NEEMA

After she made her mother-in-law disappear, Amina began to move like her.

It was not something anyone noticed at first. Grief has a way of borrowing the body

before the mind becomes aware of it, and people are generous with their explanations

when tragedy enters a household. They said Amina had changed because she was tired,

because she was poor, because she had lost her husband to the unknown, missing,

vanished, swallowed by silence, and was doing her best to survive what remained of her

life. No one questioned the way she paused before speaking now, as though listening for

voices no one else could hear, or how she lingered in doorways, one hand resting against

the frame as if steadying herself against something unseen.

No one questioned why she had begun to sit in her mother-in-law’s old wooden chair at

dusk, rocking slowly, rhythmically, her gaze fixed on the tall grass at the edge of the yard

as if waiting for something to rise from it. In the late 1990s, in the scattered rural

settlements of Tanzania, things were rarely questioned directly. Life demanded endurance,

not curiosity. Families endured hunger. They endured illness. They endured silence. When

something went missing, people learned to look away. When someone changed, people

learned to explain it away.

Neema, a fourteen-year-old girl, was only thirteen when she learned how useful silence

could be.

At school, she sat near the window, her body folded inward, her shoulders curved

protectively around herself, her eyes drifting toward the sky whenever lessons grew too

loud, and her thoughts wandered into her small, private internal world. She did not raise

her hand. She did not laugh when others laughed. There was something about her

presence that teachers could never quite name, something that unsettled the other children

and quietly hindered her chances of ever forming real friendships. She came to school

irregularly, sometimes clean and neatly dressed, sometimes smelling faintly of damp

clothes, old smoke, and cold nights. She had been lonely since her only best friend had

disappeared over two years before, and she had never formed another bond after that loss.

She often went to the spot where they used to meet, a small, forgotten park where almost

no one ever went anymore. Beneath their favourite tree, she placed letters for her friend,

sliding them carefully under a heavy rock so the wind would not carry them away. No one

would steal them, she believed, because only she and her friend knew that place. The rock

did not look disturbed. Nothing looked out of place. She always hoped she would return

and not find them there, but she did repeatedly until one month, things began to change. The letters started disappearing.

At first, she thought it was a coincidence. Then she became certain. Soon after, she began

finding letters in return. Messages promising they would meet again. Promises that they

would spend time together soon. Words that felt familiar enough to make her heart soften.

It made her happy for the first time in years because she believed her friend was finally

reaching back to her.

At least, at first, it seemed like it.

Neema was also a passionate artist. She produced careful, detailed drawings of strangers

she passed in the street, of imagined faces, of people who looked like memories. When

chaos rose in the house, she retreated into her private world of art. Often, she drew herself

laughing with the friend she missed so dearly. Sometimes, she drew her family… her

mother, her grandmother, and her father, even though he had been missing for a long

time, his absence lingering in the house like a shadow that never moved.

Her dreadlocks were always neatly moisturized, her gaze distant, her eyes shallow with

exhaustion far beyond her years. The children did not bully her. They simply avoided her,

as though sensing that whatever surrounded her was not meant to be disturbed. There was

a quiet about her that felt heavy, almost sacred, like something watched over her or

followed her.

At home, Neema learned the rhythms of survival in a house that belonged to Abigail.

Abigail was in her fifties, with closely cropped hair, soft-spoken, her voice carrying

authority without cruelty. She ran a small daycare from the front rooms of the house four

days a week. Parents trusted her with their children, their worries, and their prayers. She

was known as a light to those children, a calm presence, a safe place, a spirit that softened

fear. She cooked large meals and donated food to children who were severely

disadvantaged. She was punctual, organized, and dependable in ways that made people

lean on her without realizing it.

On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the daycare closed, and the house softened.

That was when Abigail became Neema’s grandmother, cooking slowly, humming hymns

on her wooden rocking chair at night before Neema went to bed, mending clothes,

stitching toys from scraps of fabric. One of those toys was a doll.

Abigail sewed it carefully, stuffing it with old cloth and a carefully wrapped piece of

black plastic containing contents only she knew about. She shaped its face with deliberate

stitches, her fingers steady and precise. She gave it to Neema one evening after prayers,

pressing it into her hands without explanation. The doll wore a stitched smile, one meant

to bring comfort.

“Some things are meant to be listened to,” Abigail said softly, “even when people can’t

hear them.”

Neema kept the doll close after that. It became her companion, her comfort, her secret

friend. But Amina did not like the doll.

It unsettled her.

It made her uneasy in ways she could not explain. The doll appeared in Neema’s life just

after her real friend had stopped responding, after she had begun disappearing

emotionally, and Abigail had made it to fill the emptiness. Amina felt it in her body, a

quiet discomfort that made her skin crawl.

Neema often dreamed of her missing friend. Those dreams were the only things that truly

made her happy, but they were always the same.

In the dream, they played and laughed in the park where they had last seen each other.

Then her friend would stop smiling abruptly. She would stare at Neema not with warmth,

but with something hollow and wrong. After a long silence, she would begin to sob,

crying about being mistreated. When Neema asked how, the girl never answered. She

only cried harder.

Then Neema would see her.

A woman in the distance.

Standing perfectly still.

Wearing a black dressOld. Silent. Watching.

Her face never cleared, but her presence was heavy, demanding, terrifying. Her friend

would rise slowly, tears streaming down her face, and walk toward the woman. Before

leaving, she would always turn back and scream:

“Save me, Neema! Save me!”

Then the old woman would take her hand, and they would walk away together, dissolving

into the distance.

Neema always woke up crying.

