Iya Kere was dead.Everyone looked somber, but nobody cried. Iya Kere was so old she was like that furniture in your house you always expected to see whenever you looked. She had weathered so many decades in strength and spryness that belied a youth’s; even as her children all died of old age.
Wura stood in the shadows to stay unnoticed, which was practically impossible. As Iya Kere’s grandchild and only relative, the villagers greeted and extended condolences to Wura as they came to pay last respect to Iya Kere who lay on a table in the center of the room.
Table of doom, Wura thought as turned her eyes towards that table. Her heart got heavy and dark as the table brought back memories of rituals in the night, howls of pain from the young initiates, and the rancorous laughter of the old woman chiding those in agony while the other women made small talks. Wura shivered as a familiar darkness encompassed her.
She had lain there once when she was twelve, she and other girls as they went through the ritual of maidenhood and had the blade put between their thighs. She remembered the sharp agony of the cut, walking funny for weeks, and becoming withdrawn and a shadow of herself.
Wura jolted as someone touched her. “Yemi?” Wura looked at the woman.
Yemi looked worn and beaten, with hard creases on her face. Gone was the caramel beauty Wura had not seen for over fifteen years now.
“Why are you like this?” Wura asked, taken aback.
Yemi sighed. “I now stay in the village after marrying three times in the city and it didn’t work out. All my husbands had the same complaints–I was always cold when it came to sex.”
Wura frowned, thinking how for the past years she had to pretend anytime her husband moved to her. From painful sex, complications during her two childbirths, to the cyst she battled. Everything pointed towards this table and the ritual of maidenhood.
“I–”
“Rokeeb died of childbirth complications after you left, Sewa still has abscess,” Yemi said. “We need to stop these customs. For our children.”
Wura’s face fell, she knew what Yemi meant.
“But how?”
“By standing against them, fighting if need be. Other women agree with me.”
Wura nodded. It was past time. “Let’s do this then. Let’s fight.”