We were in the kitchen with my Aunty Doris, and she was teaching me how to bake banana bread. My husband loved it with all his heart. He always complained about how he missed his mother and her mouth-watering banana bread. When I told Aunty Doris about this, she laughed and said to me: “Don’t worry my child, I’m here. Baking is not as hard as it seems. All you have to do is to bake from your heart.”

I really don’t know how life would have been like without Aunty Doris. She was like a mother. Ever since my own mother passed away, she had been the one to take me under her wing, from high school until now that I was married. We had our clashes, especially when I was growing up. Sometimes I would feel she was abusive but, as time went by, I realised she was just treating me like any parent would treat their child. Her daughter Mantoa and I still didn’t get along, because of the feuds we had when we grew up, but at least Aunty Doris was still there for me.

“Yoo, Aunty it smells so good! I can even feel the little one kicking very hard in here,” I said, peering in the oven.

“Hai, suka, we are baking for Timothy, not you and that big five baby of yours. Look at how big you are! Next thing you know, it will be hard for you to enter the door!”

I laughed so hard that I almost wet myself. Just as I was about to run to the loo, I felt something warm between my legs. I looked down startled, and there was water mixed with blood on the floor.

“Don’t look so shocked! Your water just broke,” Aunty Doris said taking my hand.

And that is when labour pains started. Timothy’s phone was on voicemail, so Aunty Doris called an ambulance to take me to hospital. How I wished he was there. I just couldn’t stand the pain on my own without him. He had promised! Promised to be there every step of the way and then suddenly his phone was off? At the hospital, two men came rushing to the ambulance, and helped to get me onto the wheelchair. By then the pain was overwhelming. I felt as if I was going to die at any given moment. Where was Timothy, dammit?!

They took me straight to the delivery room and the doctor was happy at the rate the baby was coming. I didn’t care how he felt about it. All I needed was for it to come out of me immediately. I had forgotten all about Timothy and his whereabouts. The pain had started to drive me insane and Ii refused to let go of the doctor’s hand. It was such a relief when I pushed for the last time, and I heard someone say “It’s a boy…!”

I didn’t hear my baby cry…the look on the doctor and the nurses’ faces explained it all. My baby boy was dead! He was still born.

It was a shock, not only to me, but to the doctors as well. The rate the baby kept moving usually meant it was doing fine; my health was excellent and so was the baby’s. No one could explain what had happened. As if all that was not enough, Timothy never switched his phone on and nor did he bother coming to the hospital that day.

I cried myself to sleep that night. Nothing made sense. My child had been still born and my husband was nowhere to be found. It all felt like a nightmare I wished I could wake up from. When they asked me what I wanted to do with the baby, I asked them to keep him in the hospital mortuary until I could discuss the matter with his father.

When I woke up the following morning, Timothy was by my bedside. What surprised me was how calm he was. He didn’t look like a man who had just lost a child. Surely he knew our little boy had passed away, or didn’t he?

***

Tell us: Tell us what you think: What could have happened to the baby? How will Timothy take it?