Matou remembered waking to the dampness beneath her, knowing immediately what awaited her. “Matou! Look at what you have done!”
There was no answer Matou could give. To insist upon her innocence was insolence. To remain silent was an admission of guilt. And to suggest that Aunty Bae herself might be responsible was unthinkable.
Then came the punishment.
Matou would be ordered to strip the bed, carry the urine-soaked sheets outside and wash them. She remembered the sharp smell, the unpleasant dampness against her arms, the endless scrubbing while Aunty Bae stood nearby issuing instructions.
Matou would scrub until her fingers hurt, sometimes washing the same sheet twice because the old woman insisted it still smelled.
It was not the washing that humiliated her. Household chores were familiar to Matou. She washed clothes, swept floors and fetched water without complaint. What wounded her was being forced to clean another person’s urine while accepting blame for something she had not done.
Worse still, Aunty Bae made no effort to protect her dignity.
She spoke openly about Matou’s supposed disgrace, sometimes in front of other members of the household.
“Imagine! A girl of her age still wetting the bed!”
Matou would lower her head as people looked towards her. Some appeared disgusted, others amused, and a few offered pity that was almost as painful because it assumed her guilt.
Nobody seemed particularly interested in hearing her side.
She was a child, and Aunty Bae was an adult. That alone appeared sufficient to settle the matter.
But Matou suspected there was something more.
She was not an Owens by birth.
She was the child brought from another family, entrusted to their care for an education and a better future. She ate their food, slept beneath their roof and benefited from their generosity. These were facts she was reminded of often enough, sometimes openly and sometimes through small acts that made her feel different from the other children.
She was expected to be grateful.
And gratitude, it seemed, required endurance.
There were things the other children could do without attracting much attention that would earn Matou a reprimand. Their mistakes were often treated as ordinary childhood carelessness. Hers could become evidence offing gratitude or bad upbringing.
She was family when there was work to be done, but an outsider when tenderness was required. She belonged when obedience was demanded, but not always when affection was distributed.
Now, after two months in Farato, Matou learned that the truth had finally emerged. There had been no child to accuse. No convenient culprit to summon from sleep. No small hands to strip the bedding and scrub away the evidence. And still the bed had been wet. For one brief moment, Matou felt a fierce satisfaction. Her absence had accomplished what her silent protests never could. The truth had revealed itself without a single word from her.
Yet the satisfaction quickly gave way to something sadder. Why had nobody believed her before? Why had it taken her absence for the adults to recognize what had been happening? And why had a child’s dignity been so easily sacrificed to protect an adult’s pride?
Aunty Bae’s children had now sought treatment for her. She had been given her own bed, with a mattress covered in impermeable material, and arrangements had been made to manage the accidents with greater privacy and comfort.
The new sleeping arrangements were a welcome relief, but Matou was not certain they amounted to an apology. A change in circumstances did not necessarily mean a change of heart.
Still, she was grateful.
She would no longer have to wake in fear of another accusation or carry soiled bedding outside while others looked on. She could sleep among the children, whisper with Jane in the darkness and wake without dreading what the morning might bring.
And somewhere within her, a quiet determination took root.
One day, when she was grown, she would remember those mornings. She would remember what it felt like to tell the truth and not be believed, to be humiliated by someone who was supposed to protect her, and to be treated as though her feelings mattered less because she belonged to another family.
She would try never to become that kind of adult.
For now, Matou was only twelve. She could not demand justice from Aunty Bae or recover the mornings lost to humiliation.
But she could hold onto one truth that nobody could take from her.
She had not been guilty.
She had never been guilty.
And whether Aunty Bae acknowledged it or not, she had deserved kindness all along.
Later that night, when the lights were finally switched off, the room filled with the soft sounds of children settling down. Jane whispered something that made Martha laugh. “Keep quiet,” someone warned. “You keep quiet.”
A pillow rustled. Somebody giggled again. Matou lay on her back, listening.
The room was different from the one she had known before leaving for Farato. The air was fresher. The bed was comfortable. The old dread that had accompanied nighttime seemed to have loosened its hold upon her.
