Alkaline, by Udochukwu Chidera

If they asked me when it all started, I would say it was the night after she had Somkene. In the weeks leading up to that night, she had looked forward to having her child, decorating the nursery with different shades of pink and shapes of teddy bears, the bed smelling of baby oil and powder. Everyone knew she was happy to become a mother. But when I brought Somkene, wrapped in a plump, white shawl to her, her face registered disappointment.

“Sister, meet Somkene, our beautiful baby girl.”

She waved me aside and turned her face to the wall. I was taken aback. Nobody expected her to act that way. She was supposed to take the crying baby from my arms, cuddle her closely to her gorged breasts and sing those nursery rhymes she had planned to sing after birth. When she finally took the baby, she held her with a distant, tasteless look in her face, seemingly frustrated by her sore, milk less breasts, before tossing her back to me like a porcelain doll. My heart leaped. I tried to talk to her; Mama also did, but our words bounced off the hospital walls and right back to us.

“Do you think it is because of Chidozie?” Mama queried and I shook my head vehemently.

Though Chi-Chi had had a difficult pregnancy, it could not be because of her deadbeat baby daddy, Chidozie, the sweet talking Ogwu businessman who had his way with words and had promised her everything in the world only to abscond when he heard about her pregnancy, close down his shop in Ogwu market, cut all connections with her and never returned any messages or calls. She had seen such men as weak, men who wanted the easy way out, who drove themselves through legs without any form of protection and rejected the consequences later. I still remember the evening Mama found out she was pregnant, she had cried bitterly especially since Chi-Chi was in her final year in university, set to be the first graduate in the family. She had grabbed her arm, all the way to Ogwu market but we met Chidozie’s neighbour who said he had travelled overseas to buy new goods. My sister was a strong woman with a tough personality, sometimes I couldn’t imagine how Chidozie had used sweet words to lay her on her back and pump his seeds into her. But love made one do stupid things. Chi-Chi promised to have her baby and shower her with all the love she had to give. She had looked forward to this baby as much as everyone. So what changed? The baby screamed for the warmth of her mother’s body or breasts but found none. She neither asked for her nor cuddled her for weeks after we were discharged from Central Hospital, Ogwu.

The day Chi-Chi finally reached out for her, I was stunned. I didn’t say a word; I placed the baby in her hands.

“She looks like Chidozie,” she muttered. “She cheated me.” She smiled, looking at Somkene absent-mindedly. “A whole nine months for you to come out with his coffee brown eyes and lush lips.” Could that be the reason for her change in temperament? The fact that her baby reminded her of a man who dumped her when she needed him the most?

“Leave us, I want to bond with my child.”

I swelled and deflated with relief, raising my hands to the skies in thanksgiving before leaving the room to hunt for scent leaves that Mama would later use to make her pepper soup. I was barely finished with harvesting the greens when I heard screams and shouts from the compound. I looked up at the cause of the commotion and saw Chi-Chi on the balcony, baby in hands, smiling. It was a strange smile, the kind one wears before doing something one will regret. The baby shrieked as if she had a premonition of what her mother wanted to do. My mother was on the ground, tumbling in the dirt with her kiri kiri star wrapper.

“Chi-Chi, nwa m, biko, come down, don’t do this.”

Everyone was begging her.

I could have slapped myself for leaving her in the room alone with the baby. She wanted to kill Somkene, not bond with her. Praying for a miracle that slowed time, I tiptoed upstairs to the balcony, sneaked up behind her, yanked her back, and grabbed the baby from her hands. Chi-Chi fell hard to the ground.

“Chi-Chi, ara o na agba gi?! Are you mad? What kind of mother thinks of doing this to her child?” were the questions asked when everyone gathered in the sitting room, heads bowed like we were mourning.

Chi-Chi just stared into the emptiness, her eyes just as bland.

After that day, my sister was given a new moniker: the suffix of onye ara was added to her name and I was christened, “Nnenne, nwanne Chi-Chi, onye ara”–Nnenne, the sister of Chi-Chi the mad woman. Anytime I was coming back from the market with my stool and basket, little children would trail me, clapping, making up songs referencing my sister until I would turn and give them a hot pursuit.

Chi-Chi was kept in a solitary confinement where she crept further back into her shell, saying few words and staring out the window towards the clump of bushes. Sometimes she changed the music on the boom box to match her mood, sometimes she was a Firework in the sky, like Katy Perry sang and other times she was melancholic, Frozen in her body, just like Madonna. Music was something we had been introduced early to by our father and what we loved as adults. When we did Saturday chores, we turned the volume high, moonwalking with the mop or throwing our rags in the air and catching them while doing cartwheels to Britney Spears with Mama yelling in the background. I let the music play because they said music is therapeutic, maybe she would find her way back to us through it. I entered from time to time to take the dirty plates by her bedside to wash, change the sheets and pour hot water for Mama to bathe her.

“How is my child?” She startled me with that question the few times I went to drop food for her in her room. Ever since the incident, she hardly talked about her child or anything else.

“She is healthy,” I one day replied her. “We are giving her infant formula.”

She looked at her breasts bloated with milk and sighed.

“How big is she?”

“Six months big” I replied, so much time had passed.

