The boy’s leg is a crystal. My stomach is a flat and beautiful diamond, lighting up a shiny splendor in the dark garden. Dim candle lights encircle us as we sit under an Iroko tree, and in the ground, we bury my wedding ring, the one I’ve been forced to wear even though I am not married.
I wake up just when we have covered the last ground. The boy from my dream is the boy from Granny’s church; third row, front seat. He can make his crutches lean against the wall, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lets them lie on the rest of the space that four more people could sit on. This is my theory: he does that so no one sits beside him. I must not have slept for long because Granny is still telling the story of the yam woman.
That she loves to tell stories is unquestionable. Everyone knows a story she told them. The real conundrum is how great of a storyteller she is. She doesn't tell stories about God or church, which is all she seems to talk about these days. Instead, she tells stories of witches, ghosts, and powers beyond and adversaries below. Her cheekbones are high and bronzed beneath her round glasses, and a streak of sunlight hits her face as it stabs through the living room.
She's peering at me now, as she does often. But I'm okay. What's wrong with dozing when you’ve heard the same story being told over and over again? She’s sunk into a giant chair from across the living room—a concrete-floored space with a simple settee, missing a center table and an antique shelf with ornaments that could earn her a fortune if she sells them. Instead, she basks in self-pride for a collector’s job well done. She wears nothing because of sweltering heat but an Adire wrapper lies flat atop her thighs. Her naked torso is glorious, reflective of the feisty days of her youth.
In this house, there is no TV. No computers, no internet. This is the world that makes sense to Granny, and yet, it is the perfect punishment for me, for getting pregnant before wedlock in a Reverend's house. Two birds, one stone.
"Ehen, so it’s serious lovemaking, not the one you do fiam that leaves you wondering if you even did anything. No oh, not that one. The real one gan gan, you know? "
I don’t respond because I am tired. Besides, the real listeners of the story are the other teenagers in the room, yet it is me her eyes are fixed on.
"You know?" She asks again tepidly.
I don’t know.
Every time Granny reaches the love making part of this story, she’s fully convinced that I know exactly what she speaks about. I watch her lips move with precision. Her voice is groggy, yet her eloquence cannot be missed. She tells her stories in the same way she behaves—in a fast, graceful, no-nonsense manner. Her voice is too stern and purposeful; no one dares interrupt her, even though we know what she will say next. Interrupt ke? And grandma’s diction is perfect; English so polished it feels like it has slid right out of the Queen’s mouth, and when she speaks Yoruba, it is in a way that reflects the value of ancestry, the story of a people I will never know. And sometimes, she weaves both languages into a sentence, and it feels like the birth of a proposition, the emergence of a new language that future generations will come to know as their mother tongue.
Iya Sule, the woman who helps with errands, is sitting on a metal chair in the corner, one eye on Grandma, the other on the Eko wraps she’s separating into two trays. Her children are the ones listening to Granny’s story for their literature assignment. After this, they will begin their evening work of hawking Eko on the streets. I imagine them running around chasing cars and rumpled Naira notes. Back in Lagos, when I saw hawkers, I never thought much of them as people with names and loved ones. They were merely a component of the road, a consequence of Nigeria’s battered system, not people who could ever sit in the same room as me listening to my grandmother's stories.
Most parts of the story are lost to Iya Sule, yet she listens to Grandma with an obvious fascination for the Oyinbolanguage she will never understand. Her voice rises to a high pitch. This is the part where the story morphs into a chant. We must respond lest we get the threat of a whooping. Her hands rise up, slicing through the air from different angles, twisting, twirling, and commanding beautiful motions to the sound of her voice. I imagine she would have been a great performer when she was much younger, hypnotizing audiences till they were out of their bodies, no longer themselves. The lights, the cameras, and she’d be all of the action.
As for me, this is what I could never be. I am the insignificant one, lost in the audience of a million, drenched in darkness. I would never be found. I’ve heard this story too many times. I may as well be the protagonist—the one who fucked someone and gave birth to a yam. I shouldn’t cuss. Grandma says God doesn’t like it, so I cuss only in my mind. Grandma also says every single thing about me is very significant in God’s magnificent plan, so there’s no need to think too much about who’s going to take care of the baby when it's born. It’s already sorted out in God’s great plan.
