BOOK ONE Chapter Four: The Silence That Screams
865 Words
The first weeks after Chidera’s birth felt like walking through fog. Dinma was functioning, but not fully present. Not because she didn’t love her daughter—she did, deeply—but because motherhood twice over, in two different emotional worlds, had left her spirit stretched thin. There was no room to fall apart, so she learned to survive in fragments.
Nurses came in and out of her hospital room with soft voices and brisk movements, but it was the quiet in between that pressed down on her the most. Ike visited with her mother, eager to hold his little sister. He looked so proud, standing on his toes, peering into the bassinet. And for a moment, she felt a small warmth bloom in her chest. Her children. Her reasons.
Kene sat at the edge of the hospital bed, scrolling through his phone like he was waiting for the day to end. He was physically there, but not present in any meaningful way. She kept telling herself not to resent him. Not everyone knows how to respond to new life. Not everyone adjusts quickly. Not everyone understands how fragile a postpartum woman can be.
But the truth was sharper than any excuse she created. Something about his spirit had shifted long before the baby arrived. She just didn’t want to see it clearly.
At night, when the visitors left and the ward grew calm, the silence became heavier. Chidera would cry, Ike would curl against her, exhausted from excitement, and she would hold them both—one in her arms, one in her thoughts—feeling stretched between who she needed to be and who she still was underneath.
By the time she returned home days later, life had already rearranged itself. There was no space to rest. No pause button. Bills were waiting. Work was waiting. Ike’s school needs were waiting. Her body was still healing, and her mind was still trying to catch its balance, but the world didn’t slow down for her.
Kene started making himself scarce.
Not in an obvious, dramatic way.
Just small absences that piled up until they became a wall.
He always had something to do. A meeting. A plan. A late-night conversation he didn’t want her to interrupt. When he visited, he picked at her routines quietly. Why was the baby fussing? Why didn’t she try a different method? Why was Ike so attached? Why did she seem overwhelmed?
He never offered solutions.
He just pointed out problems.
Gently. Calmly. With that tone that made her feel like she was failing.
There was a night—one she never forgot—when Chidera wouldn’t stop crying no matter how she rocked her. Ike was tired and cranky. Her body ached. And Kene, instead of offering help, sighed loudly and asked if she could “keep the noise down a little.”
It stung in a way she didn’t have the strength to express.
She didn’t argue.
Didn’t lash out.
She just carried everything quietly, like she always did.
But something cracked.
Not a loud break. More like a hairline fracture in her spirit. A small warning.
Weeks rolled by. Chidera grew. Ike adjusted to being a big brother. Dinma returned to work little by little, cooking for small events, delivering meals when she could. Money was tight. Time was tighter. But she kept pushing because she had no choice.
One afternoon, while she was prepping a small order in the kitchen, Ike walked in with his hands behind his back. He stood there for a moment, staring at her with that thoughtful, too-grown expression he sometimes wore.
“Mummy,” he said quietly, “are you happy?”
She froze.
The knife in her hand.
The onions on the board.
Everything paused.
She forced a smile. “Of course I am.”
He tilted his head, studying her face in that uncomfortably honest way children do. Then he pulled something from behind him—a small flower he had plucked from outside, its petals a bit crushed, but still vibrant.
“I just wanted you to have this,” he said. “Because you look tired.”
Her throat tightened.
Not from sadness—at least not only sadness.
It was the tenderness.
The way children see what adults pretend doesn’t exist.
She knelt, hugged him, and held on a little too long.
Later that night, when both children were asleep, she sat alone on the balcony, letting the cool breeze wrap around her. She stared at the neighborhood lights flickering in the distance and felt a truth she could no longer hide from:
She wasn’t happy.
She wasn’t okay.
And she hadn’t been for a long time.
She whispered a quiet prayer.
Not for love.
Not for Kene.
But for clarity. For guidance. For the strength to choose herself if the time came.
But she didn’t know that bigger storms were already forming.
Because somewhere else in the city, Somto—the man who once doubted her son—had begun asking questions he never asked before. And sometimes, the past doesn’t stay buried. Sometimes it circles back at the exact moment you’re least prepared for it.
- Writer
