After four years of helping her parents sell tomatoes, Chumuka was finally admitted to secondary school in town. Her parents were proud, though their pride was wrapped in worry. Sending a daughter away was not a small thing. The world outside the village was larger, louder, and less merciful.
On the morning they left, her mother packed her clothes carefully, adding roasted groundnuts and dried fish into a small bag. Her father tied the luggage to the back of the bus with his own hands, as if doing so could protect her from everything ahead.
When they reached the school, the buildings looked too big, the girls too confident, and the voices too unfamiliar. Chumuka's stomach tightened. This was no market stall. Here, no one knew her.
Her parents helped her settle into the dormitory. Before they left, her mother held her shoulders and looked directly into her eyes.
"Treat your body like a ripe tomato," she said quietly.
Her father added, "Not everything that smiles at you wishes you well."
Chumuka blinked, confused. She almost laughed, thinking her parents were repeating old market advice at the wrong place. But her mother's eyes were serious.
"People test what they think they can take," her mother said. "Do not let anyone handle you carelessly."
Then her father spoke a Tonga saying she had heard once before: "Cilondelonde tacifwa ku maboko yakwe." He explained, "The careless one is destroyed by their own hands."
When they turned and walked away, Chumuka remained standing in the courtyard long after they disappeared. Around her, girls chatted and unpacked. Some ran excitedly from room to room. But she stayed still, thinking.
A ripe tomato.
Why would her parents compare her body to a tomato?
She carried the question into the dormitory and into the night, not knowing that the answer would come painfully, through the life of someone sleeping only a few feet away from her.