When she was still a distance away he left the window and went to the door, opening and stepping outside, and then just standing there where she could see him. She came a few more steps and pretended to be tired, putting down her bucket. She wasted a few more seconds by fiddling with the blanket that held the baby to her back, bending forward from the waist while doing so. It was in this position, with a safety pin between her white teeth, that she looked up suddenly and Tsotsi caught her eye.

He held it longer and looked deeper than he had done with anyone else in his life, making sure in that time that she understood that his baby was waiting in the room again and that he was asking her. He waited for her to pick up her bucket and start walking. When she had come to within a few steps of him, he turned and went into the room.

He wasn’t sure she had followed until the room darkened, and then he knew that she was in the doorway. Even so he did not look back but went straight to the bed. ‘He’s been crying,’ he said. ‘He looks bad. I got nothing for him. You will feed him again.’

Silhouetted in the door, with the light behind her, he could see nothing of her face. He didn’t need to. The hesitation was obvious and he was about to say something else, something maybe about her baby that would make her decide when she finally came in and closed the door. After the glare it took him a few seconds to accustom his eyes to the dark. When he could see her clearly, she was already at the bed, loosening the blanket that held her child.

He knew then that she had wanted to come, that she had come prepared to come; that for all he knew she might even have knocked on his door in passing if he had not stepped out into the street. He knew that firstly because of the ointment she smeared around the sore lips, dipping her finger into a small jar that had come out of a pocket in her dress. There were also the clean clothes come out of the blanket to clothe it, and the powder she dusted all over the small baby. In all this, the ointment, the washing and the clothing, her own baby cried once, but she silenced it with soft words, bending low so that it could smell her presence.

Then she unbuttoned her blouse; it was the same one with the buttons sewn on again, and she started feeding and this he watched intently because he had not seen it the first time. Her breasts were big and full of milk and they started dripping even before she had a nipple in the small mouth. The baby gave her trouble. After sucking for a few seconds with a loud greedy noise, he then turned his head and the milk dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.