The weight of home

Rumbidzai arrived in Texas as a giddy, bright-eyed teenager with a suitcase full of dreams. She was ready to embrace this new chapter of her life with so much enthusiasm, despite the daunting reality of being far from home and alone, for the first time.

Her first culture shock came quickly, the unbearable heat. She had arrived during peak summer and nothing could have prepared her for that suffocating blaze. Eventually, she learned to adjust but once her classes started, a different kind of discomfort crept in, loneliness. She scanned her classroom and realized how much she stood out. Her blackness stuck out like a sore thumb. It was summer and a lot of students were away on vacation or working internships, leaving only a handful enrolled in summer classes.

One day, a few weeks in, she woke up yearning for her mother’s hearty chicken stew with piping hot sadza. That comfort meal which tasted like home. She decided to recreate it and excitedly made her way to Kroger to buy the ingredients. She glided along the aisles, already savouring the meal in her mind. When she finally finished cooking and tasted her meal, disappointment washed over her and she burst into tears. It didn’t taste like her mother’s, perhaps it lacked that warmth, love and mother’s touch. That wave of loneliness was like a thick blanket over her.

Years passed.

She graduated. She secured a decent job. She was no longer that naive teenager who had stepped off the plane at George W. Bush Airport wide-eyed and full of dreams. She was more grounded now and more self-assured. But still, she never truly felt like she belonged.

The quiet ache for home never fully left her. It would show up uninvited, in the middle of a workday, during lunch with friends or while standing in line at the grocery store. It was a quiet, persistent longing that no number of years or accomplishments could silence.

As the first daughter, the burden to be perfect weighed heavily on her shoulders. She had to set a good example for her younger siblings. She had to succeed, not just for herself, but for everyone depending on her. So even when she was overwhelmed by her own struggles, she still had to show up both emotionally and financially, to compensate for her physical absence.

She couldn’t even tell them she had lost her job. That she was struggling to cope. That she was slowly sinking into depression.

With the current Administration’s immigration policies, her job prospects were dwindling and ultimately her future in America was hanging by a thread. The American dream, once vivid and full of promise, now seemed elusive.

It wasn’t that her parents were ungrateful or insensitive, far from it. But they depended on her. They were aging, ailing pensioners who received a paltry payout each month which barely covered a fraction of their monthly expenses. She had to send money every month, it was not an option. That word – “Black tax” always rubbed her the wrong way. It made it sound like a burden, but it was just the reality of her life- familial obligations rooted in love and duty.

Her younger sister, Tariro had fallen pregnant at eighteen. Rumbi had to help support the baby. Then there was her younger brother, Tonderai who was battling a crystal meth addiction. He had been in and out of rehab over the last few years, each stay a costly one.

Rumbi found herself in a painful quandary: should she keep struggling to stay afloat in America so she could continue supporting her family from afar, or buy a one-way ticket home and finally be close to them?

But it wasn’t that simple. She had been gone for over a decade. Home was no longer the place she left behind. She would need to readjust, rebuild and reintroduce herself to a country that had changed- and to a version of herself that no longer quite fit there.

She often imagined going home once she had saved enough, maybe even built a house. But she hadn’t reached that point yet. She was still working toward it.

Whatever decision she made, she had to remember: she wasn’t just far from home.

She carried home on her back.
And because of that,
she couldn’t afford to fail.