Unchained

Kukua tied the scarf tight around her head and knelt down next to the bed. Shame washed over her as she tried to find the right words to say in the prayer. It was a whole new ritual but one she welcomed. The shame threatened to consume her as she stammered through 'The Lord's Prayer'. She had nothing more to say. She wished she knew how to pray. Feeling sorry and worthless, she stretched herself up from her knees and sat on the edge of the bed silently, not wanting to wake her husband who had been far gone, snoring away. She turned to look at his harmless-looking frame, watched his chest heave up then down and smiled. It was a wonder he still loved her, after all that had happened. Her hand went up to rub her sore eyes. It was heavy with sleep yet it was the eve of her birthday and so she waited.

Obiom had come as a miracle. His marriage proposal, a shock. He knew she was not fully human, as some of the elders back in the village put it. She did not come through the most high God. According to them, she was an abomination - a water child. Kukua's mother had been desperate to prove her fertility. She had suffered in the hands of her husband's younger wives who bore him sons. She had wanted a child badly, she couldn't wait on Odomankoma anymore. That night she had laid there on the riverbank, stark naked, weeping and pleading for the spirit to deliver her from her distress. Her prayer that night had found its way into the ears of the water-god. She fell in a trance, a very strange one. A half-man had appeared to her, his torso shone like polished gold and his lower half, was a glittering pearl-studded tail. He was magnificent. He gave her the fish that ended up in her soup bowl the next morning. A month later, she found out she was pregnant.
Kukua had slipped out of her mother's womb around the same hour her mother had the encounter with the merman. She was born that night, along with a plague - a deep misfortune that formed her very flesh. That night, her mother breathed her last.

She had been made to keep her hair in dreadlocks. The whole village knew she was not like them. Her complexion; almost white, had left the birth attendants dumb-stricken. No wonder she killed her mother, they had whispered among themselves. Grief for the death of his favorite wife had caused Kukua's father to turn bitter too. None of his younger wives was willing to raise the water-child. Her mother's mother, angered by their cowardly actions, had taken her up, moved to the outskirts and raised her. She still held memories of days when the old lady will shine her locks with Shea butter till they glowed, a shocking ebony black, against her pale skin.

As she grew into womanhood, girls her age in the village hated her. She is too beautiful to be real, they gossiped. In school, she was called Mami water behind her back. The boys gawked at her frame and beauty. It mesmerized them yet they were all scared. No one wanted to die. They knew she was misfortune, and no one wanted that.

The village almost demonstrated against her being included in the puberty rites but the queen-mother had insisted every young woman who qualified was to be a part of the ritual. The other girls had stayed far away from her throughout their confinement days. Their hatred for her was mingled with fear and a touch of their own insecurities. Her grandmother had been her pillar through it all.

The day of their final dance to usher them into full womanhood was the day Obiom had visited the village and the day a section of hell broke loose. Of all the young women, why choose her? Murmurs had rippled through the crowd that had converged to witness the occasion. In their eyes, Obiom was a fool. The young women raised concerns, that her family be disallowed from handing Kukua over to Obiom. The truth had to told to the man and his family first. In the end, the whole village sat as witness to what was to be a revelation of the truth and hence a dissolution of the whole idea of marriage. They were wrong. Obiom knew what he wanted, and made that clear to the entire gathering, that their myths were not going to dissuade him. His mother had hurled her huge self on the dirt floor and wept, and his dad, upon realising Obiom had made up his mind, washed his hands off the whole matter and as insult to an injured Obiom, disowned him.

The actual marriage ceremony was a sorry sight. Kukua's grandmother stood in as her family and Obiom came with a like-minded uncle of his. On her wedding night, as her husband, for the first time, saw how her dark coral waist-beads glistened against her fair skin, her grandmother rolled over to her left side, and crossed on to the other world. She was found the next morning, stone cold, with a satisfied look on her face; a slight smile that indicated she had moved on peacefully.

So she sat there, at the edge of the bed she had shared with the God-sent man for ten years. She just sat there and waited for the very hour. That very hour she was born, some 3 decades ago. She waited. Every single year, after she got married and her grandmother passed, on her birthday, at that hour, she fell in a trance that sent her back to that same river. She would sit rocking a baby in her arms and the half-man will appear, take the helpless infant, and cuddling him rather gently, will walk back into the river with it. It happened every year. Every year up till that very one when she had succumbed to Obiom's constant plea to get rid of her locks and go to church with him.

He had found God that year and he wanted to share his joy with her. She had agreed and had followed him. Yet she missed her locks, she felt it had been a part of her. Then he got her to get rid of the beads too.  That had happened three days ago. Still she waited for the spirits to take over her body and claim their annual payment for her life. She didn't notice the hour slip by, and she almost didn't see sleep take her. The messenger clad in white, with a sad and knowing smile on his face, looked down at her, and then her husband, sighed and placed the sleeping baby securely between man and wife.

Kukua woke up to an unusual sensation in her stomach and soon, she was hunched over the toilet bowl, heaving out the contents of her stomach.
"This is like your fifth morning in this condition Kukua"
She stared up at him, wanting to believe yet too scared to accept it just yet. It had been ten years of childlessness. But the signs were obvious and so she smiled. He smiled. And then they both burst into laughter that brought tears to their eyes. Finally, they were going to have a baby, directly from Odomankoma.

The thought hit Kukua and her tears turned bitter. She felt the emptiness overcome her. Her womb had been occupied for the very first time. She felt alien, knowing she couldn't be that vessel. She couldn't carry Odomankoma's gift. She was not going to allow it, her very soul knew that. The tears flowed freely as Obiom's thanksgiving prayer resonated from their bedroom. She had to find a way to let him know how she lost the baby. But first, she needed to have the abortion.