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.
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.”
The woman returned the next night, and the next, and the next. She took Bimbo to church, gave her a New Testament, taught her to pray, to fast, to meditate on the Psalms. And in the third month, before the entire village, watching with surprise and skepticism, Bimbo went down to the waters and was baptized.
The sharp tongues of the village murmured, “That woman has become a saint now.”
But deep down they knew something had changed. Her gaze was different, her walk lighter, her face calmer.
And then, without boasting, without loud prayers, without street prophecies, her belly began to grow.
She did not announce it. She waited for the kicks, the nausea. And when it was impossible to hide anymore, she revealed it.
Twins.
The village was in shock.
“Look what fasting and prayer can do!”
Even the mother-in-law did not mock this time. She only started leaving bigger plates of food at the door.
Mario smiled again, and Bimbo prayed, “Lord, however they come, I will love them.”
Months passed.
The day came in a small suffocating room, with wind moving the stained curtain. The twins came into the world.
First, a small girl, delicate round face, clear eyes, healthy, crying loudly, and the father was moved.
“She will be named Sean,” he said, touched because she came bringing joy.
Then came the second. Silence.
The midwife hesitated.
“Bimbo. The other is also a girl, but strange—very thin. Her skin has patches, her eyes are misaligned, her nose curls upward, her mouth twisted. She cries like a sick cat.”
Mario stepped back.
“What is this?”
“She is your daughter,” replied the midwife firmly. “Just different.”
“This is a punishment.”
But Bimbo took her in her arms gently, without fear.
“No. She is mine, and she belongs to God. It does not matter what she looks like. She is my answered promise.”
Mario turned his face away. “I cannot look at her.”
“Then don’t,” Bimbo said. “But she will not be discarded. She will live. She will be loved, even if only by me.”
And so began a new chapter in Bimbo’s life.
On one side, Sean—celebrated, carried in arms, photographed.
On the other side, hidden, avoided, rejected.
But Bimbo treated them both with the same cloth, the same affection, the same blessing.
“Mom loves you. Mom failed others, but she won’t fail you.”
Sod smiled. Even if crooked, even if strange, she smiled like someone who had already forgiven before understanding.
And in heaven, perhaps, a page was being turned.
Because love, even if delayed, still redeems.
Sod did not cry like the other babies in the village. Her cry was fine and sharp, like that of a lost bird. And her laughter, when it came, arrived like a surprise, subtle and shy, as if asking the world for permission to exist.
She grew in a corner of the house in a makeshift cradle of old rags and worn pillows. While neighbors came to visit Sean, bringing toys and colorful beaded necklaces, only Bimbo leaned over Sod, eyes shining with tenderness.
“Mom is here, my little crooked flower,” she would say, kissing her forehead with the care of someone holding a cracked but precious glass vase.
Sod’s skin did not clear with time. It remained blotchy, with uneven tones, gray patches on her chest and arms. Her hair grew in sparse coarse tufts. Her eyes, one lighter than the other, gave her expression a mysterious air that frightened adults and intrigued children.
“What is that?” whispered the women under the shade near the well. “Looks like she was sewn together from leftovers of another baby.”
“God forbid,” exclaimed another. “That’s a punishment.”
Mario never contradicted them. He only looked at Sod as if she were a ghost in the shape of a girl.
The father who had lifted Sean high for all to see had never touched Sod, never carried her, never called her by name.
Once, Sod tried to run toward him, arms stretched like fragile branches of a young tree.
“Papa,” she said in a trembling sweet voice.
Mario instinctively stepped back as if she were made of fire.
“Go play with your mother,” he said.
Bimbo watched, torn between anger and resignation.
“Is she your daughter?”
“I have a daughter. She’s out there playing with her new kite. That one is not mine.”
Sod heard it. She always heard it, but she never complained.
Instead, she found comfort where the world did not reject her: in nature.
From an early age, Sod showed fascination with trees, the wind, birdsong, and especially the river. She spent hours sitting by the riverbank with a notebook Bimbo had made from scraps of paper and a plastic cover. With charcoal, she scribbled curves, leaves, fish, and especially the river.
The river was her refuge, her counselor, her mirror.
“Mom, the river whispers,” she said one morning while drawing smiling fish. “It calls me by name.”
“And what does it say?” Bimbo asked, sitting beside her.
“That it knows my story and loves me even if I am ugly.”
