One day, a little girl appeared in the village carrying leaves, laughing, and helping the elders with a basket of mangoes. Her eyes had a strange brightness, as if they knew too much. Her skin was dark as night, and her smile shone like the sun. No one knew where she had come from, but soon everyone wanted to know who she was.
And Bimbo felt a chill the moment she saw her.
“Who is that girl?” she asked breathlessly.
“We don’t know,” replied Donatau, scratching her chin. “But doesn’t she look like someone?”
Bimbo swallowed hard.
The girl had the same mark on her left cheek, the same little wrinkle on her chin. And when she smiled, the world spun.
“This cannot be,” Bimbo murmured.
But it was.
What came after that would be another chapter in the story, because when you throw a flower into the river thinking it will sink, the river may carry it to a garden that sends it back stronger. And Bimbo was about to reap the seed she had sown, not of love, but of cruelty.
And harvests do not wait for seasons.
Bimbo no longer slept. Her nights were now filled with stifled sobs and sweat-soaked sheets. No matter how much she faked strength, no matter how high she held her head walking through the village, her heart was a drum of guilt that would not stop beating.
Seven years had passed since that silent act.
But the Ogen River does not forget.
So she began going back there, at first in secret. At night, when the village lanterns were off and only the croaking of frogs accompanied her steps, she would stand barefoot before the dark water, eyes filled with tears.
“If you hear me, my daughter, forgive me,” she would whisper.
She would throw flowers, sometimes banana leaves with small bills tied to them.
“Mom was wrong. Mom was blind. Come back to me.”
She did not know why she did it. Maybe madness. Maybe hope.
But the fact is, she truly cried. Not for her mother-in-law’s judgments. Not for the village gossip, but for the invisible hole that had existed within her since that early dawn.
“Ogen River, if you took her, bring me another. Bring me a living daughter, and I swear I’ll love her, even if she comes skinny. Even if she comes dark.”
It was a promise.
And the universe has always listened.
Three months later, to everyone’s astonishment, Bimbo was pregnant.
“A miracle,” said the neighbors. “A sign,” shouted the preacher.
“The womb has opened again!” sang the mother-in-law, who now even praised Bimbo’s beans.
Mario, her husband, was moved. He smiled again. He kissed Bimbo’s forehead every morning. He even started planting yams in the yard with renewed hope.
But Bimbo was afraid.
Her belly grew, but so did the guilt.
Until the day came and the cycle, like a cruel clock, repeated itself.
It was a soft, rainy afternoon. The sky was not crying. It was only whispering.
The same midwife from seven years ago, now older but still with firm hands, assisted the birth.
The baby was born, breathed, cried.
“A girl again,” said the midwife, smiling.
But as she stopped, the child was different. Skinny as a stick, with a high forehead and eyes far too big for her face. Her skin was black as freshly burned coal, her fingers long. And that same faint cry, like a tiny bird’s whistle.
Bimbo froze.
“No,” she whispered.
“Ma’am, she’s alive, healthy, but she needs care. Maybe she’s premature. She needs love.”
But Bimbo had already stepped back.
“No, this is a test. This is punishment. Are you seeing this? She is your daughter. She is not mine. This is a mistake of nature, a flaw of God.”
The midwife, exhausted, only shook her head.
“You promised you would love her, remember?”
But the promise turned to dust.
That same night, Bimbo waited until everyone was asleep. She took the baby in her cold hands.
Once again, she walked to the river. The path felt shorter this time, more familiar. The wind seemed to know what she was doing.
When she reached the riverbank, she hesitated for just a second. Just one.
“I asked for a daughter. Not this.”
And she let the baby slip from her hands.
Plop.
The water swallowed her without sound, without whirlpool, without protest.
But the sky—this time the sky lit up with distant thunder. Small but present, like a warning.
You have not learned.
The next morning, when Mario woke up, he found Bimbo pale, sitting with sunken eyes.
Then he asked anxiously, “Where is the midwife? She said it was a girl.”
