Spirit Child

“Push! push!! push harder!!!”

The nurse continued to yell as I struggled to follow and focus on her loud instructions. I was slowly losing it, and it felt like a thousand spears were going in and out of my body simultaneously..

“Arghhhh!!!”  I screamed in frustration as tears spilled from my eyes blurring my vision. 

My body was on fire and I was weak from pushing for too long. 

“Push! push! push!” I moaned in pain. “That’s all you keep saying, can’t you see I’ve been doing this for the past 3 hours, and nothing is happening.”

I snapped out at all of them. My lower body was sore and on fire, and I could not control the words that were spilling out of my mouth in frustration.

“Ssshhhh honey, it’s fine..just be strong. You’re almost there. Only a little while now..we’d have our baby. You’re doing just great!”

My husband tried to placate me and my raging nerves. He was clearly tensed and filled with terror that this child might kill me or tear me apart. Whichever would happen first.

I could see it in their eyes. The tension was as thick as bread. 

“Don’t you dare say a word to me, Bolu. You’re the reason I am in this mess again. I told you I was not ready to go to the room yet, but you would not listen. Now, see what a moment of fleeting pleasure is costing me.

“Don’t tell me to be calm!!! It’s not your v** that’s on fire with a human head that refuses to come out ! I hate you for this.”

“Sssssssssshh you’re doing great, my love” Bolu continued to encourage me as I continued to yell like a mad woman. 

I wanted it to be over. And everyone who spoke a word to me in this dire situation was bound to come under fire. 

My waist, and legs were cramped and sore, and it felt like my uterus wanted to self consume itself. I was covered in sweat and the hospital walls appeared to be closing in on me as I struggled to breathe through every piercing pang of contraction

I wanted it all to end, I felt like I was going to die from the pain of childbirth..

“The head is coming” the nurse yelled in excitement after my third push .I was fast losing strength and the walls were beginning to double. I was soon going to black out.

“Olowa eseun ooo” Bolu muttered as he peered up at the nurse in excitement. I could feel the tension loosening up a little in the room.

“Okay babe, just a little while now, okay? Can you do that push one more time for me.”

I looked around and realized for the first time that it was really happening. This was no longer about me, the pain I was feeling,or my body. 

It was about this child. This little human that I had formed with Bolu.I felt the baby’s ears slide out of me, and I felt something magical happen at that moment. Something settling in my chest like a warm cloud, something I could not really explain.

I was really having a baby that I had made with the man I loved most on Earth. It was worth it after all. None of the initial pain was worth this feeling of euphoria after all.

This feeling of birthing a child into the world. 

My child.

“You’re almost there babe,” Bolu squeezed my hand as I gave the final push that helped the baby move out of me into the world.

A loud cry overwhelmed the room as I saw the perfect shape of her head.

My baby was perfect.

This time around, it would be different. 

I would make sure of it.

The baby’s loud cry and Bolu’s laugh of joy was the last thing I heard before I slipped into unconsciousness.

 ————————————————–

I heard quiet whispers as I tried to open my eyes. 

Where was I? I thought as I stared blankly at the white wall in front of me. 

I tried to move my legs but a sharp pain shot through me, slicing my abdomen in half.

I remembered suddenly.

Bolu, my husband.The nurse.

The screams and shouts to Push. 

The baby

I just had a baby.

I heard the tiny muffled whispers again. Coming from one end of the room. I could recognize the voices anytime, anywhere. Even in my next life. I would know that voice.

It was my mom, Bolu and two new nurses talking in whispers.

“She’s the one. Mother exclaimed loudly. She is the same one.” 

They were arguing about something that I could not understand.

Where was my baby, and why were the nurses discussing with Bolu and my mother in hushed voices like something bad had happened.

“But this cannot be.”Bolu responded angrily.”Are you certain of it?”

“I am most certain she is the one. The black beaded eyes, the patch of hair, it cannot be a coincidence!” My mother’s statement was met with silence as she admitted the things I dreaded the most.

Oh God. no. This was not happening again.

“Is she really?” Bolu muttered, trailing off in sad thoughts.

“What’s going on?” I screamed out loud startling them all into jumped silence.  “Where is my baby?”

I watched as they all turned towards me with fright in their eyes.

“How are you doing my darling?” Bolu asked, walking up to me to pat my hands, almost immediately.

I could tell that he was trying to hide something from me. I knew him too well. 

I looked up at him, trying to search his eyes to know what he was hiding from me.

