Rhoda’s life began with separation long before she understood the meaning of loss. At barely two years old, she was taken to her grandmother’s rural homestead and left there, not as a visitor, not for a short stay, but as a child quietly handed over to a new life. She did not yet understand that this moment would define the emotional landscape of her early years.

The homestead that received Rhoda was a place shaped by hard living and quiet endurance. Her grandmother, hardened by years of betrayal and the burden of raising abandoned grandchildren, could offer food, shelter, and order—but affection was a rare commodity. Her capacity for tenderness had long been consumed by survival. She governed the household with duty rather than warmth.

Her mother, tired of a troubled marriage, decided to leave soon after Rhoda’s brother was born, seeking a fresh start in the city. In doing so, she left behind her two young children, Rhoda and her brother, in the care of their grandmother.

Sharing this space was Rhoda’s aunt, her mother’s elder sister. A single mother of four children, each from a different father, she lived a life marked by its own storms. The cousins, close in age and numerous, filled the compound with a restless energy. They quarreled, competed, played, and grew together without understanding where one story ended and another began. Rhoda could not clearly recall when each cousin appeared; they were simply there, part of the crowded rhythm of her earliest memories.