The Gods Want Our Baby But We Want To Keep Her For God

There are three marks on her chest. Those marks are carefully inscribed in the middle of her breast. She’s very fair so the marks are easily seen. You don’t even have to pay attention to see them. When she wears a dress that shows her cleavage, you see those marks. It’s like a tattoo that was badly done—a tattoo done by a novice. I saw it, I think during our second date. We were new. We were trying to get to know each other so I didn’t ask any questions about those marks and I didn’t think deeply about them. The relationship grew. We didn’t want to stay apart from each other. We felt whole when we were closer to each other so we were closer every day.


One day we went to bed and had sex. The light was off. Later when she put on the light and came to sleep next to me, I saw more marks on her skin. There were two different sets of marks on her waist. Each set is placed right on top of each butt cheek. I ran my fingers over the lines and asked her, “Are these intentional? When was it done? Did you request them yourself?” She smiled as if to say “They are nothing. Don’t give much thought to them.” She was about to brush my question off when I asked again. She explained. “I don’t know when those marks were given to me. According to my mother, it’s a tradition in our house. The first girl child gets those marks as a sign of good luck.”

That was it. That was the only time we had a conversation about those marks. It didn’t do anything to our relationship. I didn’t even remember them until I ran my fingers on her skin and felt the roughness of those marks. There were better things to think about—better things like what she brings to the table of our love and how good she was to me. We dated for three years and later got married. If I didn’t marry her, there was no other woman I would have loved to marry. She was everything to me and everything was her.

Three years after marriage, we didn’t have a child. I was playing it cool in front of her so she didn’t feel pressured but whenever I was alone, I thought of it. I was scared. “What if we don’t have children? What are my parents thinking about us? It’s been three years for Christ’s sake.” Things got worse when my junior brother got married and gave birth the following year. At the naming ceremony, everybody who congratulated him added, “You’re the real man! You didn’t waste time at all.” I was there. I felt like they were talking to me. I didn’t feel man enough. I smiled but the smile didn’t come from my heart. I was waiting for the whole thing to be over so I could run away. I was tired of hearing that I wasn’t a man enough.

My wife was trying. She went home often and came back with herbal drugs. Her mom called and asked me to help her drink it. I had my own I had to drink. One cup each morning, afternoon and at dawn. We didn’t stop praying together because we are Christians. Our fortress had always been God so we cried to him every night and dawn. For some of the herbal drugs, we had to wake up at dawn, pray over them and mention our desires before we take them. We did it diligently until one day my wife missed her period. She tested and it was positive. She was pregnant. In fact, we were pregnant.

We held hands and jubilated. We prayed that night and thanked God for coming to our rescue after five years of marriage. There is some kind of light that glows in our hearts when we are happy. All of a sudden, things that made us angry don’t make us angry again. Things that made us sad no longer held power over you. The faces we saw and went like, “When is this guy dying so I don’t get to see him again,” all of a sudden become the face you want to see over and over again. It’s because of that light—it glows in us when there’s a reason to be happy. It glows brighter than anything outside of us and it constantly reminds us that there’s a reason to be happy. To us, that reason was the pregnancy.

When the time was right, my wife gave birth to a bouncing baby girl. I was the man—the real man. Even when they didn’t say it after congratulating me, I said to myself, “I’m the real man. I won’t allow y’all to deny me my manhood. I’m the man! The only man in my home.” A week after our child was named, troubles started brewing.

I saw it on the face of my wife. She was often quiet than I knew her to be. When I asked, she gave me the usual line, “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” She didn’t sleep well at night but she blamed it on the baby. She got angry easily, I blamed it on the baby. She was always on the phone talking to someone. Immediately she sees me coming, she’ll speak undertone for a while and later end the call. I wasn’t getting it so I tried eavesdropping. It was her family. They wanted her to send our daughter home so they do to her what they did to my wife when she was a baby—the marks on her skin.

There’s a fetish priestess in their house. They’ll send the baby to the priestess at dawn and she’ll do some rituals, make a cut in her skin and put a black portion in it. We can only bring the baby back home after seven days when the sour had healed.

I said, “Never!”

The only good luck she needs is the one that comes from God. We don’t need anything from anyone. I told my wife, “Tell them it’s never going to happen. As far as I’m alive, I’m not sending my daughter anywhere.” The good thing is, my wife supports me. The bad thing is, she doesn’t go all out to tell them she doesn’t support the idea. She hides behind me and tells them I say I’m not going to do it. So her mother called me one day. She told me, “Don’t harden your heart on certain things you don’t understand. I’m a Christian too but we give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. How many years did it take you to get your wife pregnant? Do you think it’s normal? Did you ask her where she got the drugs you were consuming from? Bring the child. Your wife has it and she didn’t die so your daughter won’t die too.”

As I write this, it has become a war between my family and my wife’s family. The phone calls never stop, even at dawn when we are sleeping, we’ll receive a call from someone. My mom will call at dawn and ask us to pray because she had a dream and saw my in-law running away with our child. A few days later, my in-law will call and ask if I love my daughter more than she loves her.

You remember the light I spoke about—the light that glows in our hearts when we are happy? That light is off and we are back to square one. Little things make us angry. We see a call and we don’t know whether to pick up or not to pick because we know that call is going to annoy us.

Weeks ago, my wife said, “After three months, they can’t do what they want to do to the baby. We can only hold on until three months are over but…but…anything at all can also happen before the third month. It’s a carrot and cane. We should choose one and be ready for the consequences.” My parents think nothing will happen after three months. Sometimes I believe them. Sometimes, I’m scared. It took us five years—five whole years.

Honestly, we are scared and confused. Is it that bad if we send the child? Is there anyone here who has been through that before? That they didn’t send the child but the child survived? We need answers before it’s too late.