But the greatest surprise was yet to come.
Her sleeping place had changed.
She was no longer expected to sleep beside Aunty Bae.
Instead, her bedding had been moved into the room where Jane and the other children slept.
For several seconds, Matou simply stared.
She could hardly believe her good fortune.
Before leaving for Farato, sharing a room with Aunty Bae had been one of the most dreaded parts of her existence. Nighttime had never offered the refuge it should have. There had been the old woman’s endless complaints, her demands for water, her insistence that Matou attend to one thing or another, and the accusations that seemed to arise whenever something went wrong.
Worse still were the mornings when the bedding was wet.
For a long time, Matou had endured the humiliation of being blamed for something she knew she had not done. She had learned to defend herself only in her thoughts, for protesting too strongly could bring punishment, and remaining silent was often taken as an admission of guilt. Aunty Bae’s authority had been such that Matou’s word carried little weight against hers.
Yet Matou had eventually discovered the truth.
It was Aunty Bae herself who wet the bed.
The discovery had been almost impossible to believe at first. How could an adult who scolded children for the smallest mistake be responsible for something she so mercilessly condemned in others? Matou had found the contradiction both astonishing and, in a private corner of her wounded heart, faintly amusing.
But she had never exposed the old woman.
Partly because she feared the consequences, and partly because there was something about the shame of it that she instinctively understood. Even at twelve, Matou knew that certain humiliations were best left unspoken.
During her absence, however, the truth had finally emerged without her assistance.
With no Matou in the room to blame, Aunty Bae’s nighttime accidents could no longer be explained away as the carelessness of a child. At first, the old woman had attempted to conceal them, stripping the bedding early and complaining about the heat, the dampness or the poor condition of the mattress. But the accidents continued, and eventually her children noticed.
There had been concern, embarrassment and, for Aunty Bae, considerable indignation.
She had not taken kindly to questions about her bladder.
“What is all this interrogation?” she had demanded when one of her daughters gently asked whether she was having difficulty controlling her urine. “Am I a child that you must question me about my bed?”
Nobody had suggested she was a child.
Nevertheless, the conversation had offended her deeply.
Her children persisted, not out of disrespect but out of concern. They arranged for her to be examined and sought treatment, hoping that something could be done to relieve the condition. The explanation they received was that such difficulties could occur with advancing age and weakness of the bladder. It was not a matter of deliberate carelessness, nor something that could simply be corrected through scolding.
For Aunty Bae, who had spent years believing that discipline was the answer to almost every human failing, the explanation must have been particularly difficult to accept.
Her children made practical arrangements. She was given a bed of her own, with a mattress protected by an impermeable covering that could be wiped clean whenever necessary. Fresh bedding was kept nearby, and the room was reorganized so that she could sleep more comfortably and privately.
The changes had transformed the sleeping arrangements for everyone.
And Matou, returning from Farato, was the unexpected beneficiary.
Jane, who had been watching her expression with obvious amusement, finally burst out laughing.
“What are you standing there for? Come and see where you are sleeping!”
Matou followed her, still uncertain.
“Here?”
“Yes, here.”
“With you?”
“Who else?”
Matou looked from one bed to another.
“Every night?”
Jane rolled her eyes. “No, Matou. Only on Tuesdays. The other days you will sleep outside with the chickens.”
Matou laughed.
It was the first entirely unguarded laugh she had managed since arriving in Bakau.
“Are you sure?”
Jane looked genuinely puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”
Matou had no answer.
How could she explain that the simple privilege of sleeping among the other children felt almost miraculous? That after years of dreading the approach of bedtime, the prospect of lying down without listening for Aunty Bae’s complaints seemed too wonderful to trust?
She touched the mattress.
Soft.
She pressed her palm against it again, watching the material yield beneath her hand.
It was nothing like the hard sleeping slab in Farato.
There was a proper pillow, clean bedding and enough room to stretch her legs without somebody complaining that she had taken too much space.
Yet the first thought that came to Matou was not gratitude for the comfort.
It was Bubel.
