One day, during a family lunch at the main house, one of Fatoumatta’s boys smirked when Zainabou started talking to herself.
“She’s crazy,” he muttered.
Zainabou threw a spoon across the courtyard, striking the wall behind him.
“Say it again,” she dared him. “Say it to my face.”
The boy fled.
Later, Nata saw Fatoumatta approach Zainabou with a bowl of fruits.
“I would not do such a thing to you,” she said simply. “Pateh is just a naughty child.” She added, in defence of her son.
Zainabou looked at her suspiciously, then muttered, “I know, you wouldn’t dare me. But don’t let him get used to it. I can be crazy sometimes,” she muted under her breathe.
Fatoumatta smile and did anyone who was within hearing spot. That smile infuriated Zainabou.
She started spitting insults, and rants that persisted throughout the day. Nata kept in her house. Not once coming out of it. She cooked and dished the meal in her sitting room.
By then, even the elders in the compound had learned to treat Zainabou with a strange respect. She was unpredictable, yes — but also unafraid. Unapologetic. And perhaps, that’s what made her dangerous in a world where women were taught to swallow everything, even their own truths…
But the truth about her marriage and the complexities were beginning to show.
Zainabou was never meant for quiet domesticity. Even in her younger days, before the diagnosis, before the whispers of madness turned into open declarations, she had always lived with intensity. She was vivid — in voice, in gesture, in desire. And when she was married to Mama Jang, her father’s long-time driver, many in the compound saw it as a solution to a lingering problem. Give her a man, they said. Marriage will calm her down.
But madness is not calmed by marriage or love.
And Mama Jang — stoic, kind, and tragically naïve — had no idea what he had walked into.
In the first few weeks of their marriage, there was peace. The elders in the compound whispered about it with relief. “Maybe she needed stability,” one auntie suggested. “A husband to center her.”
Their small room — a spare parlour and adjoining bedroom on the western side of the compound — was neatly arranged by Zainabou herself. She swept it three times a day. Laid down mats with surgical precision. Hung a calendar of Mecca over their bed. She cooked, often with more spice than necessary, and served Mama Jang with pride.
But at night, the cracks began to show.
She would stay awake, eyes wide, whispering into the dark.
“I can hear them,” she’d murmur. “Talking about me. Laughing.”
“Who?” he’d ask, voice heavy with sleep.
“The spirits. The ones who hide behind your radio.”
Soon, Mama Jang’s nights became battlegrounds. There was no consistent sleep — only bursts of it. He would awaken to her pacing, mumbling about betrayal, or tapping the mirror with her fingers and whispering questions to her reflection.
“Where did he go?” she’d ask the mirror. “Who was she? The one with the smell of oranges on her dress.”
Mama Jang, groggy and frustrated, tried at first to soothe her. He brought home fruits. He told her she was beautiful. He even gave up evening attaya at the junction with his friends to rush home early.
But it was never enough.
She grew jealous, suspicious of his every move, every change of clothes, every new smell on his body. “You don’t love me anymore,” she’d say bitterly. “You think I’m mad like they do.”
He wanted to argue. To shout that she was sick, and that he was tired. But he held back, swallowing words like stones.
Their first big fight took place on a Thursday. Market day.
Mama Jang had gone into Serrekunda for a spare part for the lorry. The traffic near Westfield was madness, and by the time he got home, the sun had long dipped below the rooftops. He walked into the compound tired and dusty, his shirt unbuttoned halfway, the plastic bag with the car part in hand.
Zainabou was seated on the veranda. Her eyes followed him like a hawk. She didn’t speak until he unlocked their door.
“So you’ve returned,” she said.
“I told you, the traffic — ”
“Liar!”
He froze. Her voice had cut through the quiet compound like a blade.
“I smelled her,” she hissed. “On your collar. Oranges.”
Mama Jang blinked. “What are you talking about, woman?”
“You think I’m stupid. You think I can’t tell. You go and lay with some girl while I sit here like a mad woman counting the chicks in my mother’s garden. Do you know how many? One hundred and twenty-two!”
She began screaming then. Not words — just raw, guttural sound.
Neighbours poked their heads out of their doors.
Mama Jang tried to calm her. “Zainabou, you’re tired. Please, I was just—”
Before he could finish, she had flung the bag at his chest and lunged at him with her nails clawed like a wildcat’s. He staggered backward, tripping over the step.
