The Walk Home

Fourth Win

The last bell rang, and the school yard boiled with shouts and running feet. She waited, a quiet figure by the wall, until the big crowd thinned. Walking home alone was asking for trouble, but walking with everyone was just a different kind of trouble, too many eyes, too many elbows. She picked a family she knew from a nearby shamba, a mother with three younger children, and followed them at a careful distance. Their noise was a good cover. The hard knot of worry in her belly, which had loosened a little during lessons, pulled tight again. Getting home was its own fight.

The red-dirt road was hot and open. Up ahead, near the broken-down tractor, some older herd boys from the secondary school were kicking a plastic bottle. She saw them see her. Her face went still and faraway, like she was looking right through the baobab tree at the side of the path. She slowed her steps just a little, letting the family ahead get closer. A boy whistled, low and long. She didn’t turn her head. She just kept walking, her eyes on the dust around her feet, her heart thumping a fast rhythm against her ribs. When she was past them, their laughter at her back felt like a cold splash of water, but she was past. That was the win.

The path left the road and dipped towards the river, not at the crossing place, but higher up where the mango trees grew thick. Here, the light was already turning golden and long. This was the part she hated most. It was too quiet. Every rustle in the grass could be a snake, or a dik-dik, or something else. Her ears strained for the sound of a man clearing his throat, or footsteps that didn’t match her own. Her own tiredness was a danger, too. Her legs felt heavy. What if a cramp from her monthly pains doubled her over here, where no one could see? What if she stumbled and tore her already-mended dress? She walked faster, her breath coming short, her sandals scraping on the stones. She was not thinking of lessons now, only of the curl of smoke she knew she would see soon from her mother’s cooking fire.

Then, there it was, the thorn fence, the smell of woodsmoke and goats. She pushed through the loose gate pole and was inside her own compound. The fear fell from her shoulders like a heavy sack. She had made it. No one had bothered her. Nothing had happened. Her little brother looked up from playing with a twisted wire toy and grinned. The fourth win was this: the simple, enormous fact of arriving. She was home before dark, her body her own, her day complete. She stood for a moment in the last of the sun, letting the safe, familiar sounds wash over her. The walk was over. She had won. Now, there was only the night to face.