OGBANJE EYES

 You don't know what to name this baby. 

It has your husband's nose and his mother's ears. It looks nothing like you even though the nurse on duty during the delivery swears it has your forehead.

You don't know what to name this baby.

 This thing weighing about four kilograms that slipped from between your legs in a pool of sticky blood, wailing as if it would rather not be out of your body.

You don't know what to name this baby.

 It has yet to open its eyes on its own but your husband says the doctor already checked and it has 'normal' eyes. He says it and flashes a grin before saying no offence as if he meant it to offend you in the first place. You don't answer him. You sigh instead. You hope he thinks you are tired and leaves, him and the nurse with crooked teeth and the doctor palpating your stomach.

You don't know what to name this baby.

—even though during the past six months you had been poring over books with baby names and their meanings, and searching websites for English names, Igbo names, rare names, biblical names— for a baby girl, for a baby boy, for a baby with beautiful eyes. 

You are thinking about it when your mother-in-law bursts into the room, flowing unabashedly like water from a cracked pipe that you are desperate to shut off. Her perfume, her voice, her movements—da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. The woman gives you anxiety. You can feel your heart increase its pace—da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

I hope our baby doesn't have ogbanje eyes?

You want to twist your body sideways and pretend to be deeply asleep but your vagina just got stitched and moving is painful. You open your eyes instead and watch the jagged lines on the ceiling. Poor craftsmanship. You want to think that whoever did the painting did a terrible job. In some parts of the ceiling, the paint is thinned out and the grey of the plaster behind it is peeking out. Patches of grey in the midst of a wide sea of white paint. Some mistakes are art. You choose to think that the painter is an artist.

You don't know what to name this baby. 

This baby that your husband and his mother are cooing over. You watched the woman pry open the child's eyelids to confirm the eye colour and scream praise tha Loooord a few moments ago. Now, she is asking about the baby's gender, the baby's weight, how the experience of watching a birth take place was. She is asking her son the questions, patting his back and hugging him, as if it were from a hole in his body the baby came out from, as if it was in his abdomen the child grew for nine months, as if you were not there lying on the gigantic bed with many tubes connected to your veins, stitched up and exhausted, as if you were not able to hear or see them.

Ehen normal eyes, just like grandma. She is so hairy. Thank God she inherited the only good thing in that woman's body.

Mummy.

I'm telling you. Imagine your daughter had ogbanje eyes like your wife.

Thank God she doesn't. Let's go home and bring things for the mother and baby.

Chere kwanu, let me admire my granddaughter a little bit more.

You don't know what to name this baby. This tiny thing that is fathered by this man. This man that is thanking God that his baby does not have your eyes even though many times he swore that your eyes aroused all his senses.

They are green and they are blue. Like the sky and then like grass. I don't know what colour they are but I love them and I love you.

This man that begged you to stay with him, even though his family did not want you and refused to carry out the traditional wedding rights as they ought to. This man whose mother called you Ogbanje eyes.

You don't know what to call this baby. It is still sleeping sweetly. It is beautiful. Shouldn't you be grateful that it has the regular eye colour? Why do you feel betrayed? You had discussed it many times over with your husband.

I wonder what the baby's eye colour will be.

I hope they are like mine, no offence.

You don't want your child to have coloured eyes?

It's not that. I mean, how would we cope with raising a child that looks different?

Wow, Ikenna.

You said it yourself. You had a hard time growing up because you had bluish green abi greenish blue eyes. People always thought you were a witch.

That was in the 90s biko! We are in the 2014. Am I not alive and well?

...but we are still in Nigeria. You know you only get away with it because contact lenses are now more popular and people don't know it's your real eye colour.

Except that your mother sha.

Our mother. She is your mother too but that's not the point. What I'm trying to say is that I hate the way my mother bullies you. I don't want my child to be bullied that way.

Our child.

Yes, our child.


You don't know what to name this baby.

 This baby that was supposed to be on your side, an act of rebellion, a shot of snotty saliva on their faces, that you, an abomination had recreated another abomination; a black child, Nigerian with bright coloured eyes for them to be scared of. Ogbanje eyes.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

"Chere kwanu" means "wait nauuu", at least in the way that I understand it. "Nauuu" is one of those fragments of Nigerian English that I don't know how to translate to pure proper English. 

Language is such a funny, wicked, and amazing thing.

I recently learned that there is no English equivalent to what  "I love you"  is said to translate to in Yoruba. I read it from a novel, so I am not sure if  it is true or if it is one of those things authors write in their stories, and I'm scared to ask questions about it because I already prefer to believe it is true. However, it got me wondering about how many other words in our native languages lack English equivalents and are only compensated with words that have the closest meanings.

I enjoyed writing this piece. I hope you enjoyed reading it...and if you did, support my blog HERE ? 

Tell me in the comments, what should she name the baby?