O.B.G. VERSUS THE MATERNITY

Obiageli wasn’t a fan of NatGeoWild. Doctor was. She preferred Africa Magic. But after suffering through a documentary on hyenas and Doctor’s prolixity on the topic, something he said had interested her: “Hyena clans are always led by females. Male hyenas must migrate later in life to avoid inbreeding. This means where you find a male in the clan, he is either too young or an immigrant who must come under the leadership of the females.” The tale of female hyenas and hyena communities—how being a child-bearer meant you were a home’s foundation, the one who didn’t have to move, the one who bossed the men around—had fascinated Obiageli. It was an example of radical feminism in the wild. Sister Confidence once opined that women were the real rulers; they only pretended to be submissive to keep their self-serving helpmates. Obiageli did not believe this. But what did she know? At the time, she had her parents and Sister Confidence to make decisions for her. Even in the maternity, her wretched existence always had Doctor’s protection, and she never felt like she had exhausted all her options. Fortunately, that day would come.

The Maternity was moving. The delivery nurses shouted instructions at the driver of the long tractor-trailer backing into the entrance. Obiageli placed her bag in the stack of personal items that would go in the trailer and looked on as the vehicle chugged forward and back against the gates, edging and angling its way through. It roared inside the compound and halted with an even louder roar that brought those still in the dormitory to the windows. Its metallic grey trailer doors, all solid steel of it, towered over the place.

Obiageli scanned the maternity one last time.

The peeling metallic signboard did not say ‘maternity’; it said, ‘Support for Women Empowerment Through Skills Acquisition (SWETSA)’. When she first saw it, she had thought, How ironic. Her father, a prayer-warrior, was winning this battle in spite of her. Her father wanted her raised by one of those ‘aunties’ who came to the village to look for child maids to take back to the city. He didn’t want just any rich ‘aunty’; he wanted one who promised to enroll his daughter in a vocational school. And here she was: in a vocational school for intending immigrants to learn a trade before they left the country. That’s what she had thought when she first arrived.

Obiageli didn’t want to move: this place still held many memories, memories of Amara that she wasn’t ready to part with just yet. These days, whenever she thought of Amara, she saw her standing in a stairway of brick and weed, light shining through an open doorway, a zinc awning at the summit. She always seemed at peace in her shanty little heaven. Obiageli could not imagine her anywhere else, especially as she hadn’t been outside these walls in years. To think that all this while she had envied her friend, believing she was free, not knowing she was in a grave, a grave dug to hide her, not memorialize her. Amara and the others who fell sick during the epidemic were no more and she couldn’t share this with anyone: Doctor would see it as a betrayal, and she would suffer for it. Keeping it to herself wasn’t easy. She tried not to think about it to avoid anguishing and erupting with profanities and had gone about her packing like a mindless migratory bird.

“Obiageli,” someone called.

It was Oluchi.

“You’re crying,” she said.

Obiageli didn’t realize she was mewling, but now her tears flowed.

“Aww.” Oluchi hugged her. “I know. You miss this place already. I miss it too.”

Unaka was the delivery nurse at the trailer doors. He grabbed the others by the arm and helped them up the high rear entry step. Obiageli didn’t want his help. She wanted nothing to do with him. She hated him. A team of two delivery nurses, Nonso and Arinze, carried those who were gravid with children into the trailer. Obiageli wasn’t pregnant, so it amused them when they found her in the line for those in their third trimester. Hooking their arms under her armpits and thighs, they lifted her like a sack, and swung her playfully from side to side, as if gearing up to throw her—“Nooo,” she begged—before they loaded her into the trailer.

“Me next,” Dumebi said. “Do for me.”

“Gerraway dia,” Nonso said and swung an arm at her.

Everyone treated Dumebi like a child because she acted and spoke like a ten-year-old. And she was at least eighteen. Doctor said she was autistic.

In the truck’s tow, the trailer creaked and rattled. Obiageli sat with seventeen others at the far end of the trailer, next to the luggage and medical equipment, and rocked with its unsure glide. Doctor did not tell her why they had to move, but she knew. All it took was her father’s words: “The stench that stays stagnant gives away its source.” Her father had said this to her mother to imply that if Obiageli remained in the village, her rascality would expose them both as bad parents. The Maternity had a stench and had to move because of it. The authorities would find them if they didn’t.

