Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Read Online Free PDF Page B

husband was losing
patience. Shortly after he left, he wrote to her from Lobatse and told
her—proudly—that his new wife was pregnant. Then, a year and a half
later, there came a short letter with a photograph of his child. No money was
sent, and that was the last time she heard from him.
    Now, holding
Precious in her arms, standing in her own room with its four stout, whitewashed
walls, her happiness was complete. She allowed Precious, now four, to sleep
with her in her bed, lying awake at night for long hours to listen to the
child’s breathing. She stroked her skin, held the tiny hand between her
fingers, and marvelled at the completeness of the child’s body. When
Precious slept during the afternoon, in the heat, she would sit beside her,
knitting and sewing tiny jackets and socks in bright reds and blues, and brush
flies away from the sleeping child.
    Obed, too, was content. He gave his
cousin money each week to buy food for the household and a little extra each
month for herself. She husbanded resources well, and there was always money
left over, which she spent on something for Precious. He never had occasion to
reprove her, or to find fault in her upbringing of his daughter. Everything was
perfect.
    The cousin wanted Precious to be clever. She had had little
education herself, but had struggled at reading, and persisted, and now she
sensed the possibilities for change. There was a political party, now, which
women could join, although some men grumbled about this and said it was asking
for trouble. Women were beginning to speak amongst themselves about their lot.
Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst
themselves, there were whispers, and looks exchanged. She thought of her own
life; of the early marriage to a man she had barely met, and of the shame of
her inability to bear children. She remembered the years of living in the room
with three walls, and the tasks which had been imposed upon her, unpaid. One
day, women would be able to sound their own voice, perhaps, and would point out
what was wrong. But they would need to be able to read to do that.
    She
started by teaching Precious to count. They counted goats and cattle. They
counted boys playing in the dust. They counted trees, giving each tree a name:
crooked one; one with no leaves; one where mopani worms like to hide; one where
no bird will go. Then she said: “If we chop down the tree which looks
like an old man, then how many trees are there left?” She made Precious
remember lists of things—the names of members of the family, the names of
cattle her grandfather had owned, the names of the chiefs. Sometimes they sat
outside the store nearby, the Small Upright General Dealer, and waited for a
car or a truck to bump its way past on the pothole-pitted road. The cousin
would call out the number on the registration plate and Precious would have to
remember it the next day when she was asked, and perhaps even the day after
that. They also played a variety of Kim’s Game, in which the cousin would
load a basket-work tray with familiar objects and a blanket would then be
draped over it and one object removed.
    “What has been taken from
the tray?”
    “An old marula pip, all gnarled and chewed
up.”
    “And what else?”
    “Nothing.”
    She was never wrong, this child who watched
everybody and everything with her wide, solemn eyes. And slowly, without
anybody ever having intended this, the qualities of curiosity and awareness
were nurtured in the child’s mind.
    By the time Precious went to
school at the age of six, she knew her alphabet, her numbers up to two hundred,
and she could recite the entire first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the
Setswana translation. She had also learnt a few words of English, and could
declaim all four verses of an English poem about ships and the sea. The teacher
was impressed and complimented the cousin on what she had done. This was
virtually the first praise that she had ever