The women exchange horrified glances at each other. After three days of shouting, pushing and praying, the result of their labor sleeps undisturbed on the mat close to the grieving mother. One of the women who took extra attention in rousing the mother awake whenever she tried to drift off to sleep runs outside.
‘Try to keep your eyes open. Your child is dead, but you must live so that you can give birth to stronger children’.
The mother opens her eyes and glares solemnly at the child.
‘She is so still and calm. She must be at peace where she is. Wherever she is’.
With her body half alive, her pain revisits her, touching her everywhere and crippling her. The women form a circle. They are scared that she might descend on anything and harm herself. After all, one easily becomes mad after losing a child. An ambush of tigress, protecting her from herself.
The mother sits up painfully, bites her own tongue till it bleeds. The women do not notice this. When she cringes her face from too much pain, they think she is swallowing her tears.
The mother licks her tears and mix it together with the spittle and blood in her mouth.
‘Collins, for three days, I have known pain because of you. I have cried and died many times in three moons because of you. I curse you today, double of my pain shall visit you. If it is one child you will have, two will cause you pain. Just as the frog cries at night and the fly visits every household during the day, unless my child comes back from the dead, you shall live restless until the day we meet’.
Then she spits, and drifts quickly into nothingness.