Mary didn't actually go to the main boarding school building.
She was much too tiny to be with all the older kids. Instead, she lived in the school owner's house itself, tucked away in a small back room that always smelled faintly of chalk and old dust.
Right from the very beginning, she learned what silence felt like, its shape and its weight.
Whenever she tried to open her mouth to speak, a hand would quickly wave her off
"Quiet, Mary."
"Go and sit down right now."
"Children shouldn't talk too much, you know."
Her words, brave for a moment, would shrink back inside her, swallowed by a growing fear that quickly took their place.
At night, lying on her thin sleeping mat, she sometimes wished with all her heart that there was someone anyone at all who truly loved her. She tried so hard to remember her mother's face, but it was like trying to catch smoke. A fleeting shadow of a smile, the faint echo of a lullaby once hummed that was all. She had no clear picture, no solid memory to hold onto tightly.
The only thing she truly remembered was being left behind. And in her small, innocent mind, that could only mean one terrible thing: she simply wasn't loved.
Her father was an even greater mystery, a complete unknown. She had never, not once, known him as "father." His name, his face, his very presence all of it was completely absent from her life.
To Mary, he was like a story that no one ever bothered to tell, a man who might as well have never even existed in the first place.
Birthdays came and went, just like any other ordinary days, swallowed up in the crushing silence of her life. No one in that household seemed to know when she was born or, more accurately, no one cared enough to ask. There were no cakes, no cheerful songs, no clapping hands of celebration. Just another day where she blended invisibly into the walls, completely unseen, unheard. Sometimes she would hear the other children talking excitedly about presents and parties, and she would wonder, with a pang of longing, what it must feel like to have people genuinely rejoice simply because you existed.
The only bright spot, the only exception, came on rare afternoons when an old woman would visit. She was bent over with age, her colorful wrapper tied loosely around her waist, her feet moving slowly but steadily. She claimed to be Mary's grandmother (her father's mother). No one else in that house ever treated Mary kindly, but the old woman always pulled her close, gently stroking her hair
"My poor child,"
she would murmur softly, pressing a piece of kola nut into Mary's small palm or secretly slipping her a piece of delicious fried plantain."The world is harsh, my dear, but you must be strong and endure"
Mary always looked forward to those precious days with a hopeful heart. For a few brief moments, she felt truly seen, cradled in an affection that wasn't harsh or cruel, but genuinely warm. Those visits became the only times she was genuinely, truly happy.But happiness, for Mary, never stayed for long