Look in the mirror; what do you see? A reflection of yourself, or a reflection of your worst fears? Do not be scared, close your eyes, imagine you’re in the forest, chased by a wolf, sitting on the wet forest floor, your legs closed, your arms around you, close your eyes once again, and count to 10. By the time your count reaches 5. You’re gone.
April-5-1946.
It was a cold morning as it rained heavily through the night. I couldn’t sleep as I stayed awake, imagining what today would look like for me. Yesterday started on a good note till my Boss Mr McPherson had told me about the letter he received requesting me to be part of the press pool during the trial of 'Kemi’ I wondered why anyone would’ve invited me, I was the lowest-ranked reporter in my bureau, so I found it laughable why anyone would be interested in me, I only drew puzzles for the morning and evening papers, some of the puzzles I made were petty but quite interesting. Then my boss told me that the suspected ‘Baby killer’ was the one who requested for me. In case you’re wondering who ‘Baby killer’ was, it was the tag the colonial police gave the serial killer who roamed the marina parts of Lagos, her victims newly born infants. It was a gory sight to behold. She claimed a total of 20 infants before she was caught. From the onset, it was always speculated that the killer was a female because it ever happened in delivery rooms where only female nurses were allowed. So, when my boss told me about reporting the case, I felt sick. Why would I want to interview such a murderer, but after a series of back and forth, with the help of my boss convincing, I decided to give it a try. So here I am, sitting at the backbench, few meters away from the suspect, shaking slightly out of fear and out of cold, then she looked back at me, and her face broke into a smile. She was beautiful, she looked perfect, or maybe I was hallucinating.
October-5-1944
Kemi had just come back from studying nursing in London. Although most of her studies were interrupted by the Great War, she enjoyed every bit of it, and she was so eager to come back to Nigeria and start putting her clinical knowledge into practice. Till, she met Phillip, a young Irish man, who had also come to London to study astrology in London, at the prestigious London School of Astrology, they met during one night of the London blitz, she was caught up in a shelter where she assisted Dr Andrew and Dr Benjamin with caring for the homeless and injured. She usually left by 4:00 pm every day before the sun goes down and the blitz began, but this night was busy, she had to assist each doctor, who had surgeries that very day, by the time they were done, it was past 6 pm. On her way home, the Blitz began; it started early that day. She was caught up hiding beneath a concrete slab wall that shrapnels have shattered, and then a bomber flew towards where she hid, shelling the hell out the slab, till it caved on her. A few hours later, she woke up to a man in an Irish accent, lifting her from the rubble. 'Are you fine, lady?’
That was all he said. Six months later, she was the one asking if he was okay after telling him about her pregnancy. He wasn’t subtle about it at all. She figured they were both outcasts, she was black-African, and he was Irish. She went under the knife. This led to a series of depressing spells on her, as well as constant nightmare plagues. Her dreams were as vivid as reality. She saw herself in the woods, a child holding her hands, telling her not to leave. All of a sudden she sees the child on the floor, bloodied, she looks at her hands and sees them soiled in blood too, she wakes up screaming, every night, her days were spent daydreaming, every time she closed her eyes for a few seconds she saw the face of a child, one that she never saw, before. She complained about these dreams to Philip, who insisted she visited a psychiatrist, but it was wartime, and no one cared about ordinary civilians having mental deprivations. So I began to sleepwalk, one step at a time. I left a trail of blood wherever I walked to, then somehow, I found myself walking back to bed at dawn. Then the worst thing happened, Phillip died. The blitz caught him. It’s funny how you diagnose yourself with madness first, so it’s only fair for me to say that I went mad. Then a few months after my spell with madness, I broke out of a psychiatric asylum, boarded a ship, crossed the Atlantic and found myself in Lagos, Nigeria, the place of my birth. I became normal again, as soon I saw my family, none of them had a clue about my London life, as though I was a born again, all my sins washed. Till a year after, on the anniversary of Phillip’s death, I found myself sleepwalking again.
January-9-1945
I've just completed my studies in Scotland and was back home, but to the dismay of my parents, I decided to be a journalist instead of practice law as my parents have hoped. My father refused to speak to me for days, while my mother silently pleaded to me to change my mind; it was horrible because I couldn't stand the coldness of everyone towards me, soon I moved out of my parents' house, I knew what I wanted to become, and I was going to become that, at first it wasn’t easy as almost all the journalism firms I knew about and submitted applications to, were full, no one needed new reporters except those who they wanted to send to Burma, as press conscripts to enhance the British propaganda against the Japanese empire. Still, I’ve seen and heard enough about the war in Europe. I didn’t want it anymore. So I went about writing essays and then sharing them around public libraries in Lagos.
At first, I had just a few readers, till my readership became enormous and I couldn’t sustain the demand from my pocket, I wrote different essays on different weeks. And soon, when I couldn’t maintain the printing anymore, I stopped. It was a battle of hunger vs common sense; hunger won. I was about ironing my law gown and wig, running off to my father, like the prodigal son I was, but the universe had its way of doing things. I got a letter from the Bureau chief, Mr McPherson, for an interview. It was the most fantastic day of my life, two weeks after I started as a desk officer, under a sub-editor's supervision for the evening papers. I never heard from my family anymore, and the disownment was mutual, I must assure you. I changed my name, and I began my career.
