Nwanyi

TW; SUICIDE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Please read with music throughout

I was sixteen the first time they told me I would never have children.

“An accident,” my father told everyone.

He said it so easily. So calmly. As though the word could cover the truth like a cloth thrown over a corpse.

But my father and I knew what really happened.

I knew because I had seen what kind of man he was. I had seen what he did to people who spoke too much, to people who angered him, to people who stood in his way. I saw it once, when I was very young. After that, fear lived inside me like a second heartbeat.

So when they asked me what happened, I said nothing.

I let them believe him.

My mother refused to accept it.

“What do these doctors know?” she would say.

She carried me from hospital to hospital, from one white corridor to another, always hoping the next doctor would say something different.

When they did not, she turned to herbs.

Every morning she would stand over me with a cup of bitter black liquid.

“Drink,” she would say. “Before the devil swallows your children.”

I drank.

I drank until my stomach hurt and my tongue forgot what sweetness tasted like.

Then she carried me from pastor to pastor.

They laid hands on my head. They shouted. They poured oil on me until it ran down my face and into my eyes. They said I was cursed. They said there was a spirit sitting in my womb. They said God was testing us.

And every single time, my mother would ask the same question.

“Pastor, what is a girl who cannot bear children worth?”

I used to sit there, very still, pretending not to hear.

But the words entered me all the same.

What is a girl who cannot bear children worth?

Eventually, I found the answer.

Nothing.

Without my womb, I was nothing.

Not a daughter. Not a woman. Not a person.

Just a mistake taking up space in somebody else’s house.

So I prayed harder than anyone.

I fasted.

I drank every herb my mother brought home.

I let strange women tie charms around my waist. I let pastors press my head to the floor until my forehead bruised against the tiles.

I wanted to be fixed.

I wanted my mother to look at me the way she looked at other girls.

Then, when I was seventeen, she did something I will never forget.

Every Friday, after school, she would bring a man home.

Then another.

Then another.

At first she could not even look me in the eye.

She would stand by the door and say, quietly, almost impatiently, “Just do it. Perhaps one of them will open your womb.”

I still remember the first man’s hands. They smelled of cigarettes and engine oil.

I remember staring at the crack in the ceiling because it was easier than looking at his face.

After some time, they all became the same.

Different voices. Different bodies. Same hands.

Sometimes my vision would blur from the herbs she made me drink first.

Sometimes I would cry.

Sometimes I would beg.

It did not matter.

They did not stop when I vomited.

They did not stop when I fainted.

One of them laughed when I could barely keep my eyes open.

Another said I should be grateful.

When it was over, my mother would come into the room, avoid looking at me, and change the bedsheet.

“Do not cry,” she would say. “I am trying to help you.”

And because I was still her daughter, because some foolish part of me still wanted her love, I believed her.

At twenty-five, I finally became pregnant.

The day I told my mother, she burst into tears.

For the first time in years, she held my face in both hands.

For the first time in years, she smiled at me like she was proud.

Suddenly, I was precious.

She rubbed my feet when they swelled.

She combed my hair and oiled my scalp.

She cooked my favourite soup.

At night, she would sit beside me and place her hand on my stomach.

“My grandson,” she would whisper.

And I would close my eyes and let myself believe that this was what love felt like.

I told everyone my mother loved me.

I said it proudly.

As though I had not spent years begging for scraps of it.

For nine months, I carried that child like he was the only good thing God had ever given me.

I spoke to him when nobody was around.

I promised him things.

I promised I would never let anyone hurt him.

I promised that when he cried, I would hold him.

I promised he would never have to earn my love.

Then the day came.

I pushed.

And pushed.

And pushed.

I screamed until my throat tore.

I thought if I suffered enough, surely God would leave me this one thing.

Then suddenly the room went quiet.

Too quiet.

No cry.

No tiny angry sound.

No movement.

The nurse looked away.

Someone covered him too quickly.

I knew.

Before anybody spoke, I knew.

My son was dead.

They placed him in my arms anyway.

He was so small.

So beautiful.

He had my mouth.

I touched his cheek with one finger and waited for him to move.

He did not.

Then my mother walked into the room.

For one terrible second, I thought she would hold me.

I thought she would cry with me.

I thought she would say, “It is not your fault.”

Instead, she looked at me.

Not at him.

At me.

Like I had failed.

Like I had disappointed her one last time.

Then she shook her head slowly.

Just once.

And walked out.

No word.

No touch.

Nothing.

I think that was the moment something inside me finally broke.

Now I am standing at the window on the sixteenth floor of the hospital.

My blood is still running down my legs.

My body is aching.

My son is in my arms.

His name woul have been is Nwabugo , (a child is glory)

But now my glory has been snatched from me.

Outside, the world is moving as though nothing has happened. Cars are passing. People are laughing. Somewhere, somebody is buying bread. Somewhere, somebody is in love.

And here I am.

I look down and wonder if my mother will finally understand when she sees my body on the ground.

I wonder if she will ask herself what kind of love leaves bruises. What kind of love teaches a child she must suffer to deserve tenderness. What kind of love sends men into her daughter’s room and calls it help.

I wonder if she will remember every time she asked what a girl who could not bear children was worth.

As for my father, perhaps it is a mercy that he died before today.

Nobody questioned a twenty-year-old girl who said she found him dead in his room.

Nobody questioned why the pillow was still on the floor.

Nobody questioned why, for the first time in my life, I slept peacefully that night.

So when Nneoma jumped, nobody noticed at first.

The woman at the nurses’ station was laughing at something on her phone. A doctor was arguing with a porter in the hallway. Outside, the sky was heavy with rain.

Then there was a sound.

Not loud.

Just enough to make people turn.

By the time they reached the window, it was already over.

Down below, sixteen floors away, Nneoma lay still with her son in her arms.

Even in death, she had not let him go.

Later, people would whisper about her.

They would call her weak. They would call her mad. They would shake their heads and ask why she did not think of her poor mother.

Nobody would ask what had happened to the little girl she used to be.

Nobody would ask who taught her that she had to bleed, and break, and suffer before she deserved to be loved.

And somewhere, in the room she had left behind, the bed where she gave birth was still warm.