My stomach growls and grandma’s eyes reach me. I try to hide it, but my face says it all. This yam story has made me weak for yam, especially burnt yam. Even though I’ve been caught, I still confess with the soberness of an offender seeping through my voice.
"Sweet sixteen, I want burnt yam." I say
She does not complain much about my cravings. Those were the exact things she craved when she was pregnant too, especially when she carried her daughter, my mom. Burnt yam, burnt Jollof, burnt everything.
Later in the evening, when the sun is dying and it’s getting cool. I am on the balcony scraping the last slices of burnt yam, plantain and stewed ponmo. The newspaper that housed the food is soaked in oil, so I lick it until my lips are a shining beauty. Iya Sule has set up a green mosquito coil on the floor and it's almost choking, but she would have it no other way. Ibadan's mosquitoes are not as kind as the ones we have in Lagos, she warns.
Before I came to Ibadan, beg your pardon. Before my mother bundled me into the back seat of her Toyota Camry, chanting like a mad woman that I had killed her and made her a disgrace to the whole world, I had believed Granny was the wicked one, but I know better now. My mom is not even half the woman Granny is. What did my own mother do when the doctor said I was pregnant? She said she always knew that my good girl facade would be exposed, before she tossed the doctor's report in my face. Not once did she ask me what happened. I could not have told her how it happened. I mean, I’m not even sure what happened, but it wouldn’t have cost her one Naira to ask.
A soft wind hits me, a call to pay attention to the city, to be present here. Ibadan feels to me at first like an abandoned child. A place too comfortable with average to demand more, yet the harder I look, the more content and happy it seems with all it has "just enough." The air is fresh, and the thousands of rusty brown roofing sheets that cloud my view are birthmarks of the ancient city. Ibadan is so close to home, yet so far. And these days, I’m even confused about what "home" is to me. When I return to Lagos, things will not be the same again; it won’t be home. And here with grandma, I’m not allowed to go out, so I’m in bondage, and home should mean freedom. Mum’s instructions were clear: I was not to be seen at all, so Granny's insisting I go to church with her every Sunday is sheer rebellion, if you ask my mother.
As the wind continues to blow, it carries along with it, hope and the sound of Sade Adu’s No ordinary love. I know it’s Granny gyrating in her room, dancing nostalgically to the music of her youthful days. In her words, "the good old days, when days were days" Don’t get me wrong; she’s still got every zesty shred of it.
It is why she insists she is granny, way cooler than grandma, it is also why we call her ‘sweet sixteen, old mama never die’. Sweet sixteen for short.
***
"What do you do?"
The boy is throwing stones at the beach while I sit on the salty sands. He stops and looks at me before clicking his tongue.
"Does it look like people that have one leg have jobs in Nigeria?" He responds. Then he throws another stone, this time fiercely, to hit a raging wave. I can tell the boy is agitated by my question. I'm getting angry too, because the boy knows a lot more about me than I do about him.
"You, what do you do?" he asks calmly.
"I was a student before I got pregnant."
"You keep saying you're pregnant even though your belly is flat."
My heart skips a beat.
"I am pregnant. You can't see it, but I really am. "
I wake up palpitating. Not good for the baby. I run my hands against my belly, a weak attempt at confirming if the pregnancy is still there, but what do I really care? I do not want a product of intercourse I did not agree to. I do not want this child. In my dreams, I’m not pregnant, and I feel young, free, and at peace. Here in real life, I'm in bondage with so many questions. Sometimes, I wish I could squeeze my belly so hard, but even though the baby is not my baby, it is a baby and I'm scared to kill it.
I turn around to face the other side of my bed. I can only sleep on my side. Sleeping on my back still feels very unfamiliar to me and scares me. I imagine an evil spirit appearing at night and pointing at my belly, just like in Nollywood films, so sleeping on my side it is.
The stacks of unused bowls, pots, and plates tell me that this room was being used as a store before I came. On my bedside table is a picture of my great grandmother. Her skin is dark and mine is caramel, save for my neck and feet, which have been darkened by pregnancy. She looks nothing like me, yet she is with me. I feel her. She too knows what it is for someone to take you without your permission and leave you with a life you never imagined for yourself. The story of Ayinke, my great grandmother, lives with me always. I’ll tell you just how Granny told me.
