Above and beyond.

Art by Rene Bohmer on Unsplash.

I bite down the urge to cry as I proceed towards the train. I remind myself again that I must not cry, even as a thick wave of emotion seizes me again and sends me spiralling into the murky depths of sadness. I had often contemplated this moment in my mind and devised a strong mental barrier to keep my emotions in check. It was supposed to be impenetrable, a safeguard against the ache of farewell. It seems now that I must have underestimated the intensity to which those storms would brew within me; how faithful they would be to the point of their origins, how relentless they would be in the pursuit of my undoing. Those impenetrable walls I thought to be well fortified against those barrages of emotion now stand at risk of being blown to pieces like sandcastles against an incoming tide as the forces within me begin to gather momentum again, plundering me into a state of messy lack of self-control.

I fight my way through the crowd into the train as the weight of farewell presses against my chest, making each step heavier than the last. I clench my fists, nails digging into my palms, hoping the pain will anchor me and keep me from dissolving into the sorrow clawing at my resolve. I have a long, embarrassing history with tears. I have never had the restraints to banish them when they come. I could only try to keep them at bay. When my tears come, they don’t come in little trickles. They come in torrents, unrelenting and reckless, announcing my sorrow in great waves, drowning all my last vestiges of composure. I must not cry. Not now. Not today!

I take my seat in the compartment, shoving the single bag that contains everything I own beneath the seat. It feels absurd, almost too simple; this one small bag holding everything I own, every fragment of my life now reduced to something so easily tucked away. I am oblivious to the thrills and clamour of the other children in the compartment. They are leaving home, just like me, to a future waiting to receive them and alter their lives as mine is about to be altered. The uncertainty of that future churns dread in my heart. I was leaving home for the first time. To a place where I would be a stranger. I am going to a place that neither has the familiarity I have been so acquainted with at home nor the essence of comfort that makes home a cherished sanctuary in my child-like imagination. I am going to a place where my most intimate fears of being alone in the world would come into a suffocating reality. The future ahead suddenly seems so bleak and suffocating, like a vast, empty horizon stretching out endlessly, devoid of color or hope.

Of the ten people given admission to the Government College in Bunzu, it is only me alone who exhibits a difference, like a solitary flame flicking in the darkness. The difference comes from the fact that I had been given a scholarship to pursue my education in Bunzu, unlike the others whose parents actually had the means to send them there. Going to such an important school in Bunzu on the privilege of a scholarship is seen in the same light as turning up in rags at Street corners, begging for the pity of strangers. I could not have spelt to the world louder that I come from such a background that lacks the ease and comfort of privilege, where every opportunity feels like an uphill battle, and nothing is handed to you. My place in Bunzu had been secured solely because I had the good fortune of having the finest results in its entrance examination. So excellent was my performance that it was said that no one else had achieved the same feat since the school's inception forty-five years prior. My bigger dilemma was how quickly people would see through the veneer of my accomplishments — the poverty that lay beneath it and how it had borne a mark that abides with me forever.

Mama and myself had trundled the whole length of the market in search of the items that would be required along with my resumption. It had to be the local market reserved for people like us. We could not afford to go to the respectable ones in the bigger towns. The state of our finances and privileges would not allow it. The list had been explicit — two pairs for everything. That was beyond what we could afford. We had to simply buy only a pair for each, hoping it would suffice. Even so, not everything on the list was accounted for.

Shortly before the date for the departure had been finalized, we entertained the presence of a representative from the Government college in Bunzu. He had taken residence with the parents of one of the students with whom we would begin life anew at the college. An invitation had been passed along to us. The representative had been a man of distinguished personality and refinement. Everything about him spoke loudly of good breeding and authoritative airs. He moved with the easy grace of men who had drunk to their satisfaction in the fountain of privilege. His words carried the weight of one accustomed to being heard, his manner exuding a quiet confidence that came from never having to question his place in the world. He had come, he said, to ensure that all was in order for our arrival at Bunzu. To offer guidance where needed and to answer whatever questions we might have. It was clear from the outset that his presence was not merely administrative; it was symbolic.

Mama and I were not unaccustomed to such gatherings. It was the first time we were in the company of people whose lives had been shaped by comfort and abundance. So uneasy we were by the opulence of that atmosphere that we felt out of place. They moved among each other with effortless ease. The kind that conveys the impression of years of familiarity. You knew at once that this was not their first time in such an atmosphere, nor would it be their last. Mothers, children, and fathers alike, they laughed and conversed with a lightness that suggested nothing in the world could unsettle them. For them, such gathering was a routine. A place for equals where powers and status cannot be questioned. It had been quite different for Mama and me. We were outsiders and were painfully aware of our own awkward presence in a place where we did not quite belong. Nobody took notice of us. We simply faded into the recesses of the room, becoming part of the unremarked background, grateful for being unnoticed because that would draw attention to us and raise questions we were afraid would not merit the dignity of satisfactory answers.