She was no longer sleeping alongside Aunty Bae. She was sleeping with the other children. It was such a simple change. Yet to Matou it felt as though somebody had quietly opened a door that had been locked for years. She turned towards Jane.
“Jane?” she whispered. “What?”
“Are you asleep?”
“I’m answering you, aren’t I?”
Matou smiled. “Nothing.”
“Then sleep.” A moment passed.
“Jane?”
“What now?”
“I’m glad I’m sleeping here.” Jane shifted towards her.
“Of course. Where else should you sleep?” Matou did not answer.
Jane, already drifting towards sleep, added, “We missed you, you know.” Matou’s throat tightened. “I missed you people too.” Then the room became quiet.
For a while Matou lay listening to the unfamiliar comfort of being included.
But when the others had fallen asleep, her thoughts returned to Farato.
She reached towards her belongings and found the homemade cloth Borogie had sent. She pulled it close. The smell was already fading. That frightened her. She inhaled deeply. Smoke. Earth. Perhaps kerosene. Perhaps she only imagined it. Home.
Her throat tightened.
By now Bubel was probably asleep, perhaps still asking why she had gone away. Borogie would be settling down after the day’s work. Nenneh Dado would have found something to discuss, and Yerro might be sitting outside, thinking about the coming farming season or listening to the distant sounds of the village.
Perhaps one of them had looked towards the place where Matou usually sat and remembered that she was no longer there. The thought hurt. But it comforted her too. Because absence worked both ways. She missed them. They missed her. And that mattered.
She remembered Nata’s words. You belong to us in Farato. You belong to us here in Bakau. Matou repeated them silently. She looked around the room once more. The smooth walls, the comfortable bed, the electric light now extinguished, the other children sleeping peacefully nearby. Everything appeared brighter and shinier after Farato, yet somehow less alive. But tonight there was something new.
She had returned expecting the old loneliness to swallow her immediately. Instead, she had been welcomed by children who had genuinely missed her, adults who had admired the gifts from her family, and even an Aunty Bae who seemed unexpectedly pleased to see her.
And best of all, she was no longer condemned to spend her nights beside the old woman whose anger had so often made sleep a fearful business. Perhaps the house had not changed as much as Matou wished. Perhaps Aunty Bae would still be difficult tomorrow. Perhaps there would still be punishments, misunderstandings and moments when she longed desperately for her mother. But tonight, at least, something had shifted.
She was not quite as invisible as she had once believed. Matou pressed the cloth closer to her chest. For years she had thought being sent away meant that somehow she had become less her parents’ child. The holiday had changed that.
She had seen Borogie’s tears. She had heard Bubel scream because she was leaving. She had watched neighbours bring farewell gifts. She had felt Yerro embrace her and watched Nata postpone her return to Jeshwang so that Matou would not travel alone.
Those things could not be undone by distance. She had been sent away. But she had not been given away. At twelve, Matou could not yet understand all the contradictions contained in that truth. She could not know whether the education her parents wanted for her would one day compensate for the loneliness it demanded of her now.
All she knew was that somewhere beyond Bakau stood a modest compound where the bed was hard, the blanket too thin and the kerosene lamp smoked.
And if somebody had appeared at that moment and said, Come, Matou. I will take you back, she would have jumped from that comfortable bed without even putting on her shoes.
But nobody came.
Instead, Jane turned in her sleep and murmured something unintelligible. Her hand fell across Matou’s arm. Matou looked at it. She could have moved away. There was plenty of space. Instead, she allowed the hand to remain. It was not Bubel’s little arm. It was not Borogie’s reassuring embrace. It was not the crowded warmth of the sleeping hut in Farato. But it was something. And perhaps, Matou thought as her eyelids finally grew heavy, belonging did not always arrive in one place and remain there forever.
Perhaps it could grow quietly in another.
She held the cloth against her chest and whispered the words Nata had given her, changing them slightly until they became her own.
“I still belong to them.”
Then, after a moment:
“And they still belong to me.”
With Jane sleeping beside her, and the old fear of Aunty Bae’s room finally behind her, Matou closed her eyes.
For the first time since leaving Farato, sleep came without a struggle.