“Hey babe.” He squeezed my hands gently. I loved it every time he did that to me.”How do you feel now?”

I smiled up at him in question. “I would be fine once I see the baby.”

I watched the nurse shift uncomfortably from one foot to another at the mention of a baby.

“What’s going on?”

“Shouldn’t a mother be allowed to see her new born child?” I asked, trying to hide my anger and fear.

“You need to rest , my dear child. The baby is doing fine.” my mother replied almost immediately trying to placate me. 

“Where is the child? I want to see her now. I don’t believe you all.” I yelled, getting apprehensive almost immediately.

I could not bear to lose another child again, after losing the first three children only five months after their birth.

Was I cursed? What exactly was this happening to me?

“I overhead you all talking in whispers about something ominous. Don’t hide anything from me. What is wrong with the child? Is…Is my baby dead, again?”

“Babe, what is wrong with our baby?” I asked looking up at Bolu, daring him to tell me the truth with my eyes.

Bolu shifted his gaze from me and focused on my legs like there was something intriguing there.

He was going to avoid the question like he had not heard me ask. 

I started to panic and cry almost immediately.

I feared the worst had happened.

Without a word, I watched Mother walk straight into the small room that was separated by a curtain. The room where they kept the baby. 

Why had they separated the baby from me?

Wasn’t a child supposed to be near its mother’s warmth in the early stages of its birth?

I wondered as Mother approached with the bundle of cloth that the baby was wrapped in.

Without a word, my mother brought the baby closer to me.

I screamed as I noticed her face. 

She was the one, again. Back in flesh and blood.

That jet black beaded eyes, the patch of hair, and that mark. That mark of shame that was supposed to stop her from returning. It was right there. Like a phoenix who had been burned but had emerged regardless of the torment.

The sight of the mark on her cheeks brought back old , hard , cruel and painful memories.

The slaughter of the goat in the field, the white cloth that had been used to stain the blood, the piercing sharp dagger that had Sliced her cheeks and belly, and the revolting stench of the Calabash that the priest had carried as incense to ward off her fellow spirits aiding her from the spirit world.

I felt tears blur my vision as I held her in my hands. 

The baby, my baby, was here again. They had said the mark would stop her from being reborn. Would stop her from coming back to my womb. Yet here she was not only out of my womb, but back here in my life, my world, and in my arms.

“We must kill her, ” my Mother’s voice brought me back into reverie. 

“What?!” Bolu screamed. The anguish blinding his eyes as he stared at me in fright

“We can’t kill an innocent baby just because there is a mark on her cheek!”  He argued trying to be logical.

“Bolu, we all know that this child is the one. The ogbanje child that has cursed your wife from having real children.” My mother countered in an argument.

“If this is not done. She would be dead in a few months, and come back again after another 9 months is up, until she kills your wife, my daughter, through childbirth.”

“This is the curse of the reborn,and you know it.’

“But surely there must be something else. Another alternative to this madness. To this myth.”

“Myth? Mother countered. Did you just say Myth Bolu?Please, don’t be incredulous. When your wife almost died giving birth a few hours ago, was that a myth?”

“When you buried the same girl child three times under five months near the Udala tree, was that a myth? When your wife almost died giving birth to this child a few hours ago, was that a myth?

Now that same child is here again, and you don’t want us to take action. If only we had taken the advice from the village elders a long time ago with the second child, maybe by now, you’d really be a father of a flesh and blood child, and not of an ogbanje spirit child!”

“Mother! Don’t speak to my husband in that manner. It’s not our fault that any of this is happening.” I argued, turning to face my mother in loud sobs. 

“Babe?” Bolu looked at me with fear in his eyes.

“I just want this to end,” I concluded in a final tone. “I just want to be a normal mother of a normal child. Why has the universe refused to bless me with a real child? “

“But babe…” Bolu countered, trying to help me see the reason for his argument.

I looked down at the baby in my hands and felt a pang of pain hold my chest again..

“Mother is Right.We must do it.”

“I don’t want to kill this baby.” Bolu yelled in frustration.

I looked down at her black beaded eyes, jet black hair, and the deep criss cross scar on her face. Her eyes twinkled with some sort of mystery and sarcasm as if she was mocking me in baby language. 

Those same eyes that I had fed numerously with my breasts.

“I would do it. ” I stated amidst the chaos of Bolu’s pleas.

“I would kill this child tomorrow, tell the elders to prepare for the rites and offerings.”

“It is he who has brought this one to life that must take it away from life as well. After all, a spirit child is no child at all.”

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