Bimbo bit her lip. “She did not survive.”
Mario stopped, motionless for long seconds, then buried his hands in his face.
“Another?”
“Yes, but she was born alive. The midwife said so.”
“Yes, but only for a short time. She stopped breathing. It was quick.”
Mario did not scream. He did not cry like the first time. He simply walked to the freshly planted yam patch, knelt down, and pounded the earth.
“Why? Why does this keep happening to us?”
Bimbo wanted to comfort him. But how? What was she supposed to say? Sorry, love, but once again she looked too ugly, so I threw her in the river?
So she cried again. But this time, the crying felt more automatic, colder. She no longer knew whether it was pain, fear, or just the sound of her own ruin approaching.
The following days were slow and heavy.
Mario went back to silence. This time, the mother-in-law did not praise any beans.
“This is not normal. God does not give and take away for no reason,” she said, looking at Bimbo as one looks at a snake.
The village began to whisper again, now with more certainty.
“Two daughters dead in the same way.”
“She is hiding something.”
And Bimbo was so consumed that she no longer recognized herself in the mirror.
At night she returned to the river again. She cried, tossed leaves, begged, but now the river seemed mute, as if it were saying, I do not hear you anymore.
And for the first time, Bimbo began to fear that what was coming was not just punishment.
It was vengeance.
The chickens were still asleep when the silence of early morning was broken by a cold voice.
“Bimbo, wake up.”
She opened her eyes slowly, reaching across the mattress for her husband Mario’s arm. But it was not him speaking. It was her mother-in-law, Donatau, standing in the doorway, her old lantern shaking in her hand, her gaze loaded with judgment.
“Get up and cover your head. We have visitors.”
Bimbo sat up slowly, heart racing.
Outside, under the shadow of the mango tree, a young strong woman stood with a sack of flour on her head and a shy smile on her lips.
“This is Nem,” said the mother-in-law bluntly. “The new wife.”
Bimbo felt the world tilt.
“New what?”
“New wife,” Donatau repeated, as if announcing a replacement gas tank. “Seven years, Bimbo. You’ve had seven years. Two dead children, none alive. And you think Mario is going to die waiting for you to finally birth something that lives?”
“Mama,” Mario murmured, standing up in shame. “We haven’t even talked this through with her.”
“Oh, shut that loose mouth, Mario. What kind of man watches his own mother grow old without grandchildren and does nothing?”
Bimbo looked at him, hoping for a gesture, a word, a defense, but all she saw was doubt.
She approached and knelt at her husband’s feet, eyes red, soul bare.
“Give me one more year. Just one. If I’m not pregnant, you can marry as many women as you want. But let me try one last year for everything we have lived through.”
Mario looked at her. There was pain in his eyes, yes, but also exhaustion. Still, he nodded slowly.
“Just one year.”
The mother-in-law rolled her eyes. “One wasted year.”
But for Bimbo, it was a miracle in installments.
The next night, Bimbo returned to the river, for the last time, she thought. She brought a candle and an old Bible she borrowed from a neighbor, just in case things went wrong.
She cried like never before.
“I’ve thrown two daughters into this river,” she confessed aloud. “I made promises I didn’t keep. But please, just one more chance. And if one comes, I promise I will love however they come.”
The waters moved slowly, as if reflecting her heart.
“Do you think God still hears you?” asked a voice behind her.
Bimbo turned, startled. A simply dressed woman stood there, eyes that seemed to see beyond the natural, leaning on a wooden cane.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who also made mistakes, but decided to stop making them. You are reaping what you sowed, daughter. But a bad harvest can be pruned if the heart changes.”
“I don’t know how to change.”
“Then I’ll show you.”
She extended her hand. Bimbo took it.
And there, in front of the waters that had been both grave and altar, the old woman prayed. With every word, Bimbo cried harder. Not a cry of guilt, but of release.
“You killed, but God forgives murderers. He forgave Paul. He forgave David. He can forgive you too.”
“But how? How can He forgive me?”
“With surrender.”
Leave a Comment