It was in the early hours of the morning that Bimbo gave birth to the child. The midwife, a woman with firm hands and deep eyes, only sighed as she dried the newborn with a worn cotton cloth.
“It’s a girl,” she said. “Very small, but alive.”
But Bimbo did not look. She barely looked at her.
In the corner of the room, a flickering lamp cast long shadows across the mud walls. The baby cried, but not loudly. Her cry was weak and thin, as if she already knew she was not welcome in this world.
“What is that?” Bimbo muttered, wrinkling her nose. “A lizard?”
The midwife stared at her in shock. “Excuse me, ma’am. She’s skinny and very dark. What kind of creature is this? That’s a sign of a curse, not a blessing.”
The midwife held the baby more carefully, trying to hide her offense.
“She has all her fingers. She’s breathing well, and her heart is beating. She’s alive, ma’am. Alive, and she’s yours.”
But Bimbo was not listening. The frown on her forehead was a mask of disgust. That was not the baby she had imagined. Not the little Princess Clara she had hoped to show her husband, Mario, and her mother-in-law, Donatau, the woman who already called her a hen without eggs every time the subject came up at the table.
So, as soon as the midwife fell asleep in a corner, exhausted, Bimbo got up, took the baby into her cold hands, did not look at her face, and walked out.
The village was still asleep. The sound of crickets was the only witness.
She walked to the Ogen River, her footprints erased by the low mist. She stood there before the dark water that whispered songs of centuries. The baby squirmed in the cloth with barely an audible cry.
“You are going to destroy me. You knew it,” Bimbo whispered.
And without another word, she let go.
The sound of the cloth hitting the water was so faint it did not even echo. No thunder rolled from the sky. No leaf moved. Only silence.
Then Bimbo returned home, lay in bed, and shut her eyes tightly.
The next morning, when Mario came running after hearing about the birth, he found Bimbo hugging a pillow and crying.
“She was so sick, so weak. She didn’t make it,” she sobbed.
Mario froze. “What?”
“I tried. I tried to hold her, but she was gone,” Bimbo said, burying her head in her chest.
Mario stood still. Tears came to him like hot rain. He screamed, punched the floor, ran outside, and kicked a drum that flew across the yard.
The neighbors heard the wailing and whispered.
Bimbo only cried with technique, because not a single tear was real.
In the days that followed, the house was filled with silence. The village sent porridge, comforting herbs, and prayers. Her mother-in-law, Donatau, spent her days sitting on the porch, repeating, “A baby who dies at birth is a sign. A sign that something is wrong with the mother. The fault is never the baby’s.”
Bimbo pretended to listen. She would say, “It’s God, Mama. It’s divine will.”
But inside, all she felt was relief.
She had rid herself of the shame of that ugly dark daughter who would have ruined her reputation.
But time is no fool.
Seven years passed, and nothing. No other child came. No belly grew. No morning sickness. Nothing.
With each visit to the healer, she returned with a new amulet. With every prayer in the hilltop church, she came back more tense. Until one day, Mario himself said, “I’m tired. You lied to me. That girl, are you sure she was born weak?”
“What?” she replied, offended. “Do you think I would kill my own daughter?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you thought it. I was the one who suffered, who gave birth, who cried through countless nights. You fell silent.”
This time she truly cried, not for her daughter, but from fear, because the truth was a shadow that occasionally whispered in her ear.
Her mother-in-law, more cruel than ever, did not forgive.
“That woman has a dry womb. I said it. She threw away the blessing and now wants to reap miracles. Never.”
In the village, other women began to distance themselves. Mothers avoided talking about children around her. Children stopped playing when she passed. One day, while drawing water from the well, a girl said loudly, “Look, the woman who lost her baby. They say the river took her. Or maybe the other way around.”
Laughter. Whispers. Humiliation.
Bimbo came home every day with slumped shoulders. At night, she lay beside Mario, who no longer touched her, and whispered to herself. And yes, she would have gone back, but the thought was immediately swallowed by pride, fear, guilt.
Only destiny does not forget.
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