Nata, the firstborn of Borogie, had never been a stranger to tragedy. Misfortune had walked beside her since she bled into womanhood. She had lost her first child in stillbirth, a tiny life that had slipped away before it could taste breath. The memory clung to her like a shadow.
That day had begun with a dream. She saw herself in a wide, endless river, struggling to keep afloat. A child’s voice called to her from the other side, soft yet urgent, “Mama, mama, come.” She reached out, stretching her arms through the current, but the water grew heavier, colder. Just as she thought she could grasp the small hand reaching toward her, the child slipped beneath the surface. Nata jolted awake, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding as if she had truly drowned. It was a dream, yet it left her body trembling, her skin cold, as though it had carried an omen.
Then the pains began.
The labor stretched for hours, each contraction tearing through her like a blade. She clawed at the mats, bit her lip until it bled, screamed until her throat burned raw. The women pressed warm cloths to her back, urged her to breathe, to push, to endure. The midwife’s chants mingled with the rattling of calabashes and the murmur of Qur’anic verses. Outside, children hushed their play, listening to the sounds of agony spilling from the room.
Time became a blur of fire and darkness. Sometimes she thought she would faint, other times she prayed to faint, just to escape the relentless grip of pain. Sweat soaked her wrapper; her hair clung to her face. Borogie knelt by her side, whispering encouragement, her hands trembling even as she stroked her daughter’s damp brow.
Finally, with one last desperate push, the silence came. A silence so heavy it drowned out the voices, the prayers, the rustle of bodies around her.
The old midwife lifted the child, her face already lined with sorrow. She shook her head slowly. No cry pierced the air. No tiny fists flailed. The baby’s skin was cold, its lips already darkened.
Nata turned her head weakly, searching for a sound, for a sign.
“Why is it so quiet?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
No one answered. The women only exchanged glances heavy with pity, their prayers faltering into silence.
Her mother wept openly, trying to hold Nata together with words that broke apart even as she spoke. But Nata felt nothing — only a vast emptiness, as though something had been ripped from her very soul.
The stillbirth silenced her laughter from that day forward. It left her body bruised, yes, but more so her spirit. Every cry of a newborn in the compound afterward pierced her like a knife, mocking her emptiness. She carried that grief in her bones, in the hollow of her arms that longed to cradle what she had lost, in the dreams that returned to her again and again – the river, the child’s fading voice, the hand she could never hold.
And then came Zainabou — her landlord’s schizophrenic daughter – her shadow of a sister. It was no small irony that Zainabou’s belly soon began to swell while hers remained flat and haunted. Nata had lost her child; Zainabou, though mad and unpredictable, carried life like a stubborn gourd that refused to sink in water.
By coincidence, Zainabou’s pregnancy drew her closer to Nata.
She would appear at Nata’s doorway almost every evening, her scarf loose, her laughter brittle. Often, she carried plates of food from her father’s kitchen — rice steeped in groundnut sauce, steaming domoda, even fried fish glistening in palm oil. But she rarely ate the meals prepared for her. Instead, she would set them down untouched, then squat near Nata, eyeing the little scraps Nata managed to buy from the few coins her husband, Bukari, gave her.
“You waste good food,” Nata would chide softly, pushing her plate toward Zainabou.
“I cannot eat it,” Zainabou would whisper, her eyes darting as if the air itself watched her. “It tastes of betrayal. They put things in it. But yours… yours is clean.”
And so Zainabou, the bride married off with a kasanbarr for dowry, fed on scraps from Nata’s plate.
There was an irony in it: the mad woman with a protruding belly eating the humble meals of the one who had lost hers. Nata often wondered if God was laughing at them both, weaving their suffering into threads neither of them could untangle.
…
Bukari, Nata’s husband, was not a cruel man. He never raised his hand against her, never denied her shelter. But his silence was a wall she could not climb.
He was a man of his time — authoritarian, distant, more father figure than lover. He was nearly twenty years older, a man chosen for her when her breasts had barely formed. For him, marriage was not companionship; it was duty, status, the assurance of a woman to warm his bed and tend to his needs.
Their conversations rarely went beyond commands.
“Nata, sweep the yard.”
“Nata, wash my clothes.”
“Nata, bring water.”
And at night, his presence beside her was not tender but perfunctory, a rhythm of duty that left her staring into the dark, her body stiff beneath him. She would often hold her breath, praying for it to be quick.