The distance between us was glaring, so loud. We were only two my mother bore before my father passed away, she never remarried but happily raised us. We used to be close, we often knew what each other was thinking without any words, passing messages with mischievous glares. We walked back from school hand in hand, plucking hibiscus flowers and placing them in our hair. Chi-Chi was the stronger and more stubborn one, getting into fights with boys or girls who tried to bully me and taking Mama’s bashings and whips with peace while I cried in the background, begging Mama not to kill her.

“Sometimes I hear her screams from here and my breasts become very full and sore. From the time she was conceived, she has caused me nothing but pain. Chidozie, the man I thought loved me, abandoned me to my fate to eat my own thoughts till my blood pressure spiked. She took my life when I was about finishing school. I had to keep everything on pause for her, yet she keeps crying. I can’t stand those tears. Sometimes, I want to use a pillow and stifle her forever, but I am not capable of the dark thoughts that woman is asking me to do.”

My eyes bulged out at the mention of “that woman” till I was sure they were as round as akara balls.

“Which woman, Sister Chi-Chi?” I enquired, and she raised her hands slowly and dramatically to a dark corner. My eyes followed her hands, hoping to see whom she spoke of. But nothing was there, just a wig stand with her brunette wig that hadn’t been worn in months. Was the silhouette making her imagine there was someone else in the room?

“She is not here now but she comes sometimes. She wears a faded jean skirt with floral shirt that billows in the wind and an eighties-themed wig, ruffled and stringy. She looks interesting and intelligent, talks to me. She is the only one who understands me and advises me on what to do.”

She took the spoon and scooped the pepper soup into her mouth resignedly. She looked tired, like she didn’t want to talk anymore. I hurriedly went to Mama and told her what I heard. Mama, who had been chopping onions, dropped the knife and wiped her hands on her faded wrapper.

“This is where Prophet Ukoh comes in. Before Chi-Chi wakes up one day, carry her clothes and enter Eke Uboh.”

I knew Prophet Ukoh, the tall man with an intimidating physique, dressed in white from head to toe with well cut Afro hair and wild nostrils that flared out when he commanded the evil spirits to come out and drown in our Osimmiri river. He never walked alone; he had a procession of white-clad zealous believers tethered to him by an invisible string and latching onto each word with a feverish Amen! You could tell he was miles away by the bell he used to ward off evil spirits and the strong scent of the herbs he immersed in water to purge the environment of them. He was known for the tactics and theatrics he employed in calling out unclean spirits. When he was in a good mood, he asked politely, imploring them to take host in a new body. On other days, he would go as far as challenging the spirit to a duel or wrestling the victim, making sure that the demon was stressed before eventually leaving, so it would think twice before coming back. He had a good number of success rates and Mama was sure he would cure Chi-Chi.

He danced around Chi-Chi for some time, as if trying to inspect the demon he was expunging and group it accordingly.

“This one is strong,” he mumbled and his interpreter chorused in Igbo.

He reeled off, telling Mama that Chi-Chi was suffering a possession from the ghost of a woman who drowned her babies when she was alive and had taken her own life, too. The woman often visited women who recently gave birth and had access to those with porous spiritual fields. The woman had ruptured Chi-Chi’s mind and made herself comfortable. He mentioned some items that they would buy for him to banish the woman and rebuild and fortify Chi-Chi's spiritual field once again. I heard words like pure alkaline water, raven’s eggs, red and white candles and aromatic incense.

“The alkaline water will neutralize the damage caused by the evil spirit, the raven’s eggs is to make sacrifices to appease her, the red and white candles is to build a protective wall around her while we carry out the rituals, and the incense is used to invoke and welcome good spirits to replace the bad one.”

Mama, with tears in her eyes, set out to gather the items requested by the prophet. On the morning of the first ritual, we walked to Chi-Chi’s room and met an empty bed with the bed sheets wrapped neatly and piled in a corner. The window was open and the wind floated the curtains. I rushed to it, screaming her name, but no one replied and my words reverberated in the chilly breeze. My sister was gone with the wind as Ben King’s Stand By Me boomed in the sitting room.

“I told you the woman has been pulling her into her world. Now she is gone. We have to make offerings for her safe return instead,” Prophet Ukoh spoke heavily, shaking his head as my mother rolled on the floor and Somkene joined in the confusion, crying her tiny lungs out. I fell to my knees and wept.

We never saw Chi-Chi again. It was only when I entered school I started hearing things like “postpartum depression” and linked it to what might have happened to my sister. It was the metaphor for the monster under her bed; the one that convinced her to eat her young. I realized that we had stigmatized my sister without knowing her full story. Somkene calls my mother “Mama” and she is the only living reminder of the beauty that sprouted amidst the sadness and chaos of our home. That sunflower that wasn’t stifled by thorny weeds.

I still say prayers and book masses for Chi-Chi's safe return and her soul. Maybe she will change her mind one day and appear at our gate. We can only hope.

Author’s note

Mental health issues especially postpartum depression are trivialized in Nigeria and alluded to demonic possession so writing this story shed light on such struggles, what goes on in their heads and understanding them.

Udochukwu Chidera

Udochukwu Chidera is a Nigerian writer and pharmacist. She won the second prize in the 2024 Dissolution Climate Change Contest organized by the Litfest Bergen Norway. She is a contributor at IHRAF Anthology for the Sudanese War, Non-Profit Quarterly Magazine, Conscio Magazine, and Valiant Scribe, amongst others.

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