Being a Girl.

I learned fear before I learned love.

Before I knew how to write my name, I knew how to lower my eyes.

Being a girl meant knowing when to be quiet.

And knowing when silence could save your life.

In the kind of neighbourhood I grew up in, everyone knew everyone. And everything.

Your secrets, your sins, and even what you had for dinner the night before. There was comfort in that closeness a strange kind of safety in knowing that if something happened, someone would come running. But there was also a price. Privacy was a luxury none of us could afford, and stories spread faster than the harm they caused. Especially among the women, who turned gossip into sport. They'd sit outside on plastic chairs in front of their houses, wrappers tied tightly around their waists, tongues moving even faster than their hands peeling groundnuts. What they didn't know, they invented. And what they knew, they exaggerated until it no longer resembled truth.

I was just a child then, but in homes like ours, childhood was more of a theory than a practice. My parents worked around the clock. My mother managed a small buka in the next town, coming home late most evenings with bags of leftovers and feet swollen from standing all day. My father worked construction long hours under unforgiving sun, carrying the weight of other people's homes while barely holding together his own.

I used to think she was angry with the world. Angry at us. Angry at herself. She was loud and sharp and unrelenting. But as I grew older, I realized she was just exhausted. She loved us, but she didn't know how to show it gently. Her love came with stern orders and raised eyebrows, and sometimes, in rare moments, stories about her day at the buka. On good days, her words were wrapped in humour. On bad days, they came laced with bitterness and disappointment and often, so did the cane.

When I came back from school, I'd drop my bag with a thud on the floor and head straight for the kitchen. The first thing I checked was the pot on the stove. Most times, the lid came off to reveal only a smear of yesterday's soup at the bottom. Sometimes there'd be a forgotten piece of yam or two spoons of rice. But more often than not, it was just the memory of a meal.

My siblings were too young to understand that hunger didn't mean someone had done something wrong it just meant we were still poor. But to keep them from crying, I'd round them up like ducklings and take them downstairs.

Downstairs was freedom.

The compound was large, shared by six different families, each with its own brand of noise. We children carved out a shared kingdom in the space between the washing lines and the scattered slippers. That yard became our world. We invented games, gave each other nicknames, argued about rules, and made peace before our mothers came to shout us inside.

There was a woman who sold fruits at the front of the yard her table covered in old newspapers, piled with oranges, bananas, and pawpaws. If we were lucky, she'd offer us soft bananas that couldn't be sold, or pieces of mango that she sliced with the same knife she used to chase away flies. I knew better than to ask her for anything, but sometimes she saw the shadows under my eyes and handed me something anyway, without a word.

But even paradise had a curfew.

Before our parents came home, we had to fetch water. That was law. We'd fill up the big plastic drum in the corner of the kitchen with buckets from the compound tap, muscles aching, arms trembling. If we didn't, the cane would find our backs. And the cane in our house didn't just teach it screamed.

My mother usually arrived first, pushing the door open with her elbow, carrying bowls of leftover rice and pepper soup in plastic takeaway containers. She moved quickly, checking everything was the floor swept? Was the water fetched? Were our uniforms rinsed and hung?

If anything was undone, her voice rose like a siren.

I used to think she was angry with the world. Angry at us. Angry at herself. She was loud and sharp and unrelenting. But as I grew older, I realized she was just exhausted. She loved us, but she didn't know how to show it gently. Her love came with stern orders and raised eyebrows, and sometimes, in rare moments, stories about her day at the buka. On good days, her words were wrapped in humour. On bad days, they came laced with bitterness and disappointment and often, so did the cane.

My father always came last. You could tell what kind of day he'd had by the way he walked through the door. If he came in talking and asked about our day, there was peace. If he entered in silence and headed straight for the bench on the balcony, we knew to disappear. Dinner would be served with care, placed on the stool beside him. He'd eat slowly, wipe his hands with a rag, and then lie down on the bench, arms folded across his chest, staring into nothing.

But the worst nights were the ones when my mother had complaints.

"She left the pot on the fire and went to play downstairs," she might say. Or, "The small one was crying and she ignored him."

And with those words, my fate was sealed. More lashes. No explanations accepted. Just pain, swift and unquestioning.

I learned to take it silently. Crying too loudly only earned you more. And that's when I began to escape not physically, but in my mind.

I created a place in my head. A secret world with soft beds and warm meals. A place where nobody shouted my name in anger. Where hunger was just a word in the dictionary. I would sit quietly in the corner, away from everyone else, close my eyes, and go there.

his star

And the beautiful thing about that world was—it belonged to me.

Even as the real world spun around me, with all its noise, its heat, its poverty, and punishment I had that one thing no one could take away.

My imagination saved me.

It gave me peace when peace was a stranger. It gave me hope when reality was too harsh to bear. And it gave me something to smile about real smiles, not the kind you wear like a mask.

Most nights, I smiled in my sleep. Because even if I went to bed hungry, even if my back stung from the cane, I knew that in my mind, I had already arrived in the place I was born for.

That was the night I realized growing up was not the same as growing safe.