Obiageli wasn't a fan of NatGeo Wild. Doctor was. She preferred Africa Magic. After enduring a documentary on hyenas — and Doctor's lengthy explanations — something he said caught her attention: "The females are always the leaders. The males must migrate later in life to avoid inbreeding. So, 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." In a hyena community, being a child-bearer means you stay rooted to lead a pack that includes males. Sister Confidence used to say women were only submissive to remain in relationships; they were the dominant sex and would show it when all else failed. Obiageli hadn't believed her. But what did she know then? She was still a child. The Maternity hadn't yet claimed her life.
These days, she had Doctor's protection and never truly felt completely helpless. But the day would come.
The Maternity was moving. Delivery nurses shouted instructions at the driver of the long semi-truck as it backed into the entrance. Obiageli placed her bag in the stack of personal items the nurses would load into the trailer and looked on as the vehicle chugged forward and back, edging closer, angling at the gates, and inching through. When most of it was inside, it roared to a halt.
Obiageli scanned the place one last time.
The peeling metallic signboard at the gate did not say "maternity"; it said, "Support for Women Empowerment Through Skills Acquisition (SWETSA)." When she first saw the sign, she thought, How ironic. Her father's wish was coming true. Her father wanted her to be raised by one of those "aunties" who came to the village looking for child maids to take 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 — a place for intending immigrants to learn a trade before they left the country. That's what she thought when she first arrived. She couldn't have been wronger.
Obiageli didn't want to move: the maternity held memories: Amara's ghost lived here, and she wasn't ready to part with it. These days, when she thought of Amara, she saw her standing in a stairway of brick and weeds, light shining through an open doorway, a rusty zinc awning above her head. Amara was always at peace in her shanty little heaven. Obiageli could not see her in a different background, especially as she hadn't been outside these walls in years. To think she had envied her friend all this while, believing she was free, not knowing she was six feet under. Amara and all those who fell sick during the epidemic were in graves dug to hide them, not to remember them. She couldn't share this with the girls because Doctor would see it as a betrayal and punish her. So she cried in the shower and muttered profanities when she was alone.
"Obiageli," someone called.
It was Oluchi.
"You're crying," she said.
Obiageli didn't realize.
"Aww, come here." Oluchi hugged her in a motherly way. "I will miss this place, too."
Obiageli mewled on her shoulder.
Unaka was at the trailer doors, grabbing patients by the arms and helping them up the high rear entry step. He was a stocky delivery nurse who often led their morning workouts. Obiageli did not want his help. She wanted nothing to do with him.
Two delivery nurses, Nonso and Arinze, teamed up to carry the heavily pregnant girls into the trailer. Obiageli wasn't pregnant, so they were amused to find her in line with those in their third trimester. Grinning, they hooked their arms under her armpits and thighs and lifted her like a sack. They swung her side to side, as if about to toss her — "Nooo," she pleaded — before loading her into the trailer.
"Me next," Dumebi said. "Do for me."
Nonso swung an arm at her. "Gerraway dia."
Dumebi bolted off.
Everyone treated Dumebi like a child. She acted and spoke like a ten-year-old, and she was at least eighteen. Doctor said she had autism.
In the truck's tow, the trailer creaked and rattled. Obiageli sat with seventeen others at the far end, next to the luggage and medical equipment, rocking with the trailer's unsure glide. Doctor did not say why they were moving, but she knew. All it took were her father's words: "The stench that stays stagnant gives away its source." Her father had said this to her mother, implying that if Obiageli remained in the village, her rascality would expose them both as bad parents. The Maternity had a stench; it had to move because of it.
At what seemed like a sharp bend, the trailer wheeled to the right, and she slid to the left. The floor was cold. Obiageli uncrossed her legs and curled into a foetal position to relieve her shins. It was dark on her side. Too dark to perform her morning ritual: apply makeup. The brightest light came from the trailer doors, which the nurses left open as there were no air vents. A rope tied to the handles slackened and stretched to restrain them from turning 180 degrees 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 stood by the trailer doors, forming a fence between the patients and the outside world.
Obiageli grabbed her makeup kit and edged away from the other patients, settling near the center of the trailer where the light was dim but workable. She opened her compact and began powdering her face with the calm of a trespasser.
A few nurses looked up from their phones or turned away from the view outside.
A sudden dryness caught her throat; she swallowed and proceeded with the eyeliner. Then came the lip gloss. She let it set before painting her lips red with a lip brush.
She smacked her lips, knowing some were watching.
With her makeup done, she wasn't just another girl in the trailer. She was OBG. Original Baby Girl.
