Songs for this chapter are:

Superposition - Daniel Caesar

Plastic 100c - Sampha

—••—
Poison. Poison.

Folakemi was having the hardest time dissecting that word—in such a manner that it would at least be applicable. That word didn't seem to apply in any reasonable way. What poison ruptured Sindara's blood vessels? From where did it come? How could poison find its way into Sindara's body when Folakemi had left Sindara in safe hands? Could David ever poison his precious sister? It wasn't making any sense.

Her head was throbbing. Her mind was fuzzy with several disorganized thoughts like a haystack carelessly stuffed into a shopping bag. She was trying to hold on to something to think about, but the more she tried, the more it seemed like there was nothing to be thought about. Because nothing was understandable, she'd seemed to fail woefully at trying to comprehend anything.

So she stood still in the hospital's reception, gazing at the lean doctor till her eyes started to hurt. She was desperate to know what was going on. But it didn't seem like the doctor was willing to quench the burning curiosity she had. Hence, he walked back into the office, shutting the door he'd open minutes ago— as though time had been put on rewind. As though he hadn't just stepped out to say something utterly confusing and disconcerting.

Still, with that puzzled countenance, Folakemi turned to David, hoping that her dear son would help interpret what the doctor had just said.

"David... The doctor just said something about Sindara consuming poison. And it doesn't make much sense to me. Can you tell me what you think the doctor is trying to say? How did it happen? Or rather, what exactly happened to Sindara that led to poisoning? Was it from the porridge or the beans I left over? Did she react terribly to the food?"

Folakemi asked David gently. Everyone, including Alexander (who'd earlier acted as though he knew better), wanted to know what had happened. Everyone had been caught in the moment, hoping that Sindara would at least live but now that she didn't, they were even more curious to know the reason— The reason only David could give.

As David sobbed dejectedly, his head bent low, he raised his head to look into his mother's forlorn eyes— or at least what used to be her eyes. It was popularly said that eyes were a window to the soul, but this window— the window in Folakemi's eyes had been broken. He couldn't see what was underneath— just pure blandness and utter disbelief. Soulfulness was void.

"Sindara refused to eat neither the porridge nor the beans. She said she wanted to eat jollof rice. I tried to force her to eat the porridge. After I warmed the porridge, I broke the yam into pieces with a spoon so it would be easier to eat since that was her reason for refusing to eat the porridge. Still, she didn't eat it.

There was no money at home. I was afraid of buying jollof rice on credit from the food seller down the street. I didn't know if you would be okay with it. I tried calling you and Dad on the landline, but no one picked. So I thought of asking every neighbor in the street for jollof rice. Sindara was already so weak and feverish from hunger, so I had to act fast. Nobody in the neighborhood had jollof rice to give. So one last option came to my mind. I... I-I went to the house of the woman that you told me never to approach yesterday."

Silence hovered in the hospital's reception after David's words had quenched the curiosity of everyone. The nurses at the counter who didn't seem to exist were now sitting behind the oak desk, staring morosely in disbelief. It was a sad narration— something you had a time believing, something that was hard to process. How can that selfless, genuine act be the cause of someone's death? The prevailing thought on the mind of everyone present in that space.

And so, Folakemi voiced out that thought when a soft monosyllabic question proceeded from her lips as hot tears slid down her eyes:

"What?"

Yemisi and Alexander gasped curtly— as though they knew the woman in question that David had talked about.

Folakemi's mind became even more disconcerted. She was looking at David with an intensity that had no aim. There was nothing she had to say to him. Yet, she stared as though she had so much to say. Her tongue became void of saliva. She was a standing jumble of indecipherable thoughts.

But in that moment of confusion and being unable to figure out what exact direction of her thoughts, there was subtle, still, silence that she discovered amid the ebbing waves of her emotions. It was a silence that contained guilt. The silence had snatched all of her words, making it impossible for her to say anything to David—and she quickly realized it.

David had just indirectly killed his sister, her precious daughter. David had intentionally approached the woman that Folakemi warned him never to meet. David had witnessed the slap that Folakemi had given that pale-looking woman. David had seen her cry in the market. David knew everything. She was supposed to have that impulse that any mother would have on receiving news of the death of their offspring.

