by Adaora Raji

Sometime this morning

Your eyes know what it wants to feast on, even though you know it is time to ease away from the crowd. Still you stand with the people at the public toilet in Iju Ishaga, watching as they peer at a sleeping baby wrapped in a white blanket placed in a blue plastic bowl, just large enough for the baby to fit into. Everyone of you is waiting to see if someone will come to lay claim to the baby, but nobody comes forward.

A woman in an adire boubou makes her way through the crowd to the entrance to the toilet and squats to nudge the plastic bowl as if to ascertain if it is a real baby or a fake one. When she can no longer contain her curiosity, she peels away the blanket to determine the sex. She shakes her head wrapped in a multi-colored scarf before confirming the sex to everyone. The crowd goes “ahhh” and you “ahhh” along.

“There is this orphanage in Muyiwa street that I can take this baby to. Who will take us there?”

A balding man steps forward. He is wearing a black long-sleeve shirt over brown threadbare trousers that he appears to have slept in.

“I will carry you with my okada,” he says, a helmet pressed to his chest with his left hand and a bunch of keys dangling from his right hand. Suddenly, he is no longer just another okada man. He is a messenger of light and the most recent salt of the earth. So you all make way very quickly as he wheels his okada and stops at the entrance of the toilet. The woman sits behind the okada man and someone balances the blue plastic bowl very gently on her lap. As soon as they leave, you all will disperse slowly and a man with a comb sticking out of his thick afro asks you:

“Who on earth dumps a baby in a Lagos public toilet?”

“Only the devil,” you will reply.

Sometime last month

Your body knows what it wants and says it with the darts of pain exploding from your spine to your lower abdomen. It wants to expel this thing that is causing you to grunt and scream, and be free from the pain. In her living room turned delivery room, Aunty Nurse asks you to push, and you finally push the thing out of your body.

At home your neighbors carry the  thing from you, and they stare at it like it is the object of some apparition. Mama Chiwendu and Iya Halimat help you bathe the thing every morning and at night, carrying it away from your one bedroom apartment at the times you need to sleep. They do this for three weeks until their generousity runs out. You know this because the thing wailed and nobody takes it from you. Perhaps because they have all gone out of the compound at the same time. Or because you have run out of money for diapers, supplements and everything else. Or maybe they are simply tired of waiting for the father of the thing who you told them is based in Gabon and will return soon to reward them for their generousity.

You are tired, not tired that your body aches but tired in a way that you wake up at the crack of dawn. Wear your blue and white polka dots dress, wrap the thing in a white blanket, before placing it in a blue plastic bowl.

‘Amara where you dey go this early morn morn?’ Iya Halimat asks from her door when you tip toe through the corridor.

‘I want to take baby to my mother in the village.’

‘Why na?’

‘So that I can have time to work.’

‘Odabo.’ She says and shuts her door firmly.

 The morning cold gives you goosebumps and you tug on to the handle of the plastic bowl a little too  tightly. But your pace is steady and confident, not once did you turn to look behind as you make your way to Iju-Isagha public toilet. With tiny teardrops converging around your eyelids, you drop the bowl at the entrance of the toilet.

Sometime last year

Your heart knows what it wants when your eyes rests it’s gaze on the dark skinned boy with fluttering eyelids spitting rap verses at the ileya carnival. It happens that his heart wants the same thing when he leads you to the place where your bodies will melt and your hearts beat dance to the rhythm known only to you and him.

You keep dancing to this rhythm for several months until two red lines on the urine strip confirms what you suspect. You let him know that your bodies have made another body.

‘l live with my parents. I can’t add to their burden by having a baby.’

‘Neither can I. I can barely afford rent. You say, matching his tone.

He hands you fifteen thousand naira in one thousand naira notes.

‘Take care of it, please.’ He is looking at you with the eyes that confirms it is the last time you will see him.

You know money is hard to come by these days. Instead of taking the fifteen thousand naira to the doctor who costed the D&C, you go to Baba Ayo, the chemist at the street corner;

‘Just take this tablet first thing in the morning, the thing will just disappear, and your period will appear fiaaam!’ He gives you a red pill and you thank him for saving you thirteen thousand naira.

You drink the tablet and wait, but your period doesn’t come. You race back to Baba Ayo for a more potent tablet, and your stomach keeps growing big. When your neighbors ask where the father is, you will say that he lives in Gabon but he will come as soon as you give birth.

Photo by Landiva Weber vis Pexels