Soon after the burial, we learned about the will. Dad had left everything-his properties, savings, and belongings—in the care of his younger brother, Uncle Raymond, until we were of age. It was meant to protect us, to ensure we had a future.
But Uncle Raymond had other plans.
He refused to let us into the house our father had built. He claimed we had no right to it yet.
He stopped sending money. When Mom tried to reach him, he said, "When the children are grown, they can come to me. Until then, I have my own family to feed."
I watched Mom break all over again. I saw the fear in her eyes, the worry about how she would feed us, keep us in school, and hold the pieces of our lives together.
It was betrayal dressed in a familiar face.
Life after Dad's death wasn't just difficult—it was merciless.
We moved into a cramped apartment near the market. Mom took up sewing and selling
clothes. I got a job at a bookstore to help with school fees. Life was hard—unfair, even—but I was determined to fight for what was ours.
Mom tried everything to hold us together. She stitched clothes late into the night, her fingers pricked and blistered from constant work. In the mornings, she'd wrap her headscarf tightly, smile faintly, and walk into the streets with baskets of fabric and thread, hoping someone-anyone-would buy.
The house we lived in was barely a home. It
was a cramped, single-room apartment with a leaking roof and a broken window that let in the cold night air. My siblings and I slept on a thin mattress laid across the floor, huddled together like lost chicks. There were nights we went to bed hungry, and nights we stayed awake just listening to Mom cry softly, thinking we were asleep.
At school, things weren't easier. I couldn't focus. My uniform was worn out, and my shoes had holes in them. Some teachers
understood; others didn't. I still tried my best
—for Mom, for my siblings, and for the promise I made to myself the night I buried my father.
Then came the letter: a final notice from the landlord.
We were being evicted.
I remember the way Mom crumbled to the ground that day, the paper clutched in her hands like a death sentence. She didn't speak for hours. She just sat by the window, staring
out blankly at the world as though it had stopped turning.
That night, she had chest pains for the first time.
She brushed it off, told me it was stress, told me she was fine. But I saw the truth in her eyes-she was breaking. Day by day, she was fading.
I tried to pick up more shifts at the bookstore.
I skipped meals so my siblings could eat. I watched over Mom like a hawk. But there's
only so much a girl of eighteen can do when the world refuses to give her a break.
One morning, I found her collapsed on the floor beside her sewing machine. Her hands were still wrapped around a half-finished dress.
I screamed. I shook her. I begged her to wake up.
But Mom was gone.
The doctors called it a heart attack. I called it a broken heart.She had loved too hard, worked too much, and suffered too long.
We buried her beside Dad, in a simple grave with a wooden cross. There were no flowers.
No choir. Just us—the three children she died trying to protect-standing in the pouring rain, clutching each other for warmth.
I wasn't just heartbroken.
was angry.
At Uncle Raymond.
At the world.
At life itself.
But I couldn't give in. Not yet. Not while my siblings still looked to me with those same innocent eyes.
This wasn't the end of our story.
It was the beginning of a fight. A