The Joys of Motherhood The Supernatural Quotes

Nnu Ego was the apple of her parents' eyes. She was a beautiful child, fair-skinned like the women from the Aboh and Itsekiri areas. At her birth it was noticed that there was a lump on her head, which in due course was covered with thick, curly, black hair. But suddenly one evening she started to suffer from a strange headache that held her head and shoulder together. In panic, Ona sent for Agbadi who came tearing down from Ogboli with a dibia.

The dibia touched the child's head and drew in his breath, feeling how much hotter the lump was than the rest of her body. He quickly set to work, arranging his pieces of kolanut and snail shells and cowries on the mud floor. He soon went into a trance and began to speak in a far-off voice, strange and unnatural: "This child is the slave woman who died with your senior wife Agunwa. She promised to come back as a daughter. Now here she is. That is why this child has the fair skin of the water people, and the painful lump on her head is from the beating your men gave her before she fell into the grave. She will always have trouble with that head. If she has a fortunate life, the head will not play up. But if she is unhappy, it will trouble her both physically and emotionally. My advice is that you go and appease the slave woman." (2.131-132)

After a while, Nnu Ego could not voice her doubts and worries to her husband any more. It had become her problem and hers alone. She went from one dibia to another in secret, and was told the same thing—that the slave woman who was her chi would not give her a child because she had been dedicated to a river goddess before Agbadi took her away in slavery. When at home, Nnu Ego would take an egg, symbol of fertility, and kneel and pray to this woman to change her mind. "Please pity me. I feel that my husband's people are already looking for a new wife for him. They cannot wait for me forever." (3.38)

She would have to put up with things. She would rather die in this town called Lagos than go back home and say, "Father, I just do not like the man you have chosen for me." Another thought ran through her mind: suppose this man made her pregnant, would that not be an untold joy to her people?

"O my chi," she prayed as she rolled painfully to her other side on the raffia bed, "O my dead mother, please make this dream come true, then I will respect this man, I will be his faithful wife and put up with his crude ways and ugly appearance. Oh, please help me, all you ancestors. If I should become pregnant—hm…" She nursed her belly, and felt her rather sore legs. "If I should ever be pregnant." …

In her exhaustion, she dreamed that her chi was handing her a baby boy, by the banks of the Atakpo stream in Ibuza. But the slave woman had mocking laughter on her lips. As she tried to wade across the stream to take the baby from her, the stream seemed to swell, and the woman's laughter ran out in the dense forest. Nnu Ego stretched out her arms several times, and would almost have touched the baby, had not the stream suddenly become deeper and the woman risen to a higher level. "Please," Nnu Ego cried, "please let me have him, please."

[…]

She opened her eyes, startled. "Do you think I shall be tempted to take other people's babies in this town? I dreamed that I was doing so…" (4.20-22; 25)