TRAPPED...Part 5.

I heard a loud bang. As I drifted towards wakefulness, I tried opening my eyes. The light from a solitary bulb on my ceiling greeted me. I murmured a silent prayer of gratitude. Another nightmare. The bad dreams had been frequent since Jide's demise. But last night's was so vivid. I had dreamt of my death. 'Being alive is a gift!' I said aloud. The lyrics of a song filtered into my consciousness.

          

          Death is real...It is a drug we'll all take

          Life is just a dream...One day we will wake 

I sat up. My pyjamas was drenched with sweat. The baby started crying. I carried him from the cot and rocked him gently. The crying stopped. I hurriedly prepared another bottle of milk. After feeding him, I bathed him and dressed him up in Vikky's old clothes. I laid him back in the cot. I was taking my bath when I heard a knock on my door. 'Coming!' I shouted, hastening up. When I finally answered the door, it was Mama Tunde. 'Ekaro Ma,' I greeted. 'Ekaro, my daughter,'she responded, smiling. 'Hope the baby allowed you to sleep?' 'Yes,' I replied, running my fingers through the baby's soft hair. 'He was well behaved.'

An hour later, we arrived at the police station. A burly constable was at the front desk. 'Yes? Women, what can I do for you?'he asked. 'I found this baby near a refuse dump at Olaitan street last night,' I began. 'No one could say who dropped him there. So we decided to bring him here and report the matter.' The policeman looked confused. 'Jubril!' he called out to another policeman behind a wooden counter. 'Come hear story o! Hmmm!' He was shaking his head. 'Wetin happen?' Jubril asked. I narrated the previous night's events. 'Haba!' Jubril exclaimed, turning to the other policeman. 'Amodu, e fit be one mad woman born am, come forget am for the refuse dump. E fit still be all these small, small girls wey dey carry belle anyhow. Una go write statement for us,' he said, handing me a sheet of paper with pen.

'We don write statement finish, where we go drop the baby?' Mama Tunde asked Officer Amodu, as I gave him the finished statement. The policeman let out a hearty laugh. 'Drop the baby, kè?' he asked, sarcastically. 'Go and look at the signpost outside. It says Police Station, not orphanage!' Noticing the shock on our faces, he lightened up. 'Look women, what you did was commendable. Heroic. But we don't have the facility to nurse one-week old babies.' He sounded like he was pleading. 'There used to be an orphanage down the street but it was closed down last month.' 'Why?' I asked. He shook his head. 'The owners turned it into a baby factory. They gather teenage girls, get them pregnant, nurse them within the walls for nine months until delivery. After delivery, they sell the children. Male children go for seven hundred thousand naira while the females go for five hundred thousand.' 'And the mothers?' I asked in disbelief. 'They give them between fifty to hundred thousand naira depending on the sex of the baby and their negotiating power. You are paid more if you give birth to a male child,' he concluded, looking towards the window. 

We left the Police Station with the baby. The policemen had promised to contact us whenever they get news of a missing baby matching his description. In my mind's eye, I could see the faces of those teenage girls, passing through the excruciating pains of labour, and handed 'peanuts' afterwards. Their babies, gone. Cruelty in its most inhuman form. Fuelled by poverty. I had seen those walls and the gate to the orphanage. But I never knew what went on behind them.

We entered a bus to Ketu. We located another Motherlesss Babies home. The Proprietress was touched by our story. 'I would have taken him in but for two problems,' she  began. 'One, we have exceeded our capacity. Add that to the fact that funding is becoming difficult.' She sighed. 'Second, our youngest child here is five years. It will be difficult to raise a newborn here. You can bring him back in three years time,'she added. I stormed out of her office, disappointed. 'Wetin you go do now?' Mama Tunde asked me, on our way home. 'I will keep the baby,'I replied, smiling down at the bundle in my arms. 'Till the mother shows up.'

Two weeks passed. The mother did not show up. I had settled into my new role of nursing a newborn. Bathing. Feeding. Changing of diapers. Vikky had returned from my sister's and could not get enough of the new baby. I had simply told her 'He is your little brother.' 'Baby! Baby!' she would scream in her sweet, tiny voice. 'Where is my teddy?' It was a new rhyme she learnt at school. She usually ends the question by touching him in the cot. One day, she asked me,'Mummy, what is Baby's name?' It struck me there and then that I had not named the baby. I thought for some time. 'We will call him Uche...Uchechukwu,' I finally replied. "It means 'the will of God'." The next Friday, I took him to him to the church to be baptized. Nkechi had agreed to be his godmother. He was christened Francis.

'Stella.' I heard someone call my name. I had gone to the hospital to collect my Antiretroviral drugs and to give Baby Uche his six weeks oral polio immunization. 'Stella.' The voice was unmistakable. As I turned, I nearly dropped my handbag. I could not believe my eyes. Standing before me, was Dan, my ex-boyfriend. He was grinning widely. 'Dan!' I screamed, still trying to take it all in. He was looking different. Clad in a white ward coat, with a stethescope around his neck, his name tag read 'Dr. Daniel Olisa.' 'What are you doing in our hospital?' he asked, still smiling. 'I came to collect some drugs,' I replied evasively. 'How come?' I asked, pointing at his outfit. 'Last time I saw you...' My voice trailed off. 'When I left your house in anger?' he asked, breaking into a laugh. 'Stella, it has been eight years. Many things have changed.' His look was penetrating. I looked away. 'I can see you have a new baby,' he said, touching the baby strapped on my back. 'Yes,' I replied, weakly. He had tried to hide it behind the smiles. But I noticed. Looking into his eyes at that instant, I saw pain.