Chapter Six
401 Words
Hunger Beyond the Stomach
Ama often went to bed hungry, but that was not the hunger that hurt most.
There were nights when the pot was empty before it reached her. Nights when she swallowed air and water and told herself it was enough. Her stomach learned to endure, to quiet itself, to wait until morning.
But her heart did not learn so easily.
She hungered for things no bowl could hold:
her mother’s voice,
her mother’s touch,
her mother’s protection.
She missed the way her mother called her name as if it were something precious. She missed the weight of a hand on her head, the quiet certainty that someone was watching over her. In Auntie Efua’s house, no one noticed if Ama went to sleep too early or stayed awake too long.
At night, she hugged her knees and whispered her pain into the darkness.
“Mama,” she breathed, as if the word itself could feed her. Sometimes she told the darkness about her day—how she fetched water, how she stayed out of trouble, how she tried to be good. She hoped, in some small way, that her mother could hear.
The darkness listened, but it did not answer.
Hunger changed Ama. It made her careful with smiles, slow with hope. She learned to measure her needs the way food was measured—small portions, nothing extra. When her cousins laughed loudly, something twisted inside her, not because she hated them, but because she remembered laughter that once belonged to her.
Sometimes she dreamed of food and woke up ashamed. Other times she dreamed of her mother and woke up empty, as if something had been taken from her again.
During the day, Ama watched other children cling to their mothers’ cloths. She felt a tightness in her chest and looked away quickly, afraid someone might see.
She wondered if sorrow would ever grow tired of her.
If one day it would loosen its grip and leave her alone. If there was a time when thinking of her mother would not hurt so much. But sorrow stayed. It sat with her in the mornings, followed her through chores, lay beside her at night.
It was a hunger that no meal could cure.
And slowly, without realizing it, Ama began to understand that some hungers are not meant to be filled—
only carried,
endured,
and survived.
- Writer
