She had wings, but that was her only claim to angelhood. They peeled out from under her bra straps in juicy flaps of humanity and wobbled ominously as she bellowed her invective into the already hot air.
Quite what she said was, to our South African ears, hopelessly entangled in an accent that reeked of rum and considerable experience of too many bad men.
But we knew she was far from happy. Her eyes flashed, her voice boomed and those wings wobbled as each angry syllable spewed from her shining face.
She sat in a seat — or was it in two seats? — a few rows from the cover boundary, casting an acidic glare over the scene that had dared to play itself out on the Recreation Ground in St John’s, Antigua, that fine day in early May 2005.
Her ire had more than likely been stirred by a match that was proceeding as tediously as a hedgehog in the slow lane of a velcro freeway.
West Indies had needed the better part of two days to take six South African wickets, and here we were on day three with Wavell Hinds gone on the first ball.
She wasn’t to know that the match would yield a world-record eight centuries — including Chris Gayle’s 317 — and just 17 wickets. Among them was the only wicket Mark Boucher has ever taken in a Test match, a feat that teammates who had to put up with the wicketkeeper’s loud swaggering for days afterwards will hope is never repeated.
If she had known all that she might have ripped out a few seats and flung them clean across the ground. Instead, she limited herself to bellyaching — and she was attached to no ordinary belly.
Then, just as abruptly as she had vented her spleen at all who would listen and many who would rather they hadn’t had to, she met her match. The retaliation rat-att-tatted at her from many metres away in razor-edged, staccato Xhosa, cutting through the afternoon haze like the bad-tempered bark of a hot and bothered AK47.
Makhaya Ntini had had enough, and he told her so. At least, that was the message that leapt the language barrier. This we knew because she cut herself short in mid-moan. For a delicious instant the ground was swaddled in a silence that made some of us think of an ancient insect trapped in amber.
The moment was melted by a smile as broad as the boundary itself, and reciprocated in kind. Her wings shook with laughter as Ntini boinged back to his fielding position on his built-in pogo stick.
He had won a victory, but he had shared his victory with the vanquished. If the Ntini family finds itself in need of a motto, that would do nicely.
Back in Mdingi, the mammas would have expected nothing less. They had the task of ensuring that young people such as Ntini were equipped to make their way in the wider world.
There aren’t many young people from anywhere — much less from a village perched on the side of a hill in the Eastern Cape like a hat popped just-so on a Swanker’s head — whose world has stretched as wide as Ntini’s.
It is a long way from Mdingi to King William’s Town in socio-economic terms, never mind from Mdingi to Perth, Delhi, Leeds and Antigua. How the hell do you measure that?
The success of Ntini’s career will be quoted in Test caps and wickets, and in feats like the 13 for 132 — the best ever Test figures by a South African — which he took in Trinidad two weeks before that 2005 tour reached Antigua.
Others will hold uppermost the fact that Ntini was the first African to represent South Africa in the post-unity era. Cricket, even racially unified cricket, creaks with conservatism and class division, and for a brash bugger such as Ntini to come from the other side of nowhere and build the career he has is a beacon for many to follow.
Some might consider his emergence from a conviction and subsequent acquittal on a rape charge as his lasting triumph. Let it be known that Ntini made a poor witness and was badly represented at his trial, and that he would in all likelihood not have been found guilty.
A few might gaze in wonder at Ntini’s sustained success, despite what they will consider a certain noble savageness. Do not mistake Ntini for an innocent. He is a startlingly savvy man who understands, for example, the media, far better than most of his teammates and the administrators who run the game.
Of course, a serious assessment of Ntini’s life and achievements thus far — he will not go gently into that good night for a long time after he stops playing — will consider all of those factors.
But greater than any and all of them is the truth that after 79 Tests, 164 one-day internationals and almost 10 years as an international cricketer; as a figure fêted in significant chunks of the world and heralded as a pioneer in his own country, he has grown into a wiser, more mature version of the person he was when he arrived.
On Friday, as Ntini begins his benefit year with a match against the touring West Indians in East London, he should know that this alone makes many people proud to say they know him. He should also know that the angel of Antigua will be pretty pissed off if he hasn’t saved at least two seats for her.