“Please,” he say, voice down. “This thing is in our family for many years. I know people who die because they didn’t do this baff. Even my mother, when she was pregnant of me and my six brothers, she do the baff. We must be quick.”
I don’t like this ideas at all. I don’t like that Khadija bring me come here and put me inside this nonsense mess with her. But she look as if she about to die, and if it will save her, then I must be helping her. I must. I think back to when I first come to Morufu’s house, how Khadija will wipe my crying tears every night and give me pepper soup to drink. How, even when she was feeling sick, she make a hot water for me to baff that day after Labake was breaking her clay pot.
It was Khadija that make living with Morufu not so bad. Because Khadija was there, I been able to smile and laugh on many days. Now I must help her smile and laugh and see her baby boy too.
I must.
My heart is sounding boom in my ears as I bend down and pick Khadija’s hand. It feel like a ice block as I hook it around my neck. “Where is this river?”
“Not far,” Bamidele say. “One mile walking.”
“Why don’t we just take taxi or motorcycle?”
He look around, shake his head. “I have a new wife,” he say. “What will people say if they see me with another pregnant woman inside a taxi or motorcycle?”
I swallow the curse in my mouth. So the foolish man have a wife, and he also give Khadija pregnants? What was Khadija even thinking when she was doing all this? And how is she even sure she is carrying a boy-baby when the midwifes or the doctors have not check it?
In Idanra town, which is not far from Ikati, there is one doctor there, he will come once in the month to help pregnant womens. I hear he have a magic eye-glass and tee-vee for checking if a baby is a boy or girl. I must ask Morufu to carry Khadija to the doctor.
“We must go now,” Bamidele say. “We can take the back route over there.”
He bend down on the other side of Khadija, pick up her hand. “One, two, three . . . carry her!”
Together, we drag Khadija to where Bamidele say the river is.
CHAPTER 15
Khadija is warring with God for her soul.
Me and Bamidele, we are holding her, begging her to be talking. To not be sleeping. I get to talking too, I talk to her about Mama, about Kayus and Born-boy, about Papa. I tell her more things that I want her to know, and things I am not wanting her to know. When I ask her, “You are still here? Khadija? You are still here?” she will make a moan, and I will get to talking again, saying anything that is entering my mind.
I think of Death, how it come and take my mama and kill her dead.
Death, he tall like a iroko tree, with no body, no flesh, no eyes, only mouth and teeths. Plenty teeths, the thin of pencil and the sharp of blade for biting and killing. Death is not having legs. But it have two wings of nails and arrows. Death can fly and kill the bird in the air dead, strike them from the sky and fall them to ground, scatter their brain. It can be swimming too, swallow the fishes inside the river.
When it is wanting to kill a person, it will fly, keeping hisself over their head, sailing like a boat on top the water of the soul, waiting for when it will just snatch the person from the earth.
Death can take form of anything. It clever like that. Today, it can take form of a car, cause a accident; tomorrow it can shape hisself as a gun, a bullet, a knife, a coughing-blood sickness. It can take form of a dry palm frond and flog a person until the person is dying. Like Lamidi the farmer. Or as a rope to squeeze all the life from a person, like Tafa, Asabi’s lover.
Is Death following Khadija now? And if Khadija die, will it begin to be following me too?
We take the path that Bamidele is showing us, the floor is so full of mud, it is sucking our feets inside it and we are fighting to pull it back out, making the walking even more hard for us, until I see the edge of water. I never feel so much hope in my life.
“Khadija,” I say. “You do well, we have nearly reach.”
She groan, a weak sound.
“This is Kere river,” Bamidele say as we cut out from the path and find ourselfs in front of the river.
The water is spreading out like a big field of glass, the top of it shining under the early-morning sun.
There are two girls drawing water with their clay pot from the edge. One of them look up and see us, nod her head and continue to draw the water. One fisherman is paddling his canoe in the river, throwing the fishing net, spreading it like a peacock wing over the water.
In my hand, Khadija slack herself. I slip on my feets, catch myself before me and her will be landing on the floor. Me and Bamidele, we make her to lie down. I make her bag a pillow and put her head on top it. I kneel down in her front, take the edge of my cloth, wipe her face.
“Let us do the baff,” I say to Bamidele.
Bamidele, he is sweating now too. He swing his head around the river, turn his face to me. “I will go and bring the special soap.”
I look Khadija. Her eyes are closing.
I pinch her, she open the eyes, close them back.
“How long?” I ask him. I don’t want him to leave me and Khadija here, in front of a river, inside a strange village. “When you will come back?”
“Soon,” Bamidele say, wiping his hand on the side of his trouser. “Five minutes.”
“Too long,” I say. “Two minutes. Run quick and come back.”
“I take a shortcut,” he say. “Off her cloth for me before I come.”
“I am not offing her cloth,” I say. “How will I naked a pregnant woman by myself?” Part of me want to head-butt this Bamidele in the nose for talking like a fool. “I am not doing anything for her until you are coming back. You hear me?”
“I am coming,” he say. He bend his head, say something to Khadija’s ear. She nod her head, be like ten minutes before her head move.
Bamidele stand to his feets. “I am going now,” he say, and before I can talk anything, he turn around and start running back to the path we just come from.
Just then, a thunder scatter boom from the sky.
It is Death, making a announcement, giving us big, big warning.
* * *
Many minutes pass, and Bamidele have not come back.
I hold Khadija’s hand, counting the seconds, the minutes, and watching the river. The two girls by the water are helping each other, putting their clay pot on top each of their head. When they reach my front, they stop. They look like twins childrens. Their face is the same round of tomato, the same hole in their left cheek when they smile, but one of them is having skin the color of cocoa powder, and the other, her skin is the yellow-brown of fresh bread.