Looking good gave her power — a small triumph in a world where the mind's survival mattered as much as the body's. At the very least, she could face the mirror and feel a flicker of pride. It made getting out of bed each morning a little easier.
Doctor had put it nicely when he said, "You should be grateful we are not harvesting your organs or mutilating you. 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 yanked her by the hair. She grabbed the attacker's wrist with both hands and stood quickly, determined not to let the weave come off. It was Unaka. He shut his eyes and leaned in, lips puckered. She shoved him back and slapped him hard.
"Useless beast. Common mongrel. How dare you?"
Unaka slapped her back, and she lashed out with a wild flurry of kicks and slaps. The nurses' arms pulled her away, just before she could gouge out his eyes.
She looked around for her lipstick — it had fallen in the chaos — and spotted it on the floor. But before she could reach it, a nurse kicked it aside. Then another. And another. The nurses passed it between themselves like a cheap soccer ball, laughing as she crawled on all fours, desperate to reclaim 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 wan' burst my blokos because of leepsteek."
"Nyem ya. Give it to me."
Unaka grabbed her by the hair, pushed her onto the floor, and twisted her arm behind her back.
"It is paining me," Obiageli cried. "O-woo-woa. Leave me."
He smacked her on the back of her head repeatedly. "You dey mad? I be your mate?"
He tried to slam her face into the floor, but she twisted, taking the blow with her temple. He got off her, and she rolled onto her back. Her weave was gone. But all she could think about was her lipstick.
Dazed, head throbbing, she lay on the floor and watched — like a scene unfolding in slow motion — as Unaka leaned back and flung her lipstick through the trailer doors.
Jesus.
She couldn't believe it. Had he really tossed out her designer lipstick like an eggshell?
Some of the nurses called him Chilie Aka Gi Elu (Put Your Hands Up). A nickname from his highway robber days, they said. During stickups, he'd yell, "Chilie aka gi elu, and praise God." He had served time, but they swore he was still a killer — someone you never provoked.
But all Obiageli saw was a man at the open doors of a moving trailer, taunting her to push him to his death.
"That will teach you," he said. "When I tell you to do something, you do it. You think say because Doctor dey knack you, you be special somebody. Lie. I can do what I want with you, and nothing will happen. I am not disposable like you."
Obiageli's secret was out. Thanks to a nurse's frayed nerves and a moment of indiscretion, everyone 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."
"Wetin you call me?"
"Go and get me my lipstick, useless man."
The nurses held Unaka back.
"Close your mouth," Nonso barked at Obiageli. "You wan' die for here?"
Anguishing in the clutches of his fellow nurses, Unaka tried to break free. "Do you think you are the only one Doctor is banging?" he yelled. "He bangs Uche too. But do you see her doing shakara like you? You are worthless."
Unaka's words stung. Obiageli did not know Doctor was sleeping with any of his patients, besides her. She couldn't say she suspected it; she had only considered the possibility and dismissed it.
"She is sorry, Unaka," Oluchi said, coming to her side. "Obiageli, tell him you are sorry."
Oluchi was the only patient with a contract. She was from the local community that they had now left behind. She sold her babies. Her family knew where she was, or at least they did. Some said she swore an oath of secrecy and was Doctor's spy on the other patients, his self-appointed head girl. She reported anyone who tried to escape. How could she be on Obiageli's side? She never was and never will be. She was part of the system. There weren't enough willing patients like her, so The Maternity kidnapped girls.
Obiageli first learned about the pro-life versus pro-choice debate while watching CNN in Doctor's study. When he explained it to her, she knew instantly where she stood. She was definitely pro-choice after being no-choice her whole life.
Oluchi stood on the other side. She was like her pro-life nemesis, the embodiment of everything Obiageli fought to escape.
"Na God go punish am," Obiageli yelled.
"What's wrong with you?" Arinze said. "We are trying to remedy the situation, and you are worsening it."
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 throat and shouted, "Speak now? Open ya mouth make I blow your brain."
"Obiageli, please. Apologize," Oluchi begged tearfully.
The road to Obiageli's capture had many ifs. If those "aunties" had taken her in, she wouldn't have become 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. Why those "aunties" never came back for her, she never knew. Her parents did, though, but they kept it to themselves. The night she learned of it, she checked her reflection several times in the mirror and thought, Oh? So, I'm too beautiful for a maid? Her parents didn't actually say her "aunties" thought she was a potential husband hazard in their homes. It was what she surmised from eavesdropping on their conversation:
✦ Obiageli, age thirteen — eavesdropping at home ✦
One late evening, Obiageli checks that the coast is clear before slipping into the parlour, knowing her father would be angry with her for coming home late. From the kitchen yard, she hears his voice — her parents are speaking loudly, unaware anyone is home.
