A year had passed since my mother left us in the village.
Some nights, I would stare at the ceiling in that quiet, unfamiliar house and wonder what I had done wrong. Had I been too stubborn? Was I not lovable anymore?
The village was quiet, but not peaceful. My younger brother and I had no one our age to play with. We were too "city-like" for the other kids. We spoke differently. We dressed differently. Even the way we asked questions made the older villagers shake their heads.
At first, I tried to be like them. I played in the dust. I greeted the elders with respect. I even smiled more than I felt.
But nothing filled the ache.
Every morning, I watched my younger brother light up the house with his smile, and deep down, I began to feel something I had never felt before—jealousy. Not hate, but something close. He was still innocent. He didn't question why our mother left. He still believed she'd come back soon.
But I knew better.
I knew when someone leaves with bags and doesn't say goodbye while you're sleeping, they don't plan on coming back soon.
I started keeping secrets. I stopped telling my brother how I felt. I became the "quiet one." The one who stared too long. The one who made up stories in her head instead of asking questions out loud.
I remember one day standing outside under the tree beside the house. I watched a group of older girls walk past me in wrappers tied tightly around their tiny waists. They looked so grown. They walked like they owned the ground.
That day, I copied their walk.
Not because I wanted to be them—but because I wanted to feel something again. Maybe power. Maybe beauty. Maybe just noticed.
Attention became my new hunger.
The men in the village would look twice. Some would smile too long. A few would try to speak to me like I wasn't just a child. I didn't understand everything they said—but I knew the way they looked at me felt wrong.
Still, I felt seen. For once.
And that scared me… because I liked it.
I began to linger in places I shouldn't have. The corner shop where the older boys gathered. The stream where girls whispered about their first kisses. I didn't join the talk—but I listened. I always listened.
It was like I was no longer living in my body—but watching a stranger become me.
My stepbrother was gone. My mother was just a voice over the phone, sending money and brief instructions. "Take care of your brother." "Listen to Grandma." "Be good."
But she didn't see the shadows crawling into me.
I stopped hugging my brother. I stopped laughing. I didn't protect him anymore. I envied him. I feared that the only thing that once made my mother proud—my strength, my cleverness—was now something he had more than me.
He was becoming everything I thought I was supposed to be. And I... was disappearing.
Still, no matter how lost I became, I held tightly to one thing: my innocence.
Even as some boys started whispering things they thought I didn't understand, even as they tried to offer me "gifts," I refused.
I was just ten years old.
But I was already being asked to choose between pain and pride.
And when I said no—when I said I wouldn't be touched—the boys began to leave.
I felt abandoned all over again.
It was as though every "no" came with a price: another door closed, another person vanished. I cried in silence most nights. I was scared that the world would never accept me unless I gave in. And the world wasn't making it any better because a small voice in me kept whispering: "You are nothing without your virginity." I knew that voice was right because if I ever lost it the world we will hate me, my mum will hate me.
And then—like a twist in a movie I didn't believe anymore—my mum came back.
She returned to the village with tired eyes and a forced smile. She said she had missed us. She said she was sorry.
She hugged my brother first.
Then she turned to me, and for a moment, I saw it in her eyes—the shock of how much I had changed. Maybe she saw the fake smile. Maybe she saw the shadow behind my stare.
But she didn't say anything. She just said, "Pack your things. We're going back."
Back to the city. Back to where this story began.
But I wasn't the same child anymore.
And deep down… I knew the story was far from over.