I Cry at the Feet of My Other Body

“Female Show Thyself” by Esther Alimson

Obiageli knew this day would come. For I still remember her incessant nods and yeses and her I ready do anything carry this bele. I remembered the way Mother’s responses caressed Obiageli’s impatience. Her Calm down and Gbo mi, listen to me.

Like Obiageli, a lot of women have found their paths to my mother’s house; opened their bare palms for Mother to read their stack of problems; promised everything with empty mouths and wishful eyes that looked convincing. In the twenty years I have spent, with Mother, learning the sublime art of palm reading, I have heard many answers to Mother’s first question to these women, the same answers told in different ways. 

‘How did you find me?’ Mother would ask.

My good friend told me about you, Iya.

I have heard legendary tales about your healing eyes, Iya.

From market women, Iya.

Tales of my mother had spread beyond the borders of the village, like wildfire, so that everyone who walked into our compound had either heard about my mother in passing or someone somewhere had told them. 

Mother’s second question was always the same. And only a few made it to the third.

‘What do you want from me?’ 

She asked this question before touching the center of her head with an old wooden rosary bead. A tradition she learned from her mother who learned from her mother which I’d learned from her. It has always been the answers to her questions that propelled this tradition. The uncovered mysteries hiding beneath the palms of these women, waiting to be read.

I need help, Iya, my mother-in-law is on my neck. 

I caught my husband in a lie, found out he’s been cheating and I want him to stop.

I want wealth, Iya, help me. 

My daughter is not beautiful enough and I fear for her future—perhaps you could give me some things.

Generic answers. Selfish problems. Mother refused to read the palms of women with these sorts of problems. For the women who complained about their mothers-in-law, she said to them, ‘Go and make peace.’ To the ones with cheating husbands she said to them ‘Pack your load and leave the man.’ Mother dislikes women who stay with disrespectful men; for those women, she uses herself as an example. She would point at the roof of our house and tell them, ‘You see this house? Na me build am.’ She hissed at those who complained of wealth and said to them, ‘Did you not go to school abi you cannot move your limbs? Go and learn a trade.’ My personal favorites are those who complained of their daughters’ ugliness. For those, she excused herself, disappeared inside, sprung out with a broom, and chased them out of our house.

‘Foolish woman!’ she’d call after them.

 ***

Obiageli was different. She came bearing her grief beyond her palms. The first time I heard her speak, I felt the pain that crawled out of her eyes; the worries that reverberated through her raspy voice. And when she said, ‘Iya, I no go leave this place today until you help me,’ in that matter-of-fact way masking behind years of unmatched suffering. I shed a tear and wiped it off as fast as I could. It is something mother must never see, for she told me, many nights ago, that palm reading was not for empaths.

Still, I wondered how a pretty woman, with such an impeccable nose on a slender face, could bear so much pain.

Obiageli made it to the third question. For even mother felt her pains and knew that her problems were genuine.

‘Will you stretch your palms for Iya to see?’ Mother asked this question in a reassuring singsong tone. There were two women before Obiageli (in all the years I have spent with my mother) that she had asked to open their palms for her to read. One was being bullied by her brothers into giving up her share of the properties their dead father left for her because she was a woman. When she came to our house, with a strong countenance and a rare kind of fierceness in her voice, she was ready to fight. Mother smiled and asked her to open her palms for her to read, then made her leave with Zibuzibu seeds wrapped in fresh banana leaves. The second came crying and cursing and threatening to show her husband shege. When mother asked what she could do for her, she said she wanted to be with her kids. That her husband has left her for another woman with her own children. ‘What if that ugly witch poisoned my children the way she poisoned their father? God forbid Iya,’ she spat.

None of these women came back to pay homage and mother didn’t worry herself about their sheer lack of simple courtesy. Mother doesn’t worry herself about a lot of things.

Obiageli spread her palms and pushed them forward. Her teary eyes dried up almost immediately and hope dissipated over her. Mother stared into them for long, too long, and I began to wonder from where I sat if all was well.

‘You said you are Obiageli?’ Mother asked.

‘Yes, Iya.’

