I stand rejected ( Amina's lamentation)

Amina’s Lamentation. The laughter of the Irish Nun woke me up from my slumber and brought me back to reality; I had been dreaming of the school field at Gusau, the brightly coloured walls of the classrooms which I had cherished and longed to attend one day just like Aisha my friend. I remember when we used to sneak into the premises and sit on the desk and pretended an invisible teacher was writing on the small blackboard hanging on the wall. “Master me,” Aisha would quickly say, raising her hand up to answer a question from our imaginary teacher. The school was my dream but the stench coming from under me was my reality, my bane and my predicament. I was lying on my mat at the centre for rejected wives thrown into chastisement because we were not woman enough to deliver a child. “Amina, you are awake,” the Nun said on noticing my eyes were open as she made her way towards me. She came close and gently pulled her nose mask in place to keep my smell away; I was not annoyed by her gesture, neither was I embarrassed; she was the only one that came close to me and the other young girls and wives at the centre; she was the only person that still tried to make me smile and constantly told me that Allah and her Virgin Mary would make me whole again but I knew deep inside me that help was faraway, just like my father who virtually sold me to his friend as a wife; just like my mother who after collecting my dowry and the gifts items from Alhaji, my supposed husband, now found me a nuisance because I could not control my muscles again. It started during the season of the Locust when I was 11 years old; my father’s small millet farm got eaten by the rodents and put every one of us in a state of hunger. My father had four wives and 18 children. My mother was the third wife and I was her last daughter, my elder brothers were nomads that reared their cattle in the distant cities of Jos and Makurdi. I was living with my other siblings during the famine. My father popularly called Danladi, could not cater for us and had taken to drinking Burukutu , a local gin that his wives were left with providing for their children. Aisha and I were regarded as the smartest girls in Gusau then because we were could already recite some verses of the Koran and would soon join the boys in the elementary school. Admission into the school then was a physical test; your right hand must touch your left ear when put across the head. We failed earlier as kids and could not touch the ear but who wanted to train a girl at Zamfara. The month Aisha’s mother registered her in school was the time I was betrothed to Alhaji Danjuma; a groundnut merchant from Kafanchan. He was the Messiah to my family and the genesis of my woes. I was a child, he was already a grandfather. “Alhaji will take care of you,” my mother assured me the day I was handed over as his fourth wife. I stepped out in my traditional maiden attire to see my husband and noticed his coloured teeth; I later got to know that he was my father served him as a houseboy when he was a teenager. I became his wife and was horse ridden to Kafanchan. “Put your finger in your mouth and bite hard when he comes to you at night,” my mother advised, “Don’t make him think we did not train you well.” I did not understand her neither has my body blossomed to womanhood but I was his wife. That night when Alhaji came into my hut, he took me and ordered me to remove my clothes. I cried when he tore through me and thought I would die throughout the time he was on top of me smelling of dry gin and kola nuts. “You will bear me a son,” he said as he left; I looked at my legs and saw blood and semen. His other wives cleaned me up and assured me it will get better when I give birth and become fuller. I became pregnant and could not bear the bulge, the sickness in the morning and the nauseating smells that made me vomit a lot. One day after many months, I felt my stomach coming down and alerted Mother, the oldest of us wives. “Let us go, the baby is due,” she informed. For the next three days I was in labour; I was made to drink many concoctions and beaten to concentrate and push harder for the baby to come out of me. “She is too small for the baby’s head to come out,” they told me while I was writhing in pains. “We will cut you further to bring the child out.” I lost consciousness because the pain was too much. “He died,” was the first thing my mother told me, “His head was stuck inside you for a long time and you could not push hard,” she said. My husband accused me of killing the son he had always wanted. For weeks I lay on the mat in my hut unable to move my legs. “Can’t you stay without wetting yourself?” my mother asked me when I could not control my urine again, “You need to be strong to bear your husband another son.” That was her problem, my husband’s concern and what the family needed from me; I was a child expected to deliver a child. When my situation did not change after some time, Alhaji ordered that I should be taken to the back of the house very far from them so they could breathe properly. I relocated and then my ordeal started; one by one everybody got tired of me and kept their distance. “Let me take you to where women like you are,” Mother told me and brought me to Zaria. “You have Vesico Vagina Fistula (VVF),” I was told, “but we will help you live,” the Irish Nun assured me. Five years down and she is still helping me and I am grateful. Aisha appeared one day and has been coming since then. She is in Form 5 and promised to help me. I don’t know how she would do it. I wait for her help but until then, I stand rejected.