The Heavens May Fall by Unity Dow

Author:Unity Dow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2006-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

“We want to appeal. We can’t just let him get away with this!” Kereng Badisa, Nancy’s grandfather, had acquired a stoop in his posture that had not been there when I first met him. It appeared that the past few months had weighed him down, literally. Even as he spoke, there was weariness in his voice that was at odds with the challenging words he was uttering. He said to me beforehand that he felt as if he had let his granddaughter down. He felt he could have done a better job on the witness stand. I tried to assure him that he had told the truth; and that the truth had only resulted in a retort that was obviously not about truth.

Until his peace was shattered on the night his granddaughter had charged out of his little house rented to John, Kereng Badisa had been a semi-retired mechanic with a weak knee that did not stop him from tinkering with the odd engine in his workshop. He was a proud man who believed in hard honest labour. When he and his teacher wife had first moved to Mochudi to be near their grandchildren, then toddlers, they acquired a plot at the edge of Makakatlela Ward and then proceeded to turn it into a home envied by many. It was a paradise for children with its playground, fruit garden, and biking and walking trails. The kindergarten and the workshop were on either side of the main house, so the grandchildren had a home that was both a school and playground. They also saw their grandparents and their mother every day and at every meal. Their mother lived with them until she went on a residential internship at the Gaborone Motel. Then, as if on cue, their peace was destroyed by the events of that fateful night.

When the older Badisas first came to Mochudi they were both middle-aged. The mere fact that they moved to a new village and started all over again in terms of setting up home, Kereng setting up a new workshop and Gertrude a kindergarten school, was testimony to their spirit and resilience. Their daughter, Sally, had been struggling to raise two children on her own while she studied for an accountancy diploma by correspondence. Her parents saw the move to Mochudi as both a responsibility and a challenge. It had worked out wonderfully for them all.

Looking at her as she sat on a grey-brown couch that had seen better days, in my small office whose walls needed to be painted, I could see that Gertrude too felt defeated. She kept on stirring her tea long after it was necessary. The metallic sound was grating but I could not, under the circumstances, ask her to stop.

As for Sally, their daughter and mother of Nancy, she was pacing up and down my small office, folding and unfolding her arms like a caged panther. She made me nervous because I couldn’t make out whether she was about to scream in anger or dissolve in tears.

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