It was in these nights that fear of pregnancy rooted deeply in her bones. She had learned too early that pregnancy was not promise but peril: swollen ankles, sharp pains, and the memory of a stillborn child that haunted her dreams.
In quiet moments, Nata often thought of her younger sister, Matou.
Matou lived as a foster child, treated as though she were invisible — a fly on the wall, tolerated but unloved. She fetched water, swept courtyards, and was scolded for things she did not do. Yet in Nata’s eyes, Matou was the lucky one.
“No one bothers her,” Nata would whisper to herself. “No man lies on top of her. No belly swells with fear. She still has a future, even if they treat her like dust.”
Sometimes, in the privacy of her heart, Nata would have given anything to exchange lives with Matou. She would rather bear the loneliness of neglect than the suffocating weight of child marriage. Childhood, she had learned, was a brief and fragile season in Africa —especially for girls. One moment, you played with dolls made of rags; the next, you carried a husband’s name and the burden of his children.
…
It was no pleasant surprise when Nata began to feel the stirrings of another pregnancy.
The signs crept in slowly — morning nausea, dizziness, a heaviness in her breasts. At first she denied it, blaming spoiled food or heat. But when her monthly bleeding failed to arrive, her heart leapt painfully against her chest.
She felt trapped.
One evening, as she sat under the baobab tree, her mother Borogie found her staring into the distance, tears clinging to her lashes.
“What troubles you, my daughter?” Borogie asked, sitting beside her.
Nata whispered, “I think I am with child again.”
Borogie exhaled slowly, her face a mixture of worry and maternal instinct. She reached out, rubbing Nata’s back gently.
“Do not cry, my child. This is how life continues. One day, your woes will vanish when your children grow and support you. You will see, Nata. A child is a blessing.”
But Nata shook her head violently.
“How can a child take care of another child, Mama? I am still a child myself. I have nothing. No joy. No freedom. Only fear.”
Borogie’s lips trembled, but she clasped her daughter’s hands tightly. She had no easy answers – for she too had walked this same path.
In their time, child marriage was no scandal. It was the norm, woven into the very fabric of tradition. A girl was considered ripe once she bled. Men believed it was their duty — and their right- to marry her off before “waywardness” could taint family honor.
At markets, women whispered about brides younger than fifteen, girls carrying babies on their backs while still nursing their own dolls — girls who still wet their beds at night or sucked their thumbs in secret. No one questioned it. It was simply the way of things.
But for Nata, marriage was a prison. Perhaps it would have been easier if she had learned to fall in love. Yet love was never given to her — save for her mother’s. She had no tenderness to draw from, no freedom to choose, only duty.
Every glance at her husband Bukari, every memory of her stillborn child, every whisper of another pregnancy reminded her how quickly her childhood had been stolen. She had never known love as a choice, only as an obligation.
Strangely, it was Zainabou — mad, unpredictable Zainabou — who sometimes voiced the truths others dared not speak.
One evening, as they shared a bowl of rice, Zainabou placed her hand on her swollen belly and said, “You think this is life? It is not. It is a cage. They call it marriage, but it is just chains with bangles.”
Nata looked at her in surprise.
“Do you really believe that?”
“Of course,” Zainabou replied, her eyes flashing. “I asked for a husband, and they gave me one- but he was just another warden. He touched me the way one checks a goat for fat. No tenderness. No laughter. And yet, look at me, carrying his child.”
Her voice softened, almost vulnerable.
“But sometimes… sometimes I dream the child will love me, even if no one else does.”
Nata’s throat tightened. “I lost mine,” she whispered. “And now another grows inside me. But instead of joy, I only feel fear.”
Zainabou laughed bitterly. “Fear is the only dowry they give women.”
She leaned back, her voice turning sharp as she mimicked the elders beneath the bantaba tree, kola nuts staining their lips red: “They speak of honor, lineage, and the need for girls to ‘settle early.’ They tell themselves it is protection from shame, a shield against promiscuity.”
Then her voice dropped low, as though repeating whispers she had overheard among women:
“Marriage comes too soon for us.”
“By the time we understand our own bodies, we already carry another.”
“We are girls raising children.”
Nata stared at her, amazed. Was Zainabou really mad? Or was her madness just a sharper way of seeing what others chose to ignore?
The truth was, such words rarely left the courtyards. To challenge the norm was to invite ridicule, to risk being cast out as ungrateful or rebellious.
Nata knew this well. Even her whispered complaints to her mother were always met with resignation.
“This is our way,” Borogie would sigh.
But in her heart, Nata longed for another way.
To be continued…
