THE TRIALS OF NDIDI ( In memory of a cousin)

 

The day Ndidi died, she lost the battle  but not the war for her sisters continued to fight.

The taste of anxiety on my tongue dissolved into a salty flavor of blood. I bit my tongue again. It's the second time in two minutes. I am drowning in my anxiety. A lonely tear drop moisten my lashes, I dared it to complete its course. It dried up as quickly as it formed, like an abandoned well in the desert.

Njakiri's face loomed before me, his big brown eyes stared at me like one who has seen death. My throat welled up with a lump. The weight the size of Njakiri's Adam's apple that bounces when he talks. My right hand clutched my purse tight, a reflex action. My whole world revolved around my worldly possessions. Don't judge me, that is all I have in this life.

Debilitating anxiety courses through my veins, seeping out of every pore on my skin, The saliva lump held me in a chokehold threatening to strangle me as my nightmares multiplied. I knew that look. I have seen it many times. Exactly twelve times. Njakiri shook his head and muttered under his breath to his Gods. Chanting words that do not give me hope. I have stopped listening to the lyrics of his trance each time the spirits of his Gods inhabit him.

Then he called my name, in a guttural voice that thundered like Kaieteur waterfalls. The lone tear drop multiplied and became a dozen and two rivers. I cried like the day I was born, wailing, willing it to be born. The reason I have wandered into the abodes of all the Gods known to mankind. But it refused to make me all of a woman.

The nights of my life have stayed longer than the days. For me life has been an endless prelude of many winter solstices since the unfortunate day I wedded the man, my mother said should be my husband.

I was my mother's only child. Her only claim to all of a woman. As the culture decreed. But she still fell short. She never bore a son. So that day I walked out of Njakiri's shrine devastated by the news from his Gods.

Njakari had not seen a child in my future neither a son, or daughter