Nata’s grief arrived quietly, as most things in her life did. It didn’t crash through the door or declare itself with screams and tears. It sat instead like a stone at the pit of her stomach, unmoving and heavy. After the miscarriage, the world seemed to resume its rhythm too quickly, as if nothing had been lost. But something had — a dream, a possibility, a small heartbeat that once fluttered inside her.
At night, when the fan in the main house hummed through the stillness and the street dogs barked at ghosts, Nata would press her ear to the cool mud wall. Sometimes she imagined she could hear her siblings, Khadja Bobo and Bubel laughing. Sometimes she thought she heard her mother singing old lullabies as she watered her garden or brewed attaya with a neighbour. She never went to visit unannounced. The port in the wall was too narrow for pride to pass through. She felt inexplicable shame. She felt like a failure.
It was her stepmother, Nenneh Dado, who offered the kindest sympathy beyond her own mother. A woman whose womb had known life, but never the joy of holding it to term, Nenneh Dado’s understanding came from a place of silent suffering. She never patronised Nata with proverbs or platitudes. She didn’t tell her that God had a plan or that another child would come in time. Instead, she talked — animatedly and without caution — about the ordinary goings-on of the compound.
“Nata,” she would say, settling herself beside her on the mat, “your father argued with the radio again today. Swore the President Jawara was speaking nonsense about the price of rice. I told him the radio cannot argue back, but you know your father.”
And Nata would smile. Just a little.
Nenneh Dado’s presence was a balm, not because she offered solutions, but because she acknowledged Nata’s presence without requiring her to perform grief. In those casual conversations — about bread shortages, rising fuel prices, and the neighbor’s stubborn goat — Nata found her dignity returned to her, bit by bit.
Her father, Yerro, came too, but he never talked about the loss. Instead, he brought news clippings or sat beside her, chewing on a toothpick and asking if she had eaten. That was his way. Clumsy, indirect, but not uncaring. He was a man raised by men who didn’t speak their sorrow aloud, so he translated love into presence, into “Have you eaten?” and “How’s your mother’s garden?”
Her granduncle’s wife brought groundnut porridge one morning and pressed Nata’s cheeks with both palms, murmuring, “The next one will stay.” Nata wasn’t sure whether to smile or cry. So she did neither.
Her granduncle brought every leftover food, he could obtain from the hotel he worked, to her first. She felt loved beyond words…
But it was in her mother’s garden where she felt most whole.
The garden had always been Borogie’s refuge — a rectangle of earth carved into soft rows, rimmed with neem trees and humming with bees. It was now a sanctuary for Nata too. The soil asked for nothing but water and time. It did not whisper judgements or cast pitying glances. It simply received her, bare feet and broken heart alike.
Each visit, Borogie handed her a hoe without fanfare.
“No need to speak if you don’t want to,” her mother said once, kneeling beside a patch of spring onions. “The earth listens in silence.”
And so Nata listened too.
They would sit beneath the neem tree afterward, hands crusted with mud, breaking okra pods and crushing scotch bonnet peppers for the evening stew. Sometimes, Borogie would hum old Fulbe songs under her breath, songs Nata remembered from childhood and chorused in at relevant spots. Sometimes they worked in silence. But always, there was comfort.
After market days, Borogie would untie the corner of her wrapper and pass Nata a tiny cloth bundle filled with coins.
“Buy soap,” she’d say.
“Or rice.”
“Or hide it for something better.”
There was no announcement, no guilt attached. Just quiet support — the kind that restores a person.
In that garden, Nata was not a wife who had failed. She was not a barren vessel. She was not invisible. She was simply a daughter. And that meant everything.
…………………..
Back at the compound, the drama rarely ceased.
Her battles were internal, hushed and buried deep. They did not shake the walls or call for an audience. But they burned quietly — a steady flame that threatened to consume her from the inside out.
Not like Zainabou.
