Actually, she wasn’t old really – 43 – and if it was a shoe it was a very well-worn one, down at heel. But the ten kids certainly fit the old rhyme.

Betty’s voice on the phone had been guttural and indistinct. When I said I needed to come visit she said sure I could come, then asked an incomprehensible question about some other service she needed. I suggested we go over that when I got there.

Watts has a bad reputation but, like most areas, it’s patchy; decrepit streets suddenly give way to rather well kept neighborhoods. On my drive to see Betty the transition was the reverse: after driving along a road that was primly suburban, with freshly painted two-storey houses behind redbrick walls I turned a corner into a street of rundown faded little bungalows with broken fences and littered yards. The garages, long since abandoned by cars, had been converted into rooms or even self-contained apartments.

The house I pulled up at was nondescript except that the garage door and the eaves had been painted a garish dark green. The gate was stuck closed, which didn’t matter much as there were gaps in the fence wide enough to pass through.

When I knocked at the front door there was a long pause until it was opened by a tallish, rotund black woman in a copious old flowered dress. This maternal picture should stereotypically have been topped by a jolly face, maybe once had been, but now Betty wore instead a blank gaze, from which any vitality had been rasped away by the grind of living.

She proceeded me back into the house and lowered herself heavily on to a small couch. I sat in the only other chair available and immediately became aware of the scrutiny of many small pairs of eyes. There seemed to be kids everywhere, a sensation heightened by the smallness of the cramped living room.

Far from shy the children were full of lively curiosity. The smallest one (a boy about 5) giggled “Hi” and tugged at my briefcase. Two other boys held back a bit, one with his head slightly crooked to one side as if trying to size me up. My first impression was how beautiful they all were, the girls like miniature Janet Jacksons and the boys like the young Michael before he grew up – or whatever he did.

“Well,” I said. “What a beautiful family. What are you raising here, rock singers or movie stars?”

Betty smiled faintly. Whether or not she recognized the compliment it seemed to bounce off her.

“It says here you have 6 children under 15.”

“No ten.” Betty brightened. “Only six of them still live here. The others are grown. And I have four grandchildren.” For the first time she became animated, with what was unmistakable pride.

“They’re so cute” and I almost added – do they all have the same father? It’s just that they were so uniformly pretty that it must have come from one source, I thought.

“You’re genes, I guess” I ventured, staying on safe ground.

“Guess so” she smiled.