SEYIANOI

Seyianoi stood there for a couple of minutes looking at the lifeless fetus that would have been her baby. It would have been a beautiful boy with ears corked like his grandfather’s. She had already named him before she had seen him. He would have been called Musere like his father, well not actually his father now that he had denied being the father and forfeiting all responsibility. 

The moment she broke the news to him that she was going to be a mother was still fresh and cold in her mind like the July dew that numbed her bare feet. He stood there under the Osokonoi tree where they shared countless moments of passion and denied the possibility of him being the father. Her mind played episodes of every single day that they had met and how it all led to this stalemate of raw emotion, regret and internal condemnation that she was currently feeling. 

She hated Musere and yet she still felt some tiny fragment of love for him for teaching her a lesson that she would never forget for eternity. He had used her and left her to face the unforgiving world alone. Even trees and shrubs seemed to be ashamed of her. The birds chirped different as if mocking her for carrying a baby at a tender age. Despite all these, she carried herself with a new aura of bravery that she herself was surprised of. Whenever they stared at her, she stared back. When they mocked her, she stood shoulders high, defiant and strong to the last thread of her being. She watched as her mother and her posse of village friends performed the last rites before wrapping the body in leaves and burying it in a shallow hand-made hole in the middle of the cattle boma surrounded by four manyatta huts. The women looked at her with both disgust and pity as if there was a stench left on her after she had lost her baby. At the same time, memories like a waterfall were running through her mind like the episodes to a sad story. She remembered her pain. She remembered how the rumor mill had castigated her as soon as her baby-bump was visible. She remembered herself before all these, when she was still in her element. That is when she was still the main attraction to the village boys and her swaying hips made them stare with awe and have their juvenile jaws drop. She could not help but curve a concealed Mona Lisa smile at how they used to turn around to watch her pass by. It reminded her how she used to walk with an intentional twist just to get them ogling. She had a rear that shook the ability of any man in the village to concentrate on anything else when she passed by. It was for this particular reason that hoards of men, both young and old, loved crowding in her mother’s hut every evening. All these were, however, now in the past and she stood there with her dignity in shreds and tatters.

This experience had made her tougher and she had resolved that her tears would never flow again. She had lost her baby and she would never have the opportunity to hold him in her arms ever. She would never get to watch him play in the fields nor grow up to be a moran to defend her when she grew old and frail. These, however, were just a fraction of the myriad of expectations that she had had going into motherhood and then just like that it all crumbled like a sand dune before her unbelieving eyes. 

  Her tears had stopped flowing and it felt like the wells inside her in which they emanated had dried up. She had been crying for months now and it looked like her own soul was finally tired of wailing from within and tearing herself up. Her mother looked at Seyianoi with both a mother’s sympathy and the soft empathy of a woman in excruciating pain. It tore her apart to see her daughter go through this entire struggle. She was however consoled by the tenacity and strength in which she took it all. 

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Musere could not sit still for even a second. He walked around his father’s huge compound with his head hung low and his broad shoulder’s drooped in shame, regret and utter disgust. He felt so low. He tried so hard not to remember what was going on a few meters away but it was the only thing on his disturbed mind. He felt the shame sweep through his body like an electric current and paralyzing his entirety. He regretted most of the decisions that he made lately but worst of them all was denying that he was not responsible for Seyianoi’s pregnancy. He probably was not thinking straight at that moment or so he thought. He figured out what would have happened if he had accepted responsibility like he had been raised to. Maybe she would not have battered herself and her young soul so much, maybe she would have not gone through the ridicule she did all by herself, maybe the baby would have made it and he would have been a father already. All these ‘maybe’ and ‘if only’ statements ran through his mind. 

As soon as this entire dramatic twist had started, he had become a different person altogether. He thought of visiting old Mama Dikirr, the village seer who was believed to see even people’s thoughts. Prior to this ordeal, it had never occurred to him, and it had never crossed his mind for even a second. He was now considering it due to particular changes in his life. He was now mumbling to himself something that had never happened to him before. He talked out loudly to himself and had frequent sleepless nights mired with nightmares.......