ISLAND

The trembling of her body was leafy, her mangled thoughts stiffened by the cold air in the room. A tingling in her left ear, the cause of her tilted head in remedy but she soon felt a dull ache on her neck and didn’t bother with it again. Her rigid hands held tightly to the light gown that covered her body, cringing every fold in haste until her feet clasped together. She was relived; they were still there. She had not seen them in a while, the mountain belly obscured her sight of them for months. She stared at it in wonder, how it had been transforming every moment in a manner she could never understand. Then she was filled with resentment. This, that wanted to be a creature on its own, yet depended on her for what she did not know where to find. How resilient was it? She imagined a sports car speeding from a sharp bend, the speed of lightning, road and rubber in perfect contact, trees on its side bowing to its power and without stopping, rushing on top of her belly. She saw it spinning in the air before crushing into a tree, smoke coming out of the bonnet, the driver with streaks of blood on his head, struggling to break the door open; screaming silently through the cracked window just before the car burst into ….

Are you ready?

She leaped in fright, her head turning sharply to face the savior from her nightmare. A middle age woman was standing next to her. The puffy cheeks obscured the rest of her face. Droplets of sweat had settled on her nostrils. The buttons of her blouse struggled to hold her breasts together even as her chest heaved heavily with each breath. Her voluptuous contour reminded her of her mother and when she touched her hands, they felt warm and safe.

“Don’t worry, it will be over before you know it. We have done this so many times, nothing could go wrong,” 

She gently smiled before proceeding to unravel the instruments wrapped under a faded brown towel. There was a long one with a hook at the end, two blades next to a stacks of bandages and folded pieces of sheets laying neatly on a tray. The woman began to hum to a certain tune. She knew it. ‘When the waters run deep’ a classic melody from a rock band. They must have sang it even before she was born but as she knew song by heart, how she and her friends sang back to the tune, nodding their heads in rhythm when they boarded the bus in the evening.  One of the lines stuck in her head,

Nobody knows tomorrow…live for today… she doubted the surety of the present and the uncertainty of her future. 

Her eyes shut tightly by the prick on her forearm. By the third time, her eyes were fixed on the large needle punching holes on her dry skin that had flattened over her weak bones. The nurse shook her head instructing her not to tighten her muscles. She let her win her own battle. When the fifth attempt was successful and the fluid hanging on a stand was flowing through her veins, she lost herself again. She saw the water gushing out of several holes on the bottle and poured down into a bloody pool that was now flooding the room. Her chest was heaving, her wide opened mouth gasping for air while her belly gripping her body tightly. The bed was now floating and as she was about to scream…

Are you sure you are alright dear?

The nurse rescued her once again, wiping her forehead with a piece of cotton, her eyes furrowed in worry. She did not want the woman to certify her anxiety and dismiss the process. With a deep breath and a plastered grin on her face, she reassured the nurse.

She was grateful for the opportunity she stumbled upon to correct the error. The nurse had been kind to her, organizing all of it for the price of her savings. She would not be a coward. She would take the blame for trusting the words of another who had much more than a last one for the road. A better life would not be earned by opening her legs. Even her own mother would have begged the higher spirits to come down one last time to give her a beating to chase away her stupidity. Big Baba would never allow her serve in the bar either. He said he did not want the customers to start pointing fingers. The regretted the sore image she had made for her uncle; the leader of the Christian men movement in their church cost her a place to stay and Mrs. Sarri who accommodated her because she knew how to pound the cassava that her husband wanted for dinner, was always looking at her with cutting eyes as her belly bulged out, almost blaming it for her bareness. She would break free. She would start a new page. She would write her story again on a clearer pages with dark stokes of a pen that would not be erased.

A plump short man stumbled into the room, his tie hang loosely over his flipped collar shirt under his coat that was buttoned incorrectly so that he looked disfigured. He leaned on the door for a moment staring at her with haggard eyes that cringed her body. A brief dialogue with the nurse illuminated his face. He drew closer to her leaving a trail of mud from his dirty shoes. She tried to focus on what he was saying. A fetid smell of staleness made her choke every time he opened his mouth.  

It all happened faster than she could remember a second from the next. The sharp object poking her deep enough to make her fold her lips together. She had to be brave. The coating of blood tiled the floor spreading quickly to the corners of the room. She had to be brave. The nurse stood up, her head shaking in distress, her hands trembling as she passed large sponges of cotton, the plump man yelling out for even more cotton. She saw the two people in the room appearing in duplicates in her eyes, her heat beat drummed into her ears. She saw the racing car again coming towards her, the room began moving in circles. She knew what was happening. The island was sucking up everything in the room. It would not be long before it consumed her too. She would not fight, maybe it was taking her to a better place.