The Day the Sun Lied to Me
The whistle sliced through the heat, and we ran.
Dust rose behind us like red smoke. I was sixteen, all sharp angles and long legs, my fair-chocolate skin shining under the harmattan sun. People said I was beautiful, but they always added "if only she had flesh." I was used to it. I ran anyway. Faster than all of them. Green House vest flapping against my flat chest, heart banging like it wanted out of my ribs.
We won.
We won everything.
Afterwards the field turned into pure noise and colour. Agatha was already kissing some tall boy from the government school. Victory had two boys fighting to carry her bag. Susan was laughing so hard her dimples swallowed her face.
I stood a little to the side, holding my medal, smiling like I belonged.
No one came to me. No one ever did.
It was okay. I had my notebook in my locker, pages filled with worlds where girls like me were chosen first. In those worlds I had curves and a voice that stopped traffic. In those worlds nobody ever looked past me.
We came home in the school bus, singing till our throats hurt.
Cindy (fourteen, already taller than me) kept replaying her relay on my lap.
Gerard, ten years old and full of fire, punched the air every time he remembered passing the baton.
Sonia, four years old and still believing the world was soft, fell asleep with her tiny medal clutched in her fist like treasure.
Mama wasn't home.
Daddy wasn't home either.
The house felt too big, too quiet. We ate the jollof rice the teachers packed for us, passing one warm Malta between us, raising our plastic trophies to the ceiling like we had conquered something real.
By 7 p.m. my siblings were falling asleep mid-sentence.
I told myself I would wait for Mama. Just long enough to see her face when I showed her the big silver cup.
But my body was heavy, my legs still trembling from the tracks.
I lay down on the mattress in the girls' room, still wearing my dusty green vest, medal resting on my chest like a promise.
I'll close my eyes for five minutes, I thought.
Just five.
Sleep dragged me under like a jealous lover.
I never heard the car horn.
Never heard him shouting my name from the gate, voice tight with the kind of anger that doesn't need alcohol to burn.
Never heard him jump the fence, never heard the gate scream open, never heard his heavy footsteps crossing the parlour.
I was far away, running in a dream where someone was waiting at the finish line just for me.
Then the first blow landed, and the dream shattered into a thousand screaming pieces.
Everything that happened next, you already know from the prologue.
The stick.
The darkness.
The slow, careful breaking of my body while the house slept.
When he finally switched on the generator, harsh white light poured into the room like cold water.
My siblings stood in the doorway, awake now, eyes wide with a horror children should never have to learn.
Cindy, fourteen going on forty, covered her mouth so hard I saw her nails dig into her cheeks.
Gerard, ten years old and trying so hard to be brave, let his trophy fall. It hit the floor with a cheap plastic crack.
Sonia, only four, started screaming my name in a voice too big for her body: "Tali! Tali! Wake up!"
I tried to lift my hand to tell them I was still here.
My arm wouldn't move.
I tried to speak, to say Run, hide, don't look, but blood filled my mouth like punishment.
Cindy whispered, barely air:
"That… that's not Tahila… that can't be my sister…"
I wanted to tell her it was me.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for ruining the best day we'd ever had.
But the pain was a living thing now, eating me from the inside, and the room started spinning again.
The last thing I saw was Sonia reaching out with her tiny hand toward the blood on the floor, as if she could push it back into me and make me whole again.
Then the darkness rushed in to claim me a second time.
That was the day I learned the sun can shine on you all afternoon and still leave you cold.
That was the day joy turned its face away and never came back the same.
But somewhere inside the ruin of my body, the writer in me opened her eyes and started taking notes.
Because even then, even then, I knew:
This story wasn't finished.
It had only just begun to hurt.