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Karen woke up with a slight headache. She got up from the bed a bit feeling a bit woozy, the last time she remembered feeling this way was when she was pregnant. The thought of her last pregnancy brought a sadness upon her, she had lost the pregnancy and another part of her had died yet again. The sad fact that she didn’t get to carry her child that would spring from the seed that had spent the first three months of its life engulfed her. Deep in thought she would blurt out talking out loud to spirit of her dead unborn child, with the hope that it would hear her and she would say repeatedly, “If you were a she I had great plans for you and if you were a he, I also had great plans for you”. She would go on and describe how she had bought baby items in blue and pink colors, pink if it had been girl and blue if it were a boy. She found herself doing this on a daily basis usually while dressing up after her morning bath.

She had been unaware how grief stricken she had gotten until a couple of months later while she was cooking in the kitchen. She had been dicing onions to add to the sauce that she had cooking on the stove and a gentle nudge on her upper arm jolted her back to reality. She looked up to see Makinde, her dearly beloved husband standing in front of her, looking at her worriedly. Until then did she realize how tight her grip had been on the knife, she stopped chopping as he locked his gaze on hers;  

“You have been chopping loudly for quite a while now” He reached for the paper napkin beside her on the kitchen island and dabbed her tears.

“The onions are making your eyes teary”. Makinde spoke with his wife half scolding half caring. Karen dropped the knife and accepted another napkin from him. As she wiped her face she was quite surprised at how much tears she had shed. They both knew that it wasn’t only the onions making her teary but it was best to leave it at that for now.

She wasn’t quite sure how long he had been standing in the kitchen watching her, or how long her chopping sound had gone on for. She also wasn’t certain if he was standing there a couple of minutes ago when she had dropped the knife and wept like the first day she lost her last child. She hadn’t gotten over the loss of her last child, which was one of several. She wondered if she could call it a child, after all it had stayed only 3 months, but it was the one that had stayed longest in the warmth of her womb. 

Choosing her words carefully she lied to her husband,

“No dear I’m good….. Just putting an extra touch to the sauce I’m making for you” She winked at him and flashed a smile, trying so hard to cut through the dense atmosphere and lighten the situation. She couldn’t tell her husband how depressed she was from the loss, not because she didn’t want him to know how depressed she was but because she didn’t have the right words to express her sorrow. There couldn’t be words to express the deep tunnel she was falling through.

Makinde didn’t look convinced as he watched his wife lie to him however, he touched her lightly on her shoulder and said softly, more like a whisper,

“Please loosen your grip on the knife dear” and he walked out of the kitchen back into the living room.