‘And you have been looking for a child for seven years?’

‘Yes, Iya.’

Mother’s voice was soft and hopeful, and it comforted Obiageli, happy that she had come to the right place. 

‘You cannot bear a child.’ 

‘Enh?’

Mother sighed. ‘You no fit born pikin,’ she looked at Obiageli's eyes. ‘I have read your destiny and I do not see a child in it.’ 

Obiageli withdrew her hands, reached for the medium-sized purple purse she had come with and began to ransack it. I had expected her to drop to the floor and cry or beg Mother with every teardrop in her body that Mother should help her. She didn’t. 

She brought out a pocket-sized bible and a flyer that had “Our Lord Jesus Heals” in bold print clogged against headshots of youth pastors; I swear these men were fine men, despite the terrible design of the flyer with contrasting hues and fonts that I could barely read.

 ***

Obiageli’s story began seventeen months after her wedding, she started to recount, when the flyer she’d brought out of her purse was slipped into her hands from a woman she’d met along the streets of Surulere, at evening, before daylight was replaced with headlights from slow-moving cars, korope, and molue, ‘one old woman like that,’ she’d said. ‘I no dey belief these things you see, but e taya me. Because my mother-in-law no allow me rest,’ she’d said. ‘She don use insult baff me finish. Every time talk, talk.’

Her mother-in-law moved as though the world revolved beneath her feet, like she knew everything. She would call her over the phone on moonless nights, when the notorious sounds of generators in the neighbourhood announced the street’s power failure to slip pieces of advice into Obiageli’s ears. She was always calling, always visiting, always talking. She reminded Obiageli of her misery, formed insults into well-thought-out parables and rubbed them on her face–‘Shebi if I had my own child I would fight her and set boundaries,’ Obiageli said. ‘But I no get. Shey mother-hen go fit fight crow if she no get pikin?’ 

I could tell, from Obiageli’s story, that she was convinced she needed to be a mother. Because she believed a woman could not be without a child. Who would listen to her stories and draw life lessons from them? Could she call herself a woman if she had no children? She visited the church when she saw the flyer, she wished she could tap into the grace of the Lord Jesus, a healing, a miracle. A child that would take her misery away.

The church sat somewhere around Makoko waterfront, on a street of old, interlocking buildings. Something about waterbodies always goes with miracles, something that strengthened Obiageli’s faith. ‘But people plenty and the queue long,’ she said, so she waited and queued and did everything the nosy lady who stood behind the megaphone, at the church’s entrance, told them to do. She bought candles and holy water and anointed oil and watched miracles happen before her eyes. She brought new yams to the church, which the pastor said was to cleanse her body. Paid for full body cleansing at the Makoko lagoon. Put anointed oil in every meal she ate. Never went to bed without bathing with holy water. She stopped going there when, one morning, a call came from the church with an instruction to bury a live baby goat behind her house. Once, she’d spilled the blood of a white fowl on her door, searching for grace, but burying a live baby goat was something she couldn’t do. 

‘Iya, na that day I run comot the church.’

When she was done telling her story, she started to beg and cry and weep, none of which moved my mother. Eventually, her breath petered out, it was when she packed up her purse and made to leave that Mother finally spoke. From where she’d sat, I could see the struggle written all over my mother’s face as she tussled with the part of her that saw herself in Obiageli. And Mother understood. She knew she would not be Iya if she didn’t have me. I saw the struggle on my mother’s face give way to fear, and I could tell she was about to do a forbidden ritual.

 ‘You said you want a child? Don’t you?’

‘Yes, Iya, just a child.’

‘And you will have a child, come, sit.’

Mother made her open her palms, again, and she touched them with her wooden rosary bead. She drew close to me and began to collect parts of my body. She took a little of my flesh, my eyes, my hair, my heart, my voice, and my joy, and from these came Obiageli’s baby. 

The baby was neither male nor female. It was just a baby. Obiageli didn’t mind that the baby she now held in her hands was a replica of another person, of me; after all, she just wanted a baby. She made her leave with a rule, a promise, a covenant that she must never take her baby to a hospital.

‘Gbo mi, if the baby get sick, bring it here.’

