When the Light Hit Just Right

The road was still red.

Red like the clay that used to cake her school shoes. Red like her scraped knees after playing dodgeball barefoot with the boys. Red like the sunburns they wore like medals after swimming too long at the village dam. Naledi hadn’t seen this road in twenty-two years, but the moment her sandals hit it, she remembered everything.

She paused under the acacia tree that still leaned slightly over the path like it was trying to eavesdrop on the lives below. Its shadow still reached toward the edge of the old footpath, the way it had when she was thirteen, hiding from chores with a stolen guava and a book that wasn’t on the school reading list.

The breeze was the same too—warm, a little dusty, smelling of wild sage and hot tin roofs. And underneath it all, she could almost smell freedom—that rare and specific scent that only belongs to childhood: sweat, sun, and the absence of worry.

She closed her eyes.

“Naledi! Let’s race to the water tower!”

“Last one there is a rotten egg!”

“You cheated! You cut through the soccer field!”

Voices rose and faded like echoes through time. When she opened her eyes, the road was empty. Of course it was.

She had returned to Palapye for her aunt’s funeral. Just a weekend, she’d told herself. In and out. A few tears, polite nods, a dry speech. But then her cousin’s car dropped her off at the old family house—the one no one lived in anymore—and the memories rushed in like a flood that had waited decades to break through the dam.

Now, instead of catching a combi back to Gaborone, she found herself walking barefoot toward the old tuck shop.

It was still there.

Its metal gate was rusted, and the hand-painted “Cool Time 50t” sign had faded almost completely. But it was there. So was the bench out front, where she used to sit cross-legged with Zanele and Leungo, trading gossip for Chappies.

And to her astonishment, it was open.

A boy no older than twelve leaned over the counter, buying fizzers. Behind the faded curtain, a woman stepped out—wrinkles around her eyes, arms strong from lifting crates, but the same woman.

“Gogo Maggie?” Naledi breathed.

The woman squinted, then broke into a wide grin. “Eish, Naledi? Naledi Tsholofelo? E tla reng, ngwanake?”

They embraced over the counter, tight and wordless. Gogo Maggie smelled of fried dough and old sunlight.

“Still running this place?” Naledi asked.

“Still sweet teeth around here, ke itse,” the old woman chuckled. “You want a fat cake? Or just a memory?”

Naledi laughed. “Both.”

She sat on the wooden bench, her fingers greasy with vetkoek oil, and watched the village pass by. The kids still ran barefoot. The goats still wandered with too much confidence. The air still shimmered at noon.

Time hadn’t stopped. But it hadn’t rushed either. It had looped. And somehow, she’d stepped back into it.

Later that afternoon, she walked toward the dam.

The heat pressed down heavier now, but her legs moved with certainty. The rocks were still sharp, the thorn bushes still tried to catch your skirt, and the sound of buzzing flies still sang like background music.

And then—there it was.

The dam. Its water low but shimmering. The same brown edges. The same smooth rock where they used to sit and dip their feet. She stepped toward it slowly, then suddenly, she ran.

The way she used to. No hesitation. No deadlines. Just joy.

She laughed—out loud, head thrown back, chest open—as her feet hit the rock. She stood there, arms wide, letting the sun paint her face gold. And in that moment, she wasn’t forty-five, divorced, burdened, and tired.

She was thirteen. And free.

She slipped off her skirt, leaving her leggings underneath, and walked into the water. It was warm, soft with silt. She waded deeper, heart beating faster, not from fear—but from something she hadn’t felt in years.

Wonder.

She stayed until sunset.

As she dried off, lying back on the same warm stone, she thought of how much had changed.

Her body bore the stretchmarks of motherhood. Her hands carried the calluses of holding too much. Her heart had been broken and stitched back too many times. But her spirit?

Her spirit was just under the surface, waiting. Like water behind a dam.

All it had taken was coming home. Doing what she had done before—but this time, with different eyes.

That night, she returned to the house and pulled an old notebook from a dusty drawer. Her handwriting—tiny and stubborn—still filled the pages. Poems about stars. Letters never sent. Drawings of water towers and mango trees.

At the last page, she wrote:

“Coming home didn’t make me younger.

But it reminded me who I was before the world got loud.

And today, for the first time in years,

I remembered how to whisper back.”

She closed the notebook, smiled at the silence, and slept deeper than she had in months.

THE END