WOMEN OF OYIN

Chapter Four : The fire In Her Chest

Adesewa was born with her fists clenched.

The midwife had said it with a mix of awe and concern as she pulled the infant from Iya Abeni’s trembling body.

“This one did not come gently,” she had whispered. “This one came ready to fight.”

At 15, Adesewa was not like the other girls in Oyin.

While they knelt to greet men and lowered their eyes when elders spoke, she stood tall not out of defiance, but because it never occurred to her to shrink. When told to grind pepper or sweep the compound, she did it, but with questions on her tongue:

“Why must only girls do these things?”

“Who decided that boys should eat first?”

“If our ancestors truly wanted this, why aren’t they here to explain it?”

Her questions annoyed the elders and scared the women.

“She is too curious,” they said. “Too bold for a girl.”

But Iya Abeni knew better. She had seen that same fire once before long ago, in another life, buried under her own silence.

Adesewa’s spirit was restless. She chased lizards barefoot, climbed trees higher than the boys dared, and once followed a snake just to see where it slept. She memorized the names of herbs, eavesdropped on the meetings of the elders, and asked her mother how women could give birth yet have no say in how the village was run.

“You talk like a boy,” one of the aunties hissed at her once.

“Then maybe the gods made a mistake,” she snapped back.

Still, for all her boldness, Adesewa carried a quiet kind of fear not of punishment or beatings, but of becoming like the women around her.

Tired. Silent. Beaten by tradition into obedience.

She loved her mother, but she did not want her life.

She had watched Iya Abeni cry at night when she thought no one saw. She had seen her rub old scars on her thighs while cooking, scars no one dared speak of. And though Iya Abeni tried to teach Adesewa gentleness, she also knew better than to crush her fire. Instead, she whispered prayers in the dark, asking the ancestors to protect her daughter from the very world she had been born into.

One day, Adesewa had wandered to the river alone. The water was low that season, but it still danced in the sun. She sat at the edge, legs folded, and stared at her reflection.

“Why did you send me here?” she whispered to the sky. “Why must I live in a place that wants to bend me before I’ve even bloomed?”

There was no answer, only the soft rustle of palm trees and the distant drumming of women pounding yam.

But somewhere deep inside her, she felt a reply not in words, but in something stronger:

You are not here to bow. You are here to break what needs breaking.

And from that day, Adesewa began to listen not just with her ears, but with her spirit.

She watched. She remembered. She questioned. She would grow older, yes. But not smaller.

And when the time came, she would not go quietly