(A continuation of the short story, Thirst. You can find the first instalment here: https://suitsscandalandthegoodwife.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/thirst/ shout out to my daddy for being the number one supporter of my writing…and to Anita and Namdi for answering every doubt with a, “Wendy, Just. Write!” I love you guys!) 🙂

2:07p.m. on the fifth of February 2011 found Kilali Roger standing in a confused daze at the Kaduna Government Memorial Mortuary off Sabon Gari in the old town.

“Madam abeg no look us, look T.V. If na dead body you come fine’ for hya abeg fine’ am dey go! We get many dead body hya today” One of the mortuary attendants shouted at Kilali as she stared aghast at what looked to her like a million little bodies littered on the ground. The attendant’s loud voice came to her from far away, prompting nothing but an eery smile from Kilali. “Nigeria’s service industry will be the death of me” she thought. The smile was immediately wiped off her face as she belatedly realised it would literally kill her, if her daughter’s body were to be found littered amongst the charred corpses carelessly scattered around by the ineffective Nigerian Mortuary workers.

“S-ssor…..” She coughed. “Please, please I need to find Olla” she murmured to the frowning attendants. “ ‘Olla’ na road or wetin be that one?!” the most assertive of the attendants asked belligerently, drawing smiles from some of his colleagues. One of the attendants hung back, clearly not enjoying Kilali’s distress. “Madam no vex,” he told Kilali, “…we dey work since morning we don tire na why dem dey behave like this, you no say this job no be small tin. Who you dey find? Na pikin from dat bus from Minna state wey all the small pikin die?” Kilali could only nod mutely, her brain unable to retain information. Going into autopilot, she asked redundant, foolish questions.

“So this bus, are you sure it was the one from Minna that crashed?” “But some of the children are alive. Are they here? There is a little girl that belongs to me there..she’s in the hospital? Let me look at the ones that did not die first. Please. Please. Plea..” her voice cracked then. The look all the attendants were giving her now told her brain something her heart could not comprehend just yet.

Baby Olla was gone.

“Ok madam” the formerly belligerent attendant told her quietly. “Since you don already reach here make we first just check the pikin wey dey here fas fas then we go go see the one wey no die for hospital, mmmn?” he told her calmly, knowing the hospital was empty of a wounded but alive little girl belonging to this woman with the vacant eyes. He slowly winded between the little bodies. A silent Kilali followed.

The air gradually filled with hushed voices as more parents filed into the mortuary. Every few minutes, the pain in the air was exacerbated by a wounded cry from a relative indicating they had identified their own. But still Kilali and Olla’nna remained separated.

“Ma, you talk say your pikin get pink and blue watch and suppose dey wear yellow uniform abi?” The attendant said to Kilali as he stopped, staring down at a little girl that looked eerily like… “OLLA?” Kilali whispered quietly to her daughter as if the love in a mother’s voice could wake the child. “Baby Olla” her mother whispered again to her baby, this time shaking her pink watched hand. “Baby, Olla, Olla’nwam, Olla’nna…” her voice getting more insistent as she called her daughter’s names. She shook her with each name. As her voice softened, the pressure of her hands increased. “Olla, Olla, Olla don’t leave mummy. Please. Please Olla.” By now she had her daughter’s little body in her arms and was sobbing into her lifeless neck.

Kilali Roger cried like a king. Not a queen. In contrast to her regal, almost aloof, nature she cried like a lion feeling the first tear of the hunter’s arrow. Loud and haunting, the sound burst from her lips like it had been repressed for a long time. Like the tears of women all over the world, it had. It had laid deep inside her through marriage issues, losing a father, labour pains and more. Mixing with her intestines, peppering her throat, fighting with her tonsils to escape the prison of her mouth. Often she did not let it. But today, today there would be no other day like it. The tears burst from her, drawing gasps and answering tears from the eyes of the other parents as they all mourned the deaths of their Joy.

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