“Leave me alone!” she shrieked. “You dirty man! You think you can humiliate me?”
He raised a hand instinctively to block her, but she mistook it for a slap.
“Look! He wants to beat me!” she shouted to the compound. “Come and see!”
…………………………
Chaos erupted.
Children ran.
Doors opened.
“Zainabou! What’s this nonsense?” her mother shouted.
“He cheated on me!” Zainabou barked. “Ask him! Smelling of oranges! Liar!”
By then, two of the men had grabbed her arms, trying to calm her down. She writhed like a woman possessed. Mama Jang stood against the wall, breathing hard, his shirt torn at the shoulder.
Mama Sellou, her father, stepped out finally, face like thunder.
“Take her inside!” he ordered.
Zainabou was pulled into her room, still screaming curses at her husband, at her family, at the world.
…………………………
After that night, something in Mama Jang changed.
He no longer came straight home.
He lingered longer at the garage.
He stopped eating her food. Started accepting lunch from her stepmother, Fatoumatta instead, claiming “my stomach doesn’t like too much pepper.”
He no longer tried to understand.
In the silence between them grew resentment.
She felt caged. He felt trapped.
Her outbursts became more frequent. Once, she accused him of sleeping with Fatoumatta. Another time, she tore his trousers apart looking for “the scent of another woman.”
He took to sleeping in the lorry some nights.
And on days when she was calm, he wouldn’t speak much — afraid that any word might spark another inferno.
…………………………
The family adapted in that strange Gambian way — by adjusting around the chaos instead of confronting it directly.
They would say, “Let her be. She’s touched.”
The elders would caution, “It’s not her fault.”
But no one ever truly addressed what was happening.
No one talked about schizophrenia.
No one talked about mental health.
No one talked about the husband whose days were filled with time bombs and whose nights were haunted by screams.
…………………………
The courtyard was still that afternoon, save for the occasional rustle of neem leaves above the lorry. Mama Jang sat slouched on an upturned oil can, elbows on knees, staring into the hollow of his lorry’s open hood. The engine had long cooled, but he remained motionless, as if expecting the machine to speak back to him — or, perhaps, offer answers no human had managed to give.
Nata had seen him like this many times before — vacant, withdrawn, and wrapped in the sort of sadness only invisible burdens could breed. But today, there was something more brittle in his posture. As though if someone touched him too roughly, he would shatter.
She approached him gently, barefoot across the sun-warmed sand, carrying a jug of cold water she had cooled beneath the clay pot.
When she handed it to him, he took it silently, nodded his thanks, and sipped.
After a long pause, he said in a voice that scraped like gravel, “She wasn’t always like this.”
“I know,” Nata replied.
“She was funny. Could make you laugh so hard your ribs ached. She used to play tricks on me when I came back from driving—put sugar in my rice and swear she didn’t know.” He smiled faintly at the memory.
Nata nodded, but said nothing.
“I don’t know what happened,” he murmured. “Sometimes I think… maybe I broke her.”
“You didn’t,” Nata said softly, leaning against the hood of the lorry. “She’s just sick.”
He turned to her then — really looked at her. His eyes were swollen with exhaustion and something deeper — the kind of loneliness that even sharing a bed couldn’t cure.
“But who takes care of me?” he asked, voice cracking. “Who sees what I carry?”
There was a pause. Long and deep.
And then Nata said, simply:
“Your baby will.”
The world seemed to stop.
Mama Jang blinked.
He wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Who?” he asked, barely audible.
“Yes,” Nata confirmed, her voice clear but gentle. “You heard me right. You two are going to have a baby.”
He stared at her, stunned.
“Zainabou is acting out because she’s pregnant. I don’t think she even knows it herself. But I’ve watched her. The changes… the nausea, the sudden cravings. Even the madness feels sharper, like her body is speaking louder than she can.”
Mama Jang shook his head slowly, like trying to chase away a dream.
“No… no, that can’t be true. She’s mad, Nata. She’s—”
“She’s also a woman,” Nata interrupted. “A woman with a womb. A woman who has carried pain, yes, but also now carries life. Whether she knows it or not.”
The lorry, the courtyard, the world — everything fell away for a moment. Mama Jang sat back slowly, jug of water now forgotten on the ground.
“A baby?” he whispered. “I don’t know how to be a father in this madness.”
To be continued…
