“So what about you, Lola?” Bonang asked. “Do you think you’ll ever have a baby?”

I looked around the people in the waiting room of the clinic: a middle-aged white couple who didn’t look pregnant at all, an overly pregnant black girl who looked like a child herself, and her stern-faced mother, an Indian woman in a severely ironed business suit with a slight bump she was trying to disguise, another young black woman with far too much make-up on, with a baby in a pram, and Bonang, three months pregnant, beaming like she won the lottery.

It was an odd collection of people, all here because they were in various stages of reproduction. Could I see myself ever doing it? It seemed unlikely; I could barely take care of myself. How would I take care of a baby? But I knew that wasn’t what Bonang wanted to hear. Bonang wanted everyone to want babies just like she did.

“Sure,” I said. “I’d love to have a baby one day.”

The stern-faced mother’s head snapped around and she looked at me as if I’d just said I’d like to eat babies, not have one. The Indian woman rolled her eyes. The woman of the middle-aged couple looked at me pleadingly, as if I held the magic key to reproduction. The made-up woman went to the desk and asked the nurse for the toilet key.

Bonang’s phone rang. “Hello Jomo. Yes. OK. Well, you’ll need to call Amo, not me. I can’t do anything about it. Yeah, bye.”

I wondered what Jomo would want with my little sister, Amogelang. “And?” I asked Bonang.

Bonang sighed heavily. “Well … you know Mr Wang and Jomo are making that chemical company.”

“Yes …”

“Well, they’re trying to sell some of Amogelang’s products. You’re not meant to know. Amo said you wouldn’t like it, since it might distract her from her school work.”

“Yes. She’s right. What is a twelve-year-old-girl doing going into business?”

“You know how clever she is. And it’s not like she’ll be doing the selling.”

“But it sounds like she’s being consulted about something.”

A round, old woman with a tray of sweets, airtime cards, and cigarettes came into the waiting room. I watched her rush to the nurses at the desk. “Here’s your magwinya for tea, Nurse Robert.”

Nurse Robert took some coins out of his pocket and gave them to the woman. “Thanks Mma Di-Sweets.”

The woman hurried out and my attention went back to Bonang.

“Well they’re selling Relaxmol, which is doing quite well. They even have Joburg veterinarians coming to buy, to use on their patients to calm them down. And the anti-superglue product flies off the shelves. So Mr Wang asked her if she had anything else. Amo said she had something called KidStop. Jomo and Mr Wang thought it was great so they started stocking it.”

“KidStop?” I asked, then paused as the made-up woman appeared in front of me. I looked at her.

“Could you keep an eye on my baby? I want to go to the loo,” she said.

“Sure,” I said. The woman pushed the pram closer to me.

“She’s sleeping,” the woman said.

“OK.” I turned back to Bonang.

“Yeah, so this product is meant to be put on the bottom of kids’ shoes, like toddlers who like to wander off and stuff. It’s a little bit sticky and keeps them from going too fast.”

“So it has a problem?”

“Yes, apparently sometimes it’s too strong and the kids get stuck and can’t move. Jomo got a call from a first grade class off on a trip to the museum in Polokwane. Apparently five of them are permanently stuck at the lion diorama. And it’s shrunk the shoes round their feet so they can’t even get them off. He was there when he called. I could hear the crying in the background.”

I shook my head. I had all sorts of my own problems and I was not going to get myself involved in any that were not mine. But I would give my little sister a strong talking to when I got home.

“Bonang Kopang?” Nurse Robert called from the desk.

“That’s me.” Bonang stood up and followed Nurse Robert to the examination room.

Just then my phone rang. It was Gideon, my official boyfriend – yay! Things were going so well between us. I looked around for the mother of the baby I was meant to be watching. She seemed to still be in the toilet. I turned to the couple next to me. “I’m just going to go outside to take this call. Could you tell the mother when she gets back?”

“Sure,” the man said.

I pushed the pram outside the door onto the closed-in veranda, so that I could speak privately to Gideon. The baby was so wrapped up in blankets under the hood of the pram that she seemed to have no head. I didn’t want to move anything for fear she’d wake up. Crying babies and me don’t go together very well.

“Hi Gideon, how’s things?”

“Good. I just wanted to find out what you’re doing tonight. I was thinking of coming to Nokeng for a few days. I’m investigating a corruption charge for a story and I need to do some interviews at the regional government offices. I thought I’d stay at my parents’ place, since it’s closer.”

“I’m free tonight. Should we go out for dinner?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. “I can’t wait to see you.”

I put the phone back in my bag and negotiated the pram through the door and back into the waiting room. I was surprised the mother was not back yet. What was she doing in the toilet all of this time?

When she finally emerged it was clear. She smelled of cigarette smoke and she seemed to have reapplied her heavy layer of make-up, if her bright-red, shiny lips and thick mascara-ed eyelashes were anything to go by.

The woman smiled at me. “Thanks for watching her.”

“She’s a good baby. Never made a peep.”

“Well, that’s a change.” The woman laughed awkwardly.

She pushed the pram back to where she’d been sitting. After a few minutes she reached forward to look inside under the hood, carefully pushing the blankets to the side to check on her daughter. Then she looked up at me, her face panicked. I wondered what was going on. She stood up and pulled the blankets completely out of the pram, shaking them in the air. Then she lifted the thin mattress and tossed it to the side. “Where’s my baby?!” she asked me. “Where’d you put Lesego?”

Everyone in the waiting room was on their feet now. They went to the woman and looked inside the empty pram.

“Where’s my baby? Where did you take my baby?!” the woman screamed at me.

I just looked at her; there was nothing I could say.

***

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