Who Would Marry A Half Woman – Fiction by Nigerian Writer Despan Kwardem

Tomorrow, she would just have to walk into the hospital theatre and die. Eva decided as she listened with disinterest to the unending drawl of Doctor Philip. She’d always suspected it would come to this.

“…we’ll perform a total mastectomy followed by radiation.” he concluded, his tone sombre. He tried to assuage her fears by cleverly masking any underlying danger with a professional smile – that plastic smile doctors flash at their patients as though it was a template from medical school – and some technical terms garnished with harmless words she could understand.

But Eva wasn’t fooled. The proof of her womanhood was being challenged. The jelly in her had matured; only a thin film of courage held her from busting. She stared at him sheepishly from across the table in his small office with its suffocating hospital smell. Although an automatic dispenser laboured to overpower it, spraying mist of freshener with a snake-like hissing sound every ten or so seconds, the smell, like birthmark, stubbornly clung to the upper roof of her nasal cavity, adding to her discomfort.

Dr Philip took her hands. “Reconstruction can be done by either salvaging your own breast tissue or using silicone or water-filled implants.”

Minutes later, Eva eased her way out of the hospital and returned home. A pleasant looking but unsure 26-year-old who, only hours earlier was happiness personified, now faced the greatest challenge in her life. It started as a small lump in her breast. She noticed it three years ago during her Youth Service, but made nothing of it. She’d experienced occasional nipple retraction, which had frightened her, but most of her friends said it was the cold in Jos. Then when she started having pains in the nipples, they blamed it on her bra type. She changed it, but after some time, the pains returned, sometimes engulfing the entire breast. That was when she sought medical help.

The young doctor told her it was just some physiological changes occurring in her body and she had nothing to worry about. He recommended she changed her bra too. Stupidly, she believed him. Imagine her shock when Dr Philip told her it was now a stage three invasive cancer, but offered no explanation. She had to find out by herself that it meant the tumor was larger than 5cm and had spread to three auxiliary lymph nodes, including the lymph nodes near the breastbone. She couldn’t understand why medics in Nigeria don’t tell their patients the whole truth of their situations.

Somehow, she managed to survive the day as it crawled by with its worries. And then came nightfall. Dinner was nice; the news was boring, you could always trust NTA. The night breeze drove away the depressing heat of the day and soon everyone was gone. It was time to relive her evening routine. She picked her bible and settled down for her nightly devotion.

Then the attack began.

Suddenly, a foreboding sense of dread gripped her, forming a horrid wall that blocked everything out of her sight. But why her? What did she do to deserve this? Hadn’t she prayed hard enough? She may have defaulted in giving her tithe, but at least she’d tried. She never failed to attend church activities – Sunday worship, bible studies, midweek service, etc, except she had a good reason. So why would God choose to punish her this way? How could she live without one breast? Who would marry a half woman?

The last of six children, Eva was the only person who went beyond secondary school in her family, but had been three years now without a job. Where would they find three hundred thousand naira for the treatment; chemo-something? “The alternative was to cut off the breast immediately,” Dr Philip had said without even thinking how she could feel. Was it the small money she made from selling bed sheets or the peanut mummy made from selling vegetables they would use? There was no point talking to Jude, her boyfriend.

The dude had been forming busy ever since she told him she’d been diagnosed with cancer. He won’t pick her calls, won’t return her calls, and won’t even reply messages. And whenever they met at their church band rehearsal, it was always one excuse or another. Things took a dip after he got this job as the Logistics Officer with an international NGO working in the North East. He can’t tell her he wasn’t making money – somebody who bought a car, bought a piece of land for 1.5m and renovated their father’s house, all within six months of moving to Maiduguri.

But he wasn’t like that before he got the job. Maybe it was something she did. Or he’d found another girl – one of those Shuwa girls with their smooth skin? Those Maiduguri girls sure know how to love. Her chest burned as though it was the cauldron of a blazing furnace. Had she not been good enough? She couldn’t say she was a saint, but at least she kept herself until they graduated into courtship with Jude; and only after he promised her marriage. Now look at it – everything was crumbling. The doctor said it would have been best if they flew her to India, as if India was somewhere at the back of their house. Where would they get three million naira for that?

And God was silent as though he didn’t care. She stopped and tried to push this thought away, not risking offending God further. But she needed answers. What went wrong? Was it something she did? The doctor said it was hereditary; something about inherited gene mutations in tumor suppressor genes. Those medical jargons they used when they want to confuse you.