Ayinke’s husband was cheating on her with the wife of a rich man. Big mistake. When the rich man found out, he came to this house and raped Ayinke as punishment for the sins of her husband. She got pregnant, and one morning, when her husband was away, she packed her things, left the house, and never came back. The end.
This is how compactly her life is summarized.
And sometimes I wonder if the child in my belly will one day summarize my life story to the time when a boy spiked my drink and had his way with me. I wonder if they will mention that I was a straight-A student who dusted all the boys in class, that I loved to talk a lot despite my quiet demeanor, that I was very curious about the world in a way that people detest. Like Ayinke, many times, I wish I can disappear into oblivion.
It is her picture. I continue to stare when Granny knocks on my door and enters immediately. She won't wait to be told to come into a room in her own house.
“Olanrewaju, get up. You'll be following Iya Sule to the market.”
It's as if I haven’t heard right. I'm not allowed to step outside the house. It happens fast, just like the day when my mum asks me to pack my bags for Ibadan—an intense, inexplicable thirty minutes that go quickly from the doctor announcing the pregnancy to being on a two-hour drive from Lagos to Ibadan.
The next thing I know, I am in the back of grandma’s car, too close to the smell of garlic oozing from Iya Sule’s Ankara. I'm wearing a Kaftan that drops down from my left shoulder. My feet are too swollen for the slippers I have hurriedly worn, and I have also forgotten the wedding band Grandma forces me to wear to church so that people don’t keep staring.
This is the first time I've seen Ibadan, the city with a long list of firsts, including Nigeria's first television station, first housing estate, first skyscraper, and first university and teaching hospital.
When children walk up to the side window asking us to buy their Moin Moin and Eko, Iya Sule shoos them away.
"Kíni? Nkan tí mò n sè nílé?" She makes better Eko than whatever it is they are selling, so no, thanks. The car moves slowly through the commotion on the road as we get stopped by the police at intervals. When they shout ‘Happy Weekend!’ with a wicked smile hanging from their lips, the driver knows what they are really asking for is a meager hundred naira note; he squeezes it into their palms. It makes it harder to miss the beggars at the stops, mostly people with disabilities, asking for anything they can get. It makes me think about the boy briefly.
I imagine if Iya Sule ever looks out for her children on the road, she might wonder whose car window they are holding on to.
The skies are getting dark now and pregnant with water. Looming darkness covers the streets. Very soon, the rain begins as slow drops at first, and then emerges into a heavy downpour, digging up dirt as it hits the ground. When we arrive at the market, Iya Sule decides she will brave the rain alone so I stay back in the car with Granny's driver in front. I focus on Iya Sule as she runs into the market, and soon I can no longer spot her in her cherry red gown.
The rain wipes down the window and I see people running helter-skelter. Others walk as if the rain is nothing different; they are not trying to run away from it or fight it. It’s just the rain, after all. A man walks past the window hurriedly with a rack of clothes and points quickly at it while looking at me. Would I buy wet clothes? No, but his hustle is respectable. My boubou is not spared from the mud splashes formed by the rain as it hits the ground. I’m watching, inhaling the unfamiliarity of it all; jarring voices, aggressive haggling, the grime, the routine. Everything is happening quickly. So quickly that I almost miss it, miss him, the boy from church, the one who reveals himself to me every time I fall asleep. But this is not a dream. I am wide awake. What is he doing standing in the rain, fixated on a single point, staring into nothingness as the waters soak him? I’m still wondering about this when the pain arrests me; A sharp, throbbing pain that causes everything to seem frozen in time. I grab on to the safety handle, bow my head and suppress a scream. In seconds, I am relieved of the pain. Granny claims that these are normal. When I look back, the boy is not there anymore. It’s probably not him; the boy in church does not stand on his two feet.
The driver tries to make small talk with me. The awkward silence has somehow given him permission to speak. When I tell him about our church and this market, he asks where I've been in Ibadan and laughs. He says there’s a lot to do in Ibadan, but first I must try the staple, Amala, from Amala Skye. When I don't respond, he asks if I know that Ibadan was formed from Eba Odan, two words that translate to ‘edge of the meadow.’ I tell him I did not know, and just then, I spot the red dress. Iya Sule is coming back. Save me.
