Restored by grace

Nandi sat at the small wooden desk in her cramped dorm room, staring blankly at the textbook in front of her. The fluorescent light above buzzed faintly, its flicker a cruel reminder of how little sleep she had gotten the night before. Her notes were spread out in neat rows, highlighted in colors that no longer held meaning. The air was stifling. Her room smelled faintly of the instant noodles she had eaten three nights in a row, but she didn’t notice anymore. The only sound was the faint hum of life beyond her closed door—distant laughter from a group of students walking down the hallway, the click of someone unlocking their door, the muffled thump of music from a nearby room. She didn’t belong here. Not in this dorm. Not in this school. Not in this world. Her eyes drifted to the photograph perched on her desk. It was the only personal item she had brought with her from home. A family portrait taken when she was nine. She was standing between her parents, a shy smile on her face, her braids neat and shining in the sunlight. Her father had his arm around her shoulder, his grin wide and confident, his other hand holding a beer bottle he had refused to put down for the picture. Her mother, elegant in a bright yellow dress, stood stiffly beside them, her smile forced and distant. The photo was a lie. Her hand trembled as she reached for the frame, tracing her younger self’s face with a fingertip. A surge of anger she didn’t understand coursed through her, and before she could stop herself, she slammed the frame back down onto the desk. The glass shattered instantly, shards scattering across her papers. She froze, her breath catching in her throat. For a long moment, she just stared at the mess, the cracked glass reflecting her fractured reflection. As she carefully picked up the larger pieces of glass, her mind wandered back to the day that photo was taken. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the church service had just ended. Her father had been in a rare good mood, laughing and joking with their neighbors. He had promised to take her out for ice cream after the photo, and she had believed him. But the ice cream never came. Instead, they had gone home, where her parents’ laughter quickly turned to shouting. She remembered standing in the hallway, clutching the hem of her dress as her father’s voice roared and her mother’s sharp words cut through the air like knives. That night, she had fallen asleep to the sound of glass breaking in the living room. Now, years later, she was the one breaking glass. She sighed and grabbed a tissue to dab at the blood on her palm from where a shard had nicked her. The sting was sharp but fleeting, a faint echo of the pain that had settled in her chest long ago. The memories threatened to overwhelm her, but she shoved them aside, focusing on cleaning up the mess. That’s what she always did, clean up the mess and keep moving. There was no room for weakness. Not here, not now. Her phone buzzed on the desk, and she glanced at the screen. A text from her mother: “Did you send the money yet?” Nandi’s jaw tightened. No “hello,” no “how are you?” Just a demand. She had sent the money last week, but she doubted her mother had even noticed. She deleted the text without replying and dropped the glass shards into the wastebasket. The photo, still intact beneath the broken glass, stared back at her. She hesitated before shoving it into the bottom drawer of her desk. Out of sight, out of mind. As the evening wore on, Nandi tried to focus on her studies, but the words blurred together on the page. Her chest felt heavy, like a weight was pressing down on her, making it hard to breathe. She was supposed to be brilliant. She had skipped two grades in secondary school and graduated top of her class. Everyone had called her a prodigy, the pride of her family. But here, at university, she was just another student. And lately, she felt like the weakest one. Her phone buzzed again. This time, it was a group chat from her classmates. Someone had shared notes for the upcoming anatomy exam, and the others were already discussing how to memorize the diagrams. She started to type a reply but stopped. What was the point? No one would notice if she didn’t participate. She tossed the phone onto her bed and leaned back in her chair, staring up at the cracked ceiling. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away. Later that night, Nandi lay in bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars someone had stuck to the ceiling years ago. She had tried to take them down when she moved in, but they wouldn’t budge. She thought of her father, probably passed out drunk in their living room back home. She thought of her mother, sitting in silence, the television flickering in the background. She thought of herself, a girl who had been so full of dreams once, now reduced to this. Her throat tightened, and she whispered into the darkness: “God, if You’re there... I don’t know what to do anymore.” The silence that followed was deafening.