OBG vs 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 in-breeding. 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 asthe vehicle chugged forward andback 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 laid 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.

“That will teach you,” he said. “When I tell you to do something, you do it. You think say because Doctor is banging you, you are special. Lie. I can do what I want with you and nothing will happen. I am not disposable like you.”

Obiageli’s secret was out. The others now knew she was Doctor’s mistress.

“I sorry for your mama,” Obiageli said calmly. “She think say she born pikin, she no know say she born bastard.”

“What did you call me?”

“Go and get me my lipstick, useless man.”

The nurses held Unaka back.

“Close your mouth,” Nonso barked at Obiageli. “You want to die here?”

Anguishing in the clutches of his fellow nurses, Unaka sought to break free. “Do you think you are the only one Doctor is banging?” he yelled. “He bangs Uche too. But does she do shakara like you? You are worthless.”

“She is sorry, Unaka,” Oluchi said. “Obiageli, tell him you are sorry.”

Oluchi was the only patient who had a contract. She was from the local community they had now left behind. And she sold her babies. Her family knew where she was, or at least they did. Some said she had sworn an oath of secrecy. She was a spy, a self-appointed head girl who reported anyone who tried to escape. She was not on Obiageli’s side. She was part of the system. There weren’t enough girls like her, so The Maternity kidnapped.

Obiageli had learned about the pro-life/pro-choice debate while watching CNN in Doctor’s study. When Doctor explained it to her, she knew right then she was pro-choice because she had been no-choice all her life. Oluchi was on the other side of the divide. She was like her pro-life nemesis.

“Na God go punish am,” Obiageli yelled.

“What’s wrong with you?” Arinze said. “We are trying to remedy the situation.”

Someone slapped Obiageli, and she fell forward.

When she regained consciousness, Unaka was poking a gun in her mouth, his face twisted as if stifling the urge to pull the trigger with a loud ‘fuck’.

He stuck the gun’s nozzle further in her mouth and shouted, “Speak now? Open ya mouth make I blow your brains.”

“Obiageli, please. Apologize,” Oluchi begged tearfully.

The road to Obiageli’s kidnap had many ifs. If her ‘aunties’ had taken her in, she wouldn’t have been Sister Confidence’s protégé. And if she hadn’t been Sister Confidence’s protégé, she wouldn’t have met Brother Sylvanus, the agent who brought her to the Maternity. She never knew why those ‘aunties’ never came back for her. Her parents did, but kept it to themselves. The night she learned the truth, she had checked her reflection in a mirror and thought, Oh? So, I’m too beautiful for a maid? The truth of the matter was, her ‘aunties’ thought she was eye-catching, a potential husband hazard in their homes. It wasn’t their actual words, but what she surmised from eavesdropping on her parents’ conversation in the kitchen yard.

“What do you think they mean by ‘not maid material’?” her father asks.

“It means she is not hungry-looking,” her mother says. “They want her to look thin and scruffy like her age-mates in the village.”

“I don’t know about that. All I know is, I have told her to stop painting her nails. She is only thirteen, for God’s sake. Mama Obiageli, look at your daughter. She paints her face and nails. Why won’t they say she is ‘not maid material’?”

“It is Confidence who is teaching her that.”

“Do something about it. Are you not her mother?”

“Papa Obiageli, you want to ship blame, abi? If you could provide three square meals for your daughter, would she spend the whole day with that harlot? Confidence feeds your daughter for you. You are not ashamed. It is thanks to her she has strong bones and teeth.”

“Ok. So she can remain in the village then. That’s what you want, abi? Am I wrong for wanting her to be raised in a decent home since I am too old to provide for her? Regardless, Mama Obiageli, you are her mother. And you are much younger than me. Don’t allow them to take your daughter from you. Or else she will turn out like Confidence.”

“Tufia. God forbid.”

Unaka stuck the nozzle further in her mouth. “Make I just waste her.”

“The smell will be bad,” Nonso said. “And we can’t just throw her out of the trailer. We will have to park, dig a grave, and bury her.”

“That will not be good,” Nurse Praise said. “It will leave us exposed.”

“Don’t do it,” Arinze said.

