Akunna James-Ibe

THE CHILD WHO LIVED

The devil came to steal her baby in the middle of the night. He shimmied through the gaps between the hinges of the door, slithered across the long wooden cross she once used to hit him on the head, and stood hands akimbo at the baby’s side, watching it sleep with a wry smile on his face. First he rolled up his sleeves. Next he cursed the baby with a fever. Then he spooled the baby’s breath round his fork. And he proceeded with emptying its soul into a wicker basket. That’s when the Holy Spirit tapped her–three small pats on the thigh. She jolted awake in time to see a rat scurry towards the door from the foot of the bed. With a leap and war cry, she grabbed the wooden cross and sent it crashing down on the rat; again and again till it was a bloody spatter, again and again till Helen came hurtling down the corridor.

Without waiting for madam’s response to her frenzied knocking, Helen barged into the room breathing hard.

“Aunty! Aunty what…Jesus!” She jumped at the sight of the bloody mess on the vinyl floor and clasped her mouth, eyeballs quivering. Across the room, madam was rocking a bundle in her arms, sobbing noisily, and blustering in tongues. Helen dug her nails into her palms until the queasiness in her gut settled at the bottom, then with a puff of breath, she sidestepped the dead rat and hurried over to madam who was bobbing like a windup doll close to the window. After this night, she was going to quit this job. After this night, she assured herself.

Feverishly, madam grasped Helen’s arm as snot mingled with tears dripped on the shawl. “I just dozed off for three seconds Helen, three seconds…so why is this happening again? Why is Lazarus breathing like this?” Helen flinched and peered into the bundle in madam’s arms.

“But–baby looks fine aunty,” She said, suppressing a wince. Madam released her grip sharply and pointed a trembling finger at her. “No. Call Joshua osiso! My baby will not die again. We’re going to the hospital.” She wiped her nose with the crook of her left elbow and grabbed her night robe from the bed where it lay sprawled.

Helen hesitated. “But baby is breathing well.”

Madam stared wide-eyed at her and approached menacingly, swinging her finger like a pistol. “You? Are you plotting with my husband’s new wife to kill my baby? Helen?”

Helen stumbled backwards and waved her hands frantically. “No! No! Let me call Joshua!”

The last time Lazarus died, it had taken madam three days of absolute fasting and prayers to convince God to return him. Three months ago. He was her fourth child. Unlike with the three who died before him, she did not wail when she noticed that her efforts to preserve the baby had come to naught. Instead, very early the next morning, she bathed its tiny body, garbed it in a woollen jumper, and strapped it loosely to her back with a threadbare wrapper. Without uttering a word to anyone, she left the house and did not return until she was found. They found her on the third day in a cube-sized church several miles from home, spread-eagled on the linoleum carpet that separated the altar from the rest of the church’s bare floor. There, on the altar, her baby lay, grey and rigid, as dead as a shunned sacrifice.

The brethren of Fiery Faith Chapel had gathered that Wednesday after a roadside evangelism to pray and cast out leftover demons from Sunday’s service when they saw a female form sprawled on the floor of their church. Worried that she might be dead, they huddled at the church entrance, exclaiming, chattering, and throwing quizzical glances at one another until the pastor and Brother Timothy arrived. Brother Timothy marched into the church like a host of angels was trailing him. He was the head of the prayer ministry. Taking a deep breath, he knelt by the woman and prodded her with the spine of his bible.

“Sister,”

Silence.

“Sister,” he called again, poking harder until she stirred. Then she sat up abruptly as if she was never asleep and grabbed Brother Timothy by both arms. He jerked backwards, caught off guard by the sudden evolution of her state. But she had heard her baby cry.

“Thank you Jesus! Thank you!” She planted wet kisses on Brother Timothy’s hand while he gaped at her. Without uttering another word, she stumbled to the altar, picked up her baby, and departed as mysteriously as she had come. She had the baby called Lazarus.

The people at home knew this story. She had recounted the miracle to them when she returned. That’s why she kept watch over this child who lived every night with a wooden cross. That’s why she did not understand why Helen had belittled her agitation, or why Joshua was driving like he took lessons from a snail. Once, twice, she tried to pry the steering wheel from Joshua’s hands, and Helen had to restrain her. Once, twice, the baby slid off her laps as she struggled with Helen and, in her alarm, she finally regained some composure.

As soon as Joshua parked the vehicle at the hospital’s frontage, madam jumped out and dashed towards the emergency room with Lazarus, her breasts flapping across all quadrants without restraint. She looked harassed; strands of hair poked out of her cornrows like twigs, and dark pouches like 3 dimensional shadows hung beneath her eyes. From the doorway she sighted a woman in dark green scrubs hunched over a desk, and was soon kneeling at her feet before the nurses at the wooden counter opposite the desk could react.

“Please help my baby! He’s not breathing well!”

The woman in green scrubs looked up from the folder she was scribbling into with a worried frown, and waved off the approaching nurses. A small fist of caregivers, alerted by the noise, began to form close to the wall behind the desk.

“Calm down ma. What happened?” The woman in green scrubs stooped to her level. “Let me see him.”

Helen and Joshua rushed into the ward at that moment. The woman in green scrubs looked up from the bundle in her arms and landed a quizzical stare at them.

“Are you with her?”

“Yes Nurse!” They chorused.

“Doctor,” One of the nurses behind the counter scolded.

“Oh. Sorry doctor,” Helen said.

“What’s the meaning of this?” The doctor asked as she rose from the floor with the bundle in her arms. Helen winced and threw the doctor an apologetic look as she approached the desk.

“Please help us,” She muttered and clasped her hands. Curious, the two nurses leaned over the countertop.

The doctor sighed and kneaded her forehead. “Since when?”

“Since she lost her fourth child and her husband took a new wife,” Helen said quietly. The doctor clicked her tongue and looked down at the sobbing woman.

“It’s okay. Your baby will be fine.” She patted the woman and signalled one of the nurses to draw some fluid into a syringe from a drip on a nearby stand. The nurse handed her the syringe with raised eyebrows and spun her index finger close to her temple. The doctor nodded. The nurse shook her head and sighed.

“Your baby will be fine,” The doctor said again, and injected the clear fluid into the plastic doll’s arm. The woman watched, wide-eyed. After she had injected the doll, she placed the bell of her stethoscope over its plastic chest and nodded satisfactorily.

“The heart is beating. Listen.”

The woman wiped her eyes and shuffled to her feet. She listened:

Tick-tock 

Tick-tock 

Tick-tock

“My baby is alive.” 

The woman dropped to the ground and hugged the doctor’s legs. The doctor patted her, sneaking out her wristwatch from beneath the baby’s shawl.