At what seemed like a sharp bend, the trailer wheeled to the right and they slid to the left. Obiageli uncrossed her legs and curled into a foetal position to relieve her shanks of the cold floor. It was dark on her side. Too dark to apply makeup. The brightest single light came from the open trailer doors. There were no air vents in the trailer, so the nurses left the doors open. A rope tied to their handles slackened and stretched to restrain them from doing a 180 on their hinges. In the wind’s battery, they opened and shut sporadically. The light from phone screens bathed the faces of those who peered into them. Only nurses carried phones. And all six of them stood by the trailer doors, between the patients and the outside world.

Obiageli grabbed her makeup kit and slid farther away from her fellow patients. She found a spot in the middle of the trailer, where the light was dull but sufficient. She took out her compact and powdered her face with the calm of a trespasser. Some nurses noticed her and turned away from their phones or the view outside. A sudden dryness in her throat made her swallow. She proceeded with the eyeliner. Next, she applied lip gloss. She waited for it to dry before she painted her lips red with her lip brush. It was almost as if she were an object of reverence, the way she brought the trailer to a standstill. She wasn’t just any girl after she put on makeup; she was OBG, Original Baby Girl.

Looking good was empowering. It was her solace in a world where the survival of the mind was as important as the survival of the body. She could still look in the mirror and feel a sense of pride, and this made getting out of bed each morning a lot easier.

Doctor had put it nicely when he said, “You should be grateful we are not harvesting your organs or mutilating you in any way. You can still have more children.”

Doctor and his wife owned The Maternity, a baby farm. They sold babies and represented surrogates. Obiageli and seventeen others were patients, not baby-making specimens. The men who impregnated and looked after them were delivery nurses, not traffickers. Their care facility was a maternity, not a den.

Someone grabbed her by the hair and pulled. She held the wrist of her attacker with both hands and rose to her feet so her weave didn’t come off. It was Unaka. He shut his eyes and leaned in with his lips, but she shoved him away and slapped him. Useless beast. Common mongrel. How dare you? Unaka slapped her back, and she attacked him with a flurry of kicks and slaps. Only the arms of the nurses stopped her from gouging his eyes. She looked around for her lipstick, which had fallen during the scuffle, and found it on the floor. But before she could reach it, a nurse kicked it away. One kick became two. Two kicks became three. They were kicking her designer lipstick around like a cheap soccer ball and laughing as she crawled on all fours to get to it.

Unaka picked up her lipstick. “Stay on your knees,” he said.

“Give it to me.”

He unzipped his fly and took out his thingy. “You know what to do if you want it.”

A frisson of expectation fell on the trailer.

OBG don die. Make I do wetin? She had no words for him.

“I said don’t get up—”

She kicked him into a stoop, a foot uppercut to the groin.

He winced. “Are you mad? You want to burst my blokos because of this.”

“Give it to me.”

Unaka grabbed her, pushed her onto the floor, and twisted her arm behind her back.

“It’s paining me,” Obiageli cried. “Let go, please.”

He smacked her on the back of her head repeatedly. “You dey mad? I be your mate?”

He yanked her head and tried to slam her face against the floor, but she went with her temple. He got off of her, and she rolled onto her back. Her weave was off. But it was her lipstick she wanted. As if in a slow-motion replay, she lay helplessly on the floor, her head hurting, watching as he leaned back and flung her lipstick through the trailer doors. Jesus. He tossed out her designer lipstick like an eggshell. Just like that.

Some nurses called him ‘Chilie Aka Elu’, which means ‘Put Your Hands Up.’ They said it was a nickname his gang members had given him. He used to be a highway robber. In a stickup, he would say, “Chilie aka elu and praise God.” They said he had served his time, but he was still a killer, and you should never provoke him. But all Obiageli saw was a man standing at the open doors of a moving trailer, taunting her with his murder.

TO BE CONTINUED…