"What do you think they mean by 'she is 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 that 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. Fight. Or else you will lose your place to Confidence."
"Tufia. God forbid."
Unaka stuck the nozzle further down her throat. "Make I just waste this bitch."
"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.
Obiageli coughed and gasped.
So, Doctor was screwing Uche too? Obiageli had thought she wouldn't care if he was — that it wouldn't hurt so much — but it did.
Over the years, Doctor grew increasingly affectionate toward her. She had tried to resist, but he dangled her freedom like bait. Their affair began after an ultrasound appointment.
Occasionally, the nurses took patients into the city for scans — usually the youngest girls, or those they knew could be silenced with a gun tucked into a jacket. Doctor had escorted her that day. They went to a place called Spartan Diagnostics.
✦ Spartan Diagnostics — the ultrasound ✦
A nurse registers Obiageli as Cynthia Ekeh and hands her a hospital card.
"Give this to that nurse over there," she says, pointing to another nurse busy recording patients' weights, heights, and blood pressures.
At the medical exam desk, the second nurse slips Obiageli's card to the bottom of a stack.
"Please take a seat and wait until you're called."
Obiageli returns to her seat next to Doctor.
After a while, Doctor nudges her, and she flinches.
"Didn't you hear your name?" he says.
"Cynthia Ekeh," the nurse at the desk calls.
Doctor hovers around the examination desk as a nurse straps a sphygmomanometer around Obiageli's arm.
"Her blood pressure is high," the nurse says to Doctor. "But this is expected in her condition." She peers at Obiageli's card. "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 her master's, and she saw it as an opportunity to misbehave. I should have also played her mother's role."
"Don't beat yourself up too much, sir. Many fathers would have opted for an abortion, but you have chosen to do the right thing."
"Oh, I am totally against abortion. I have taken this as the will of God."
"Bless you, sir. May He continue to be your strength. After her scan, please take her to see a doctor so he can prescribe something for her."
"Thank you, nurse, but I'm a doctor as well. 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 wide, 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, not the father of the baby."
"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, Enter, 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. Raising a tube of Aquasonic Gel, she squints at the label.
"Shine it here," she says. "So I can read what's written."
After the scan, Doctor had taken Obiageli to a motel, where they holed up for a few hours. Their meetings continued back at the hospital, with a few nurses in the know. When his wife travelled to the U.S. for their son's college graduation, they had the place to themselves. No one dared enter Doctor's office unannounced — no one banged on the door when he locked it.
Amara knew about them. Obiageli had told her. She made it clear she didn't love him — she only played along for the little favours. And maybe one big one.
The small favours came. He bought her makeup and hair products on the sly, once even surprising her with a Maybelline Superstay lipstick. He'd catch her wearing it and tease, "Omalichanwa," not caring who overheard.
She hated him for selling her babies. But sometimes, she dreamed he had no wife, that they'd freed all the patients and turned the place into a real maternity open to the public.
She could never admit this to Amara, who loathed him. Still, deep down, she knew she would feel betrayed if she found out he was with someone else.
That was before she learned what 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 choked her till she passed out. The world between consciousness and the great unknown blurred and formed patterns. She was ready to join Amara. There was only one problem: Amara's killer would have killed her too.
There was a time when an epidemic swept through the Maternity. Amara was one of the girls who fell ill. The nurses said that after they were treated and discharged from the hospital, Doctor had freed them.
But two nights ago, Obiageli learned the truth.
✦ Two nights before the move — Doctor's study ✦
It's almost midnight when OBG strolls into Doctor's study in her bathrobe and lingerie. Doctor is hunched over his desk, poring over a stack of papers.
"Would you like to check me for pregnancy complications?" she teases. Doctor usually tells his wife a patient has a complicated pregnancy whenever he plans to sleep over.
"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 from the bed.
"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. "We were so broke then that I listened to bad advice to turn this place into a brothel. That was the period when your friend fell sick."
"What are you saying?"
"I didn't test the clients for STDs, like I usually do. I simply gave them condoms and trusted that they would use them."
"Did Amara die in hospital?"
"They tested HIV positive, Babe. 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?" Obiageli asks tearfully.
"I let Unaka take care of it. I know it was wrong, but always remember: I saved your—"
Obiageli races out of the study, sobbing.
"Come back here," Doctor shouts after her.
Obiageli coughed and rolled to her side.
Unaka had released her.
