That night, Matou sat alone beside her bundle of clothes, fingering the cowrie shell hidden in the hem of her wrapper. She did not cry. She had no more tears for humiliation. Only a gnawing ache of distance.
She remembered the storytelling nights in Jeshwang, when her father Yerro sat by the fire, puffing on his pipe, recounting tales of cunning hares and clever girls who outwitted jinns. “Tal taa leh,” he would begin, and everyone would respond in unison, “Talaa tel!”
The orange glow of the fire danced on the children’s faces as they leaned in closer, enchanted. She remembered how Nata always laughed the loudest, her body rocking back and forth with joy, and how Borogie would hum softly while plaiting their hair, her fingers quick and sure. That hut—small and poor—had been their entire world, filled with more love than walls.
Sometimes, Borogie and Nenneh Dado, her stepmother, would tell stories too. Theirs were more subtle, laced with meaning and filled with songs—beautiful songs she liked to sing when the pangs of nostalgia gnawed at her.
There were no stories in this house.
There was no laughter that made you feel safe.
There were polished floors and glass cabinets and locked drawers. There were starched uniforms and rules that made her feel like a stranger in her own shoes.
Even the food tasted different. No one shared from the same bowl. She missed the spicy smell of ‘maafeh laloh’, the way Bubel wiped his greasy fingers on her skirt and giggled, or how little Khadja Bobo insisted on sitting in her lap during every meal.
Here, the meals were eaten quietly. She always waited to eat last, and by then the food would go cold.
One Saturday morning, a day when chores were usually doubled, Matou woke up with a burning fever. Her limbs ached, her mouth was dry. Still, she rose. She swept. She folded beds. She washed clothes at the back tap.
Anna, the househelp noticed.
“You okay, Matou? You looking bad,” she said, frowning.
“I just tired,” Matou replied weakly.
But her legs gave way by midday. She collapsed beside the bucket, spilling soapy water across the tiles.
“Lazy girl,” Aunty Bae muttered when Anna tried to help her up.
“She sick, Ma,” Anna argued gently.
“Sick or not, she eating our food. She must work.”
That night, Matou lay curled on her cloth on the floor, shivering beneath the only wrapper she owned. She held her cowrie shell in both hands, whispering Nata’s words like a spell: Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are.
She imagined being back home, under the mango tree, Borogie wiping her forehead with a damp cloth. She imagined Yerro lifting her in his arms, carrying her on his shoulders, pointing out stars and naming them. She imagined Nata brushing her hair while humming one of Borogie’s tunes, Bubel dancing in the dirt with his chubby feet, and Khadja Bobo reaching up to be carried.
But those stars were far away.
She was trapped in this home of closed doors and colder hearts.
And she dreaded the long years ahead, each one stretching before her like a lifeless desert.
How long before she forgot her mother’s voice?
How long before she stopped dreaming?
How long before even the memory of love disappeared into the dust of duty?
She didn’t know.
But she feared that time was already beginning…
Like a miracle—or perhaps an ancient thread of mother-sense that tugged from the heart of Jeshwang to this cold, strange house in Bakau—Borogie and Nata arrived the next day.
There was no warning. No prior message. No knock loud enough to echo the storm building in Matou’s heart. It just happened.
She could never explain how. One minute, the house had its usual hollow silence, broken only by the predictable squeak of Mr Owens’ worn slippers or the clink of Mrs Owens’ teaspoon against her tea mug. The next, it was as if the sun had stepped into the corridor—golden, familiar, warm—and her soul, brittle from weeks of neglect, bent toward it instinctively.
Matou had just returned from sweeping the backyard, her fingers red and chafed from gripping the broom’s rough handle. Her arms ached. Her legs barely carried her back inside. She had grown thinner. Her cheeks hollowed out like scooped clay. Her spirit was waning.
For the past three nights, she had dreamed of her mother’s cooking fire and Nata’s wild laughter. The dream was always the same: her mother singing softly while pounding millet, Nata peeling groundnuts, and Matou shelling beans beside them. Then she would wake to the smell of bleach, not smoke, and the quiet clatter of spoons being counted in the kitchen—because heaven forbid one went missing.
That morning, Aunty Bae hadn’t scolded her. Not even a word about the half-hearted way she swept. She had looked at Matou for a moment—her eyes narrowing as though trying to read something written on her forehead—and then said nothing, gathering her things to leave. She left with the grandchildren, saying they were going to fetch sugar and “talk family business” at her sister’s.
