much as I’d like to…”
Motholeli licked the remnants of jam off her fingers. She looked up at Mma Ramotswe. “Yes, I’m happy. I’m very happy. And I don’t think that I would like to be anybody else. Not really.”
Mma Ramotswe sighed with relief. “Good. Then I think…”
“Except maybe you,” Motholeli continued. “I would like to be you, Mma Ramotswe.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed. “I’m not sure if you would always enjoy that. There are times when I would like to be somebody else myself.”
“Or Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” Motholeli said. “I would like to know as much about cars as he does. That would be good.”
And dream about brake drums and gears? wondered Mma Ramotswe. And have to deal with those apprentices, and be covered in grease and oil half the time?
ONCE THE CHILDREN had set off for school, Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni found themselves alone in the kitchen. The children always made a noise; now there was an almost unnatural quiet, as at the end of a thunderstorm or a night of high winds. It was a time for the two adults to finish their tea in companionable silence, or perhaps to exchange a few words about what the day ahead held. Then, once the breakfast plates had been cleared up and the porridge pot scrubbed and put away, they would make their separate ways to work, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni in his green truck and Mma Ramotswe in her tiny white van. Their destination was the same—the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency shared premises with Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors—but they invariably arrived at different times. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni liked to drive directly to the top of the Tlokweng Road along the route that went past the flats at the end of the university, while Mma Ramotswe, who had a soft spot for the area of town known as the Village, would meander along Oodi Drive or Hippopotamus Road and approach the Tlokweng Road from that direction.
As they sat at the kitchen table that morning, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni suddenly looked up from his teacup and started to stare at a point on the ceiling. Mma Ramotswe knew that this preceded a disclosure; Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at the ceiling when something needed to be said. She said nothing, waiting for him to speak.
“There’s something I meant to mention to you,” he said casually. “I forgot to tell you about it yesterday. You were in Molepolole, you see.”
She nodded. “Yes, I went to Molepolole.”
His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling. “And Molepolole? How was Molepolole?”
She smiled. “You know what Molepolole is like. It gets a bit bigger, but not much else has changed. Not really.”
“I’m not sure that I would want Molepolole to change too much,” he said.
She waited for him to continue. Something important was definitely about to emerge, but with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni these things could take time.
“Somebody came to see you at the office yesterday,” he said. “When Mma Makutsi was out.”