Tochukwu had promised you there would be no complications, that it would be fine. She had done it twice and was still ok. It was what all these college girls did everynow and then. There was nothing to be afraid of, she had said. Or would you rather leave it and disappoint your mother? So you agreed and went for the abortion.

It wasn't a decent one where you went to a clinic inside the town, to see a doctor and he gave you some talks, then drugged you and finally did the D&C.
No.
This was a local one where you went to the outskirts of town to an aged woman's house and she gave you some herbs in a cup, whose color was as black as black can be. And the taste was clammy, not bitter not sweet. She told you to lie down on a bamboo bed made with wrapper and mat. You wondered how many girls had lay on that bed and if they had all had this fear you had of dying or God deciding to punish you by making you loose your womb. But Tochukwu took your bag from you and encouraged you to go and lie down that it would be quick.
So you went carefully to the bed. You are sure when you sit on the bed that you would die and save your conscience the trouble of shame and guilt. So you lie down and watch the woman as she bends over the fire turning somethings in a pot and then putting some more things in.
You don't know when you dooze off, but you wake up coughing as you smell something strong. You open your eyes to see the woman holding a bowl of hot liquid to your nostrils. When she sees your eyes open she removes it and asks you to get up.
Tochukwu comes over to help you and then kneels down to thank the woman as she gives her her fee. The woman acknowledges it and you both leave.
That morning when you had fallen down and began to bleed five days after the abortion, you hadn't expected it. You were in the kitchen washing the dishes after the evening meal. Your mother was at the dinning area preparing her sermon for tomorrow's service.
CLANGGGG!!!! was the sound the plate made as it struck the ground and shattered into many pieces.
THUDDDD!!!! was the sound your body made when you hit the ground gasping for breathe as pain raced through your lower belly to your thighs. You heard your mother shout, and then you passed out.
You awoke to find yourself in the hospital, lying on a bed ,and a thin tube wire injected into your arm through which the liquid from a drip hanging above you head was placed. You heard shuffling feet and made to turn but felt a sharp pain at your neck.
"The doctor says not to move your body yet" you hear your mother's voice, and you remember in a flash what had happened. You close your eyes in shame because you suspect what is happening and you know by now your mother does too.
You were discharged a week later, and you went home with your mother. It seemed like God had decided to punish you afterall but not in the way you expected. You mother had stopped preaching, and when you asked her why (because you hoped that she would talk then, that all those silent stares she gave you were not imagined and that she actually knew what happened) she says she needed to stay with you at the hospital when you were sick and couldn't meet up with taking sermons at the same time.
'When you were sick' became the name she gave your condition. She decided not to acknowledge it for what it was. So you didn't ask again and you didn't talk about it too.
But you knew, she knew. And she knew you knew she knew. But the matter was buried and she gave you those silent thankful smiles that you understood she didn't want to talk about it.
So everynight when you slept and woke up sweating around twelve thirty because of the screams in your dreams you don't go to her room to sleep. You don't tell her about the dreams because that would mean you would talk about 'when you were sick', and so you kept mute and you suffered in silence. You stayed as late as was normal and avoided your bed as much as you could.
When you went to church (because your mum insisted on it), you sat far away from the speakers, you tried to shut out those words from the cleric. You stilled your beating heart and your pricking conscience. You wished for death but then you also wished for life too. You were confused, you had begun a journey of silence and you could not say anything.


This work is not purely a work of fiction,( though the characters may seem so) it is a work of life. It does not mean to condemn but rather to explain. Thank you for reading.

Alero Ajems Arubi
Copyright 2015

www.rainafather.