When we are home, I retire to the bathroom for a wash. My hands touch my belly and it feels considerably bigger. I try not to think too much about the earlier pain. Short-term pain is normal. My index finger circles my areola, tracing the entirety of its plumpness. My breasts are also bigger than I remember. Although I can’t see them now, my feet are swollen, and my nose is too. As I lather the soap onto my skin, it is here that I begin to ask how Deji had his way with me in my sleep. Was it rushed, brash, or was it slow, passionate like the one Granny's story talks about? Could I reverse the time? Not sleep over knowing his parents had gone out of town. Not collect the juice when he insisted I would be rude not to have a drink. Can we go back in time?
I stretch out my dark, swollen feet, now the same color as my neck. The unevenness looks like my head, neck, and the rest of my body have been patched together from different bodies. And my body, do I hate my body? No, I do not, because hate is the absence of love. And I have never seen my body as something to love, or something deserving of love. Some things don’t have to be loved or hated; they just need to be useful.
Before I go to sleep, my phone beeps. It’s a credit alert from Mom. Ten thousand naira weekly is just enough grand-motherhood for the week. Sometimes, it is accompanied by a "how are you doing, Waju?" or a "resounding apology" for sending me away. This is not about you. What will people say about you if they see you like this? The Obioras, your friends or even Reverend? Other times it's flat out rage. “I can’t believe you would do this. It's a terrible disgrace!”
I see all the messages. Not once do I ever respond.
****
Today, the boy’s leg is not a crystal. It’s a real leg. He rolls up his trousers to reveal a brown stump. The line of stitching cuts through the stump like where two lips meet. It's the first time I've seen a stump. I ask if I can touch it and he nods. It’s not really what I expected. It’s so soft that I fear that it might tear open if I press harder. I move closer to him, squat, and hold the stub in the palm of my hands like an offering before letting it go. It wriggles around lightly just before settling into position.
"How does it feel?"
He playfully moves the residual limb from side to side, and quickly too. I smile. He says he has much better muscle control now.
"How does it feel when you walk on your two legs?"He responds.
"Just normal,"
It's just normal too... Well, the phantom pain is crazy, then later you just get used to it.—"
What’s that? The phantom pain?
He looks around, as if searching for something that explains it. It’s the pain that comes from the part of the body that has been cut out. For me, that would be the left leg.” He smiles again.
"How do you feel pain from something that doesn’t exist?" I ask.
He shrugs before saying he does not know.
***
Sunday mornings are sacred: the rattling of tambourines, the emptiness of the roads, speakers projecting the sounds of screaming and the chorusing of a thousand "Hallelujahs." I imagine many demons die on Sundays. On our street, Lasisi Apapa, there are about ten churches. Too many if you ask me. We can’t go to any of them because Granny believes they are all led by false prophets who use their churches as money-making machines. Instead, we attend the church of eternal celebration, where the pastor preaches sermons on what she describes as Christ-centered matters.
We will arrive at church late today, and it will be because she chooses to give me a pep talk now, instead of dressing up. She says the child in my belly deserves love, whether I was raped or not. I'm not sure if I'll be able to love it, but I promised her I'd try. She knows I'm lying, so she gives me an assignment to come up with names for the baby. I still have five months to go.
On the ride to church, even though I don’t want to think about it, it keeps hunting me. Naming the child Ayinke after great-grandma or Olanrewaju, after me would not be a bad idea. I try to stop thinking. This is not the plan.
Like I predicted, we arrive at church late. Pastor Femi is on the pulpit hurling insults at no one in particular. One of our church members has been missing for days now and this should not happen to children of God.
"This is why women should not live alone ehn. And I am not asking you to live with your female friends. Live with men who can protect you!" he adds. Then he gives a binding order that unmarried, female church members must not live alone. I see the boy, third row, first seat. He’s smiling, and I wonder if he too, sees the contradiction in Pastor Femi’s statement.
After service, I wait outside, not for any particular reason, but just like many people do to share greetings and the latest happenings from the past week. Who am I kidding? I'm hoping the boy will stop by me when he passes. Many times, I wonder if he knows what we do at night-if he dreams the same dreams as me, if all I know about him from my dreams is true. The entanglement of our hearts is wrapped in an unreal world. In real life, all we share are stares. He comes out of the ‘Jesus love’ entrance with his crutches reaching the floor before his leg. His limp is just as it is in my dreams. A girl is walking beside him with her arm tucked into his right by his crutches. I wonder if that is uncomfortable for him. When he passes by me, his eyes connect with mine sharply and he smiles. I should talk to him but I’m also scared that he may not know me. The chance that he knows me is better than the certainty that he does not.