And yet... And yet, Folakemi didn't feel justified to do anything out of impulse. Even the most impulsive thing, which was to yell angrily at David for disobeying her, she couldn't do it. Instead, Folakemi felt like shrinking. Instead, she felt responsible for the death of her child.

Death.

She didn't believe that she would have to speak about her daughter in the past tense. Folakemi reminisced on what she could have prevented if she had immediately answered David's call. Folakemi wished she hadn't been too busy sweeping floors for chicken change. If Folakemi had responded to that call, she would have permitted David to buy jollof from the foodseller down the street.

Folakemi wished she had called back on time. She wished she hadn't been so calm when she had seen that missed call on the small screen of her Nokia handset. She wished she had just called back to hear what David had to say. Folakemi could have told David what to do. It wouldn't take her up to five minutes to think of a solution— A few minutes of providing another solution that would have saved Sindara's life.

Yet, she left her phone on the table and went to buy a sachet of pure water because she had been so thirsty. She thought that David had called to ask a foolish question— a question that he probably had the answers to. When I go back home, I'll ask him why he called. I'm sure it wasn't so important. I'm sure it's something he could have figured out on his own. She'd thought.

And yes, he did figure it out— at the expense of a precious life. Folakemi felt like shrinking into oblivion for not being able to spare a few seconds. She didn't feel worthy of being a mother. This poor child in her womb, how could she stop the baby from coming into this world? That fetus didn't deserve an unattentive mother.

Why had Folakemi failed to think like a mother? She'd left Sindara in David's care, knowing how picky of a person Sindara could indeed be. If only she hadn't put David in such a terrible situation. If only she hadn't made horrible decisions that made her children suffer.

She couldn't blame David for any reason. He had done what he really could have done. Folakemi and Kelvin owed it to their children as parents to provide great and delicious meals, but they couldn't do that, and now they had to pay dearly for it. This little, sweet girl was gone forever. And it was all because of her.

The doctor reappeared, gesturing towards a direction by the left side of the hospital's wards. "If you would please come in to have a look at late Miss. Sindara before we take her body out of the ward." He said, now looking dejected.

Late. Who was the doctor to tell Folakemi that her daughter was late? Late? Sindara was an early bird by nature—vibrant and always full of activities, no matter how minor. Folakemi wanted to see her "late" daughter for herself. She wished to see that girl alive.

Although it had just sunk deep within her a few seconds ago that her daughter was gone, there was something about the way the doctor had called her to come and see her "late" daughter that made her wish the doctor was wrong. So Folakemi and her children rushed into the ward where the doctor led them.

The room was void of humidity. It held cream-colored monotonous walls with a single bed in the center. Then they saw a body on the bed— a body completely covered in a blue bedspread from head to toe. The body was stiff. The body wasn't up and doing. It wasn't vibrant. It didn't seem like the Sindara that Folakemi knew.

First and foremost, Sindara hated being covered with a blanket from head to toe. She usually preferred the blanket stopping somewhere at her mid-riff. Folakemi knew this about her daughter very well because Sindara shared the same room with her.

Often, Folakemi would get worried about Sindara catching a cold on windy nights and would proceed to cover a sleeping Sindara up to her shoulders with a blanket. Minutes later, Sindara would always pull the blanket down to the navel region of her body.

"Why are you always pulling the blanket away from your shoulders?" Folakemi would ask whenever it happened.

"I want to be able to chase ojuju away whenever they come. If they come and they find me wrapped like a baby, they will attack me, " Sindara would often reply without bothering to open her eyes. It was always a soft muttering— as though she'd rehearsed that exact answer.

Folakemi always found it so funny. Her smart little Sindara believed that ojujus existed, and there was nothing she could do to change that. Thankfully, Sindara never got a cold, despite Folakemi worrying that her body might be exposed to the freezing air.

So right now, as she stared, it became less believable that that was her daughter lying lifelessly on that bed. So she moved closer, crouched next to the bed, and rolled the blue cover away from the body—well enough to reveal the face of the corpse, and there it was—the pale, unmoving, blood-stained face of Sindara.

