The burden of a rejected apology is a heavy thing

When I was a skinny lad with knees that stuck out like doorknobs, I went to school with a girl named Deborah. But in our small village, “Deborah” was too much of a mouthful, so we all called her Dofora.

She was a sweet girl, as innocent as they come. Yet, every time a naughty kid in class let out a fart, the blame always landed squarely on Dofora. If the class prefect needed to whip up a noisemakers list, Dofora’s name was inked at the top without fail. When someone giggled during a boring afternoon lesson, who else could it be? Dofora, of course.

In our young eyes, Dofora was the queen of chaos. But she never fought back, never raised her voice in protest. Instead, she wore her sadness like a heavy shawl draped over her small shoulders, giving her the look of a little widow in mourning. The reason for her mischief, we believed, lay in a tuft of hair that dipped into her forehead—a sign, according to village folklore, that she was born naughty.

Despite her endless patience, the weight of the world seemed to settle on Dofora’s shoulders. As other girls chased ladybirds in the grassy fields, she sat alone. While her peers shared slices of juicy mangoes on the way home, she walked by herself, silence trailing her like a relentless shadow.

For Dofora, silence was not golden as the old truism goes, but a burden. One fateful day, a classmate pulled a particularly naughty stunt. Naturally, when the teacher demanded to know the culprit, our fingers pointed straight at Dofora’s desk. She wasn’t there that day. Nor the next. Nor the entire term. Dofora had had enough. She left school for good, disappearing without a trace.

Time passed, and we eventually left primary school behind. We moved on to high school, then college, the memory of Dofora fading into the background.

During a Sociology class, I learned about Cesare Lombroso, an Italian pseudo-scientist who theorized that criminal tendencies could be determined by physical traits—sloping foreheads, large jaws, big forearms.

I realized with a pang that we had unknowingly subscribed to this dangerous nonsense back in primary school. We saw Dofora as a criminal simply because of that innocent tuft of hair. Years slipped by, and I had no idea where Dofora was until a classmate mentioned she was on Facebook, having Americanized her name to Debra Kimm.

Perhaps it was her way of escaping the ghosts of a past where her hair had spelled nothing but trouble. Much later, I stumbled upon Dofora. My heart raced with the urgency of unspoken apologies, eager to tell her it wasn’t her fault that we mistreated her so cruelly over something as trivial as hair.

But Dofora—now Debra—evaded me just as she had vanished from our lives back in Class Six. I was left holding an apology that would never be heard, the weight of it now feeling like dragging a suitcase full of bricks throughout my life. I’ve come to realise, my dear friends, that the burden of a rejected apology is a heavy, heavy thing.

[email protected]