In the evening, when I’m sitting on an akpoti cutting away orange rinds, Iya Sule is boiling Indomie noodles that I won’t eat. The noodles go in first, before the pepper and carrots are sliced in. She stirs and continues to add more pepper to my approval. Soon, it’s like pipes have burst in my nose. We’re getting there. This pungency of the aroma, the sweat from a heat filled kitchen, hot, hot. All of this is what I am craving. One final sniff of the mix leads to an unfamiliar tingling in my belly and, in one rapid, mighty blow that echoes throughout the house, I sneeze it all out, but beyond the sneeze, something has happened.
I lift my blouse and look intensely at my dark belly. Did you just kick? I gaze at my belly in hopes that it will prove me right. Nothing happens for a few seconds, then suddenly. I feel a gentle thud and a rapid belly movement. This is the first time I feel it move inside of me and I am sorry. I betray myself as I burst into laughter. Full thirty-two. Iya Sule sees this and smiles. I scream and run to Granny.
"She just kicked. She kicked! "
***
"How do you know she’s a girl?" the boy asks. We are in front of a large building today. The stairs look glorious, and the building looks like an ancient gift from the ancestors to the present generations. I want us to go inside and see what it holds, but the stairs may be too much for the boy.
"I don’t know, but I can feel it." There's silence, and we are in no rush to speak. We take our time, as if there is no tomorrow. I look at the boy as he takes the first step, his leg hitting the ground in an unusual rhythm. I follow.
"Tell me something real," I say.
"I don’t know my real mom," he says, and immediately he releases the words, we are wrapped in a heavy whirlwind where everything becomes red.
Red, red, red, nothing else.
***
The night is dark and sinister. Red is what I see when I wake up too. The baby goes to heaven, and it does not come with the relief I imagined would accompany it. It comes with strangers instead: Dark red blood clots that have stained my clothes and sheets; a bowl of sadness, two servings of pain and agony. It is the type of food you sit on the floor to eat from because it’s heavy and can't be rushed. The pain must pass through every part of your body.
It comes with red, bloodshot eyes and red, hot tears. It comes with an excruciating pain in my abdomen that sends me to my knees with a loud groan. It comes with phantom pain, an agony feeling from the part of my body that no longer exists.
The image is disconcerting, yet I can’t help but wonder if I willed this to happen. Granny’s Ankara is tied across her chest, her palms covering her mouth in shock. Iya Sule is squirming in a corner, both hands on her head.
I hate that a part of me thinks this, yet it is true. My baby is gone, and tomorrow, the sun will shine and the rusty Ibadan markets will open with jarring voices, aggressive haggling, the grime, and the routine. Somewhere else, a baby would be born, and there would be jubilation. The world will move along in its busyness.
I feel dizzy amid the fear and trepidation. All I want to do now is rest and wake up again.
Grandma’s soothing voice keeps saying "breathe in, breathe out" until I no longer hear it and feel like I am fading into oblivion.
***
The boy’s face is dull when we walk through the lush grassland. His leg is a crystal, and my belly is a flat, beautiful diamond, and it beams beautifully in the evening’s warmth. As we move side by side, he stretches his hand and I hold him. The wind is soft and we can hear the nothingness of the open space-the voice of silence, worlds away from chaos.
"Where do foetuses go when they die?" I ask.
He scratches his head and purses his lips before he speaks.
"Back where they came from, where nothing can hurt them again-Heaven."
I smile. My baby is in a place where there is no shame or judgment. I look around and there’s nothing much. We are just two people at the edge of the meadow, waiting for life to begin again.
Anjola Ogunsanwo is a Nigerian writer and social media strategist. She writes fiction that borders on underrepresented themes and her works have been featured on reputable platforms like: Y! Naija, Y! Africa, and Ekonke. In 2020, her first feature manuscript ‘Of Orchids and new songs’ was shortlisted for the 2020 Quramo Writers prize.