But she’d attended every deliverance prayer – travelling everywhere. She even spent the other Christmas at the Synagogue, and saw the Prophet. He prayed for her, and told her she was healed, and made her to buy their holy water. No, only Catholics used Holy water. She didn’t know what the Prophet’s water was called but she bought twenty litres of it, and had her bath with it – a cup for each bucket, and also drank it for three months. She kept to the rules. God knew she tried. So was God too angry with her or was her ancestral curse too strong for God to deal…

She clasped her palms firmly across her mouth.

If she continued thinking this way, she might find herself committing blasphemy. Even if she must complain, maybe just a little, but she won’t. Instead, she would trust God harder, believing he knows what he was doing in her life. Okay, she had breast cancer; they would perform surgery to remove it tomorrow. What she needed right now was to rest, to sleep, to stop worrying.

She turned off the light and climbed into bed. She was now alone in her world, her private world. The busy world had gone to sleep with its noise, its distractions, its false refuge. However, her mind stayed awake. It was playing back the entire hospital episode, scene by scene, motion by motion. She could hear something shuffling. At first it wasn’t clear, but soon she understood.

They were voices.

Little voices; distant, indiscernible, not attributable to any person or any creature, but voices all the same. They sounded hollow, twisted; like from a horror movie, painting grotesque images of everything that could go wrong… ‘supposing this, supposing that…’

“Nothing will happen to me,” She yelled back at them, trying to outthink them, out talk them. Instead they became louder, more insistent, appealing to her senses, appealing to her reasoning. And before long, they won. They were right.

She imagined herself on that hospital bed, numbed by a dose of anaesthesia, watching the surgeon, a burly man with protruding forehead, half his face masked by a drab green piece of hospital something, towering over her, with some jumper-cable kind of equipment, his hands stretched out like the branches of a palm tree. His eyeballs, enlarged through the special magnifying glass he wore, were even more frightening. Thick veins in dirty red carved jagged lines against his sclera, causing him to look like an angry god about to discharge a vial of vindictive on an erring mortal. With a swift strike, he dislodged her breast. Some minutes later, the steady beep from the machine that monitored her progress increased. The doctor’s eyes, now resembling a blood moon, dilated further as he bellowed urgent orders at his staff…

“I told you…” that eerie voice mocked her, “you’re going to die now.”

The machine was beeping faster, and faster, until it drew a long drawl and then became silent. The doctor placed the defibrillator on her chest and gave the signal…

Eva bolted up, panting. She was perspiring profusely. Thank God, it was just her imagination. But they say imagination is a pre-play of the future. Did it mean God was showing her what would happen tomorrow? Would the doctor make a mistake? Or would NEPA cut the power? Did the hospital have a standby generator?

It was a general hospital; though there was nothing ‘General’ about it. Apart from being dirty and smelly, its eczema-ed walls were all starving of fresh paint or a complete makeover. The floors were broken in many places, while the walkways leaked. Maybe they should just call it a ‘Corporal’ or ‘Sergeant’ hospital. She laughed at her dry joke, her mind travelling back to the first day she made such an observation. She was a kid then, about five or six years old; her mother took her to see a doctor.

While they waited for him, she’d asked, “Mummy, why don’t we go to a Sergeant hospital?”

“What do you mean, dear?” her mother had asked, confused.

“They call this general hospital but daddy’s a Sergeant; it is Uncle Deme that is a General…”

Her mother busted into laughter as she replied, “you won’t kill me, Eva.”

Her father died not long after that. She couldn’t remember much of him, but she remembered he used to tell her stories of the war while he polished his boots. It never made sense to her. Why would people in the same country fight a war against themselves? And with that came a more disturbing realization for her: nothing was certain in Nigeria anymore. Nothing guaranteed. Not even uncertainty itself.

What would happen to her dream of becoming an air hostess? She had the height, the face, the physique, everything – just like the ones on Ethiopian Airlines. She’d seen them in the adverts. She’d even practiced how they walked, how they smiled. Oh how she loved to serve people. It was just in her.

Elizabeth, Ezekiel, Emma; they all went to good secondary schools, came out with excellent grades, but for reasons no one could explain, they were now slaves to alcohol and drugs, no marriages, no families of their own. Eunice, her immediate elder sister and the only person who ever married, couldn’t have children. They said it was because an old witch had sold her womb and replaced it with a fibroid. The family did everything to get it out, but nothing worked. A prayer man said only the woman could reverse the curse; unfortunately, the old woman had long died. Would she end up a ‘nobody’ like all the rest of her older siblings?