‘Yes, Iya.’

‘If the baby is teething, bring it here.’

‘Yes, Iya.’

‘If the baby is running temperature, bring it here.’

‘Yes, Iya.’

‘If the baby is stooling, bring it here.’

‘Yes, Iya.’

‘Never take it to a clinic, ever.’ Those wicked nurses will swallow your child with their big noses and bulbous lips.’

 ***

But Mother knew she would come back in a couple of months and ask that she give the child a penis. Because who gives birth to a baby that is neither male nor female? Because people are going to visit her, with gifts, laughter, and joy, and will ask, Is it a baby boy or a baby girl? It shouldn’t matter what sex a baby is anyway, a baby is a baby. But some people may go as far to open the baby’s shawl, to check, to look, to wander, to gossip after. People, they will talk.

And when she returned six months later, with a radiant face, dried eyes and a happy heart, Mother sighed and gave her what she wanted. It was then that the baby started crying, shrill and strong, the signs of a brave child. Obiageli looked at the baby, held him close to her chest, and decided that the baby would be called ‘Dimkpa’.

 ***

Mother knew Obiageli would return to ask for more and she did. Some days she came with two baskets of fruits and ask for more hair– ‘This one is too strong, and scanty,’ she’d said. With a white-feathered chicken she asked for a brighter skin–‘I only want that people cherish him more,’ she’d said. She wanted brighter eyeballs. A dimple on one side of Dimkpa’s cheek. Stronger legs–‘Footballers make so much money,’ she’d said. Broader shoulders. With every request came stories of how she was now well treated in her home. How her mother-in-law now greets her with so much joy, so much happiness; how she was now accorded a new wave of respect; her name, Obiageli became Mama Dikmpa, I began to shrink.

I wondered why Mother was ready to sacrifice the whole of me for this woman; she said I would understand when I grew older. She said it like I was some girl she’d picked from the street and not the daughter she had so long cared for. She said it like I wasn’t twenty years old.  I had asked my mother why she had decided to suck the whole of me for Obiageli. What happened to the Iya Ibeji who never took anything from just any woman?

‘Am I not your daughter? Eh Mama, am I not?’ 

‘You are young and fertile. It’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Until I dry finish die before you leave me, Mama, until you replace me with fruits and chicken abi?’ I would ask her often and she would sigh and look away. Mother doesn’t explain a lot of things. I am used to her silence. I come from a long line of powerful women and if I wanted to take Obiageli’s newly found happiness away, I would have. Perhaps, we sometimes have to give up little parts of ourselves to make life worth living. It could be money, could be kindness, or like me, parts of your body. Life was not worth living for Obiageli before she had Dimkpa. A woman who had suffered at the hands of her mother-in-law and had been childless for seven years deserves happiness. And what kind of a person would I be if I took that away?

Soon, Dimkpa started teething. With this came lots of sleepless nights for Obiageli, lots of visiting to our house, and lots of painful jabs at my body. During the days I shrunk, I discovered an alternative form of palm reading. I read my past life beneath the lines of my hands and found out that even I was not a child like other children; I wasn’t normal.

My mother formed me from a collection of street women. My hair from the best hairdresser in the village. My calves from the village’s oldest fish seller–I have seen this woman’s little legs, and God, they are pretty. She boxed out my voice from the sneeze of the moi-moi seller who lived two houses away–her voice was as clear as the morning sky, as fresh as dew. I was a collection of the best, a relic. When I asked my mother how true my findings were, she nodded yes. She then told me that it was a family tradition. Even mother was a collection of other people’s bodies. In this family, we do not need men to have children, we make our children ourselves. The way we want. However we want. It was how the art of palm reading was passed down. From woman to woman, from daughter to daughter.

‘But Obiageli is not family, why her?’ I had asked. Mother said nothing? ‘Does this make you happy? Am I a vessel you can turn to a baby-making tool, Mama? Am I?’ Mother doesn’t say a lot of things. And deep down, I wondered if that was my purpose in life. To bring happiness to people, but at a cost. What is the purpose of living?

