The days were dry now. The rain had stopped falling, but for Zaria, the storm had only changed shape. Her wounds no longer bled outwardly—they were now internal, deep and hidden, like the ache in her chest every time someone laughed while pointing at her in the village.
She woke up every day to the same pattern: the shouting, the chores, the punishments. She moved through life like a machine—no joy, no hope, just breath. But there was something that refused to die inside her. A quiet whisper. A longing.
Her mother.
One night, after being locked in the store for a full day without food for accidentally burning beans, Zaria tore a piece of paper from an old exercise book she had found hidden under a broken chair. She searched in her school bag, still dusty in the corner, and found a fading blue pen.
And that night, under a beam of moonlight crawling through the crack in the roof, Zaria began to write.
> "Dear Mummy,"
"I don't know if you'll ever read this. I don't even know if you still remember me. My name is Zaria. I'm your daughter. I am 13 years old now. I was told you left when I was small, and I never understood why. But today, I am writing because I saw you… I think I saw you. You were in a car. I was trying to sell baskets and I ran to you. I didn't know it was you until later. You looked at me… but you drove away."
The words came with tears. But Zaria didn't stop.
That first letter opened the gate to a flood.
She wrote again the next night, and the next.
> "Why don't you want to see me?"
"I'm not bad, mummy. I didn't do anything wrong. I just wanted to go to school. I passed PLE with 5 aggregates. I didn't even study well. I was not even in class. I just read in the night and during breaks. I got a scholarship. I was happy. I thought you'd be proud. But they stopped me from joining Senior One. They said I'm pregnant. They even told everyone I aborted a baby. But I didn't. I swear I didn't. They lied. And now everyone hates me."
She wrote every detail, every bruise, every rejection. Her tears smeared some lines, but she kept going.
> "Daddy doesn't love me. I don't know why. He slapped me the day he came back. I had missed him, but he cursed me. He says I am a disgrace. He believes her. He believes Sarah. I don't know why nobody sees the truth."
Zaria had no idea where to send these letters. But fate had a way of cracking open doors, even if just slightly.
One evening, as she sat quietly by the roadside with her baskets—though Sarah had warned her not to sell anymore—an old man stopped by her stand, looking at the woven goods.
"Hmm, well-made baskets," he said, picking one up.
Zaria nodded quietly.
The man squinted at her. "You… you look familiar."
She looked up, wary. "Do I?"
"Yes," he said slowly. "You're Sarah's stepdaughter, right?"
"Yes," Zaria answered softly.
The man raised his eyebrows. "You've grown. I last saw your mother when you were about two. But even now, you have her eyes."
Zaria froze.
"My mother?"
"Yes, Beatrice. That's her name, right?"
Zaria nodded quickly. "Do you know her? Where she is?"
The man chuckled. "I don't know exactly, but I can find out. Last I heard, she married that CEO of Ankton Hotels. I think they live in Mbarara City. She's doing well now."
Zaria's heart pounded. "Do you know where she stays in Mbarara?"
"Not exactly," the man admitted. "But I have people there. I can find it."
"Sir, can I—can I give you letters? To take to her?"
The man looked at her kindly. "Why not? I'm called Tembo. I deal in used electronics and travel often. If you trust me, I'll do it."
Zaria nearly cried with hope. "Thank you… thank you so much."
From that day on, every week, Zaria gave Linda a folded letter—sometimes two—and Linda, in turn, passed them to Mr. Tembo on market day.
The letters were filled with desperation, but also the raw poetry of a child's pain.
> "Mummy, please come pick me. I'll be quiet. I won't disturb you. Even if you don't love me, just take me to school. That's all I ask."
> "They say I'm a curse. Am I?"
> "I saw you. I think I did. I ran to your car. You didn't even stop."
> "Even if you don't want me in your house, take me to a boarding school. I'll stay there. I won't ask for much. Please."
Weeks turned into months.
But no reply came.
Tembo told her every time, "I delivered them. I left them at the gate. Her house is big. Guards took them. I told them to give her."
Still, nothing.
Zaria began to wonder, Are the letters reaching her?
Is she reading them?
Is she throwing them away?
One night, she added one last line at the bottom of her usual note:
> "If you've read this, please write me just one line: 'I read it.' That's all."
The response never came.
Linda started to worry. "Zaria, are you sure you want to keep writing?"
Zaria looked down at her fingers, rough and cracked from scrubbing floors and carrying firewood.
"I don't have a mother, Linda," she whispered. "I just want to know if she ever wanted me. Even once."
Linda squeezed her hand gently. "I believe she'll answer. One day."
But Zaria wasn't so sure anymore.
She felt like she was shouting in a deep cave—echoes always returned, but never a voice.
Still, she wrote.
She wrote because that's all she had left.
Hope, even if fading.