“No, this is a test. This is punishment. Are you seeing this? She is your daughter. She is not mine. This is a mistake of nature, a flaw of God.”
The midwife, exhausted, only shook her head.
“You promised you would love her, remember?”
But the promise turned to dust.
That same night, Bimbo waited until everyone was asleep. She took the baby in her cold hands.
Once again, she walked to the river. The path felt shorter this time, more familiar. The wind seemed to know what she was doing.
When she reached the riverbank, she hesitated for just a second. Just one.
“I asked for a daughter. Not this.”
And she let the baby slip from her hands.
Plop.
The water swallowed her without sound, without whirlpool, without protest.
But the sky—this time the sky lit up with distant thunder. Small but present, like a warning.
You have not learned.
The next morning, when Mario woke up, he found Bimbo pale, sitting with sunken eyes.
Then he asked anxiously, “Where is the midwife? She said it was a girl.”
Bimbo bit her lip. “She did not survive.”
Mario stopped, motionless for long seconds, then buried his hands in his face.
“Another?”
“Yes, but she was born alive. The midwife said so.”
“Yes, but only for a short time. She stopped breathing. It was quick.”
Mario did not scream. He did not cry like the first time. He simply walked to the freshly planted yam patch, knelt down, and pounded the earth.
“Why? Why does this keep happening to us?”
Bimbo wanted to comfort him. But how? What was she supposed to say? Sorry, love, but once again she looked too ugly, so I threw her in the river?
So she cried again. But this time, the crying felt more automatic, colder. She no longer knew whether it was pain, fear, or just the sound of her own ruin approaching.
The following days were slow and heavy.
Mario went back to silence. This time, the mother-in-law did not praise any beans.
“This is not normal. God does not give and take away for no reason,” she said, looking at Bimbo as one looks at a snake.
The village began to whisper again, now with more certainty.
“Two daughters dead in the same way.”
“She is hiding something.”
And Bimbo was so consumed that she no longer recognized herself in the mirror.
At night she returned to the river again. She cried, tossed leaves, begged, but now the river seemed mute, as if it were saying, I do not hear you anymore.
And for the first time, Bimbo began to fear that what was coming was not just punishment.
It was vengeance.
Leave a Comment