The house emptied. Just Mrs Owens remained, seated on the veranda with her back impossibly straight, her white dress creased like paper, humming a song that Matou recognised from the church on the radio. Occasionally, she would look up from her Bible and glance at Matou, as if keeping count of her breaths.
After a while, Matou returned to the straw mat and lay down quietly, drawing her wrapper tighter around her. Her stomach gurgled. She ignored it. Her appetite had packed its bags the day she arrived. Her heart had followed shortly after.
Then—“Matou! Your Ma is here!”
It was Anna’s voice, shrill with excitement. It rang out like the sudden cry of a drum—impossible to ignore.
Matou’s eyes shot open. Her limbs moved before her mind could catch up. She sprang up, knocking the edge of the mat aside, nearly stumbling as her legs kicked into motion. She ran down the hallway, past the rows of stiff furniture, past the framed graduation photo of Mr Owens no one was allowed to touch—and there, in the light of the open door, stood everything she had been missing.
Borogie looked just as Matou remembered her—only prettier, more tired maybe, but just as proud. Her wrapper was the same one she wore to the market on Saturdays, faded now, the color of dusk after rain. She stood barefoot on the tile, dusty and radiant. In her arms, a cloth bundle cradled vegetables from the family garden: green okra, red peppers, the bitterleaf Matou used to help her pick. It smelled of home, of sweat and earth and warmth.
And beside her was Nata.
She looked different—taller, almost willowy, her limbs stretched out like a young tree in early bloom. Her legs, once stubby and clumsy, had grown long and graceful, and her cheeks, once round and filled with laughter, were now slender and sculpted by time and perhaps worry. But her eyes—those wide, brown, liquid eyes—were exactly the same. They met Matou’s with a glimmer of recognition that needed no words. In that split second, across the worn-out threshold of Mrs. Owens’ sitting room, two sisters found each other again.
Nata didn’t smile. She beamed—an uncontainable brightness that lit her whole face, like the moon suddenly remembering it belonged to the sky after being hidden too long behind a stubborn cloud. Her presence was like a tide rushing in, soft but unstoppable. She wore a blue cotton dress that hung awkwardly at the shoulders and bunched at the waist. Matou recognised it instantly—it was hers, one she had worn proudly a year ago before her weight made it too tight to breathe in. Now, draped over Nata, it looked like borrowed confidence—loose and unsure, yet beautiful in its own way.
Matou, though younger, had always been the bigger one among her siblings—bigger in laughter, bigger in tears, and certainly bigger in body. Her weight had been a constant source of both affection and teasing at home. It was never cruel, but it was never silent either. Borogie would sometimes call her “my soft pillow,” and Nata, quick with jokes, would playfully grunt whenever Matou landed on her during play, crying out, “The big one wins again!” They would all laugh, and Matou would join in, even when it stung a little. That was love. That was home.
But the Matou who now stood in this strange house was no longer the round-faced girl they used to tease. She had grown lean—too lean. Her cheeks had sunken, her neck looked longer, and her clothes hung on her like loose bark. She no longer filled a room. She barely took up space. The light in her eyes had dimmed, replaced by shadows of hunger, exhaustion, and longing.
And yet, as she stared at Nata, who seemed to have grown taller in her absence, she felt none of the old jealousy that sometimes crept in between sisters. Only relief. Only love. Only the comfort of finding something familiar in a world that had become so foreign.
Matou didn’t hesitate. She ran into her mother’s arms, crashing into her like a wave that had finally found the shore. Her fingers clutched Borogie’s back tightly, as though letting go would tear open the earth beneath her. She buried her face into the creased fabric of her mother’s wrapper and inhaled—shea butter, sweat, smoke, soil, and something uniquely Borogie. It was the scent of belonging.
And then she cried—not the silent tears she had taught herself to swallow at night under the mat, not the quiet sniffles she buried in the crook of her elbow when the food ran out or the chores became too much—but deep, body-shaking sobs. They poured out of her as if she’d been holding back a storm and someone had finally opened the dam.
She cried for the days she had gone without hearing her name spoken with tenderness. For the nights she had dreamed of home and woken up to cold stares. For the part of her that had started to believe maybe no one was coming.
Borogie said nothing. She didn’t need to. Her arms said it all. They wrapped around Matou like the branches of the baobab—strong, ancient, unyielding. She held her daughter through the storm of tears, rocking her gently, whispering in Fula, “Koh jamm, ndiyam am… You are safe now, my water.”
