UTU

Apondi peeps from behind the granary. She watches her friend Junta run to catch up with a group of girls walking to school, their bare feet skipping down the dusty path in excitement, their school bags swinging as they laugh and talk happily.  She could be with them, but not today. She does not know what to do with her blood. The insides of her tummy were knotting and scratching painfully. She had never felt like this. Why the pain? Why the blood? “I swear never to steal food from the pot,” She whispered to herself as another moment of an invisible hand scratched and knotted her insides. That was the only feasible explanation for the 3 day pains she’d had and the red stain on her school uniform. “Apondi!” someone calls out. She sees her best friend, Atieno’s elder sister Junta, stop and turn towards their compound. She must have been delayed by their lazy mother. Atieno had told Apondi how for some reason her mother would get lazy and have either Junta or her other friends do the har