Zainabou, the daughter of the house, moved through the compound like a storm trapped in a teacup. Her schizophrenia came in waves — unpredictable and often misunderstood.
One moment she’d be arguing with invisible enemies. The next, she’d be laughing with so much joy, children would abandon their football games to watch. And just as suddenly, she would retreat into herself, cross-legged on the veranda, her silence louder than any scream.
People whispered. “Touched by jinn,” they said. “Not all there.”
But Nata saw more than madness. She saw pain.
On one of those slow, heavy afternoons, Nata sat on the edge of the veranda, plucking dry leaves from a bowl of rice, when the second wife, Fatoumatta, walked past Zainabou carrying tapalapa bread. As she passed, she sighed.
It was long. Loud. Dismissive.
And it set Zainabou off.
“What?!” she exploded, eyes flashing. “Did I fart in your presence? Did I smell of rotten meat? Why do you sigh like that when I’m near?!”
Fatoumatta stopped in her tracks, stunned. “No, Zainabou,” she said softly. “I didn’t sigh at you.”
“Yes, you did!” Zainabou’s voice rose, rising with the fire in her belly. “You people always sigh. You think I don’t notice. You think I’m too mad to see. But I see! I hear! Your sighs slice through me like razors!”
The entire compound hushed.
Even the chickens paused their scratching.
Fatoumatta, trembling slightly, clutched her bowl and walked quickly away, head down.
The silence that followed was deafening. Only the whirring of the old standing fan could be heard, a futile protest against the afternoon heat.
Across the yard, Nata exhaled — carefully, silently.
Because she understood.
She knew what it felt like to be dismissed. To be reduced to someone people looked past. Her pain, though not as loud as Zainabou’s, was valid. It lived under her skin, tight and unspoken.
She had never screamed about it. Never demanded space. Never asked, “Do you see me?” the way Zainabou had.
But she had wanted to.
So many times.
Each time someone forgot to ask how she was doing. Each time her voice was drowned out by louder ones. Each time her name was left out of conversations. Each time someone acted as if she didn’t matter because she hadn’t made a fuss.
Each moment chipped away at her — like water dripping on stone.
And yet, she had learned to smile.
Not because she was happy, but because it was expected.
She learned to nod, to sweep the yard, to cook the food, to say “yes” when she wanted to scream “no.” She learned that silence was survival. That being overlooked was better than being attacked. That being quiet was safer than being noticed.
But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
………………………
From her mother, she learned something different – a quiet kind of power.
Borogie never shouted. She never fought for dominance in the compound. But her presence was felt. Her words, when spoken, were firm. Her love, when given, was healing.
She taught Nata that survival didn’t have to be dramatic. That endurance was not weakness. That there was strength in simply being.
“You don’t have to prove anything to anyone,” Borogie said once, as they washed bitter tomatoes in a basin of water. “Your worth is not measured by how much noise you make.”
Nata carried that lesson like a charm around her neck.
Still, the fire inside her needed tending.
One day, in the garden, she turned to her mother and said, “Mama, do you think I’m invisible?”
Borogie didn’t answer immediately. She wiped her hands on her wrapper, then looked at her daughter.
“No,” she said. “But sometimes, it’s safer to be. Until you are ready.”
“Ready for what?” Nata asked.
“To show them your fire.”
……………………….
Life continued, as it always did. The garden grew. Zainabou yelled and laughed and mourned in her own language. The compound adjusted, avoided, endured.
And Nata watched.
But now, she also listened.
She listened to the quiet ways women survived. To the hum of bees. To the crunch of earth beneath her hoe. To the rustle of coins in her mother’s wrapper. To the soft sigh of her own heart — not in despair, but in awakening.
The time would come when she would speak.
When she would plant not just vegetables, but her voice — bold, unbending, unafraid.
For now, she gathered lessons like peppers under the neem tree.
Life did not ask her to be loud. Only to be present.
And in that presence, she was learning — slowly, tenderly — how to turn quiet survival into purposeful living.
To be continued…
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