The heat in Kayole does not just burn; it oppresses. It presses down on the rusty iron sheets until the air in the house tastes of dust and old despair. I was washing the fever from my father’s face when the gate rattled—a sound that would shatter the fragile peace I had built over five agonizing years.

It was not the rhythmic knock of a neighbor. It was the hesitant scrape of a memory. Standing there, framed by the diamond mesh wire, was Mwikali. My mother. The woman who had walked out the day my father’s body betrayed him, leaving us to navigate the wreckage of his stroke alone. She looked smaller now, her once-proud braids shorn close to her scalp, clutching a battered suitcase that seemed to contain all the disappointment of her absence.

The Weight of Abandonment

Five years is a lifetime. It is measured in the number of bedsores treated, the soft porridge spoon-fed to a man who once carried the world on his shoulders, and the school exams missed because fees were swallowed by pharmacy bills. To see her now, whispering my name, felt like a violation.

• The Betrayal: She left when the stroke took his voice and his strength. She fled the hard work of caregiving, choosing her own survival over our family.
• The Return: Why now? The prodigal return is a myth we tell to make forgiveness easier. In reality, it is just confusion and reopened wounds.

A Stranger in Familiar Skin

"Who is it?" my father’s voice croaked from the dark lounge. The stroke had slurred his speech, but his spirit remained iron. I looked at the woman who birthed me, then at the man who raised me from his sickbed.

"It is a ghost, Baba," I said, my voice steady and cold as the water in the basin. "Just a ghost from a life we don't live anymore." I did not open the gate. Some doors, once closed, must remain locked for the survival of those left behind.