Published in Law and Disorder: Stories of Conflict and Crime, ed. Amy Locklin, (Main Street Rag Publishing Company), August 2014.

 

As if we didn’t know what Koli auntie meant. As if we didn’t think or talk of the little bumps appearing on the chests of one or two of us, the flatness of the rest made flatter in comparison. As if we didn’t know that the thinking and the talking about these could happen only amongst ourselves, a secret quiescent but on display on our bodies. That the glances our mothers were exchanging, their purse-lipped smiles would recur, evening after evening. That those smiles were aimed against all of us, against whoever was absent at any given moment. As if we couldn’t tell: here came knowledge bursting through our skins.