A Mother's Tale

This is true story that happened when I visited a hospital for consolatory purposes:

"Dear God, please take care of my baby, don't let my enemies to laugh at me". 


These were the words she said to her fellow admitee as she lay on her back clutching her protruding belly that four days earlier had held a full term foetus. 


A very dark skinned Ibo woman with closed cropped hair and impossibly high African cheek-bones, animated white eyes and large even teeth. On closer inspection, I saw a tube running from the under-side of her bottom as she lay flat on her back down to a square transparent bag that was slowly filling up with liquid the colour of muddy ginger ale.


I sat still with-out moving, holding my breath, I smelt a story....


And then, she began....


She had given birth four days earlier through a gruelling and harrowing caesarian section. And, after all that pain and awful near-death experience, she had not heard the cry of her baby. She has not seen her baby. No one was telling her any-thing. Not the hospital staff. Not her family. And certainly, not her husband.


She said, "I believe my baby has die", in her thick guttural Ibo accent, "because no one has telling me any-tin, even when I ask dem, they say my baby is in the first hospital I was come from. All I want is for dem to tell me if my baby has die so I can have rest of mind, I will accept it as the will of God ". 


I looked in her eyes and I saw fear, resignation, acceptance, but through all this, still;  I saw the stubborn glimmer of hope. The hope of a mother looking to carry for the first time in her arms the extension of her-self she had been carrying in her womb for past nine months.


I excused my-self under the pretext of using the bath-room, then I quickly detoured, searching for a hospital staff to be-rate them as to why they should keep this poor woman in suspence over the state of her baby. 


I found the head nurse. She then told me the truth of the situation. 

I walked out of the reception back to the ward, determined to in-form the mother on my findings, so she can make her peace. As I approached the entrance of the ward, I heard these words:


"Dear God, keep my baby well, abeg don't let people to laugh at me abeg you God abeg". She cast her eyes to-ward the ceiling with an earnest and pleading expression on her face while holding her belly. 


The prayer of a troubled Mother.


My eyes misted over. Courage failed me....


I came and sat be-side her, as gently as I possibly could wiping all expression from my face. Told her the bathroom was abysmal and as a result, I could not use it.


She continued with her story...


When she was nine-teen, a man living with-in the same neighbour-hood as her family, had come in-to the traditional bath-room made of corrugated roofing sheets (that was the general bath-room used by every-one in the under-class neighbour-hood where she lived with her parents at the time) and raped her. After the rape, she got pregnant and was forced to marry him to avoid the shame and stigma of single mother-hood, as the thought of an abortion was completely out of the question.


Her dreams died the second his man-hood tore in-to her. An intelligent woman who wanted to further her education and make some-thing of her life.


So, she enters in-to a love-less union habouring deep resentments. Lamenting the cards life dealt her. Resigning her-self to fate. 


The resulting pregnancy from the rape produced fraternal twin boys which she poured all her love upon while simultaneously pouring an endless stream of molten lava venom on her "spouse". And he feeling all that negative energy and hatred, turned to the drink there-by sinking deeper in-to oblivion him-self. 


All she was was a mother, not a wife(in the true sense any-way...).


Then she got pregnant a second time, and lost the pregnancy. A third time again, she had a girl. The fourth time, she gave birth. She rejoiced too soon, as the child died a few days later. The fifth time she got pregnant, it was a still birth. 


This was her sixth try.....


I listened to her story, rubbed her shoulder gently, told her every-thing was alright like every-body else....

And walked out of the hospital on wooden legs barely holding back my tears... carrying with me, the burden of truth...