The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine Read Free

She knew many men who had dropped, often without the chance to say goodbye to their wives; they just dropped, more or less where they stood.
    “But some of us have to go on working,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Some of us have to carry on, because if we did not, then everything would come to a stop. What would happen at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors if I said that I had had enough and was going to stop working? It would come to a grinding halt, Mma, and that would be that. It would be Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors (Now Late), Mma, that is what it would be.”
    She took a moment to think about this. What Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni said was probably true. There was Fanwell, of course, who was now a qualified mechanic even if she—and others—still called him an apprentice. And there was Charlie, who had recently been seconded to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency because there was not enough work for him in the garage. But could either of these—or indeed both together—manage the business in the absence of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni? She thought not. Charlie had always needed close supervision or he would lose his temper with an engine and start hitting it with a hammer; he would be no use. Fanwell was a much better, much more patient mechanic, but he was reticent in his manner, and it was difficult to see him coping with some of the more assertive customers, particularly those who objected to the size of the bills that had to be issued for servicing or repairing a car. Cars were expensive things, and anything to do with their maintenance was correspondingly costly, even if a garage was modest in its charges. Fanwell was too gentle, she thought, to fight that particular corner.
    Mma Ramotswe returned to her task, but she had planted a seed in Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s mind. He sat in his chair, looking up at the ceiling, drumming his fingers lightly on the table. Then he stood up, crossed to the window, and looked out into the yard. It was dark outside, and the light in the kitchen prevented his seeing the stars that hung, in great draperies of silver, above the land.
    Turning away from the window, he addressed Mma Ramotswe. “Of course, you could, you know. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”
    She stirred the pot with the wooden spoon she had owned since the age of eight—an artefact of her childhood that still reminded her of the aunt who had given it to her. It was another world, the world of childhood and of Mochudi—a world of openness and innocence, a world in which the old Botswana ways were not just the customs that people remembered with fondness but the precepts and habits by which people led their day-to-day lives.
We have lost so much,
she thought.
Our dear country has lost so much.
But everybody had lost something—it was not just Botswana, which had perhaps lost less than others. So many people had lost that sense of identification with the land that gave meaning to life; that fixed one firmly to a place one loved. At least we still have that, she thought: at least we still have land that we can call
our place;
acacia trees that are
our
acacia trees; a sky that is
our
sky because it watched over our mothers and fathers and took them up into it, embraced them, when they became late. We still have that, no matter how big and frightening the world becomes.
    The thoughts inspired by the simple wooden spoon gave way to his question. What had he suggested she do? Or not do, perhaps?
    “Me? Do what, Rra?”
    “Take a holiday, Mma. You work so hard—”
    She cut him short. “A holiday? No, I was not talking about myself, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. I was talking about other people taking a holiday—maybe even you.”
    He shook his head. “And I told you I cannot, Mma, but then I thought:
Why doesn’t Mma Ramotswe take a holiday herself?
That’s what I thought, Mma.”
    Mma Ramotswe laughed. “But I can’t possibly take a holiday, Rra. Who would look after the agency?”
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni did not hesitate. “Mma