WAME MOLEFHE ON WRITING What If?

When Mmathuso closed the small gate to her yard and bid Mmakeaitse ‘safe travels’ that Monday morning she added a warning: “Mmakeaitse, please, I pray, return that phone to Keaitse’s jacket pocket where you found it. Close his wardrobe and forget all of this. In fact, if I were you, I would throw that phone into the Tshweu River. This phone will only bring you, bring us, trouble.”

She then busied her hands to try to still her unease. She swept. She dusted. She polished. She had another cup of rooibos tea. But unlike other days, her old remedy for angst did not help, so she swapped her slippers for menangaso to take a brisk walk. Wearing her usual outfit of a calf-length leteisi wraparound skirtly, tightly knotted, her doek on her head, if somewhat askance, she closed the door to her home and walked out of the gate.

She remembered how Tsalanang’s people had whispered that Mmakeaitse’s son must have learnt things when he was away at boarding school. She had told them then, that it was none of their business. When one busybody had crossed the village to warn her to keep an eye on Thuso, she had chased her out of her yard. When the people whose totem she shared called Nortje’s farm Sodom, she hummed her favourite hymn to silence, but she could not deny that the sight of Rre Nortje’s tan bare buttocks in a bright yellow g-string had shaken her. But it was not so much the sight of bare buttocks that troubled her; it was wondering whom the photographer was that caused her to think. It was this question that had become her homework.

If she had known what Mmakeaitse was coming to her house to show her that Monday morning, she would have padlocked her gate and pretended to be out.

When Mmakeaitse started to tell her a story that began with “I’m sure” and she added Rre Nortje’s name to it and Keaitse’s name and Thuso’s too, Mmathuso shook her head and held up her hands. She did not want to hear anymore. When Tsalanang people said, “I’m sure” what they really meant was that they were sure of nothing. Why? Her people could mould a cow out of clay and make it moo. So, she, Mmathuso, was not listening to any of Mmakeaitse’s theories.

Mmakeaitse’s visit achieved only one purpose. It diluted the wonderful news that the Badisa family had brought her on that Sunday evening. She was going to be a grandmother. She would have Thuso’s child to remember him by.

At the fork in the road, she chose the quiet, not much travelled path that veered away from the construction site where another luxury lodge was being built. Their MP had promised that it was going to create jobs upon jobs for the people of Tsalanang. She swung round and past the school that she had taught at, that her son had attended, that Keaitse had attended. She continued past the senior school that was only five years old but was already falling down.

But Mmathuso chose not to let any of this bother her. She thought up names for her unborn grandchild as she walked. A name that would bring her comfort. A name like Segopotso or Boikhutso or Kamogelo. Yes, Kamogelo. It was a name that said she had accepted what had happened to her son. He was gone and nothing would ever bring him back. She would pray for his spirit to find rest.

Was it coincidence that Rre

Nortje, who was said to know what had eaten her son, happened to would be taking a walk on the very same route on the day she was? Was it a coincidence that she would see him, before he saw her, that their eyes would meet and she would not know whether to greet or flee, that she would find herself consumed by a feeling she had never known before that caused her to shake and shiver and lose her step and trip and fall? That he would hold out his arm to help her stand and she would not know what to do.