“Take this,” Mother Tinu says, giving the cloth to Ms. Tia. “Take off your clothes and put them on the floor. Tie this white cloth around your body, and the smaller one on your head.”
Ms. Tia collects the cloth, and slowly, she pulls off her jeans, her t-shirt. She is wearing a pink brassiere and pink pant of lace material. Her stomach is the flat of floor, her skin smooth. There is a mark to the left of her belly button, darker than her skin, looks like a tiny upside-down map of Africa. She press the square of folded cloth between her breasts, saying nothing. Not one word. Her lips just shake and shake, like she wants to burst with angry words, but something is holding her back, tying her down.
“Come on, Tia,” the doctor mama says. “We have to hurry. Tie the clothes around you, take off your bra and underwear. Those must go too. Is that right, Mother Tinu?”
“Yes, everything she came in. Be quick, please.”
“Leave her to take her time,” I say, my voice sharp.
“Shut your gutter mouth,” the doctor mama says.
Ms. Tia ties the cloth around her chest and on her head. Next, she drops her pant to the floor, and pulls her brassiere out from her chest, drops it to the floor too.
“Now,” Mother Tinu says to us, “will you two take a few steps back please?”
Me and the doctor mama, we take two steps back and stand far from each other like enemies in a battlefield.
I watch as Mother Tinu takes Ms. Tia to the edge of the river.
I watch as the women stop their moaning, stand up on their feet at the same time, and collect the brooms from Mother Tinu at the same time, as if they been planning the movement for weeks.
I watch as one of the women pulls off Ms. Tia’s cloth, exposing her naked, as she begins to whip her with the broom. At first, Ms. Tia is looking shocked. She is standing there, mouth open like small letter O. When it seems that she is understanding that they are flogging her, that she is collecting a whipping instead of a washing of water and soap, she starts to fight back. She kicks her legs and screams and says what the fork and what the hell, but the other three women, they hold her hands, and her legs, and cover her mouth, with no feelings on their face. No frown, no smile. Nothing. They struggle, pull Ms. Tia to the wet, muddy ground. One woman standing by Ms. Tia’s head twists her two hands behind her back and ties them with a thick brown rope I didn’t see before, and the other wraps the rope around her leg, making it tight with one thick knot.
They step back, pick up the brooms, and begin to whip.
I want to jump in front, to fight them with my life, to tear them away from my Ms. Tia, but something is gumming my legs to the floor, my hands to my side, and I am not able to move any part of me.
And so I watch as they whip, and whip, and whip, as Ms. Tia is rolling on the ground and screaming, until her fine smooth skin is having puncture from the sand, and until her whole body is becoming the red of the earth.
CHAPTER 46
By the time the women finish the flogging, Ms. Tia is no more shouting and screaming.
She is just staying on the floor, bleeding blood, her back full of so much marks. Mother Tinu collects the brooms from the other women and throws them into the river, puts her head up, shouts, “THE EVIL OF CHILDLESSNESS HAS BEEN CHASED OUT. PRAISE BE TO THE LIVING HIM!” The other four women, they clap their hands and say, “ELI-JAH!”
They pull Ms. Tia up, scoop water from the river edge, and pour it on Ms. Tia’s body, ever so gentle, as if to say, Sorry, sorry we flog you.
When Ms. Tia turns, and I see her face, my legs become rubber. Like something yank out all my bones. I fall, pushing a cry deep inside of me. Ms. Tia’s face is full of so many whip marks, like the drawing hanging in her parlor, the one of clay head with no eyes and no mouth. Only this one is Ms. Tia. And she has eyes and mouth and ears and is feeling so much pain. And her eyes, her eyes have a look, of a wild animal, of a hunter that is wanting to kill.
A cry is boiling inside of me and I want to release it, but I feel a warm hand on my shoulder: the doctor mama.
“I didn’t know,” she says, whispering. There are tears shining in her eyes, her voice shaking, fingers on my shoulder shaking too. “I didn’t know that they’d do this to her. That it would be this brutal, this bad. They told me it was just a bath. An ordinary, harmless bath. If I had known, I wouldn’t have . . . I should have stopped them. My son is going to . . .” She sighs, snatching her hand from my shoulder. “Go and bring her clothes from the car.”
I pick myself up and drag myself away from the place. My stomach is turning, the beans I ate yesternight seems to want to climb out of my throat. I stop my walking a moment, bend my knees by a short bush. I cough, pressing my stomach, but nothing is coming out. I wipe my mouth with my dress and make myself to keep walking.
Behind the church, from the open window, I see a woman on the floor, kneeling, holding a red candle in her hand, nodding, shouting “AMEN” and the prophet, he is bouncing, turning around, shouting, “ELI . . . ELI.”
And the Jesus in the picture is no more vexing His face.
Now, He just looks tired. And sad.
CHAPTER 47
We drive home like dead bodies in a coffin.
Nobody is talking. Or moving. The car feels too small, coffin-size, the cold air from the air-con so dry, my lips feel like fish scales. We are breathing though. Hard, fast breathing. Slow, heavy breathing. We are saying many things with our breathing. We just don’t talk. Don’t say a word.
But there are words in my head, many things I want to say. I want to tell Ms. Tia I am sorry I made her come here. I want to ask why the doctor didn’t come too. Why didn’t he come and get a beating like his wife? If it takes two people to make a baby, why only one person, the woman, is suffering when the baby is not coming? Is it because she is the one with breast and the stomach for being pregnant? Or because of what? I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men?
But my mouth is not collecting the questions from my head, so I just keep it there. Keep it hanging, turning inside my head, causing a banging head pain.
The doctor mama try to make small talk with Ms. Tia. “I promise you that I had no idea what was going to happen—at least not to that extent,” she says. “I wanted to stop them, but how could I go against so many women? And I thought of your miracle, your baby . . . Is there a, a way we can keep this between us? We can find a story to tell Ken, but he must not know that I allowed something so horrible . . . Think of what could happen in nine months, Tia.”
Ms. Tia keeps her eyes to the window. She doesn’t give the doctor mama any answer. Not one word to anybody. She is just sitting there, breathing fast, hard, her fingers on her lap are curling into each other so tight, the skin is nearly splitting.