Unaka relaxed his grip.

So, Doctor was with Uche too? Obiageli had had her suspicions. She had honestly thought she didn’t care so much, and it wouldn’t hurt so much if he was. But it did.

Over the years, Doctor became affectionate towards her. She had tried to resist, but he enticed her with her freedom. Their affair started after an ultrasound scan. Sometimes, the nurses took the patients for scans in the city. They usually took the youngest girls, or girls they knew they could cow with a gun hidden in a jacket. Doctor had been her escort. They had gone to a place called Spartan Diagnostics:

He registers Obiageli with the lab and shows her the name on the card: Cynthia Ekeh.

“That is your name,” Doctor says. “I am your father, Dr. Ekeh. But you will call me ‘Papa’. Do you understand?”

Obiageli nods.

Doctor submits the card to a nurse at the medical examination desk, and she asks him to sit with the other patients until they are called.

After a while, Doctor nudges Obiageli and she flinches.

“Didn’t you hear your name?” he says.

A nurse straps a Sphygmomanometer around Obiageli’s arm while Doctor hovers around the examination desk.

“Her blood pressure is high,” the nurse says to Doctor. “But this is expected in her condition.” She peers at Obiageli’s card on the table. “And you are only fourteen. Eh, Cynthia? You are having a baby at fourteen?”

“It’s my fault,” Doctor says. “Her mother travelled abroad for study, and she saw it as an opportunity to misbehave. It’s my fault for not playing her mother’s role.”

“Don’t beat yourself too much. Many fathers would have opted for an abortion, but you have chosen the right thing, sir.”

“I am against abortion. I have taken this as the will of God.”

“Bless you, sir. The Lord is your muscle. After her scan, take her to see a doctor so he can prescribe something for her.”

“Thank you, nurse, but I’m a doctor. I will give her hydralazine when we get home.”

“Very well, doctor. You may proceed to our ultrasound unit.”

In the unit, a young woman with big alert eyes and full lips introduces herself as the sonographer.

“Are you the father?” she asks Doctor.

“No. Well, yes,” Doctor says. “If you mean the father of the mother.”

“I was thinking, the father of the mother. Can you give us a minute so your daughter can change into a patient gown?”

“Is that necessary? I’m her father. And she’s still a child.”

“She’s a big girl. Ok. Let me ask her. Cynthia, would you like your daddy to be in the room while you change?”

Obiageli shakes her head.

Doctor shrugs. “I’ll wait outside.”

“Thank you,” the technician says. “I’ll call for you when we are ready.”

Doctor shuts the door.

Obiageli hurriedly takes off her clothes and puts on the sky-blue gown.

“Can I use your phone, ma?” she asks the technician. “I want to call my mother.”

“Sure.” The technician hands Obiageli her mobile phone.

Doctor pops his head through the door. Startled, Obiageli pushes the phone back into the technician’s hand but she’s not looking and it clatters to the floor.

“Do you need this?” Doctor says, holding up Obiageli’s hospital card.

“No, I don’t. You may come in now. We’re done, sir.”

Doctor sees the phone on the floor. “Did she just drop your phone?”

“I said come in, sir. You will see what we were doing in a minute.”

Doctor wades in.

The technician picks up her phone, turns on the flashlight, and hands it to Obiageli. She raises a tube of ‘Aquasonic Gel’ and squints at it. “Now, shine it here,” she says to Obiageli, “so I can read what is written there.”

After the scan, Doctor and Obiageli had gone to a motel and shacked up for a few hours. Their assignations continued in the hospital with the knowledge of a few nurses. When his wife travelled to the U.S. for their son’s college graduation, they had the place to themselves. (No one had the temerity to barge into Doctor’s office without knocking first, or bang on his door when it was locked.) Amara knew about them. Obiageli told her. She told her she did not love him; she only did it to win small favours. And perhaps a big one.

Those ‘small favours’ came: he secretly bought her gifts like makeup and hair products—and he even surprised her with a Maybelline Superstay lipstick. He would see her wearing them and exclaim, ‘Omalichanwa’, like it was mere banter.