He pressed a hand against his ribs and raised blood-smeared fingers to his face.
Dumebi held a penknife tipped with blood.
Arinze conked Dumebi. "Why did you do that? You want to kill him?"
The other nurses slapped Dumebi on the head.
"Mummy-o," Dumebi wept.
Dumebi had saved Obiageli's life. And 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 playing a lot and not shutting up. They would beat her and leave her. Perhaps they would do that here.
She was the only patient who had never been pregnant. The only patient whose parents visited. She said her parents brought her to The Maternity, thinking it was a place where she would learn how to sew. Amara thought the nurses kept Dumebi because she was an easy lay: she never resisted. 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. She was the matriarch of The Maternity, the mother hyena. Doctor handled the external affairs while she took care of the internal ones. Unfortunately, she either did not know or did not care what the nurses did to Dumebi because Dumebi never spoke about it.
Amara said she once begged Dumebi to tell her parents about the horrors she experienced at the hands of the nurses, but Dumebi didn't listen. She concluded it wasn't because Dumebi's parents would have become prisoners too if they lost their nerves — Dumebi could not 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 lay on the floor. No one paid attention to Unaka, who cocked his pistol and aimed it at Dumebi.
Obiageli was wounded, confused, frantic, and sure to die; she was like a headless chicken. She had had their throat slit and would run around for a bit before she slumped and died. So, she had nothing to lose.
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 twinging pain in her head snapped her back to reality.
She was tumbling across a car bonnet, helpless against the force of her fall — she had struck the windshield and was sliding off. She shut her eyes, certain she would never open them again.
Pain throbbed in her left shoulder. She had landed on her side and now lay flat on her back. The car that broke her fall — a silver Toyota Corolla — had pulled over.
The nurses were screaming and peering from the trailer doors as the truck crawled uphill, maybe trying to get the driver's attention. Two nurses leapt off, their feet hitting the ground as the semi-truck inched upward, barely moving.
"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 fired one. She imagined it would feel more empowering than anything she had ever felt.
She seized the gun and pointed it at Unaka's back, wondering whether to use two hands or one.
She fired.
BANG!
She missed.
The shot rattled Unaka. He dropped to his belly and crawled into the nearby bush. Obiageli pivoted to the two nurses who had jumped off the trailer. The driver of the Toyota saw her aiming in his direction, scrambled back into his car, and sped off with a screech of tires.
She fired another round, this time at an approaching nurse. Birds erupted from a tree, scattering like shards across the sky, their harsh caws softening into song. The two nurses darted back to the trailer and clambered inside. The Toyota overtook them, vanishing over the hilltop. The semi-truck had stopped — its driver possibly weighing a slow, careful U-turn on the narrow two-lane road before resuming its climb.
The roadside brush gave way to a kola nut farm, and beyond that, the horizon bristled with red-earth hills, slate-grey boulders, and tangled tropical wilderness. A tan-green pond winked in the distance.
An engine purred. Obiageli stepped off the road and staggered to her feet as an old white bus rattled past, packed with passengers.
Unaka was limping through the neat rows of kola trees. She fired again. The bullet struck a trunk. Her aim was getting better.
"Where is my lipstick?" she shouted. "Don't waste my time!"
Firing as she moved, she drove him deeper into the farm, steering him away from the road, away from prying eyes. She was doing exactly what Sister Confidence had warned her never to do: chase a boy. And she would keep chasing him until she ran out of bullets.
✦ Sister Confidence's wisdom (years ago) ✦
Sister Confidence sits hugging her knee, her foot on the seat. "You need to learn how to use boys, OBG. That's a girl's power." She leans forward and applies red nail polish to a toenail. "Make him think he is your oga whereas it is the other way around."
The acetate smell of nail polish fills the room.
Obiageli is lying on her side on the tiled floor. "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." 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?"
"Why wouldn't I, OBG? Didn't Eve use Adam? Who picked the fruit from the tree?"
"I think it was Eve. She gave it to Adam."
"Well, you know me. I don't know the Bible, but I know Men."
Obiageli laughs.
"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. We are the expensive, delicate, complex machines that handle the kind of work that requires finesse." She covers the nail polish vial with the 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 who is who. They don't operate like us because finesse is not their thing."
Sister Confidence had introduced her to Brother Sylvanus, saying he was a guide who took migrants to Europe and had even assured her that she had paid for her travel.
Unaka limped into a brown pond, dragging his stiff leg as he waded across. Obiageli continued to hound him like a hyena matriarch:
"Where is my lipstick?" Obiageli screamed after him. "When I tell you to do something, you do it."