Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith

hand on Mma Ramotswe’s forearm. When she answered, she spoke in a low voice, so that Mr. Polopetsi had to lean forward to hear what she said. This made the woman lower her voice even further. “Her parents, you say, Mma. You say her parents. I say her parents. But that girl, she thought that they were not her parents at all! She said that herself. Not to everyone, but she said it to me once, and to another lady who knew her mother. And to a woman in the Women’s Guild at the church. She said it. She said that she came from somewhere else.”
    This revelation was greeted with complete silence. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke. “And was this true, do you think?”
    The woman suddenly stood up, straightening her skirt and brushing imagined dust off her sleeve. She looked up at the sky. “It is going to rain, Mma. At long last it is going to rain.”
    Mma Ramotswe glanced over her shoulder at the clouds that had built up to the east. They were heavy and purple, stacked in towering layers; so sudden, so welcome. “Yes,” she said. “That is very good. The land is very thirsty.” She reached out and touched the woman’s shoulder. “But tell me one thing, Mma, and then we will leave you to get on with your…with your resting. Tell me, was it true that this girl was the child of another lady?”
    The woman laughed. “Certainly not, Mma. It is certainly not true.”
    “Can you be sure?” Mma Ramotswe probed.
    Again the woman laughed. “Can I be sure, Mma? Of course I can. I can be sure because I was there in the house when she gave birth. We had been friends since we were girls, and I helped her when she had her baby. It was myself and the woman from the village who helped at births. We were both there, and some other women too. All the women together. I saw that girl come out of her mother. I saw it myself.” She looked at Mma Ramotswe; there was something triumphant about her manner, the look of one who had laid a canard to rest. “And I’ll tell you something else, Mma. I saw the baby open her eyes for the first time—I was right there, as close as I am to you—and I saw the look in those eyes. It was a complaining look, and I said to myself, This one will do a lot of shouting. And, do you know, Mma, straightaway that baby started to cry and make a fuss about being born. That is the sort of baby she was.”
             
    THEY LEFT THE WOMAN, but only after she had given them a list of other friends of the late Mma Sebina, senior. None of these women knew her as well as she did, of course, but she was sure that they would confirm what she had told them. And then, with the storm clouds now virtually upon them, they made their way back to the tiny white van.
    “We can’t go and look for these people in the rain,” said Mma Ramotswe, glancing up at the purple clouds. “We shall have to come back.”
    “We shall have to come back,” agreed Mr. Polopetsi, who had a habit of repeating what was said to him; an innocuous enough habit, until one noticed it.
    Mma Ramotswe turned the van and they had just started back when the first drops of rain began to fall. First there was that smell, that smell of rain, so unlike anything else, but immediately recognisable and enough to make the heart of a dry person soar; for that, thought Mma Ramotswe, is what we Batswana are: dry people, people who can live with dust and dryness but whose hearts dream of rain and water. Now, in great veils, the rain fell upon Botswana; great purple-white veils joining sky to land, soaking the parched landscape.
    They drove down the road through the welcome deluge, travelling slowly for the puddles and sheets of water that were forming so quickly. The tiny white van, valiant in every sort of condition, ploughed through the water like an albino hippo, while its windscreen wipers swept backwards and forwards, making it possible, just, to see a few yards ahead through the downpour. But then, as if overcome by the sheer effort of pushing aside so