She hated him for selling her babies. But sometimes, she dreamed he did not have a wife, and they had released all the patients and started a real maternity open to the public. She could never admit this to Amara, who hated him with a passion. Deep within her, she knew she would feel betrayed if she discovered he was with any of the others. But that was before she heard what truly happened to Amara.

Obiageli remained still. She did not want to provoke Unaka, not with his gun in her mouth.

Unaka removed the gun and throttled her. He throttled her so hard he was choking the life out of her. And when he didn’t release her, she realized this was it. The world between consciousness and the great unknown blurred. And then it formed patterns. She was ready to join Amara. There was only one problem with that: Amara’s killer would have the satisfaction of killing her too.

There was a time when an epidemic broke out in the maternity. Amara was among those who fell sick and had to be taken to the hospital. The nurses told them they had been discharged and Doctor had released them. But two nights ago, Obiageli learned the truth.

At midnight, OBG strolls into Doctor’s study in her bathrobe and lingerie. Doctor hunches over some papers on his desk.

“Would you like to check my pregnancy complication?” she says. Doctor usually tells his wife a patient has a complicated pregnancy whenever he plans to sleep over at the maternity.

“Not tonight, I’m busy,” he says. “I want to know what things to move and what things to leave behind and sell later.” He frowns at a list.

OBG stretches on the bed. “I miss Amara so much. How I wish I had fallen sick. I would have been free too. You said after three kids. I’ve had five.”

“You don’t know what I did for you,” he says. “You are lucky you didn’t end up like Amara.”

“What do you mean?”

“Babe, I’m busy. Not now.”

OBG rises to leave.

“Do you remember,” he says, “the time you asked me if I knew clients were using condoms with the patients?”

“Yes. You told me not to ask questions.”

“I saved your life.”

She sits on the edge of the bed. “How?”

“I told my nurses to leave you out of it?”

“Out of what?”

He takes off his reading glasses. “Look. I’m not a perfect man, so don’t judge me. I’ve made some mistakes. I listened to bad advice and turned this place into a brothel. We were so broke at the time I could have become a street hawker. That was when your friend fell sick.”

“What are you saying?”

“I didn’t test the clients for STDs like I should have. I simply gave them condoms and trusted them to use them.”

“Did Amara die in hospital?”

“They weren’t taken to hospital, Babe. They tested HIV positive. Try to understand. How could I give them that kind of news? Plus, they would have to be on anti-retroviral drugs for the rest of their lives. They were bad market.”

“So what did you do?” she asks tearfully.

“I let Unaka take care of it. Look. I know I did wrong, but I did you good. Always remember…”

She races out of the study.

“Babe. Come back here.”

Obiageli coughed and gasped for air. Unaka had released her.

Dumebi stood behind Unaka with a penknife tipped in blood.

Unaka pressed his fingers against his ribs and raised them to his face. They were smeared with blood.

Arinze conked Dumebi. The other nurses did the same.

“Why will you do that? You want to kill him?” they said to her.

“Mummy,” Dumebi wept.

Dumebi had saved Obiageli. Now she was in danger. Or was she? The nurses often beat her for not cleaning up after her menses, for not doing her chores, or for crying and not shutting up. Dumebi was beaten a lot. They would beat her and leave her alone.

She was the only patient who was yet to become pregnant. The only patient whose parents visited.

She said they had brought her to The Maternity to learn how to sew. Amara thought the nurses kept her because she was an easy lay. Nurses weren’t allowed to impregnate patients without Doctor’s approval. They could score with a condom, but only if the girls consented. Rapists lost their jobs. (Doctor’s wife made sure of this.) Unfortunately, Doctor’s protection did not extend to Dumebi: he didn’t see her as one of his own. Amara said she had begged Dumebi to tell her parents what the nurses did to her when they next visited. But Dumebi didn’t listen. And it wasn’t because her parents would have become prisoners too if the nurses got wind of it—she couldn’t have known this; she wasn’t that smart—but because it was a guilty pleasure for her. “She needs our prayers,” Amara had said.

The nurses kicked Dumebi as she laid on the floor. No one paid attention to Unaka, who cocked his pistol and aimed it at Dumebi.