“You’re not ugly, my daughter. You’re different, like the full moon. You have a beauty that only appears when others hide.”
Sod smiled.
Sean, the twin brother, grew up handsome, tall, strong, with a broad smile and a steady voice. The village adored him. Older women called him prince. Children wanted to run like him. Girls were already competing for the title of Sean’s future wife.
But Sean was different.
“Mom, why do they laugh at Sod?” he asked one day, seeing a group of boys mocking his sister and calling her “rag doll.”
“Because their eyes are still blind,” replied Bimbo while washing clothes. “But your son must see beyond the face.”
And he did.
Whenever they mocked his sister, Sean appeared, not with shouting, but with firmness.
“If you mock her again, I’ll tell my father you stole guavas from the pastor’s orchard.”
He tripped one bold boy. Another time, he kicked the group’s soccer ball straight into the thicket.
“Anyone who wants to laugh at my sister can go fetch the ball in the bush. It’s full of snakes.”
The boys gave up.
But deep down, Sean also wondered.
One night, after everyone was asleep, he approached his mother.
“Mom, can I ask you something without making you sad?”
“You can, my love.”
“Why is Sod so different from me if we’re twins?”
Bimbo took a deep breath. She looked at the stained ceiling as if the words were hidden there.
“Because sometimes God sends the beauty inside first and takes a little longer to bring it outside. But when it comes, it is more beautiful than anything.”
Sean accepted it. He was a child after all.
But deep down, something told him that his sister’s story was deeper than they knew.
Sod spoke little but thought a lot. When laughter turned against her, she smiled. When adults turned their eyes away, she held their gaze. When someone said, “What a horror,” she answered, “Amen.”
She did not throw tantrums. She did not cry in public. When she was sad, she drew. And over time, her notebook became a diary of emotions.
One day she drew two girls. One with braids, smiling, surrounded by friends. The other with blotchy skin, sitting by a river, holding a flower.
“Who are they?” asked Sean.
“Me and who I want to be.”
“But you’re already better than that. You’re the best sister in the world.”
She hugged Sean tightly. The only hug the world never rejected.
At school, Sod learned fast. She was smart, quick, with a photographic memory. But the nicknames came faster than any correct answer.
“Monster girl.”
“Forest mask.”
The teachers tried to contain it, but the rejection grew like weeds.
One day, a new teacher arrived—Mr. Bangol, thin, with huge glasses and worn-out shoes. He saw Sod sitting alone in the corner.
“Have you ever thought about painting?” he asked.
“I don’t have any paint,” she replied.
The next day, he brought used tempera paints, worn brushes, and an easel made from scrap wood.
“I want to see what you see,” he said.
She painted the river, and the river was beautiful: blue and gold, with tall trees and a little girl sitting on the bank with wings on her back.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“She is when the world stops laughing.”
Bangol held the painting as if it were a relic.
“You have something special. Never hide it.”
Bimbo, seeing all this, knew she was harvesting a miracle. The rejected daughter now filled the house with color.
Despite her husband’s rejection, despite the scorn of the village, Bimbo did not retreat.
“One day, everyone will see who you are. But even if they don’t, I already do.”
And Sod, in a soft voice, replied, “I see you too, Mama. And you’re the most beautiful woman in the world, even when you cry in secret.”
That was when Bimbo understood. Her daughter was light, even if the world called her a shadow.
Time passed like the Harmattan winds—dry, persistent, sometimes nostalgic.
Sod, now nearly 22, had grown into a discreet woman with gentle movements and an attentive gaze. She still bore the unusual features from childhood: skin marked with indecipherable patterns, asymmetrical eyes that sometimes gleamed like amber and sometimes darkened like the river itself. She was an adult, yes, but the questions inside her had only grown.
Why did her father still treat her with such silence? Why did some of the elders whisper when she walked by? And why did the river always seem to call her, as if it had known her name before she was even born?
One night, when the moon was full and orange like a ripe tamarind, Sod had a strange dream. She was standing on the riverbank, but she was not alone. Two girls identical to her—blotchy skin, sparse hair, intense eyes—were standing in the water up to their waists. They smiled, but it was a sad smile.
One of them reached out a hand and whispered, “Come, Sod. You are one of us.”
Sod tried to scream, but her mouth would not open. The wind whispered through the leaves, “Daughter of water, daughter of regret.”
