Chapter Five: Broken

The upheaval was as sudden as it was jarring, jolting the entire family out of their blissful reverie. The other shoe had dropped - actually, it had barreled into their lives, flattening their dreams of harmony, and left a little human-sized crater. Whatever thin, flimsy thread had been holding together the tapestry of their family had been violently slashed and everything unraveled.

Mumbi remembered thinking how if Shiru had never been born, things would never have gotten so awry. At least then her mum didn't treat her with outright contempt, it was more of an unwitting ignorance of her presence. Of course, she brushed away that thought with expedience, because truthfully none of it was her sister's fault. The downright hate her mother exuded now was solely directed at her. And a large part of her felt she deserved it. Weaved into the way she treated her, laced into every word she spoke to her, and engulfed in every scathing glare, even though she barely ever looked at Mumbi.

Shiru's recovery had been extensive and expensive. Thankfully, she had not suffered any permanent damage or broken any bones. Her skull injury, however, had been debilitating enough that it left her in constant pain for weeks, and further delayed her speech. The one constant was that she would always cry out for Mumbi, and their mother would never let them anywhere near each other. As if by separating her, she could reverse the damage and give Shiru back her health. After she was released from hospital, she still had weekly check-ups, The financial strain inevitably compounded the emotional one, taking it's toll on everyone like a plague that spared no home.

The shouting and profanities were the first things that made a resurgence. When Shiru was hospitalised, it felt as if Mumbi's parents carved out time just to yell in each other's faces everyday, somewhere in between the scans, work, and one of them sleeping beside Shiru. There were no periods of reprieve when Shiru came home. The house had a constant buzz of air electrified by their stinging words. They would drone on and on, rehashing the same issues countless times and never finding a way forward. This endless loop only continued to trap Mumbi in a cycle of growing guilt.

She remembered one particularly difficult night, a couple of weeks after Shiru's discharge. She had spiked a fever, and couldn't keep anything down. She had been crying incessantly for hours, unable to explain the exhaustion and physical anguish her tiny body was contending with. She had cried pretty much from dusk to dawn that day. Heart-stopping, gut-wrenching wails that reverberated across the whole house. Nothing could calm her, not even her mother's last ditch attempt to let her see Mumbi. Her parents had called the doctor, frantically explaining her symptoms. He had dismissed them with a rushed prescription and instructions to take her in the next day if symptoms persisted. This only infuriated Mumbi's mum and launched her into a fit of screams and hysterical punches once the medication was administered and nothing changed. Thankfully, none of her punches connected with anything but air. Her husband had grabbed her by the shoulders and led her to their room, where a screaming match could commence without their children's hawk-like eyes laser focused on them. It quickly turned into an oddly harmonious cacophony of noises - parents yelling, imbued periodically by Shiru's wailing that had been slowly reducing.

In the midst of the chaos, Mumbi had crept up to their door. In a few minutes, she would be wishing she had never taken a single step, or heard a single word. She found her father trying to reason with her mum whose rage was palpable through the thick walls.

"You heard the doctor! You can't just overreact to everything and you know we can't afford to be back..."

"Don't you dare finish that! You want to put a price on my child's health?" Mumbi's mum questioned, accusingly.

"Of course not! You know that's not what I mean. I'm just saying..."

"No, I don't," she interrupted again, "tell me what you mean John, because it sounds like you're saying there's a maximum amount you'd be willing to spend on your children!"

"I mean that we should listen to the doctor first. We've given her the medicine, let it work! I'm not sure at this point whether your anger is at the situation or at us!"

"Excuse me?"

"You can't keep blaming everyone for an accident Grace. Sio fault yangu, na sio shida ya daktari that Shiru is unwell today, as he said, it's part of the process."

Mumbi's mum retorted, "But hapo, right there, that's where you're wrong! I'm not blaming everyone. I'm blaming you! I never wanted this life, you chose it for us. And now your child nearly killed mine!"

"Maybe you're right, I pushed for this, sue me for wanting a family with the woman I loved! Had I known this is what my life would turn into, I would have walked away, and stayed away!"

Mumbi could still remember the air rushing out of her lungs, and how she had to brace herself against the wall before her knees buckled, simultaneously muffling the scream struggling to escape her lips. That exchange had rippled through her like the bullet of a trained marksman. She had no warning. No time to process this erasure of everything she knew. Her own mother, had in no uncertain terms, repeatedly removed any ties to her. The statement danced circles around her head, "your child". It shattered her world, filling her with questions that streamed in at 100 miles a minute, whilst also providing a clarity she had not known she needed. Her father's words had cut equally deep. His expression of regret over her and Shiru's very existence yanked the pedestal she had put him on from right under him.

She stood there for a while, eyes glassy, unable to direct her feet to move from the spot she had been glued to. It felt like hours before she finally peeled herself away from the stark white corridor walls, and only because the arguing in the master bedroom had died down. She made her way to her room, filled with a new found dread and the realisation that nothing she did, or could do, would ever be enough.