She wanted more than anything to leave the child in her room, but the strangeness of its cries might draw attention. She bundled it up, trembling at the warmth of its belly. It latched on to her nape with a powerful suction that blurred her vision. This is the sort of thing a mother should do for her child, Ogechi told herself, resisting the urge to yank the baby off her neck. A mother should give all of herself to her child, even if it requires the marrow in her bones. Especially a child like this, strong and sleek and shimmering.
After a few minutes, the sucking eased to something manageable, the child sated.
—
At the Emporium, Ogechi kept the child with her, worried that it would cry if she removed it. Besides, the brash assistant who had tried to uncover the child was no longer at the shop and Ogechi knew that she would never return. The other assistant was red-eyed and sniffling, unable to stop even after Mama gave her dirty looks. By lockup, Ogechi’s head was throbbing and she trembled with exhaustion. She wanted to get home and pry the baby off her. She was anticipating the relief of that when the remaining assistant said, “Why have you not asked after her?”
“Who?” Stupid answer, she thought as soon as she uttered it.
“What do you mean who? My cousin that disappeared, why haven’t you wondered where she is? Even Mama has been asking people about her.”
“I didn’t know you were cousins.”
The girl recognized Ogechi’s evasion.
“You know what happened to her, don’t you? What did you do?”
The answer came out before Ogechi could stop it.
“The same thing I will do to you,” she said, and the assistant took a step back, then another, before turning to run.
At home, Ogechi put the child to bed and stared until it slept. She felt its belly, which was cooling now, and recoiled at the thought of what could be inside. Then it gasped a little hairy gasp from its little hairy mouth and Ogechi felt again a mother’s love.
—
The next morning, it was Ogechi’s turn to open the store and she went in early to bathe the baby with Mama’s fine shampoo, sudsing its textured face, avoiding the bite of that hungry, hungry mouth. She was in the middle of rinsing off the child when the other assistant entered. She retreated in fear at first, but then she took it all in—Ogechi at the sink, Mama’s prized shampoo on the ledge, suds covering mother-knows-what—and she turned sly, running outside and shouting for Mama. Knowing that there was no use calling after her, Ogechi quickly wrapped the baby back up in her old torn-up dress, knocking over the shampoo in her haste. That was when Mama walked in.
“I hear you are washing something in my sink.” Mama looked at the spilled bottle, then back at Ogechi. “You are doing your laundry in my place?”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“How sorry are you, Ogechi, my dear?” Mama said, calculating. “Are you sorry enough to give me some of that happiness? So that we can forget all this?” There was no need for a song now as there was no child to be blessed. Mama simply stretched her hand forward and held on, but what she thought was Ogechi’s shoulder was the head of the swaddled child.
Mama fell to the ground in undignified shudders. Her eyes rolled, as if she were trying to see everything at once. Ogechi fled. She ran all the way home, and even through her panic, she registered the heat of the child in her arms, like the just-stoked embers of a fire. In her room, she threw the child into its bed, expecting to see whorls of burned flesh on her arms but finding none. She studied the baby, but it didn’t look any different. It was still a dense tangle of dark fiber with the occasional streak of red. She didn’t touch it, even when the mother in her urged her to. At any moment, Mama would show up with her goons, and Ogechi was too frightened to think of much else. But Mama didn’t appear, and she fell asleep waiting for the pounding at her door.
—
Ogechi woke in the middle of the night with the hair child standing over her. It should not have been able to stand, let alone haul itself onto her bed. Nor should it have been able to fist her hair in a grip so tight her scalp puckered or stuff an appendage into her mouth to block her scream. She tried to tear it apart, but the seams held. Only when she rammed it into the wall did it let go. It skittered across the room and hid somewhere that the candle she lit couldn’t reach. Ogechi backed toward the door, listening, but what noise does hair make?
When the hair child jumped onto Ogechi’s head she shrieked and shook herself but it gripped her hair again, tighter this time. She then did something that would follow her all her days. She raised the candle and set it on fire. And when the baby fell to the ground writhing, she covered it with a pot and held it down, long after her fingers had blistered from the heat, until the child, as tough as she’d made it, stopped moving.
Outside, she sat on the little step in front of the entrance to her apartment. No one had paid any mind to the noise—this wasn’t the sort of building where one checked up on screams. Knees to her chin, Ogechi sobbed into the callused skin, feeling part relief, part something else—a sliver of empathy Mama hadn’t been able to steal. There was so much dirt on the ground, so much of it everywhere, all around her. When she turned back into the room and lifted the pot, she saw all those pretty, shiny strands transformed to ash. Then she scooped the dirt into the pot and added water.
This she knew. How to make firm clay—something she was born to do. When the mix was just right, she added a handful of the ashes. Let this child be born in sorrow, she told herself. Let this child live in sorrow. Let this child not grow into a foolish, hopeful girl with joy to barter. Ogechi formed the head, the arms, the legs. She gave it her mother’s face. In the morning, she would fetch leaves to protect it from the rain.
BUCHI’S GIRLS
Buchi woke to the thwack-thwack of the machete in the grass and the offended clucks of the chicken who took issue with the noise. Every few moments a ping would echo as the blade struck the stucco of the house. She counted on the sharp sound to wake her daughters. If she had her way, the girls would sleep as long as they wanted—days, months even. They had certainly earned it.
She reached a hand under Damaris, at six years old her youngest, and sighed when she felt the wetness. Precious would have her head. The little girl was supposed to sleep on the tarp-covered pallet, which crinkled with her every turn and shift, but when Damaris had sat up to watch her mother and sister snuggle into the big bed, a telltale moue on her mouth, Buchi didn’t have it in her to deny her. Besides, the more bodies in the bed, the better. Sleeping alone reminded her that before she’d been mother, she’d been wife, and lover before that, and the bed needed to become something else if she was to survive.
Buchi had become an expert in interpreting her daughter’s expressions, almost as good as Louisa, her eldest, who understood Damaris completely, even though the child hadn’t spoken a word since her father’s death. Before that, she’d been a chatty girl, inquisitive and bossy.
The blade pinged again and again. Louisa woke like a startled animal but relaxed when she saw her mother. Her smile was filmy, sadness visible underneath. It disappeared completely when she nudged her younger sister with her knee.
“Damaris wet the bed!”
“I know, baby.”
“Auntie will be angry.”
Buchi’s throat constricted.
The thwack-thwack stopped and the runch of the rake replaced it.
“We won’t tell them then. Come on, help me.”
Their talking roused Damaris and the little girl blinked awake, became aware of the damp underneath her, and started to cry.
“Shh, it’s okay, honey, up, up.”
Damaris raised her arms and Buchi scooped her up, then jostled and swayed her to quiet before handing her to Louisa.