Her eyes were open and directed upwards, her irises buried under the folds of her eyelids, revealing only the white part of her eyes. A dried line of blood that dripped from her nostrils smeared the left part of her face. Her hair was neatly packed—into two whole buns— precisely the way Folakemi had always loved to dress it.

Folakemi was studying everything, gazing intently. She rolled the cover lower. Sindara's limp arms were now revealed. Those shiny,  dark-skinned, and slightly plump arms. Folakemi had always imagined those hands to be solid chocolate bars— rejuvenating and lovely to see. Folakemi held one arm and clasped her arm in it, rubbing it on the surface gently.

"Maybe she's in a coma. She still looks so beautiful on this bed. Her hair is exactly the way I'd packed it this morning. Although her face is pale and has bloodstains, her body is still glowing. Dead bodies never look this neat. I'm sure Sindara will wake up and push the blanket away. I'm sure she will murmur about not wanting the blanket over her shoulders. I know she will, right?"

Tears streamed down her eyes as she turned to the doctor. The doctor took off his glasses for a moment and cleaned them. Folakemi suspected that he'd tried to wipe tears before anyone could see them. He stood straight, trying hard to maintain that relaxed posture that doctors always had despite the kind of medical storm that was raging.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am. She's not in a coma. She's dead. If she were in a coma, she would have at least been breathing. We would have fixed machines in here to aid her living. But there's no pulse in her body. I detest to be a bearer of bad news, but she's gone, ma'am."

Folakemi removed her hand from Sindara's limp arm and slumped slowly to the ground. Yemisi fell on her knees, too, in a bid to support her pregnant mother. Yemisi pulled Folakemi into a hug, squeezing her trembling mother tightly, and that gesture did it for Folakemi.

Folakemi broke down fully, weeping, clinging onto Yemisi as though she were her last lifeline. "M-my Sindara. My sindara is gone. W-what am I going to do now? My Sindara won't wake up from that bed to complain about the blanket. Oh, God..." The folds of Yemisi's dress muffled Folakemi's wailing. But still, the tears rang loudly, piercing through the monotonous room and striking the hearts of everyone present like a dagger.

What am I going to do now?

The question repeated itself in Folakemi's mind minutes into her sobbing. There was nothing to be done, but there were things to be said, curses to be rained, and questions to be asked— to a particular someone— To the witch who'd killed her precious daughter.

It was an impulse, and the urge felt justifiable. Folakemi still felt guilty, but there was no way on earth that she'd wished for her daughter to die. She could have been indeed unattentive, but she'd worked hard for her children so that they could eat. But this God-forsaken witch named Mrs. Shemai'ah had wished for her child to die. So she deserved some heat.

Folakemi stood up so abruptly that Yemisi's back had nearly collided with the wall. Everyone looked puzzled as they watched Folakemi wipe off her tears and adjusted her dress to fit appropriately. They wondered what was going to happen next. But the last thing they had expected was for Folakemi to sprint out of the room with an unreal force.

So before they could stop her, she'd already ran out of the hospital. The sun had set into the western sky, sinking beneath an array of reddish-orange cumulonimbus clouds. She didn't know how fast she'd sprinted, but everything went past in a blur, and in what felt like seconds, she had arrived at the blue bungalow. While she ran, it felt like it was just her— no fetus in her womb because she felt unstoppable to run at that kind of speed even with her condition.

Or perhaps, the hospital wasn't too far from her neighborhood which was why she'd been able to get to her destination very quickly. Sparks emanated from her eyes as she gazed at the blue bungalow northwards. All she saw at that moment was red. So as Folakemi crossed to the other side of the road, she got to the entrance and knocked feebly. The effect of that running had begun to backfire on her because now Folakemi's lungs were leaning on her throat for oxygen intake. Hence she'd lost a significant amount of energy.

Despite how faint her knocking was, Mrs. Shemai'ah heard it, and so she opened the door with that usual smile on her face— a fake hospitable smile. Until she saw that it was Folakemi at the door and her face dropped, her cheeks sagging. At that moment, Mrs. Shemai'ah looked a bit above the middle-aged woman that she was.

