"Eku Oro eyan oo¹. May we never hear of tragedies of this kind anymore, may the almighty Allah give you both a hundred to cover this one loss." Amina scoffed at that prayer, nearly laughing out loud. Imagine birthing a hundred as replacement for her AbdulKareem, she didn't want anyone else, she only wanted her AbdulKareem. 

She wanted him to laugh at her again, she wanted him to smile and gurgle at her with his four teeth. She wanted him to shoot his diapered buttocks out while trying to somersault on unsteady legs. She more than anything else wanted him to be flush against her, rest upon her, trustingly sharing his baby warmth with her. All of that was gone, and gone forever all because of the negligence of someone. 

"Ese ma². Amin ma." She said instead as response to the prayer and laid her head back on the head of the sofa in their living room. His little body had been washed and a little shroud had been hastily bought from the same market she'd returned from earlier and the beef and offals she'd bought had started to leak red water from the shopping bag it was in. Someone must have kicked it in the corner. 

"Baba omo da? Where's the child's father?" Someone asked and they called for her husband and he appeared, wan and vacant eyes that made her want to pity him. She couldn't pity him though, he slept soundly while her son ate a piece of fish that contained rat poison. She couldn't ever forgive him for that. 

She watched as they conferred with one another in the living room before they said a small prayer that made him wipe his face with his hands. She  watched when they said it was time.

Amina got up, so suddenly that the women by her side had no time to react, when they reacted, she'd reached the body of her son, carried carefully by his father. She laid a kiss on his forehead and said a dua to send him along, she prayed for him, she most of all thanked Allah for him. It took her a few seconds to do so but the women who had flanked her earlier reached her and pulled her away from AbdulKareem's cold as fish body. 

She willingly allowed herself to be pulled away and walked back to the chair, allowing her son to be taken away. She watched them from the window as they took him past where her sight could reach and she sighed. 

"Please stop sighing like this. It makes me fear. Sighing like this can cause you to have high blood pressure. Please don't think so much, please." The woman beside her said and  Amina nodded slowly, knowing she would soon be told to tuck her grief in. She would soon be told to start holding in her grief and accept the curve ball life had thrown at her so suddenly. 

She prayed for AbdulKareem, she shut her eyes and prayed for him from the deepest part of her heart, it hurt her that she had to say about him in past tense, it made her ache in a part of her that she didn't even know existed. She wanted to go back to the time she took the money from his father, she wished she didn't take the money from him, or had settled AbdulKareem on her back. The pain of lugging him around would not have been as much as this. 

The blame game started less than twenty minutes after AbdulKareem died. One minute she was trying to wrap her head around the loss of her son, the next minute her sister-in-law who lived in a flat next to them was asking why she left the baby with his father, asking if she didn't know fathers knew nothing about babysitting. 

"Children of nowadays." She'd lamented, as though she herself was not only three years older than Amina. Amina let her eyes shut of it's own accord, feeling tears sneak their way out of her shut lids. The pain was nearly unbearable. 

"Assalamualaikum ana mi. My in-law" Amina frowned, then she heard the low tones of her mother's voice ask her mother-in-law something and her sobs got even louder. Her own mother was here and she had no AbdulKareem to show.

"Welcome. That's how we saw it oo!" She heard her mother-in-law say in response to whatever her mother had asked in a tone that felt like she was blaming something or someone. Amina exhaled, feeling her nose become blocked. 

She sat there until she smelt her mother come into the house, a beautiful dark skinned, plump woman that Amina had been told she took her elegance and maturity from. She raised her head and felt hot tears run down her eyes, her mother walked over and pulled Amina into her arms. 

"Onikede mi. Omo iyi, omo ola³, this one will pass. This too shall pass." Her mother's voice broke at the last word and they both cried for their collective loss. A child they'd barely known, who had not even said a word to them yet, whom they'd just watched grow his first premolars. 

Amina's mother pulled her to another sofa that had been vacated by sympathisers. She pulled her last child in her arms and asked in a conspriatory whisper, "What happened?" Amina shook her head and recounted everything that had occured, from the time she had returned home from school. Her mother's beautiful face creased with a frown. She patted Amina as older people are wont to do once they saw things looked different than they sounded. 

"Maami, I want to go home with you. I don't want to stay here for a while." Her mother found herself nodding when she would have asked her to stay back. Her only response was to whisper "Your father has left Abuja. Your brother too, they'll reach here before night. We'll tell them to broach the matter with your in-laws." Amina nodded her head and buried her head into her mother's chest, feeling some comfort from the scent of her mother's citrusy scent that she'd carried for several years. 

*********

***

Amina got up and began to fold AbdulKareem's clothes that were left from the ones that had been packed a few days before. Her in-laws had refused vehemently for her to go with her parents to Ibadan, their excuse; there was no need. 

Amina reveled in the way she had let go of everything that concerned her duties, focusing on mourning her son. She had lost so much weight in just about five days, even her mother who had called her via a video call had asked why she was becoming gaunt, shedding weight that rapidly was worrisome. Nothing interested her, not even food that she loved so much.

She put her head on the changing table that was in the hallway. Since she didn't turn any room into a nursery, the hallway was filled with things that she used to dress him each morning and evening. 

She waited until the bout of tears that threatened to break her apart passed before she continued to fold little onesies that her brother had gifted her for him. She patted the pile lovingly, they'd warmed AbdulKareem, they would warm another. 

She heard footsteps and turned to see who they belonged to but it turned out to be her husband. She exhaled sadly and took the pile of clothes she had folded to a small duffle bag she had set out to pack them in. 

They had not always been like this. They used to be joined at the hip until they were not anymore. They were close, told each other every thing, found mutual respect for themselves, loved each other to some extent until one day they just stopped and nothing worked out. 

They used to go to places together, they planned dates, they went to celebrate the love and life of others together, they took pride in the love they shared, until one day it all just stopped and they became what were now. This one word greeting couple that had absolutely nothing in common. 

"Is there food?" She heard him ask and jerked out of the reverie she was in to answer him in the affirmative. His mother had sent lunch just after two pm. She straightened from where she was bent arranging clothes into the duffle bag to set him some food. 

She salivated when she opened the warmer that contained hot egusi soup, taking a wrap of semo to place in one plate before spooning the soup into a soup bowl. She sent both plates unto a tray and carried it to the small dining table, walked back to get some water from the dispenser in the corner before going to inform her husband. 

When she reached the hallway, she found him pacing, with his phone to his ear. He was pulling on his beard in agitated silence and Amina almost opened her mouth to ask what the problem was until she heard the words that shattered her very existence. 

"You didn't tell me! You said all I had to do was kill him! I killed my own child and I can't have the money I killed him for?" Amina's mouth dropped open and she clasped her hands over it to stop the instinctive scream that was about to spill out.

Glossary:

¹ Eku Oro eyan;  to be fair, I have no idea how to translate this. I just know that it's a greeting for someone who just lost a family or friend. It's usually a way of saying, 'Sorry about the death of your person' but in a way that is not so harsh.

² Ese ma; Thank you Ma.

³Onikede mi. Omo iyi, omo ola ; My Onikede, a child from the house of deep respect, a child from the house of wealth.

******

Well. What a bloody twist.

That's it oo. We're here now. To know what Amina will do next, you need to leave a comment, vote and share. I'll be writing as well, just do your part, and I'll play mine too.

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TheOmoope 💙💙💙