Poor Mama was embarrassed to the root of her hair. Her face was lost in a whirl of thoughts as she gnawed nervously at the chipped nails of her fingers. I was also stewing in the heat of self-consciousness, and my hands were firmly clasped together in my lap, willing with all my heart for the trembling sensation in my body to come into a state of stillness. It was a feeble attempt to mask my discomfort, to assume an air of quiet composure when, in truth, I felt like an uninvited spectator in a world far removed from my own. With each resonance of the cackling laughter and bustling chatter, I felt myself diminished more and more until all that remained of me was a whiff of smoke fighting to vanish into nothingness. I stole a glimpse at Mama as she busied herself with adjusting the folds of her wrapper, a nervous habit she has when words fail her. She feels the weight of our difference, though she bears it with the quiet dignity of one who had long accepted her place in the order of things. Her clothes, though clean and carefully mended, bore the unmistakable mark of modest life. Though Mama had pressed them with care, smoothing each crease with the diligence of a woman who refused to let poverty strip her of pride.

I cannot forget the look on their faces when they finally came to regard our presence. It was a look that had both the chilling edge of curiosity and the warmth of polite interest—together, becoming an awkward blend of both recognition and restraint. It was as though they were unsure of what to make of us, yet unwilling to leave us entirely outside their gaze. Their eyes bore into us like cold steel, piercing through the exterior of our modesty to reveal the raw vulnerability beneath. They were eyes that missed nothing. Sharp and calculating in their assessment, as if every detail of our being had been carefully scrutinised and found wanting. The more we felt the weight of those eyes, the more the last shred of modesty we had was peeled away. Not for once had we ever been looked at that in such a way. It felt as though we had been conjured from the thin air. Those gazes had one specific intention: To define, judge, and place value upon what they saw. It was the kind of gaze that later on, away from their haunting presences, made us contemplate in tearful silence the essence of our lives. In the stillness of that night, we regarded in muted silence the thick shadow that loomed on our existence and forced us into such state of indignity where we would always walk in the shadow of others.

While the parents had exercised more restraints, the children had laughed. We presented too much of a curious spectacle to them, and the result of the intense assessment of us was hilarity. By mocking my mother and myself, they had articulated clearly their disdain, the full weight of the disapproval they bore for us. My memory will always be ablaze with the sound of their laughter. It will haunt me for life. Each time I hear laughter now, it carries with it that sharp sting, as if I can still feel their mockery again. The memory lingers, relentless in its persistence, shaping the way I carry myself, the way I move through the world. I knew from that moment that I could never count on them for friendship or support. We would never be equals. Whatever unknown future awaited me in Bunzu, I will go through it alone. I am destined to face it on my own, a path I must walk alone, a journey that will test the core of who I am.

The train sends out its final warning in a shrill of piercing whistles, and its engines begin to rumble to life. It starts a slow descent along the tracks with all the beauty and inevitability of fate itself. A terror rumbles in my heart, and panic clutches at my throat. The dreaded moment has finally come. I am being carried away to an unknown place to begin an unknown future. Desperation swells within me, and I feel a quickening surge of helplessness tightening around me in the vicious chokehold of a noose. A part of me longs to get off the train and return home. To the familiar embrace of my mother’s weary arms, to the scent of earth after rain, to the quiet solace of a life marked by hardship yet very certain. But a part of me wills to stay on. The part of me that deeply resents the pitiful plights of my life and the many indignities I have long endured. The part of me that never gave up in the face of despair while nursing hopes for a future not yet within my grasp. The part of me that bears the weight of mockery and scorn from those who never saw beyond my lack. Those in whose eyes I have longed, and still long, to prove my worth. It is the same part that loves my mother best of all, that knows her struggles and silent hardships. That has seen her shame and the quiet suffering lurking beneath her heavy facade of smiles and unwavering resilience. It is the part of me that has never ceased to dream of a better tomorrow, where I can grant her the life she always imagined: A life of dignity, free from the cruel hands of deprivation. That is the part of me that dreams and accepts that this journey is necessary, a foundation upon which I must build, no matter how heavy the burden that awaits.

I look out of the train as it gathers its momentum, waiting to take me into the waiting hands of the unknown. My eyes start finding Mama in the crowd of strangers. She finds me first. The instant our eyes connect, the world quiets, folding into a moment only we understand. My heart constricts with love that words cannot hold. My mother was both a mystery and enigma to me. I could never find enough ways to describe the way she carries sorrow like a second skin yet walks with grace. I love her without limits. Mama’s life had been one series of disasters after another. She had lost her family in a single day when the house they had been living in collapsed under the merciless weight of a ghastly rain. The same unrelenting fate would rear its ugly head at her again. She would bury her husband and two sons on the same day. They had drowned in the rising floodwaters that swallowed our village whole.

Disaster had been her shadow. She is familiar with grief, with the silence it leaves behind. Despite the wreckage of her past, she has the unwavering strength of a mountain, standing tall, sturdy, and unshaken, charging on with a kind of quiet defiance that turns pain into power. Her hands are rough, etched with callouses from tilling unproductive soil in all kinds of weather. Yet, they are the gentlest hands I have ever known, the kind that mend wounds even when they carry their own. She never had much, but she gave me everything. I am her surviving hope and most treasured dream. She would have to contend with a life of loneliness now that I would be gone and taken far away to a life unknown. I am her gateway into the future and the view beyond the horizon she may never cross. I will look at the world for her with my eyes and carry her dreams within my soul. Her suffering will be my motivation to conquer the forces of whatever the unknown future will bring. I will be her victory, her songs of remembrance.

But most of all, I will be her daughter!