07/01/2026
Chapter One
The Rain That Brought Me
It did not begin with wind. It began with thunder, loud, unsettling, like the belly of the heavens had turned in pain. The clouds had gathered since afternoon, stubborn and pregnant with a storm that refused to break, until nightfall came and the sky opened wide as if God had finally exhaled.
The rain fell in fat, violent drops, slapping the corrugated zinc roofs of the village like a warning. Mud began to form little rivers along the narrow footpaths, the mango trees swayed like old prophets in prayer, and the wind whistled through the raffia palms like it was searching for something, or someone.
Inside a dimly lit room at the back of a compound, a woman was dying.
My mother, Inyang, lay curled on a thin mattress atop a bamboo bed, her face slick with sweat and her eyes sunken from hours of labor. Her legs trembled with exhaustion, her body slowly unraveling beneath the pressure of birth and blood.
“No more push,” she had whispered sometime between contractions, “let me rest small, just small”
But there was no time for rest. Not when death was already in the room, hovering like steam in the cold air.
The midwife, Mama Ebi, was a short, strong woman with tired eyes and hands that had pulled more than forty babies into the world. She moved with urgency, wrapping my mother’s belly with a stained cloth, pressing and praying, muttering under her breath.
“Jehovah do am. Jehovah do am. You no go take this one. Not this one, abeg.”
Outside, lightning carved its name across the sky, a white flash that briefly lit up the room through the torn curtain covering the only window. The fire in the clay pot near the door flickered low, throwing shadows across the mud-plastered walls. The air smelled of wet earth, sweat, palm oil, and something bitter, like loss waiting to be confirmed.
In one final groan, my mother gritted her teeth and pushed, tears mixing with blood and breath.
And then Silence.
No baby’s cry. No mother’s voice. Just the sound of rain hitting zinc like judgment.
Mama Ebi caught me, looked down, and froze.
“Jesu…”
I was limp. Skin pale. Eyes wide open. Breathing, but silent.
No cry. Not even a whimper.
She rubbed my back furiously, turned me over, tapped my tiny feet, blew softly into my mouth. But I just stared unblinking into her face, as though I was waiting for her to say something only I could hear.
“She no cry,” she murmured, chest rising and falling in shock. “She just… dey look me. Like say she sabi me from somewhere. Like say her spirit old pass this world.”
There was no time to marvel.
My mother’s eyes had already begun to glaze.
“Inyang! Inyang! Hold on!”
But she was already slipping. She reached out weakly, one arm extended toward the ceiling, her lips moving without sound. A breath. A whisper. And then stillness.
She died with her hand open and her prayer unfinished.
The next morning, the rain stopped like it had never fallen.
Birds began to sing. Goats bleated from their sheds. The sun came out lazily, peeking through torn banana leaves and the high ridge of the compound wall.
My mother was wrapped in white and buried beneath the almond tree behind the family house. No drumming. No village ceremony. Only Mama Nyenye standing barefoot in the mud, her hands shaking slightly as she poured oil on the fresh mound of earth and whispered Psalm 91 like a covenant.
They called it a cursed birth. A child born as the mother died. A silent baby. An orphan in her first hour.
But Mama Nyenye called it something else.
“She is not cursed,” she told the mourners who shook their heads and muttered superstitions.
“She is a sign. A seal. The kind God sends when He wants to begin again.”
That evening, by the fire in her small hut, Mama Nyenye held me close to her chest and named me.
“Aminata,” she said with quiet finality, the flames dancing across her wrinkled face.
“Faithful. Watchful. Hidden but not forgotten.
You did not cry because you were not born in fear.
You came to see. To listen.
You are not a mistake.”
She pressed her red prayer scarf to my tiny forehead and anointed me with oil—palm oil mixed with ashes and crushed frankincense.
A ritual older than the village, passed down through women who prayed more than they spoke.
“You will carry fire,” she whispered, “but it will not burn you.
You will speak mysteries, even when your voice shakes.
The rain that brought you was not judgment it was God making room.”
And so I lived.
Not as the child they welcomed with joy. Not as the baby that cried and drank milk and giggled at familiar voices. But as the girl who saw things. Who dreamed strange dreams. Who sometimes sat under the orange tree and told birds to fly away from danger and they did. They called me odd. Spirit child. “The one with her mother’s blood and her father’s absence.”
But Mama Nyenye never let me forget:
“You were born when the sky split. You came with thunder, but no tears. That means you carry something not everyone will understand.” And she was right. For most of my life, I didn’t understand it either.
TBC
