7.

Lower primary pupils are dismissed from the midday parade. It is end of school for them. Boys and girls scatter, screaming. Miisi walks along the lower-school classroom block kicking a pebble with his bare feet. He is about to climb the ramp to the playground when a group of boys fly past challenging, “Fastest to the road, Miisi.”

He breaks into a sprint.

Just as he is about to catch up, he sees his mother standing at the fringes of the football pitch waiting for him. He stops running.

She is frowning.

Miisi is seething. He walks toward her to chastise her for embarrassing him. What kind of mother tags along with a boy on his way home when he wants to race his friends down the road? He prepares to say, “Why have you come? I know my way home.” But as he gets closer to her, he realizes that it is back. He can see it in the defiant way she holds her head. The condition makes her bold and unwomanly. But when he gets to her, without knowing why, Miisi walks past her.

As he walks home, he keeps looking over his shoulder. She is following him. The boys, huddling away from him, move in a group. He hurries to tell them that he does not know her: that she is just a woman following him, but they run away from him. The village is silent, as if everyone has fled. Miisi knows why. Residents are hiding from him and his mother. They are watching from behind their windows.

The house is quiet as well when he gets there. Someone whispers to him, “Where did you find her?”

“She came to school.”

A girl weeps, “She slipped away, I swear, just like that. I turned my head like this, when I looked back she was gone.”

The whispering is unnerving. Miisi wants to scream to break it. Someone follows his mother everywhere she goes. She starts to do the dishes but they stop her. She picks up a hoe and starts for the garden but someone asks her, “Where are you going?” She turns back without a word and picks up a knife as if she is going to peel vegetables. Someone asks for it. She refuses to hand it over. The boys struggle with her and take the knife from her.

Now his mother is angry. The way she says nothing, her lips pursed. Miisi knows that look. He wonders why people treat her without respect sometimes. The problem is that he is lying in a cradle. He attempts to climb out to stop them. He screams, “Don’t talk to her like that, she’s my mother,” but a large face dips into the crib. It buries itself into his tummy and blows tickles. Miisi cries but he is giggling. He is horrified at himself; laughing at a time like this! He grabs the face’s ears and pulls hard but the face laughs and blows harder and he squeals uncontrollably.