 ***

The days that came before Dimkpa’s death, Obiageli returned with a new request. She wanted him circumcised.

‘Why?’ mother asked.

‘I want him to have a fine penis, a very fine one,’ she said over two sacks of beans that sat beside her feet with polished toenails. She did something with her eyes that emphasized fine penis with some sort of urgency.

‘No! Never! Lai Lai!’ mother was angry. ‘You can do everything to your baby but you can never circumcise him. It is too late for that, too late.’

Later, I learnt that Mother was never supposed to do the forbidden ritual for someone outside the family, and for a male child, it was a grave sacrifice. Circumcising Dimkpa now may lead to his death and my death. Mother wouldn’t have that.

Obiageli, angry at mother’s refusal, left with her sacks of beans. She returned one week later, this time, with two extra sacks of beans. And from her mascara-coated face came more smiles, more gentle whispers, as though she had lying at the back of her throat a spell, as though she could change Mother’s mind.

‘It is just a small procedure, Iya, small-time like this and the thing go fall comot.’

Mother refused, again, and when she returned the third time with more sacks of beans, she excused herself, disappeared inside, sprung out of the house with a broom and chased her away. I was happy. A happiness that was cut short when Obiageli said she would do what she had to do. It was her baby after all.

Three nights before Dimkpa died. I’d woken up to meet Obiageli waiting at the front door of my mother’s house. Strapped to her slender frame was Dimkpa, crying demurely. She stared at me and I stared back, and before I could tell her that Mother was not around, that she could wait for her if she wanted, she untied Dimkpa from her back and slid him into my hands. She had been crying for days. I could tell from her eyes, encrusted with sleep, swollen and red. She turned around, and without saying a thing, walked away. 

‘Who is this child for?’ I asked after her. Silence.

 ***

Mother returned with a mouth filled with news, news about Obiageli’s aimless walk around the village. Obiageli began combing through the village. At every junction she sees people: women covered in beautiful wrappers of vivid batik patterns, men with chieftaincy titles on caps decorated with chicken tail feathers, children who played suwe in tattered underwear, teenage girls who gossiped about every village news with their mother’s business on trays balanced on their heads, chimed one sentence at them. 

 Dimkpa cannot die, those people, they tell lies.

Mother was welcomed with Dimkpa’s cries punctuating the usual silence that engulfed her house. She wasn’t surprised. The strong smell of the dead hung over his body. She opened the baby shawl covering Dimkpa’s thighs and at the sight of his penis, recoiled for a minute then muttered something, about circumcision and never taking Dimkpa to a hospital; a warning Obiageli ignored. She too left the baby with me.

I’d cleaned his poop, changed his diapers, wiped his bum, and tried to feed him. Every night before his death, his cries were weaker. Every night I read his palm, wishing that I catch something different; wishing that I could go back to the day Obiageli decided to take him to a hospital and steal him away. Every night, the wind carries Obiageli’s cries to my ears and I tell the wind that my mother and I are not liars; ‘Tell Obiageli that we do not tell lies,’ I’d say. Every night, I cry at the feet of my other body.

about the author

Mustapha Enesi is Ebira and his work has appeared in several literary magazines. His writing explores grief, longing, and acceptance. His short stories, ‘Kesandu’ and ‘Safety Pins Are Good Omens’ won the 2021 K & L Prize for African Literature and the 2021 Awele Creative Trust Award respectively. He was a finalist for the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and the 2021 Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize. His flash fiction piece, ‘Shoes’ was highly commended in Litro Magazine’s 2021 summer flash fiction contest. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria.

about the artist

Esther Alimson is a multimaterial artist who works using photography, natural and faux hair, vintage fabric, and other materials to bring her designs to life. She creates 'see and feel' work that communicates the theory of intersectional feminism and clashes of cultural identity. She utilizes fabric, paper, buttons, hair, sand, and any other innocent ingredient within her grasp. She is fanatical about art that feeds the eyes, satisfies the sense of touch, and warms the soul. Esther has had work published in Alluvian, Uppagus, Qwerty, So to Speak, Art for a New Earth, and others. Her current project is creating appliqued prints with natural hair and fabric.