Page 3 of Cursed Daughters
“She has wet herself,” her mother confidently informed them. Ebun tried to regulate her breathing. Her baby would be okay. She had to be.
“She can’t have wet herself, Kemi.”
“Are you not seeing what I am seeing?”
“It is her water. Her water has broken.”
Aunty Bunmi’s words were firm. She touched Ebun’s arm with a cool hand, steadying her, then she pulled her into the living room, leading her to an armchair. Five sets of eyes peered at her.
“It can’t be her water. It’s not time yet!” her mother shouted. No, it wasn’t time yet. Perhaps Ebun was about to learn what it felt like to lose a child.
Her aunt’s sombre eyes met her own for a brief moment. Thenthey both looked away. Ebun thought about the anger she had felt mere moments ago. What had she really thought she could say to the woman? All she felt now was a wave of tiredness. She spotted Sango’s dark shape disappear behind the couch.
The women were debating what to do. Grand-Aunty Ronke suggested she should lie down, close her legs and the baby would relax. Her mother was pacing back and forth, speaking in tongues, and Ebun instinctively looked around to locate one of her cousins so they could share an eye-roll; and then she remembered—Mo was gone and Tolu wanted nothing to do with her.
“Maybe Mama G can…” began Aunty Bunmi.
Ebun shook herself. She had no intention of giving herself over to a mamalawo and the spirits she entertained. This was her child and she would fight for her soul.
“Just get me to a hospital.”
III
They told her to push. Push.
As if it was easy; as if they weren’t asking her to surrender herself to death.
She heard someone give a guttural cry, and then realised that she was the someone. She had been right to fear this pain. She didn’t think she would survive the experience. A voice told her she was doing well, but it was as though she were submerged underwater and the voice was trying to reach her from the surface. The words had no meaning. She breathed. She pushed. She felt the head crowning. She screamed, and it was over.
They lowered the baby into her arms, naked and crying. She stared at the child that she had nurtured for seven months—the cause of her acid reflux, the endless blood-thinning injections, the sickness, the absent-mindedness. Here she was, her daughter, in the smallest and most fragile of packages. Her skin pillowy soft against Ebun’s own. The crying subsided. They took their breaths together. Her daughter’s eyelids flickered open, and the eyes were boundless and familiar. Ebun was engulfed in a joy that was so concentrated it felt like grief. Nothing would ever matter as much as this child.
“Beautifulhair,” a nurse exclaimed as Ebun ran her fingers tenderly over her baby’s scalp. The statement was true enough. Her daughter’s hair was already thick and coily; likely to become long and resilient, soaking up moisture and defying gravity.
And then the moment was over. They whisked the baby away, tocheck that her organs were fully developed and she would be able to survive on her own.
When her daughter was returned to her, Ebun saw that her eyes were heavy with sleep. Eyes that reminded her of Monife—wide-set and downturned. She gave in to her own desire for rest. This was a moment steeped in all that was good. She didn’t have to think of anything else.
IV
The ward was dark, but she could sense that there was someone in the cubicle with her. It was Ebun’s second night in the hospital, and she had been moved to a room divided into two by a fragile curtain—leaving her with a space just wide enough to accommodate a bed, cot and solitary chair. She opened her eyes and waited for them to adjust.
She could make out a figure approaching the cot where her baby slept. At first she assumed it was her mother. But her mother was short, with wide hips, and this woman was tall and slender. Besides, her mother had gone home to sleep. A nurse? But surely a nurse would say something.
She felt panic blooming in her chest. The figure was moving towards her child with what she could only imagine were bad intentions. What else would explain this creeping about? She wanted to shout, but she was still groggy, weighed down by the various drugs keeping her from feeling pain. Her body would not do the thing she most wanted it to do, which was get up and protect her baby. She tried again to call out.
“Nurse. Nurse.” But the words were just a croak. Her throat was dry. Perhaps the other new mother would hear her, but no one responded to her cry.
Her heart rate quickened as the figure neared the cot. She could begin to make out that the woman was wearing an oversized shirt, revealing long legs, bare feet, a thin link chain glinting on the right ankle. Suddenly she recognised the thick hair and the bowed legs.It was Mo. Mo was here, not in Ikoyi Cemetery, in a wooden box covered by soil, but here in the cubicle with Ebun and the baby; bending over the crib, lifting the baby and peering at her face.
“Mo. Please. Please,” Ebun begged, even though she couldn’t have said what it was she was asking. She used her hand to hold on to the bed rail, and pushed herself up. Then she swung her feet to the floor and tried to stand. She immediately crumpled, hitting the ground hard, so she began to crawl, dragging herself to the cot.
If Mo was aware of Ebun, she chose not to show it. She was cradling the baby and rocking her gently. Neither of them made a sound. As Ebun inched closer, she noticed that Monife was wet, the T-shirt clinging to her body, her hair heavy and glossy over her shoulder. “Please,” she tried to say again. Mo lifted her head slowly, and a single drop of water rolled from her hairline and fell, catching the dim light, landing with a small splash on the baby’s forehead—
Ebun woke up in her bed with a start, her heart hammering. She looked around frantically; the ward was dark and silent. She found she could lift herself from the hospital bed and shuffle to the cot, where her baby slept peacefully. And Mo was still buried six feet deep, fifteen miles away. It was only a dream. The wall between the living and the dead was impermeable; she had no reason to be afraid. It was only as she turned away from the cot that Ebun realised her foot was wet; she was standing in a small pool of water.
V
There was the time before Monife, and the time after.
