“WHAT’S THE EARLIEST you can remember?” began Mma Sebina. And then, without waiting for an answer, she continued: “I can remember being four, Mma Ramotswe, but nothing before that. I can remember seeing a car in a ditch being pulled out by a tractor. And then the tractor ran over a chicken.

“Then I remember nothing else about being four, and suddenly I’m five and it is time to go to Sunday school. I was taken to Sunday school by my mother and she used to come back to fetch me hours later, or it seemed like hours. We were given little stamps which we stuck in our books. Pictures of Jesus walking on the water and things like that. I remember looking at that picture of the walking on the water for a long time—I loved it so much, and I still do, Mma. I still have that picture.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. She understood. She, too, had pictures that she loved: her picture, printed on a plate, of Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of Botswana, that great man; she loved that picture because the expression on his face said so much to her. It was a gentle face, the face of a man who believed in his country and had stood up for what it represented, which was decency above all else; just that—decency. When she looked at that picture, it was as if he was still there: the late President, still watching over his country. And how proud he would be if he really could see it today, she thought; how proud.

“For most people it doesn’t matter if they forget what happened before they were four,” Mma Sebina continued. “That is because they know that it was not very much. But in my case it’s different, Mma. That’s when everything happened. But I cannot remember any of it.

“I can see that you’re puzzled, Mma, and I can understand why. My mother, you see, the lady I called my mother a little bit earlier—she was not really my mother. I was the daughter of another woman altogether and that kind lady, my mother, and her kind husband, my father, who was not really my father, took me in and raised me as their own child.

“That, of course, is a very common thing, Mma. There are many people who are the child of one mother but raised by another. Their mother may become late—that is a very common reason for this sort of thing—or may be too poor to bring up children. There are many reasons why a sister or an aunt may bring up the child of another woman. Or a grandmother, of course. As you know, that is not at all unusual.”

She paused, and Mma Ramotswe, reaching for her pencil, sighed. “It is almost the rule, these days, Mma. What with this illness and everything. Where would we be without the grandmothers?”