She woke with her face wet, not from sweat, but from tears.
Bimbo came running from the other room.
“Sod. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“I don’t know, Mama. I dreamed of the river. There were two girls. They called me.”
Bimbo’s face went pale. Her bones froze, as if the river had flowed into her soul.
“It was just a dream, my daughter. The river keeps secrets. But you are safe here with me.”
But she was not safe. Not at peace in the village.
Sean had become the pride of the people. He married Ireetti, a kind and lovely young woman. The ceremony was beautiful, simple, but moving. Sod danced, smiled, applauded.
On the outside, everything seemed normal.
But inside, something had begun to gnaw slowly at her heart: loneliness.
The young men of the village still looked at her with fear or with repulsion disguised as politeness. Some tried to be kind, but they never came close.
Sod pretended not to notice. She had learned to laugh in silence, to joke about herself, to turn pain into drawings and poems.
Still, the neighbor women would ask Bimbo, “Has no one come for that daughter of yours?”
“She is a good girl. But you know, those eyes…”
Bimbo would smile faintly, but inside her guilt was a deep well she pretended had been sealed. What she did not know was that the well was still full, and every one of Sod’s tears was another drop that made it overflow.
On Sundays, mother and daughter would return together from the market. Bimbo insisted on walking with Sod even when Sod said she could go back alone.
“Mama, I’m an adult. You know that.”
“And I’m old. Did you know that?” Bimbo would reply with a playful smile, carrying the cloth basket.
As they walked through the mud houses and narrow alleys, people looked at them with restrained respect. Sod was known for her gentleness. She knew the names of the children, helped the elderly carry water jugs, and even spoke kindly to the village drunkards. But she felt like a badly assembled puzzle, as if she were missing an essential piece of her soul.
One afternoon, Bimbo found Sod sitting by the riverbank again, just as she had since she was a little girl, scribbling in her old notebook, now almost completely filled.
“You know, Mama, sometimes I feel like there’s something in this river that belongs to me.”
Bimbo stopped. The wind swirled a few dry leaves around. The sound of the water seemed louder than usual, almost like a muffled scream.
“What do you mean by that, daughter?”
“I don’t know. But when I’m here, I’m not afraid. I feel nostalgic for something I don’t even remember.”
Bimbo sat beside her, stayed silent for a long moment, and then said, “The past is like the river. Even when it looks calm on the surface, there is always a current underneath. Sometimes it is better not to dive in.”
Sod looked at her mother.
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“No,” she answered too quickly.
Sod did not insist, but her eyes said: I know you are.
The following nights became even more unsettling. The dreams returned. Sometimes the river girls were crying. Sometimes screaming.
One night, Sod woke up screaming her own name.
“Sod!”
Bimbo rushed to her.
“Are you scared?”
“No, Mama. I think… I think she is me. They are all me.”
Bimbo could not take it anymore. The pain in her throat grew like thorns.
The next morning, she went alone to the village church. She sat in the back pew and began to cry.
The pastor approached.
“Sister Bimbo?”
“Pastor, I committed a sin that has been drowning me for over 20 years.”
The pastor did not interrupt.
“I threw my daughters into the river. Not once, but twice, because I thought they were ugly, that they would shame me. And God—God left me alive.”
Even then, the pastor gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
“And even so, He gave you a third chance with Sod. But she is remembering. She dreams of them. The other two. It is as if the river wants to collect.”
“Maybe the river does not collect,” said the pastor softly. “Maybe it only returns.”
Bimbo returned home in silence. She saw Sod sitting on the porch, sewing the sleeve of her torn blouse. She looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“You are beautiful,” she said.
Sod laughed.
“Now you say it.”
“I always believed it. But now… now I see it with the eyes of my soul.”
Sod did not understand, but she felt something—an invisible weight shifting in the air.
The following week, Bimbo wrote a letter.
“My daughter, you do not know where you come from, but you need to. Before you, there were two—also my daughters, also your sisters. I threw them into the river because they were different. Because I was blind. You are the miracle God gave me to teach me how to see. Forgive me, even if I never have the courage to say it out loud.”
She hid the letter inside her Bible, tucked into the book of Proverbs.
But the village winds were stubborn, and the river was too.
The days started getting darker earlier—not because of the weather, but because of a new shadow Sod could not name. It was as if the air had changed. The lightness she and her mother used to carry on the walk home from the market had vanished.
