On clear nights, I looked out at the stars through the small opening between the wooden window coverings. Leah gazed out at them as well, staring in amazement at their beauty, comforted by their presence. We could often tell what was going on inside each other’s minds, the way twins can when they have a special bond that enables them to know what is happening inside the other person. It was as if we could communicate without having to speak. As though we could sense each other’s thoughts and feelings. It gave me comfort in having someone know me, really know me, right to the core, and love me just the way I was. I loved those evenings. The two of us looking out, enthralled by the celestial lights that seemed custom designed just for us. There was no electricity in our village. No other lights to cloud our view. So the stars filled the night in such a specific and unpredictable pattern that it seemed to me as if they were trying to tell us something—that the bright twinkling was in fact a message for us.
Those evenings seemed to last forever. And I could not imagine a better life.
• • •
One day my father had to move to Nairobi to find work as a carpenter. I felt sad to see him leave. The first night without him, we all sensed a deep emptiness. It was like we were suddenly living in a different hut and in a different village. For the first time, I discovered how much it hurt when he was gone. I felt disoriented. Unable to focus. Worried.
That evening the stars did not seem to shine as brightly. And it concerned me to think that he might not return for a long time.
There was less and less for us to eat each day, and there was not as much work to go around in our community. Without anyone explaining it to us, even at our young age we realized that my mother working in a field was not going to be enough to send us to school.
In spite of our difficulties, my mother remained happy. She had an eternal resilient smile on her face as evidence of her decision to rise above her circumstances. Her quiet lifestyle felt like an ocean of peace, making our separation from our father easier. After work, she cooked supper for the four of us. Then we played with Zemira before bed. Leah and I loved to tickle her. We laughed at every sound she made, trying our best to copy her every move. How could someone so small give us all so much joy?
Mother took her to her room for the night. Leah and I lay down on our sheet. We gazed through the partial opening through the wooden shutter and saw a clear evening. This meant a perfect view of the stars. And no rainwater coming in.
Still, if I had a choice, I would rather it poured in that evening instead of what happened.
I awoke to the sound of our baby sister, Zemira, crying. I had heard her cry before. But this time it sounded different. It was as if she knew what was going to happen.
When good things happen, time seems to stand still. But when tragedy strikes, time seems disjointed. Events flashed before my eyes like pictures taken in rapid succession. Everything that followed happened so quickly that I can’t recall the order. I felt a throbbing in my throat, like an African drum pounding in my heart. Sweat formed on my forehead. Even though my head had not comprehended what was happening, in my heart I knew something had gone wrong.
The villagers, responding to the unanswered cries of my sister, came into our hut. People hurried into my mother’s room, passing in front of Leah and me as if we weren’t there. I stood beside Leah. Neither of us said anything. We did not have to. We both knew what we were thinking.
Even though our home in Nyanza Province was far away from the coast, it might as well have been a massive tidal wave that struck our hut that evening. It was as if the powerful, unstoppable water had crashed in through the windows and doors, smashing through our defences and sweeping us away into a disaster, and neither of us was remotely prepared to navigate our shocked souls back to freedom.
I cannot recall what happened next. The details didn’t matter. Nothing else did.
My mother had passed away.
Time seemed to go slower, then stopped altogether. People cried and tried to console us. I should have been able to feel their presence, but they seemed a world away. It was as if a glass box had been built around me, separating me from everyone and everything else I knew. I felt like a distant observer of a world in which only a few short moments before I was an active participant. Now, I was on the outside looking in. Strange to be right in the middle of something and yet be so far away that I might as well have been invisible.
I felt like calling for help, but I did not know who to address or what to say. I wanted a hug, but I did not know how to ask for one. I wanted all of this to stop. To go away. To disappear. I wanted to return to what I had.
This was not right. None of it. This was the wrong dream. The wrong reality. The wrong tidal wave. I had shifted from a world of security and peace to this new place—a place I did not want to be in—one characterized by fear and uncertainty. I stood in the same hut I had always been in, and yet none of it was familiar. I looked at people I had known my whole life but could not recognize them. I heard voices I had heard since I was a child that now seemed like they belonged to strangers.
I felt like a foreigner in my homeland.
It was such a shock that everything inside me shut off. It was as if someone flicked a switch to make everything deep in my heart and mind close down, in an effort to protect me and leave intact whatever little fragment of me was still left.
Someone took the three of us in for the night. I can’t remember who. I cried often. Not just with tears, but with my whole being. I saw the same in Leah. That hurt more. I did not want her to experience the same sadness going on inside of me. The two of us had shared the greatest joys. Now we were sharing the greatest sorrow. And the bond between us grew stronger in knowing we had a safe place with each other where we could share our bewilderment, confusion, and sorrow.
Father came home from Nairobi. He held us for as long as we wanted. Somehow his presence, despite the situation, brought us a sense of calm. I did not speak much. Even less than usual. He stayed with us for what I am sure was a long while, but when he said it was time for him to return to Nairobi, it felt like he had been with us only a short time. It feels that way with good parents. Especially when you are down to one.
Father got us settled in with our grandparents. They were kind and poor, like everyone else we knew. Father returned to Nairobi. He sent money back for us.
My grandparents had two huts on their property. One was similar to ours. The other hut was meant only for cooking. This is where my grandmother slept with us three children. The hut had a familiar mud floor and mud walls and a similar view outside through the wooden shutters to the evening sky. I tried to recapture what I had seen before, what I had felt before. I wanted that sense of wonder I had when I looked out at the universe and saw the twinkling in the night. But that was all strangely gone.
The stars did not look the same.
In the days and months that followed, my grandmother talked with me, with us, yet I found I was not able to respond. I wanted to speak with her. To share with her. To offload the unbearable burden that was consuming me. But part of me did not know how to do so. Inside me, a quiet child wanted to express her heart. Yet at the same time I felt such anguish, such inconsolable grief, such incomparable fear, that I was not able to reach down to draw out the bitter waters that had infected me. Everything inside my mind had become so unsettled, so unreliable, that I remained silent, fractured in my soul, shattered into pieces. Everything inside me hurt, and I longed for a place of safety. It was like being in a room full of people who are all asking you non-stop questions, and it all becomes so confusing that in the futility of trying to keep up, you just keep