📘 Chapter 12: Roots and Resistance
515 Words
Harizon returned home for the midterm break with a backpack full of books and a heart full of questions. The house in Mutuini hadn’t changed; same cracked walls, same radio humming old rhumba tunes, same scent of sukuma wiki drifting from the kitchen. But something inside him had. He felt older, heavier, like the silence he carried had grown roots.
Mama Ruth was in the kitchen, her nurse’s uniform still creased from the day’s shift. She didn’t look up when he entered.
“You’re early,” she said, stirring the pot. “I thought you’d stay at school and chase your future.”
Harizon dropped his bag by the door. “Even futures need a place to breathe.”
She didn’t respond. Just stirred harder.
Arabella, his ten-year-old sister, sat cross-legged on the floor, sketching a lion with wings. She looked up and grinned.
“I made you a drawing,” she said, holding it out.
Harizon smiled and took it. “You’re getting better.”
“I’ve been practicing,” she said proudly. “Mama says I draw like I dream.”
Dinner was quiet. The clink of spoons against plates, the occasional cough, the hum of the fridge. Mama Ruth watched Harizon closely, her eyes sharp.
“You’ve changed,” she said finally. “You speak less. You write more.”
“I’m thinking,” Harizon replied. “That’s all.”
“About Zawadi?”
His spoon paused mid-air. “How do you know about her?”
Arabella looked up, sheepish. “I saw your messages. You left your phone on the table.”
Mama Ruth sighed. “Pretty names don’t pay rent.”
“She’s not a distraction,” Harizon said, his voice firmer now.
“You’re eighteen,” Mama Ruth said. “You don’t know what distraction means yet.”
Later that night, Harizon sat on the roof, notebook in hand. Arabella climbed up beside him, wrapped in a blanket.
“Mama’s scared,” she said softly. “She thinks love makes people forget who they are.”
Harizon looked at her. “Do you think that?”
Arabella shrugged. “I think love makes people brave. And Mama’s afraid of brave.”
He chuckled. “You’re ten. How do you know all this?”
“I read your poem,” she said. “The one about Zawadi and the mango tree. It made me feel like I was flying.”
The next morning, Mama Ruth found Harizon fixing the old radio in the backyard.
“You’re good with your hands,” she said. “You could be an engineer.”
“Or a writer.”
“Writers don’t survive here.”
“Maybe I’ll be the one who does.”
She paused, then walked away. The radio crackled to life. A love song played.
Arabella watched from the doorway, sketchbook in hand. She drew a boy standing between two paths—one paved with wires and textbooks, the other with poems and mango trees.
She didn’t know which path he’d choose.
But she knew he was no longer a boy.
- Writer