Amina did not like much of anything in the house, though she rarely said so. Since her

husband’s death… sudden, unexplained, spoken of only in fragments. Amina had grown

sharp-edged and restless. She moved in and out of the house without routine, leaving for

days, returning well-dressed but empty-handed. No toys for Neema. No extra food. When

asked where she had been, she shrugged and changed the subject.

She depended on Abigail and resented her for it.

Though work opportunities existed, she rejected them. Neighbours often tipped her about

new positions, but she dismissed them.

“I’m too pretty to work in restaurants,” she would tell herself.

“I want a rich man,” she would whisper, as if wealth would simply appear in her path.

The arguments between her and Abigail were frequent but contained… no shouting loud

enough for neighbours, no visible violence, just sharp, precise words exchanged behind

closed doors. Abigail wanted Neema to live with her permanently. Amina refused,

insisting on her rights without fulfilling her responsibilities.

Neema learned to stay quiet. She learned how to make herself small.

She clung to her doll in her room, knees pulled to her chest, rocking back and forth in

silence.

One month before the festive season, something changed.

Amina began staying home.

At first, Abigail did not trust the shift. She watched carefully as Amina cleaned the house,

cooked meals, and even drove Neema to school. The tension softened. Days passed

without arguments. A month went by, and for the first time in over a year, the house knew

something resembling peace.

Neema felt it immediately.

Amina began attending Sunday school with Abigail, mastering Abigail’s lunch recipes,

sitting beside her in the front pew at church, arranging hymn books, sweeping floors

afterward. They laughed together quietly. Even with little money, they found ways to

enjoy the smallness of their lives. Abigail often told her…

“God is going to bless you.”

Amina began copying Abigail’s mannerisms, her movements, her dress, her scent. She

called it “inspiration.” She abandoned cropped skirts and revealing clothes, adopting

Abigail’s vintage style and soft colognes. Abigail found it flattering. She felt drawn closer

to her.

That was when Amina began making tea every morning.

She rose before the others, boiling water carefully, measuring leaves by sight. She poured

three cups, just as Abigail always had.

Neema noticed nothing at first.

Only that Amina’s hand lingered over one cup in particular.

Abigail’s.

The spoon circled slowly.

Deliberately.

Long after the others were done.

Abigail noticed eventually but said nothing. She believed naming unease gave it power.

Instead, she whispered prayers.

“God shall protect me against all evil intent,”

Within days, her body began to betray her.

Fatigue.

Swelling in her legs.

Skin stretched tight and shiningDizziness.

Shortened breath.

Still, she ran the daycare. Still, she sang hymns at night.

Until one evening, she could not.

She sat in the wooden chair beside Neema’s bed, her mouth forming words without

sound. Neema watched from her bed, clutching the doll, a cold weight settling in her

stomach. She gently poked Abigail, trying to wake her.

That was the last night Abigail came to Neema’s room.

By morning, the house had changed.

Abigail lay on the couch. Amina said she needed peace. Neema was told to be patient.

Patience, Neema would later understand, was the most dangerous thing the house ever

demanded of her, because patience made fear quiet.

It taught it to wait.

It taught it to hide.

The house did not become loud after that morning. It became soft. Controlled. Gentle in

ways that felt unnatural. Amina moved through the rooms with a calm that felt rehearsed,

her footsteps light, her voice low, her presence carefully measured. She spoke kindly. She

smiled often. She touched Neema’s hair when she passed her. She asked if she had eaten.

She asked if she was warm. She asked if she was okay.

But none of it felt like love.

It felt like an observation.

It felt like practice.

Amina began sitting in Abigail’s chair every evening at dusk, rocking slowly, her body

moving in the same rhythm Abigail once had. The same posture. The same stillness. The

same silence. Her eyes fixed on the tall grass beyond the yard, unblinking, patient,

waiting, as if the land itself might answer her.

Sometimes Neema would stand in the doorway and watch her.

Amina never turned around.

IIt was as if she knew Neema was there without needing to see her.

Her movements became careful copies, and the way she poured tea, the way she folded

cloth, the way she paused before speaking, the way she held silence like a tool instead of

an absence. Even her prayers began to sound like Abigail’s, her voice softened, slowed,

controlled, emptied of emotion.

She stopped feeling like Neema’s mother.

She began to feel like something else was wearing her.

Neema started noticing the details children are not supposed to notice, the way Amina

watched her without blinking, the way her smile arrived a second too late, the way her

kindness felt rehearsed instead of natural. The way she lingered in doorways. The way

she stood too still in rooms. The way her presence filled space even when she said

nothing.

Even the house seemed to respond to her.

Rooms felt heavier when she entered.

Silence stretched longer.

Air felt thicker.

The doll became Neema’s only certainty.

At night, she held it close, pressing her face into its stitched fabric, listening to the house

breathe, listening to the floorboards shift, listening to Amina move through the rooms

with slow, deliberate footsteps. Sometimes she could hear her rocking in the chair.

Sometimes she could hear her whispering. Sometimes she heard nothing at all, and that

silence was worse than any sound.

Because silence meant waiting.

And waiting meant intention.

Amina never rushed.

She never forced.

She never demanded.

She stayed.

Present.

Observing.

Learning.

Becoming.

And Neema, too young to name possession, too young to understand imitation, too young

to understand replacement, only knew one thing:

The woman in the house no longer felt like her mother.

She felt like something that had learned how to behave like one.

And the house, once softened by Abigail’s hymns and warmth, now felt like it was

holding its breath, as if it knew something had entered it that did not belong, and it was

waiting to see what it would take.