Hope

“Hope.”
First she lisped the word while gasping for whatever infinitesimal volume of air her nostrils or mouth could admit, and then slowly, like the tentative but miscalculated steps of a drunkard, the word fell out of her mouth before she could stop it. There was a naturalness to the way the name suddenly fell out of her mouth like a fruit from a tree. It was as though she had rehearsed the name before. Perhaps she knew for a certainty that she would give birth to a girl and she’d call her Hope. So garnering all the energy she could, she said it again, tenaciously and with all airs of certainty.

“Her name is Hope.”
She was heavy with tears, a slithering sadness coursed through her. It was as if a lump of tear was trapped in her throat; the words which came out were soiled with the tears which had taken custody of her eyes. She heaved a huge sigh of relief as she stared at the little creature which lay in her hands, flapping its wing-like hands obliviously. No sooner had the baby murmured its first indistinct language, than a lingering smile aligned itself on her face. But to the distant onlooker, who was a dogged-looking nurse clad in white robe, the smile appeared veiled on her face, trapped in the time warp of sadness and happiness.

“Children are a gift of nature,” she could still recall her Pastor’s words when she'd approached him with her predicament. In the society, a 20-year old girl who had dropped out of school due to her inability to shut shop, her legs, was treated like a scourge to the society. However when she had approached her Pastor with her situation, which seemed to putrefy by the day, her pastor’s words had given her the reassurance she craved earnestly. Even her parents weren’t as generous with words when she became pregnant.

“Babies are nature’s way of telling us that there is good in every evil. No matter how badly friends and family treat you, you cannot let that be a reason to give up on the unborn child. Your story is not yet over. Keep the baby.”

So acting on her pastor’s illuminating words, she’d kept the baby. When the baby had given its first cry, she’d found out how true her pastor’s words were. Children were indeed a gift of nature. And no matter how nonsensical the baby’s sounds might have been, no matter the obliviousness which towered over her like a flower drooping over a wilted stem, she believed that nature had given her a reason to smile. So she allowed it, she pried her fears and insecurities open while lying on the maternity bed, and allowed herself to drown in the moment. The moment of complete freedom. The moment of unbridled happiness.

After no less than fifteen minutes of fidgeting with the baby’s ever hunting hands as though they were a delicate flower which she feared would break if she tended gruffly, she stopped brusquely. All the joy in her eyes disappeared, seeking shelter in a faraway land. It was as if she had had an unsettling epiphany; taking a cursory look at the horde of smiling faces who stood arrayed beside her bed like wares at the market, she couldn’t pinpoint one who was a family member. Not even the closest relative was there. She sniffed loudly as a wave of sadness washed over her. She felt alone, lonesome, a victim of familial abandonment. But even though she wasn’t well versed in the nitty-gritty of parenting, she knew without a shred of doubt, that she couldn’t look sad in the presence of her baby. So she swallowed hard and let the slaughtering emotions disappear into the dark depths of her stomach. Then suddenly she started smiling again. A smile which soon graduated into a guffaw which drew the attention of a select people. Some of them gave her questioning looks, oblivious of why she could quench such a boisterous laughter after looking as though she were going to die in the cold waters of sadness. But she knew why.

“You cannot have this baby.” Her mother had said, pointing to her protruding stomach as though what she harboured in there was but a forbidden fruit of an unreasonably large size.

“Listen to me,” she’d said, “We’re barely making ends meet here. I will not sit down and watch you run your life into the gutters. This family needs you more than the baby could ever need you. Plus I am not ready to raise the son of a ‘ghost’.”
Her mother’s words were all so clear to her now. But for some eerie reason the words only made her smile more. She’d feared the words would turn into shards and cut her deeply, severing every fibre of her happiness. But they were as blunt as a cutlass left to the tender mercies of the Sahara desert.
“You are a very smart young girl. You have your whole life in front of you. You can always have a new one when the right time comes. I only want the best for you and this family. Please don’t break my heart. You have no idea how parenting works. You will struggle to cope on your own. Please assess your options carefully before deciding to bear the child of an unknown man.”

Her mother had dealt the nail her in coffin that night. She’d touched a nerve with the truth. She hated that everything she’d said was true. Especially the fact that the little creature she bore in her stomach was the result of a night’s mistake. That singular truth bore a hole into her brain. Despite all that she couldn’t bring herself to abort the baby.
That night she’d remained tucked away in her room while her mind ran wild with the perusal of her options. However it was also the very night that she’d realized her mother had a darkness in her soul. That despite her uproar of unending prayers every night, she had failed to tame the darkness in her. Also she’d had no doubt after that night that, sometimes when the brain had too much to peruse, it drowned out the calories of time, such that, time ran at a frozen pace. She had known in her heart, without an air of doubt, that she couldn’t stay in her parent’s house and keep the baby. So while her parents rubbed it off about their financial insecurities she used it as an opportunity to sneak out of the house with what little belongings she had.
It had been the most difficult decision of her life but while examining her options she’d remembered a quote she’d seen painted on a wall, which had gripped at her heart: if you let your fears and insecurities blight you, you’ll never be able to do what you want. Such simple words, they had seemed when she set sight on them, but that night in her unruly room, shrouded in misery, she’d found them the deadlock-breaker, the thing which gave her the nudge to decide to leave her parents’ house.

So she’d left before the cock’s crow.

Through the populated markets of Kumasi, she’d found temporary homes; she’d sheltered in front of supermarkets, lying deathly under their awnings; she’d made homes under awnings of kiosks and shops and sometimes when luck dealt her a blow, she’d slept in alleys which smelled of frozen urine. Clad in whatever rug she laid hands on, she’d sold wares of different varieties in the scorching sun while her body scalded to a frazzle. All that she had done while her stomach grew bigger and bigger like a balloon admitting air. She’d once contemplated suicide but while she sauntered about in search of a rope, the baby had given its first kick. She’d been caught in her tracks. She had never been befuddled. She’d feared her stomach was about to explode however after availing her of the times she’d spent in school listening with rapt attention to Sir Joseph’s science classes, her fears had dissipated. She’d propped herself up against a wall, and waited anxiously for another kicking--- an unsuccessful adventure at the end of which she’d forborne the idea of suicide. She couldn’t bring herself to punish the unborn child for the injustices of the world.

While she lay in the bed, trapped in her historical reverie, she realized that all through her struggles one thing had kept her going --- it was none other than hope. So she decided that for as long as she lived, even though life was sure to throw more troubling problems her way, she would never lose sight of hope. And whether she lay under the awning of a kiosk or left herself to the mercy of urine-desecrated alleys, with her daughter Hope by her side, she would never give up. That said she planted a long, atypical but motherly kiss on Hope’s delicate forehead and closed her eyes as the warmth of a new beginning dawned on her.

THE END

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