Pa Modou Jatta spent most of his life at the Tanji fishing port, rising before dawn and returning long after the sun had climbed high. The sea shaped him—its patience, its cruelty, its unpredictability. His hands were rough from years of mending torn nets and hauling heavy baskets filled with whatever the ocean allowed him to take home that day. Some days, the catch was generous. Other days, it was barely enough. But Pa Modou never complained. Poverty had taught him silence long before it taught him fear.
He returned home each evening tired but steady, carrying with him the smell of salt, fish, and labor. Sometimes it was dried fish wrapped in brown paper. Sometimes it was nothing at all. But he always brought presence—and that mattered more than food.
Awa Jatta met him each night with quiet warmth. She was the strength that did not announce itself—the woman who held the household together with gentle hands and endless patience. Her days were spent weaving mats, roasting peanuts, sewing old clothes into something wearable again, and stretching little into enough. Their home was small, its walls cracked, its roof patched with aging zinc, but it held dignity. Love lived there, even when money did not.
Ruthie watched everything.
She learned early how survival worked—not through lectures, but through observation. She saw how her father's silence carried sacrifice, how her mother's softness carried strength. From them, she learned endurance.
Each morning, Awa sat Ruthie on a small stool outside the house and braided her hair into neat cornrows. Her fingers worked carefully, tightly, humming old Wolof and Mandinka songs as the sun climbed. When she finished, she tapped Ruthie's head lightly and said the same words every day:
"A child with a neat head will carry a neat life."
Ruthie believed it.
She walked to school barefoot, her exercise books tucked inside a black nylon bag polished shiny from years of use. Education was sacred in the Jatta household. Pa Modou believed it was the only inheritance he could give his daughter—one stronger than nets, stronger than the sea.
School taught Ruthie lessons no child should have to learn so early. Poverty was visible. Mockery came easily. Her uniform was worn thin, sewn and resewn until the fabric itself seemed tired. Some classmates laughed. Others looked away. Ruthie endured it all quietly, her eyes lowered, her determination burning where no one could see.
When Mariama and Isatou were born, childhood loosened its grip on her entirely. Ruthie became a second mother before she finished primary school. She cooked, fetched water from the communal tap, bathed her sisters, washed clothes, and learned the language of sacrifice fluently.
She never complained. Complaints did not feed a family.
In the evenings, Pa Modou sometimes sat beside her after returning from the port, letting the sounds of Sukuta settle around them—the hum of generators, distant laughter, insects singing into the night. His words were few, but when he spoke, they stayed.
"Ruthie, my daughter," he would say, resting a calloused hand on her shoulder, "life does not choose where you start. It only watches how you rise. You must rise better than me. Your book will take you farther than my boat."
She believed him.
She dreamed of finishing school, of attending the University of The Gambia, of working in a place with clean walls and cool air—somewhere far from fish scales and sweat and struggle. She dreamed because dreaming was free, even when life demanded payment for everything else.Pa Modou Jatta set out for the sea before dawn, as he always did. The waters near Tanji were uneasy that day—dark swells rising and falling with strange urgency. By afternoon, the wind had grown sharp, slicing through sails and nerves alike. Fishermen began steering their boats back to shore earlier than planned, murmuring warnings to one another. Nets were torn. Hulls scraped rocks. The sea was angry.
But Pa Modou did not return with the others.
As evening settled over Sukuta, the storm broke fully. Rain slammed against rooftops, thunder cracked the sky, and the wind howled through the compound like something alive. Awa paced endlessly, tying and retying her wrapper, whispering prayers into the noise, calling her husband's name as though her voice could reach him across the water.
Hours passed.The rain did not stop.Hope began to drown.
Ruthie sat by the doorway with Mariama and Isatou pressed tightly against her sides. The younger girls trembled in confusion, sensing danger they could not name. Ruthie wanted to cry, to scream, to demand answers from the sky—but her mouth felt dry, useless. She could only watch the rain fall as if the heavens themselves were mourning.
At dawn, the knock came.
One knock.Heavy.Final.
A boat had capsized near Tanji. Several fishermen were missing. Bodies were being pulled from the shore.
They found Pa Modou later that morning, washed up near the rocks—cold, still, silent. The sea that had fed his family for years had swallowed him without mercy.
The household broke.The world broke.Ruthie broke.
She was twelve years old when she learned what real grief was—not the soft sadness of disappointment, but the deep, tearing pain of a life split in two. She watched her sisters cry. She watched her mother struggle to breathe. She felt her own childhood drift away like a boat cut loose from its anchor.
The day Awa Jatta received the confirmation began like any other—quiet, ordinary, cruelly normal. She had risen before dawn, wrapped her faded orange wrapper around her waist, and warmed leftover domoda for her daughters. Ruthie was helping Mariama with her shoelaces when the knock came again.
It was not a normal knock.
It carried weight.It carried sorrow.It carried the end of everything they knew.
When Awa opened the door, three men stood outside, soaked from the morning drizzle. One removed his hat. Another lowered his eyes. The eldest spoke carefully.
"Awa… the boat capsized. Modou… did not survive."
Awa tried to speak.Tried to breathe.Tried to stand.
She failed.
Her body swayed once, her chest rose sharply—and she collapsed to the floor like a pillar struck at its base.
Ruthie screamed. Mariama cried. Isatou shook her mother's limp body, calling her name again and again. Awa's eyes were closed, her face pale, her breathing shallow. Her left arm twitched once, then went still.
"Bring the wheelbarrow!" someone shouted.
There was no ambulance. No car. No money.
They rushed her through sandy paths toward the clinic, Ruthie following barefoot, whispering prayers as tears blurred her vision. The journey felt endless. The sky felt too large for such a broken family.
At the Sukuta clinic, nurses moved quickly. A doctor examined Awa, his expression darkening with every second.
"She has been living with dangerously high blood pressure," he said quietly. "The shock triggered a stroke."
The word struck Ruthie hard.
Stroke.
Hours later, the truth settled in fully.
"She may never fully recover."
Pa Modou's hidden savings—the old metal tin beneath the bed—became their only lifeline. Ruthie opened it with shaking hands, touching the notes her father had folded away piece by piece. The money was just enough for medication, food, survival.
Every dalasi spent felt like losing him again.
When Awa finally woke, she was not the woman Ruthie remembered. Her speech was slurred. Her left arm useless. Her smile crooked and weak.
"Ru… thie…" she whispered.
Ruthie held her hand and forced herself to be strong.
From that moment on, she became everything the family needed—mother, nurse, provider. She woke before dawn, cooked, fetched water, ran errands, saved every coin. She watched her mother struggle day by day, sometimes able to lift a cup, sometimes unable to hold a spoon.
Stroke was not one moment.It was a war.
And Ruthie fought it quietly.
Her childhood ended without ceremony. Her innocence slipped away unnoticed. Responsibility settled on her shoulders and stayed.
She grew leaner.Her eyes grew older.Her heart grew stronger.
And she never complained.