“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t.”
My mother shook her head slowly, not in disappointment, but in sadness. “A child that young should not be in the street.”
I nodded, staring at my hands, feeling the weight of my own silence.
Later, when my mother asked about my savings, I told her I was almost there. I told her I could taste the dream now, the way you can smell rain before it falls.
She smiled softly. “God willing.”
But when I lay down to sleep, David’s face floated behind my eyes. The way he held the plate. The way he ate without looking up. The way he thanked me as if gratitude was the only thing he owned.
Before I slept, I prayed for him. A simple prayer, the kind that comes from the center of the chest.
God, please watch over that boy.
The next day, when I opened my shop, I kept thinking about him. I tried to focus, but my mind kept wandering back to the small boy with old eyes.
Hours later, I saw him again.
He was begging along the road, moving from person to person with a cautious posture. Some people ignored him. Some waved him away as if he was a fly. A few looked guilty but kept walking.
Then it started to rain.
Not a gentle rain. A heavy, sudden rain that slapped the ground and turned dust into mud.
I expected David to run somewhere, to hide, to protect himself. But he didn’t. He just stood there, getting soaked, still asking for help as if the rain was nothing compared to hunger.
Something inside me snapped into motion.