Had she seen the last of it today or would she walk out of that theatre into the sunshine again? Their sunshine. Only those who grew up in Gana Ropp would understand that sunshine. It rose every morning from behind Lekka’eh, their rocky hills, with a promise and a hope, banishing the darkness that had held the night hostage. Their sunshine: that was the only thing certain in her world. For certain, her end had come. It ran in the family. She would just have to walk into the hospital theatre and die.

Tomorrow.

At least that was about the only thing that was certain. A chill ran down her spine and she became afraid; really afraid as the battle raged ferociously. The darkness pressed her, squeezing her, draining out her strength, her very will to fight.

“It’s just in your imagination,” a voice tried to tell her.

“Is it?” Another queried. The voices grew louder, screaming and laughing her to scorn.

“Your place is here with us!” a third added. They were winning, she could sense it. Crooked ugly claws from wicked shadowy beings grabbed her and tried to take her away. Her weak flailing hands were helpless against their powerful grip, her mouth felt frozen, unable to even scream. They were taking her somewhere. Was she dying? “Come to your lover here,” repeated the voice, “just end everything and rest.”

Yes, she would end it now. Life was uncertain, her future was uncertain; everything was uncertain. There was no point going on.

Gingerly, she came down from the bed, drenched in her sweat, and sauntered to her dresser, where she found the bottle of diazepam she brought from the hospital. She opened it and poured some tablets into her palm. These little pills had been her friends: they were the only ones who understood what she was going through; they took away her worries, her pain and put her to sleep.

Now they would help her one more time – for the last time; but this was the most important. ‘But they’re so few,’ she reasoned, ‘the problem was far bigger, they would be powerless against it.’ She added some more pills. ‘Even this won’t be sufficient,’ she thought. She wanted a quantity that would end it quickly. She would miss them quite alright, but they would have no use to her after now. She emptied the bottle and poured everything into her mouth.

“Oh, she didn’t have water.” Forcing her friends down her throat without any lubrication was disrespectful. Even if it was the last time, she would treat her friends with respect. However, before she got the water, her tongue communicated their bitter taste.

Then

“No!” She screamed an objection. No, nothing was certain. Not even trying to die. The vehemence with which she blurted the thought startled even her. She spat everything out. Nothing was certain; not even the doctor’s report. Deep from within her, from crevices she couldn’t reach before, somewhere beneath the fears, from behind the shadow of death came a voice.

A small still voice.

It sounded distant, far, quite unlike the first urgent voice. As she listened, it became louder, clearer, ‘for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy one to see corruption…’ The voice seemed to issue from a small shaft of light, which glowed in brilliant bluish-white. As she stared at it, captivated by both its beauty and brilliance, it glowed brighter, mushrooming out into several spikes. Like lightning, it struck at the shadow, piercing through the darkness that enveloped her, eating it up, until the darkness ceased to exist.

In its place grew a shoot – the word that took on life and became the Truth; the truth spoke to her heart: She was a child of destiny. Christ had blotted out all ordinances – prohibitions, pronouncements, curses, invocations –that stood against her. Now heaven held no record of any charge against her; neither should hell, because, by blotting it out, He had caused it to cease to exist.

He had uncreated it.

And so, she wasn’t going to die. She would come out victorious; and live to tell her children and grandchildren her story. She could see them playing around her – tiny legs running around the house in circles, screaming in excitement, hiding in plain sight behind the sofas or couches, or anything they could stick their faces into, even if the rest of their bodies showed…

Children.

They would always be children. She could feel their tiny powerless hands dragging her to the bed and urging her to tell them bedtime stories.

Her stories.

Oh these little toys you couldn’t toy away. What did they know about stories? She had so many of them, but her favourite was the simple but amazing of them all: ‘Who would marry a half woman?’ she’d titled it. Thanks to that hospital. She smiled at the memory and a slight movement in the dresser mirror brought her back from the future.

She looked into the mirror. A tear rolled from her swollen eyes, down her cheek and fell off. Its silver grey reflection left a small sparkle in her eyes. It was a sparkle of light; multi-coloured like the rainbow. It held the promise of everything beautiful. It danced lightly around her and finally settled on her heart, engraving this incredible assurance into her: ‘Because He lives, she could face tomorrow.’

Nothing could ever be truer. She got back into bed. Eva wasn’t going to die. She would walk into that hospital theatre tomorrow but she wasn’t going to die. As sure as the night would pass and the sun would rise in the morning, she too would come out of it. A smile played at the edges of her mouth as she fell into a dreamless sleep.