Now every time the sun began to set, Bimbo made excuses.
“Oh, I can’t go pick you up today, daughter. I’m visiting Aunt Lara,” she would say with a forced smile.
“But Mama, you went yesterday and the day before.”
“Now she is opening a pharmacy,” Bimbo replied, her eyebrows raised. “Don’t question me, Sod. You’re a grown woman now. You don’t need a babysitter. Go alone and come straight home.”
Sod nodded, but something inside her no longer rested in peace. At first, she thought it was just her mother’s tiredness or maybe a health problem Bimbo was hiding. But no. It was something else. Something with the scent of a secret.
One muggy afternoon, the market buzzed with voices, cloth bags, rushed laughter, and flies dancing over fresh fish.
Sod was finishing packing the last bunches of plantains at her stand when she saw a familiar figure in the distance. Her mother, Bimbo, was there, but she had not come for her. She stood with her back turned, speaking with someone, a figure leaning against the tobacco stall, wrapped in a wine-colored scarf that covered part of her face.
Sod narrowed her eyes, tilted her head, trying to make out the silhouette. The conversation looked tense. The woman was gesturing nervously, and Bimbo seemed to be trying to calm her down. Before she could get closer, the woman slipped away down the side of the market, vanishing between sacks of rice and herb vendors.
Sod ran to her mother.
“Mama.”
“Oh, Sod, are you done already? I just came to buy tobacco for your uncle,” she answered too quickly, her eyes darting like she had ants in her shoes.
“Who was that woman you were talking to?”
“What woman?”
“The one with the scarf leaning on the stall. I saw her. Mama, you were talking to her.”
“Sod, please don’t start. It must have been some vendor asking me for change. I didn’t even see who it was. Come on, let’s go home. It’s already getting dark.”
Bimbo grabbed the basket and hurried away, leaving no room for further questions.
Sod stood frozen for a few seconds. The smell of dried fish felt sour. The air seemed stuck between the teeth of time.
A lie.
And a bad one.
In the days that followed, Sod could not forget that moment. Her mind became a sleepless mill.
Why was her mother hiding things? Who was that woman? Why did she look so scared?
Until one muggy Thursday, the truth began to peel away like yam skin.
Sod was crossing the packed dirt alley, returning from Dona Qualommo’s candy stand, when her eyes locked with that same woman.
She was standing next to the village well, a bucket in hand. She wore a simple burnt-orange dress and a white scarf over her poorly braided hair. But what caught Sod was her face.
It was like looking into a broken mirror.
The woman had the same spots on her face as Sod, the same jaw structure, the same strange eyes, one slightly larger than the other, with an iris that changed color under the sun.
She was older, perhaps five years older, but it was like seeing herself distorted by time.
Sod froze.
The woman saw her too. Her eyes widened with a fear that screamed silently. The bucket slipped from her hands and fell to the ground with a dull thud. She covered her mouth and began to cry in silence. Tears streamed down her face as if a secret river had overflowed inside her.
Sod did not say a word, but she felt a knot in her chest, as if all the air had been sucked out by the well.
Who are you?
The question did not come out, but it was written in her eyes.
The woman tried to approach, but Sod stepped back. Her feet felt glued to the ground, yet wanting to run.
Not knowing what to do, she turned and ran. She ran as if the past were chasing her. She passed the corner where women sold pineapples, ignored the greeting of the old man selling cashews, tripped over a sack of flour, and did not stop until she got home.
Bimbo was in the backyard doing laundry when she saw her daughter arrive with a pale face and frightened eyes. She ran to her.
“What happened? Did you fall, Sod?”
Her voice came out as a breath.
“I saw her. The woman from the market. She was at the well. She saw me and cried.”
The wash basin slipped from Bimbo’s hands, spreading soap and foam across the floor.
“Sod, what are you talking about?”
“You know who I’m talking about!” Sod shouted, her hands trembling. “She has my face. My face, Mama. Who is she?”
Bimbo took two steps back. She had not expected the truth to come out of her daughter’s mouth with the weight of a sacred drum.
“Sod, you’re tired. It must have been someone who just looks like you. The world is full of lookalikes. Soul twins. Go drink some water. Lie down. Rest. Go.”
“Go, Sod.”
The shout was louder than it should have been, more afraid than angry.
Sod swallowed hard and went up to her room.
