1

The first time, it is Ma walking in on you just as you are about to throw into your mouth the pills in your enclosed palm. The shock leaves your mouth encircled, hanging agape. As she moves away from the door and walks down to you, hips swaying to the rhythm of her slight struts, her eyes scan the room and land by chance on the Levofem sachet lying next to you on the bed. Spirit and soul do not reveal to you that she would somehow figure out what your intentions are.

It is flesh, and Ma’s untapped potential in acting, that make you think that she’d believe the painkiller lies. So you almost literally sing it to her in a slurred speech, even though she doesn’t ask you: “Ma, they are actually for my lower abdominal pains.”

“Oh! Ndo,” she says, almost in a whisper. Then she smiles, a smile that hides between the hollows of her dimples, the question: what do you even take me for?

But you do not see it. She may not have had the privilege of knowing what the four walls of a classroom looked like, but the dark circles around her eyes should have been enough to tell you that she was life-schooled, Ma would later tell you. But at this moment, she keeps up the feigned ignorance and gulps her rage. Picking up her purse and making for the door, she says, “I came to tell you that I’m off to CWO meeting.” The sentence is as cold as the feeling that would later wrap itself tightly around your chest as the door whines shut behind her. The carelessness!

The second time, it is you walking in on Ma as she is set to step out of the room you and Eugene share. Her eyes scream mischief, her trembling hands too. She doesn’t say a word. You don’t, either. But her return will be full of words, blunt and searing words. Words that’ll travel the years with her, and grow more intense with the passing of each fruitless year. Even after you must have stopped using the pills, the words will not stop. Because, still, the seeds will refuse to sprout. Not even the frequent visits to the doctor will be enough manure to fertilize your womb.

2

The vehicle is one of those teeming yellow buses that ply Lagos roads, popularly referred to as danfo. And glued to the last seat at the far end of the bus is a glum you, head drooped like a criminal condemned to death. You are buried neck deep in a pool of your own thoughts, and in no time, you’d be cocooned into a distant world. Slow and steady, the noises would fade away— the danfo’s blaring engine, the deafening hoots of other vehicles, and the cacophony of shrill and raspy voices chattering away in the danfo.

Your head is a blank space, filled only with Ma’s presence. She’s perched on the edge of the cushion. Her eyes are twin globes of fury. You try to blink the sight away. But try as hard as you might, it is the most unyielding effort ever. Bitterness clogs up your throat; you’re defying the doctor’s orders at your own peril. But really, can one stop one’s mind from wandering? How does one flick the thoughts away when they keep on going in circles around one’s head? These and more are the questions you fight hard to not ask the doctor whenever he does his recital: “Cut down on the thinking, Mrs. Enebeli. Your blood pressure is hiking.” There are just some things doctors can’t proffer a way out of. Thinking is one of them. Well, it’s been two weeks since you last had an appointment with him. You’re not bothered; you’re just not going back to that hospital. What’s the need anyway? Your stomach is not growing a bulge, after all the checkups and check downs and pills and bills.

The danfo begins to totter on rows of potholes, rudely yanking Ma’s image off the blank space in your head. You pin your focus on the houses moving backwards as the danfo speeds on, revelling in the crisp coolness of the air as it caresses your skin and whips your hair around your face. Or what else can you do to make sure the thoughts remain aloof? Sing a song? That seems like a great idea. But the first song your lips break into is the same one that served as a background music for Ma the previous night. It seeped solemnly out of the stereo, adding more melody to Ma’s sing-song voice as it chastised you vehemently.

“Did I not warn you?” she’d barked. “But you said I was seeing things.”

“Ma—” You’d prepared to protest, but thought against it. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop what you intended to avoid from springing forth. Ma would never stop at a sentence. Never.

“No, don’t hold it back. Say it again. Say what you said to me five years ago again.” She’d gestured wildly, flailing her arms in all directions. “Tell me that the drug was just an ordinary painkiller.” She drawled ‘ordinary pain killer’ in such a tone that tilted between rage and mockery, a tone that tried so hard to mimic your own voice. This lone gesture of hers had tickled your sides so much that you’d almost whipped your sorrows to the side to burst into a fit of laughter—that would have been pouring oil on troubled waters.

3

There’d been a time you’d felt the urge to shout back at Ma, to scream your grievances at her, and give her a detailed run down of the things that were out of her knowledge. These were times when her words became tiny pins, drilling their ways through your skin pores, too sharp to bear. Times when she forced you to travel down the precarious path of memory lane, and flip open that spot in your heart that has Iniobong safely tucked in it.