Another woman and a small girl appeared from behind Mrs. Shemai'ah, both looking startled to see a panting, shabby-looking pregnant woman in front of their doorstep. The woman and the little girl were both white people. The woman looked young, definitely in her mid-thirties, with curly brown hair and an angular face. The little girl looked very much like the young woman— only that she had a kid's face—chubby and cheeky with long eyelashes.

Folakemi studied the three females carefully. They had to be the daughter and granddaughter of Mrs. Shemai'ah, the witch.

"What brings you here, Mrs. Williams?" Mrs. Shemai'ah asked, not hiding the displeasure in her countenance.

In fact, with the way she looked, it was evident that she would have loved to return the slap that Folakemi gave her the previous day but was perhaps restraining herself for the sake of Folakemi's unborn child.

"I can see you have a very happy family. The joys of motherhood—having your daughter and granddaughter come to live with you. I'm sure they mean the world to you, " Folakemi said with a sardonic smirk on her face.

Mrs. Shemai'ah's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, wondering why Folakemi was speaking in parables.

"You know, I thought you had a heart— at least towards an innocent child since you have a child of your own and know how much an offspring means to its mother. I didn't think you would get back at me by punishing my family. You could have just slapped me back yesterday if you were that angry, you know? You could have even said to my face that 'YES! I duped you of your money and sold the golden necklace at a higher price and pocketed some of the money!' After all, I'm poor and powerless. What else would I have done but cry? But give my child poisoned food to eat and kill her? Why? Why are you so wicked?"

The young woman standing behind Mrs. Shemai'ah gasped, her eyes bearing a flag of horror on hearing the last sentence. The little girl's mouth fell open in surprise.

"W-what? What are you saying, Mrs. Williams? I didn't put poison in that jollof rice. How could I have done that to a starving little girl? Your son approached me, sweating profusely and panting. He even lied that he wasn't your son. He was afraid I wouldn't give him food if he revealed his identity.

Still, I gave him. I got that jollof rice from a party I attended two days ago. I'd already decided to eat it this morning when he came. I saw how urgent the situation was and gave up the jollof so his little sister could eat. I would rather not give him food on knowing he is your son than give him poisoned food."

"This was how you lied about the necklace yesterday. But you know what, I'm not even here today to hear your side of the story. Because there's only one truth—and it's the fact that YOU KILLED MY SINDARA!" tears streamed down Folakemi's eyes like a hailstorm.

"She's in the hospital right now, dead and unmoving. Her face has bloodstains, and it's because of you! You are so heartless. You swindled me and lied smoothly about it—after all, there's nothing a poor woman like me can do. As though that wasn't enough, you did this to me!

I may not have the money or the power it requires to get my revenge, but I have my mouth, and I'm going to use it to curse you and your generations!"

"M-Mrs. Williams, P-please try to understand what I'm saying. I swear I didn't kill your daughter, " Mrs. Shemai'ah pleaded, and as she did, she fell on her knees and started to weep profusely. It was surprising that an expression as passionate as tears could emanate from a stiff-looking woman.

Folakemi took one last glance at the young woman, and the little girl as more tears streamed down. She wished they weren't here. It would have been much easier to curse Mrs. Shemai'ah in the way she'd desired. Hence, as she opened her lips to utter her catastrophic decree, she exempted the two females.

"Every child that comes forth from your bloodline after this little girl will die—a slow, painful death— a death that will drain you of everything you have. Sicknesses and diseases that are unknown to the common person will befall your generations to come. Those sicknesses will devour them till they perish. So shall it be!"

——••——

Glossary

• Ojuju - This is a popular Yoruba term that means 'masquerades' with outrageous costumes and excessive powdery substances on their faces. This word is usually used to scare children in Yoruba folklore. Even though these 'ojujus' don't exist— or at least, they don't exist in the way the Yoruba tradition has portrayed.

• Chicken Change - This is a popular Nigerian slang used to term a minimal amount of money.