WEEK 15 – THE RAIN FALLS IN TORRENTS, Part 2 of 3

She cradles Number Four's head on her lap
The woman's clammy forehead burns to the touch
She strokes gently the woman's belly next
And feels the kicking turmoil raging within

Ifegi-oku sprints off to her mother's hut
Her teeth chattering, her skin shivering
She scans her sisters' faces huddled at the fire
Locates her mother in the midst of telling-tale

"Mother!" she screams, "You must come now …"
"Ewooooooooo!" cries Wife Number Three
"I begin to think your father is right!
Who do you think you are, little girl!?

"You don't seem to listen to what people say.
How many times said I avoid the rains?
Look how you shiver at yon door-mouth.
With your tiny self, looking bedraggled!

"Woman! Our mother's killed by pain, yee Gods!!!"
Perhaps it's the darkness in the little girl's eyes
That shushes Third Wife into total submission
She glances elsewhere to avoid the girl's wrath

"Which do you speak who is killed by pain?"
"Our littlest mom whose child comes now!"
Ifegi-oku rushes towards her mother
Pulling and dragging her right to the door

Her sisters follow suit and all stumble out
To gape unabashedly Number Four's agony
She's still on the ground clutching at her belly
While Amadiora's splashing rain adds to her pain

"Do not only stare, mother! Please do something!"
But Wife Number Three refuses to budge
"She must first cry out if she wishes to be aided.
And even so our custom forbids me to help.

"Wives do not assist in their sister-wives births.
So it is written in the Rules of Us for
Children long ago did breathed their last, while
Cooed in the arms of their mother's co-wives."

Ifegi-oku completely ignores her mother
Transfixed as she is with this pitiful sight:
Number Four on the ground, thrashing about
Her mouth still clamped in her refusal to shout

(to be continued)

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