Iniobong was the name you had for her, your first conception. It had been a herculean task convincing Eugene to agree with it. He hadn’t really had a problem with the name, he’d only feared Ma would want the first child to be christened in her dialect. The fact that the scan had shown a girl child was already a bone of contention. But you weren’t deterred, no woman would come into your matrimonial home to dictate what you’d christen your own child, mother-in-law or not. But later on, you would wish there had been the opportunity to trade words with Ma on the name issue; you would wish the house hadn’t been decked with the sacred silence of a cemetery on the day that was meant to be the christening ceremony.

Ma only knew that the baby died. It was all she was supposed to know. Eugene had made you promise not to give her the full details: that the baby died of weakness, after hours of trying in futility to birth it naturally, or best put, that the baby died of Eugene’s blind refusal when he was told to sign the papers that stated that the hospital had his full consent to perform a caesarean operation on you.

They told him of the implications of forcing you to birth naturally, as you would later learn, but he adamantly refused, saying something about the Hebrew women, family tradition and whatever. It still boggles your mind, the spuriousness of it all. Was it really about family tradition and religion, or more about the expenses that the caesarean operation would have incurred?

Let the tears stream down in their torrents, or gag on peals of laughter like a deranged woman: it is what you do when Ma begins her troubles these days. Because you cannot begin to explain to her what it is to lose a child in the process of sidestepping the knife, and ending up going under the knife to excavate a lifeless child. You cannot also begin to explain to her that the pills were meant to give you the luxury of time to heal; that you’ve stopped using the pills for four years now; that your agitations to birth a child has revamped and enervated again, because it seems the giver of children is angry and is holding on to his children now that you want them. Besides, there’s only little an almost primitive, greying woman would understand about a woman having a male pelvic. Or how would you have even put it? That there are women who don’t have the privilege of  having a normal delivery. You can almost imagine how she’d scoff and spit. “All this oyinbo jargon.”

4 One of the danfo’s tires rams into a pothole. It is the exact tire beneath your seat. The danfo’s sudden jerks are like volcanic eruptions, a first-hand earthquake experience. Reeling from the tumble of your internal organs, you sigh and retort, “Brab.” The woman beside you flips her gaze to you. She doesn’t and cannot know that ‘brab’ is your self-devised acronym for

‘bad roads are beautiful’. Their promptness in a rescue mission is top-notch, especially the ones that grace the suburbs of your dearest fatherland. They cut through one’s thoughts, hence, keeping one’s blood pressure in check, and preventing it from escalating.

But the reverberation of Ma’s voice is still stuck in your head, it hasn’t shaken off with the volcanic eruption. It is right there in your head, crushing your bones, boring holes in your heart in a million places like shards of broken bottles: “Just look at your life. You have blocked your womb with all that powder from that sachet. Married woman. Shame on you.”

It happens again. This time, it is like the world crashed and took back shape in the slice of a second. People are exclaiming, “Driver small small o.” There’s an uncomfortable, prickling sensation in your stomach. It starts out at the crux of your ribcage, streaks down your lower abdomen and finally settles in the sacred enclosure between your thighs.

The driver approaches a rough path again, but he slows down this time, trying to manoeuvre and snake past the potholes, the passenger at the front navigating his every move and turn. Still, the continuous joggling of the bus invites another rare kind of pain. You work your hands around your belly softly, trying hard not to make an expression that’d attract attention. The road smoothes out now, but your insides don’t seem to. The pain gets deep-seated, needles of pain swimming in your stomach. You stifle a yelp. Then you feel it, warm and sticky. It crawls out from your inner thighs and trickles down your legs. You raise your gown to find the floorboard riddled with a crimson-coloured liquid, with substances like shreds of over-cooked meat. The woman next to you lets out a whimper. Her face is an embodiment of different expressions. It is hard to tell which is more pronounced: fear, pity or disgust. “Blood of Jesus!” she mutters. But it’s no blood of Jesus. It’s the splattered mash of the unformed feotus you never knew had been in your stomach all along.

DESTINY OKODUWA is a creative writer and an emerging storyteller. He joggles his time between teaching primary school pupils and weaving words into tales. When he’s not doing any of the above, he is weaving hairs into beautiful styles that alters the appearance of women and transforms them into an embodiment of beauty. Okoduwa’s works have appeared in Nnoko Stories, Fiction Niche, Eboquills, Fiery Scribe Review and elsewhere. You can find him on Facebook as Destiny Okoduwa.