But she did not sleep. Not that day, nor the ones after.
The image of that woman would not leave her mind. The pain in her eyes. The way she cried. The look of someone who had seen a ghost.
But who was the ghost of whom?
Sod knew something was buried in that river. Something her mother pretended did not exist. But it would not stay hidden for long.
The voices of the past were returning.
And now they had faces.
Ugly, marked, deformed—but real, and alive.
Sod began to avoid the mirror, not out of shame, but out of fear that one day she would look into it and not see herself, but one of them looking back.
The days passed as if the sky were always cloudy. Even when the sun was shining, Sod walked as if she expected something at every corner. Something or someone.
The market was no longer the same. Every corner seemed to hide a glance. Every voice seemed to whisper secrets. No one dared to speak aloud.
She still remembered the woman at the well. The mirrored face. The tears.
But what would truly break her was yet to come.
It happened on another hot morning. She was stacking sacks of flour under the shade of her stand when she saw them through the hanging sheets: two women walking side by side, discreetly dressed in simple floral fabrics, but with an unsettling air because both had her face.
Each step they took made Sod’s world shrink. Her heart pounded. Cold sweat ran down her back. One was shocking enough. Two—that was impossible.
“My God, what is happening to me?”
They passed without looking at her.
She pretended to shop for peanuts, then for fabric. Sod tried to follow them, but a swarm of running children blocked her path. When she reached the end of the alley, the women had vanished like smoke.
Later that day, Sod tried to speak with her mother.
“Mom, I saw—now there were two.”
“Two? What?”
Bimbo pretended to be surprised, but her voice trembled.
“Two women just like me. Like the other one, but now there were two. You swore you weren’t hiding anything from me.”
Bimbo lowered her gaze.
“Daughter, you’re confused. You dreamed of them before. Maybe you’re mixing up what’s real with what’s imaginary. Soul twins, like the elders say.”
“Mom, stop it. I know what I saw.”
“Sod, please…”
Bimbo slammed her hand on the table. “Don’t make things up. We already have enough problems. I don’t know any women who look like you except you. That’s enough.”
Sod left the conversation with a bitter taste in her mouth. Her feet felt heavier, as if they were carrying buckets full of questions.
In the days that followed, the women disappeared. They never showed up at the market again. No similar shadows, no whispers, nothing.
But the silence was even worse.
Sod carried that mystery like someone carrying a stone in their chest, visible only to the one who feels it.
One cloudy afternoon, weeks later, Sod was closing her stand early. The sky threatened rain, and vendors were shouting to save their goods. She walked alone down the path between the trees, avoiding the main roads.
It was quieter that way, or so she thought.
In the middle of the path, the crunch of dry branches.
“Who’s there?” she asked, without enough strength to sound firm.
Before she could react, two strong arms grabbed her from behind. A cloth covered her mouth. Another pair of hands tied a tight blindfold over her eyes.
“Let me go! What do you want from me?”
The only answer was the sound of fast footsteps over damp earth.
Sod was carried. She did not know for how long. Her heart beat so hard it felt like it wanted to escape her chest. Her tears mixed with the sweat of fear.
“Please don’t hurt me, please…”
When they finally stopped, they sat her down. She heard a creek, a wooden door. The smell of the place was wet clay, burnt wood, soap, and sweat.
The blindfold was gently removed. Her eyes took time to adjust to the dim light from a lamp hanging from the ceiling.
And then she saw them—the two women from before, the ones who looked just like her.
“Sod,” said the older one, eyes full of tears. “Why? Why did you bring me here? Who are you?”
The other knelt in front of her.
“My name is Adola. That is Kimmy. And we were your sisters.”
Sod’s breath stopped.
“Sisters?”
“Yes,” said Kimmy with a broken voice. “We were born before you, in different times, but we were thrown away like garbage.”
“By who?”
“By her,” Adola corrected bitterly. “Bimbo. The woman who gave birth to us and tossed us into the river.”
“That’s a lie!” shouted Sod, trying to stand.
“It’s not,” said Kimmy, holding her. “Listen. We didn’t know either. But we were saved, separated, and after many years we found each other again, and we discovered the truth.”
“But how do you know?”
“She paid men to take us from the village when we were babies. She bought the silence of midwives, but she did not count on kind fishermen or elders who knew how to spot hidden evil.”
Adola stood up, trembling.
