DELIGHTFUL ENDINGS

Your waist beads glimmer under the faint light illuminating your room from the bulb on your ceiling. You like how they balance at the top of your hips, exaggerating their flare. You rub your palm against your flat tummy and twist around sideways.

Your stomach is flat, and there's no sign there's a fetus in it. The CT scans under your mattress say otherwise.

A knock sounds on your door, and you drop the gown folded on your waist. You brush your hair and move to open it. Your brother is standing in front, and seeing the door open, he pushes you aside, walks to your bed, and sits on it.

You don't say a word. You're used to his mannerless ways.

"They have come, your man's people. Papa wants you downstairs in exactly ten minutes," he says and looks around your room. You watch his eyes land on the gold ring sitting pretty on your dresser, and you watch him walk to it. He picks the ring up and caresses the bands. He probably feels the inscription on it because he turns it around.

"Mine," he scoffs, and you can almost taste the bitterness. He drops the ring and walks swiftly out of your room as if he suddenly couldn't stand to be inside anymore.

You want to blurt out that your husband-to-be had given you this ring on a Saturday, the Saturday after the Monday when you told him you were pregnant with his child. You had been surprised by his reaction because he didn't shout like you had expected him to. He hadn't cursed and paced around the room either. He didn't ask if you were sure this baby was his because you had lived in his house for a good month. He had held your face in his palm, kissed your forehead, and asked when he could come to see your father.

You wanted to tell your brother he had taken you out to dinner and slid the ring on your fingers after he had caressed your smooth skin in his big man's car. You watched him talk in his honey-laced voice full of promises for you and his child with tears in your eyes. You had blinked, and perhaps he couldn't stand you crying in this happy moment because he had bent over to kiss the tears away from your cheekbones. Yes, you wanted to tell your brother all this, but you knew he didn't care.

You dust your face with powder to control the oily sheen and come out of your room. Subconsciously, you walk down the stairs more carefully than you would have on a normal day.

You hear the men cackling out loud, and your heart bursts with an indescribable feeling. Of course, he would win your stoic father over, your beautiful husband-to-be.

Your shoes probably resound on the tiles because the next thing you know, they're turning around and flashing you big, hearty smiles. You walk to your father and sit on the arm of the chair he is on.

"Greet your in-laws," your father tells you in Yoruba, and you drop to your knees meekly.

"Ekasan," you say, and their jolly answers echo in response. They usher you off your knees, and you sit back on the arm of your father’s chair.

"Join your mother in the kitchen," your father tells you, and you nod in response. You're walking to the kitchen when your mother sees you and escorts you back to the living room. She greets the men and leads you to your husband-to-be. His face lights up in a smile, and it breaks into a laugh that shakes through his body as she sits you on his lap.

You look around, and everyone is happy. Everyone is conversing, and even your brother looks more relaxed. He is gulping Emu from his glass and cackling at the jokes being passed around. You are happy, too.

Seven months later.

You gnash your teeth together in pain as you scream over the phone to tell your man to hurry. The contraptions are recurring frequently now, and you can't stand the pain. You caress your swollen bump, and your mind calms down a little, but it doesn't last because the pain is back with a vengeance this time.

You slide against the chair into the little puddle of water that poured from your insides and struggle to fight the tears threatening to fall from the corner of your eyes.

You hear the door bang and let out a sigh of relief. Your husband is here. He'd take care of you now. He carries you in his arms and skims back to the door with twice the speed he came in with. You want to wonder how he can do that, but you don't have the mental strength to think. He dumps you in the front seat and rushes over to his seat.

"You'd be fine," he keeps chanting out like some mantra, and somehow, you're convinced he's trying to reassure himself, not you. He speeds through the streets, making sharp turns at the potholes with one hand on the steering and leaving the other one for you to squeeze.

They hit you again, the contractions, and you scream. He turns to try to calm you and soothe your pain, but he doesn't see the ditch. He's forgotten he has a turn to make, and by the time you belt it out of your lungs, the car is flying off the road.

Loading comments...