Idaba, Mama Knows Now

"Show me where. Let me see how my baby sleeps."

I stared at the woman whose heart, i knew, was at this very moment, breaking.

"Aunty, i do not know the exact place, i just know that she was brought here."

We stood in silence for a while, staring at the huge expanse of land and wondering where we would begin the search. There would be no mark, that i was sure of. I wondered then if some how, the two spirits would reach out to each other and this mother, my aunt, would know instinctively, where to find her baby. There had been no stone or cross placed when they brought Idaba. I saw Aunty's hands clench into a fist and then unclench. She brought one hand to her mouth and held it there as the silent tears ran down her face. She looked away quickly and started to rummage in her worn but clean handbag. You could tell it had seen better days. You could tell from the way she carefully kept it and the way she had slang it over her shoulder that she was a woman who gave attention to things. I waited. After a while, she walked ahead slowly and turned to a tree on her left. I followed quietly thinking that perhaps she had received the knowing. She sat under the shade of the tree and stared ahead.

I felt heavy with guilt. I could excuse myself if i tried hard enough. I could banish this guilt. It was not my fault and i had been too young to stop it all. I remember the day clearly, i remember the days, weeks and months before too.

Idaba was 5years old when she started to show the signs of an illness still greatly feared at the time. It was clear by her age that the illness had been passed on to her at birth. We watched, as she started to shrink, right before our eyes. She was in the hospital for three months and then she died. No one told Aunty. How could they? She had sent them a healthy baby girl from the village. They brought her here and buried her. They, my uncles and her father. Her father who was still so shaken that he couldn't leave the car the day of the funeral. He too wouldn't know where they buried Idaba.

The uncles and nephews, a group of cold hard men dug furiously and quickly. Her little body lay in a cheap coffin, the very first one they had found as they drove from the hospital.  They had argued about it. The coffin. I remember Uncle Biziire saying it was a waste of money. He had suggested she be wrapped in a kanga, her being so young and all. The Coffin sat at the back of a pickup that smelled of cows urine. A priest sat in the car and waited to be called out to say the final farewell.

When all was done, we crowded around the little grave and listened as the priest spoke of a Maker who created, sent to earth and recalled some of the little ones. It sounded as if they were faulty items that needed to be recalled. It felt like a horrible excuse for taking her so young. Why give her to us in the first place? Why take her through the pain she went through in those months in the hospital? It didn't sound right. I stopped listening and stared hard at the coffin, wondering if maybe they had made a mistake and she was in there screaming and trying to break free.

Idaba's mother who i have always called Aunty, just Aunty, did not know that her little girl had died. I imagined at that moment, that she was somewhere at her home in the village feeling a sharp pain, down with an unexplained illness, wondering why she was ill with a thing she couldn't explain. In my mind, a mother always felt things related to her child. Maybe she wasn't in pain, maybe she had this floating feeling that she couldn't explain. She would know of her daughters passing two years later, a day before this day as i stood and she sat under this tree.

Just yesterday, Aunty had come to see Idaba, her little girl who she now thought would be seven.  She came out of the taxi and the conductor placed her sack of Matooke and Irish Potatoes next to her by the road opposite the house. Yes, Idaba was seven now, but the last two years, she had spent away from us mortal beings. No one was home. She learned from the neighbor who saw her and came to say how sorry she was of the events of two years past. She learned that her daughter whom she sent to Kampala with her husband had been dead and buried two years now. I found her sitting by the veranda that faced the road. My greeting was met with a heavy blow to my face. I held my cheek and waited quietly. She walked away and didn't come back until this morning. She spoke to no one but me. "Take me," she said. "Where is Idaba. Take me to her."

My uncle sat by the veranda, his sugar cane halfway to his mouth, watching us. He didn't say anything. He didn't even get up. I looked at him hoping he would come and help his grieving wife. He didn't. He just started. My brother, four years older than my 17, spoke quietly. "Take her there if you remember." I remembered the land because it belonged to us. It was just so big and i couldn't point at the exact place. Two years was a long enough time to forget a thing that had haunted you.