She remembered how he would wriggle against her in his sleep, pushing his small body into whatever space she occupied. She remembered his feet, always cold at first, finding their way beneath her wrapper. She remembered pretending to be angry when he stole the blanket and then secretly pulling him closer when the night became chilly.
Sometimes, when the cold penetrated their thin covering, Matou would smuggle herself closer to Borogie, carefully lifting the edge of her mother’s wrapper before slipping beneath it.
Borogie, even half asleep, always knew.
“Matou, are you coming to sleep inside my stomach?”
Matou would giggle.
“I’m cold, Mama.”
“And Bubel?”
“He is taking all the blanket.”
“Then take it back.”
“He will cry.”
“Then let him cry.”
But Borogie would lift her arm anyway, making room for both children, and somehow the three of them would settle into a tangled arrangement that was neither comfortable nor spacious but perfectly satisfactory.
Nenneh Dado would occasionally complain from the other end of the room.
“Are you people going to sleep or hold a meeting until morning?”
Borogie would answer, “Tell your son to stop kicking everybody.”
“He is your son when he is troublesome,” Nenneh Dado would reply.
Then somebody would laugh, and Bubel, hearing laughter, would wake just enough to join in without knowing why.
Matou smiled at the memory.
She looked again at the comfortable bed in Bakau.
There was no doubt that it was better.
The mattress was softer. The bedding was cleaner. The room was brighter, and the air moved freely through the windows. There was electricity instead of the smoky kerosene lamp that made the walls of the hut in Farato appear to dance with shadows.
Everything was easier here.
Yet Matou would have exchanged the entire room without hesitation for one more night on that hard bed beside her mother and Bubel.
Not because she loved discomfort.
She did not.
She had complained about the cold in Farato, the mosquitoes, the hard sleeping surface and Bubel’s habit of claiming every available inch of space.
But she had never complained about belonging.
That was the difference.
In Farato, she did not have to wonder whether somebody wanted her beside them. She did not have to earn her place through obedience or usefulness. She could be cross, sleepy, untidy or unreasonable, and somebody would still reach for her in the darkness.
Here, even surrounded by comfort, she had often felt like a visitor who had stayed too long.
But perhaps things were changing.
Jane was already arranging her own bedding and talking excitedly about everything Matou had missed during the holiday. Martha interrupted from across the room, correcting Jane’s version of some disagreement that had apparently taken place while Matou was away. Before long, the girls were arguing about who had said what, who had been unfair and whose fault the entire matter had been.
Matou listened with growing amusement.
“Wait,” she interrupted. “Who are you talking about?”
Jane turned towards her. “You see? This is why you should not go away for so long. You have missed everything!”
“Then tell me properly.”
“We are telling you!”
“No, you are quarrelling.”
“That is how we tell stories,” Martha replied.
They all laughed.
For the first time in years, Matou found herself looking forward to bedtime in the Owens’ house.
There would be whispered conversations after the lights went out. There would be laughter suppressed beneath blankets, secrets exchanged in the darkness and perhaps the occasional quarrel over who was making too much noise.
There would be companionship.
She had missed that more than she realized.
Still, as the evening progressed, Matou’s curiosity about Aunty Bae grew.
She had noticed the old woman moving about the house earlier, apparently pleased to see her return. There had been no sharp questions, no immediate accusations, none of the familiar hostility Matou had braced herself to encounter.
It seemed almost too good to be true.
When she finally learned about the treatment and the new sleeping arrangements, she struggled to conceal her astonishment.
“So Aunty Bae has her own bed now?” she asked Jane quietly.
“Yes.”
“And nobody sleeps beside her?”
“No.”
Matou lowered her voice further.
“Why?”
Jane explained what she knew, without fully appreciating why the information mattered so much to her friend.
Matou listened.
A strange sensation passed through her.
So it had finally happened.
The truth had come out.
And she had not needed to say a word.
For one delicious moment, she wanted to laugh.
She imagined Aunty Bae discovering that there was nobody left to blame. She imagined the embarrassment of being questioned by her own children. She imagined the indignation with which the old woman must have received the suggestion that she needed treatment.
Matou pressed her lips together.
It would not do to laugh.
She knew that.
Besides, beneath her amusement was something she had not expected.
Pity.
