Bonnie Konyak
The chill of the cold December night pierced was biting my skin as I watched the teenager struggle to maintain a straight face despite the pain she was enduring. This slight girl of hardly 16 or 17 was about to give birth for the first time and instead for being comfortably settled and assured that it was going to be aright, she was standing outside in the cold night, outside closed door, listening to arguments as to why she should not give birth inside that particular house.
It was December 30 and nearly midnight. I was a spectator to the horrifying drama between two families over the legitimacy of the baby which was about to be born any moment. According to our customary laws, a female must give birth to her baby in the home of the baby’s father as proof of the baby’s parentage; else the baby would be considered fatherless. Whether the mother of the baby or the baby itself would be accepted by the male’s family was a different matter, but the baby has to be born in the father’s house as a legal declaration of his father.
For the same reason, this young girl’s guardians had sent a message to the boy’s family when her labour pains began in the evening but on their arrival later, the house was locked and the family sleeping. Even when they were woken up, the boy’s father refused to open the doors and let the baby be born in their house. Even the father of the baby-to-be-born, who was a mere teenager himself who reportedly had earlier admitted to be the father, refused to let in his former girlfriend. It was the scene that greeted me when I followed my mother, thinking that I was going to witness a joyous birth experience.
Despite my horror at the situation, I could not help but admire the petite girl stand up to her former boyfriend and his family, daring them to name anybody else who might, in any possibility, be the unborn baby’s father, not an easy task in a small town like Naginimora when everybody knew everybody and their dealings. Ironically, even as the girl who was in the threshold of giving birth to a baby on the cold, open ground outside the house, the boy’s family hurried off to another house for a meeting without unlocking the house. So, they waited and as they did, the poor girl was cursed, scolded and threatened to ‘quickly deliver the baby’ by her own relatives so that they could finish the business and go home.
Meanwhile, some sympathizers sent firewood and hot water for the ladies who were waiting and thankfully the neighbours intervene and the boy’s family was made to open the door of their house to the pregnant girl and her relatives. The elder ladies sat in the kitchen and the young girl was taken to a room. In curiosity, I entered the room to have another shock. The girl was lying on the cold floor with just a sack and a narrow strip of plastic tarpaulin piece for her bed. How on earth did they expect the poor girl to give birth to a baby like that? And as I chatted to the girl, she smilingly passed me a plastic bag and I curiously emptied the contents into the bed, I saw a pair of tiny woolen socks, gloves and two caps she had knitted for her baby. “I brought them here knowing that I would be leaving the baby here”, she confides. I did not know what to say as I avoided her eyes. With what words do you console her on her plight?
But despite my inability to offer consolations, there was one thing I knew I could do. I rushed to the kitchen and asked the ladies to summon a nurse for the kid to help her have an easy birth. I was annoyed to find that even for that there was a protocol to follow, that the nurse must be summoned by the boy’s families. It was a matter of ‘who would pay the nurse’ after the birth. Yet I kept on insisting till they finally sent for the poor old nurse past midnight. Of course, I was later sent off so as not to be allowed to see the actual birth but next morning, I was told that the girl had been very brave and gave birth after 1:00 AM. Soon after the birth, as she was not welcomed into the boy’s family, she walked back home slowly with her relatives, supported by two other women. She had to leave her baby behind. The baby was a girl.
Forget the past & look forward…