Obiageli was like a headless chicken. She had had their throat slit and would run around for a bit before she slumped and died. She was wounded, confused, frantic, and sure to die. She had nothing to lose. Why not do some good with her last breath?

She rammed into Unaka, dragged him through the trailer doors, over the slack rope, and into a whoosh of winds that dulled the senses like a yawn.

…

A twinge to the brain brought back her awareness. She was bouncing about a bonnet, unable to control the physics of her drop—she had collided with a windshield and was about to roll off the car. She shut her eyes, believing she would never open them again.

…

Her left shoulder hurt. She had fallen on her side and was now lying on her back. The car that broke her fall, a silver Toyota Corolla, was parked on the side of the road. The nurses were screaming—the trailer was crawling up the hill and the nurses peering from the doors were yelling (perhaps for the driver in the truck to stop). Two nurses jumped off the trailer, which was moving at an almost-stationary pace.

“My leg,” someone howled.

It was Unaka. He was further downhill, clutching his knee in a pool of blood. Between them, a gun glinted in shades of grey. Obiageli had never held a gun before, let alone fire one. She imagined it would feel more empowering than anything she had ever held.

She was right.

She raised it. Pointed it at Unaka’s back. And wondered whether to use two hands or one.

She fired.

She missed.

The shot rattled Unaka, who belly-crawled into the nearby bush. Next, she turned to the two nurses who had jumped off the trailer. The driver of the Toyota saw her aiming the gun in his direction, got back in his car and screeched off. She banged out a bullet meant for an approaching nurse. Birds in a tree scattered like shards in the sky, their rowdy caws turning melodic. The two nurses scuttled back to the tractor-trailer and clambered in. The Toyota overtook them and disappeared over the summit. The tractor-trailer had stopped. (The driver probably contemplated a long U-turn on the narrow two-lane.) After a while, it continued up the hill.

The bushes to the side of the road stopped at a kola nut farm. Beyond that, red-earth hills ravaged by slate-grey boulders and a tropical wilderness formed the skyline. A pond glinted tan-green in the hills.

An engine purred in the distance. She edged off the road and staggered to her feet. An old white bus clanked past with a gaggle of passengers.

Unaka hobbled between evenly spaced kola nut trees. She fired at him and hit a trunk. Her aim was better.

“Where is my lipstick?” she shouted. “Don’t waste my time.”

Moving through the trees and firing, she steered him away from the road, away from motorists. She was doing the very thing Sister Confidence told her never to do: chase a boy. And she would chase him until she ran out of bullets.

Sister Confidence sits with a foot on the seat. “You need to learn how to use boys, OBG. That’s a girl’s power.” She leans forward, hugs her left knee, and applies red nail polish to a toenail. “Make him think he is your oga whereas, it’s the other way around.”

The acetate smell of nail polish fills the room.

Obiageli lies on her side on the floor mattress. “How, Sister?”

“By looking good and sending blood to their thingy. If they say come, you go. Don’t worry. They will do the spending.”

Obiageli laughs.

Sister Confidence strokes her pinky toe with the nail brush. “We have been using them since the beginning of creation, but they don’t know that.”

“Sister, ah-ah. You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Didn’t Eve use Adam? Who picked the fruit from the tree? We allow them to be family heads because we want to live in families that include husbands for us and fathers for our children.”

“Correct.” Obiageli grins.

“They are the cheap, rugged, heavy duty but simple machines, while we are the expensive, delicate, complex machines that handle any kind of work that requires finesse,” She covers the vial of nail polish with the nail brush’s brush cap and lowers her leg. “What can the human body do that is more complex than carrying a child to term? We are higher in grade. Still, we need each other. Unfortunately, it takes finesse to live together in peace, so we submit. Or appear to submit. I prefer to call it committing to our dreams. But when those dreams turn to illusions, it is then that they will know. Our manner of staying in control is subtle. They won’t understand it because finesse is not their thing.”

Sister Confidence had introduced Brother Sylvanus to her. She said he was a guide who took migrants to Europe. And even said she had paid for her travel.

“Where is my lipstick?” she screamed at Unaka. “When I tell you to do something, you do it.”