“She rejected us, hated us, and now—now she pretends you are all she has. You’re not an only child. You’re the third attempt.”
The world collapsed in silence around Sod. Her tears fell without her even noticing.
“Why? Why would she do that?”
Kimmy replied with sad tenderness, “Because we had marked faces. Because we were thin. Because we were not pretty enough. But she loves you now,” said Adola. “After God shattered her inside, after she saw how her own mistakes set her house on fire. But the love born of guilt does not erase abandonment.”
Sod dropped to her knees.
“I don’t understand. I just wanted to know who I am.”
The two sisters knelt beside her. The lamp flickered. The silence said more than words.
“Sod, you are our sister, and we love you,” said Kimmy, hugging her.
“We always knew one of us was out there,” said Adola, touching her hand.
In that simple hut, Sod cried like never before. But for the first time, she was not crying alone.
The following days felt like a sweet secret hidden in her chest. Sod began to meet her sisters in silence. They would see each other in a clearing near the river, hidden among trees and untold stories.
They laughed, sang, sometimes danced, talked about their childhoods, what they had suffered, what they dreamed of.
Sod felt alive.
“I thought I was a mistake,” she said during one of the meetings.
“No,” replied Kimmy. “You’re the missing piece.”
“And Mama—she’s not ready for that yet,” said Adola with a hardened look. “She had her chance.”
“But maybe one day,” Sod began.
“Maybe,” Kimmy answered. “But for now, let the truth grow in silence like a tree’s root.”
Sod nodded and looked toward the river nearby. The same river that had once nearly been her tomb. Now it was a bridge, a bridge between broken pasts.
And she knew the time for truth would still come.
But until then, she had something she never thought she would have.
Family.
That hot night, Bimbo opened the front door and saw her daughter standing on the porch, eyes wet, face calm like never before.
“Sod, it’s late. What is with that look?”
Sod stared at her for a long time, then spoke with a calmness more painful than any scream.
“I know everything, Mama.”
Bimbo’s soul froze.
“What are you talking about?”
“Kimmy. My sisters. Your daughters. The water jug.”
Bimbo dropped the jug she was holding. It shattered on the dirt floor. She stumbled back, grabbing the doorframe.
“No, no, it can’t be.”
“You threw us away like rotten yam, one by one.”
Bimbo dropped to her knees.
“Sod, please. No.”
Words would not come. Only sobs, moans, the sound of regret buried for years.
“I was young, foolish, so ashamed of how you looked. I thought… I thought no one would accept a mother of deformed daughters.”
“So you chose pride,” Sod replied. “And now you are harvesting silence.”
Bimbo crawled to her daughter’s feet.
“Forgive me for everything I did.”
She clung to Sod’s ankles as if afraid she would vanish in that instant.
Sod took a deep breath. Then she knelt and hugged her.
“I forgive you, Mama. Not for you, but for me.”
And in that moment, two generations of pain met in an embrace where crying was no longer punishment. It was relief.
“But Papa can’t know,” said Sod, looking into her eyes.
“He can’t,” Bimbo repeated, eyes wide with fear. “He already sees me as a mistake. If he finds out about this, he’ll never forgive me.”
“Then we’ll keep this secret.”
But truth is alive and knows how to wait.
In the days that followed, Sod, Kimmy, and Adola continued seeing each other in secret in an old forgotten barn in the hills. They laughed, they talked, they healed. The three, united by the same abandonment, were now being stitched together by acceptance.
And Bimbo watched from afar, like a ghost at the edge of her own story. She wanted to get closer, but she knew it was not time yet. She spent her nights awake, pacing, whispering prayers, sometimes yelling at God, other times crying into her pillow.
Then came a clear morning—too clear for what was about to happen.
The father came home from work earlier than usual. He found Bimbo seated at the table, her eyes lost.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” The question came dry.
She froze.
“What are you talking about?”
“Three. Three girls with your face—at the market, at the river, on the road home.”
He threw a cloth onto the table. It was a floral scarf, the same one Bimbo had sewn for Adola months earlier.
“I saw them. I followed them. I listened.”
His voice was low but lethal.
“You lied to me. Three daughters—three—and you made me bury one in the name of a lie.”
“I… I didn’t know how to tell you—”
“But you knew how to deceive me.”
Bimbo stood, trying to hold his hand.
“I repented. I changed.”
“Too late.”
Leave a Comment