Present-day
The court was packed, the rain had begun falling again with rhythmic patters on the roof, the trial was about to begin, security was tight, and the air was tense. Few minutes past the hour of 9, three lord justices filed in, and soon the trial began. For hours both sides argued against each other. It was funny how even with the overwhelming evidence and witness testimony, the defence counsel, a young African lawyer, argued ferociously. He barked at the witnesses one after the other, his accent African, but his English was impeccable, perfect King’s English. Even in anger, he chose his words carefully, each vocabulary overlapping with the rest; I could have sworn that he was a poet or he read a lot of poetry. After four hours of intense arguments, the trial was adjourned till the next week, the same day.
The rain had stopped, my pencils lead, broken, and my notepads filled. I was tired and hungry, but as I was about to step out of the courtroom, a police officer tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a note. It read, 'I would love to have a word or two with you. +’ I was tired, but still, I was curious. I wanted to understand why such a woman with such a great background was caught up in the middle of such a mess. I knew without a doubt that she was guilty, but I wanted to know why she did it and why she requested for me in the first place. Eventually, I found myself sitting at the opposites side of her in the court dungeons. It was a dark room, with just a single candlelight. I was scared. I began sharpening my pencil, I got a new notepad from my bag, and then I began to write as soon as she began to speak.
‘You must wonder why I am here’, she began. Even with the poor lit room, she was still beautiful. I could see it. It was obvious. She asked one of the guards for a cigarette stick, and he hesitated for a second, then he changed his mind, took one out of his front pocket, lit it up and put it in-between her lips. She took a long drag, which she seemed to enjoy every bit of it, let the whole smoke out after what felt like forever and then she continued speaking again. The real reason why I left London was that I killed people in my sleep; that was why I was moved to the asylum. At first, I thought it was nightmares till I began waking up most mornings, my hands bloodied, and I couldn’t always remember what happened. So I stopped sleeping, and since I was still on night duty at the hospital shelter, it was great for me. But you couldn’t cheat nature.
I mostly just wake up to newspaper columns about dead infants in the pediatric section of the hospital. I wouldn’t know who did it until one day when Phillip had stopped me, and he followed me while I sleepwalked and saw that I moved from home to the hospital every night. I was always murmuring as though I was telling a tale to someone only I noticed. Since then, I started being conscious, so we developed a plan. He chained me to the bed every night. That way, I never went walking at night. It worked till he died. No one else knew, but his death worsened my situation as I grew to enjoy the cravings of blood. But when I couldn’t take it anymore, I tried cutting myself and was taken to the hospital and subsequently the asylum. Still, I escaped and found myself here in Lagos, where everything went smoothly, found myself working in the hospital where the first victim was killed.’ This time her first cigarette had finished, she asked for another, but the guard hissed, but I nodded to him to please spare one more, he did, then she continued again. 'Then I began also killing, why I was doing it I never knew, but I knew that while I slept, a door opens and I see my child who I killed, telling me to follow her, then I began following her, then she sees a child suffering and tells me to end the suffering, and I did it, that simple, if I resisted she would start wailing and screaming telling me she hated me, telling me how much that child would suffer if I don’t do what I had to, so I did it anyway. On the 20th child, I decided to turn myself in and end this suffering, my suffering. The only way out for me was jail or death, so I went to the police station and confessed. The thing about madness is that it’s realistic; you might think you’re sane while you’re actually insane, it’s the same thing. For me, my day was sanity, while my nights are insane. I am telling you my story because I want you to let the world know that I did this. And for years, I’ve been crying about the depression that women through just after losing a child or birthing a child. I blamed myself for what happened to my child, and that blame leads to my depression, and the depression led to my mental illness. Philip was a good man, he covered for me, but like everyone else, he never understood what was wrong with me. A few days before I turned myself in, I found a medical, psychiatric journal that outlined this type of mental illness, and then I finally understood what was wrong with me. Still, it was too late, I had gone beyond fixing, and everyone was too busy birthing newborns without caring for the mothers.
I’ve made my peace already, but I hope you also read the journal. I went through the liberty of leaving my key with my lawyer. Please do the right thing. And In case you’re also wondering why I chose you, your puzzles were the only thing that calmed me. Solving them gave me a bit of sanity. So for this, I am thanking you.’ After those words, she rose, smiled at me and left the room. No comments said again. I sat in the darkness for the next hour, trying to process all that I heard. By the time I stood up, my legs were numb.
I stayed up all night, typing all that I wrote down, making it into an article. By dawn I had finished up, went to the bureau and showed my boss, he read it for some minutes, while I watched his every facial expression while he read it, he then told me it was a great story that we could publish, only after I had backed this story up with the journal she had spoken about. I jumped in excitement. Finally, the break I needed was here.
I ran off to the lawyer’s office, a building in Thomas Street, at the other side of the marina. It was bustling with people, moving around, talking, and the sounds of typewriters clicking away at sheets of paper. It was a busy office. I met him in his office, at the back of the room. He was excited to see me. It looked like he had been expecting me. Without sitting or offering anything, he immediately gave me the keys to his client’s apartment. I collected the keys, and hurriedly went out of the office, but as I was about stepping out of the room, I asked him why he was defending her? He was taken aback by the question, waited a few seconds and said, 'An insane person can’t be blamed for a sane crime.’ I left the office puzzling what he said. A few minutes after, I got to her apartment, and everything was in order precisely the way she left it. I went straight to where she told me I’d find the journal. I found it, with it I found other books. Notes I figured she had compiled, I went out of the apartment and found my way back to the Bureau. I began working immediately. She had been right. Guilty. But she was a victim of her circumstances. Then I ran off to my boss, showed him my notes and the updated story, but he simply told me it wasn’t going to be published. I was perplexed, asking why? In his words, he said, 'we can’t have the story making the colonial or crown government looking incapable of solving the challenges facing women.’ I argued against, that assertion then he said, 'Who believes the word of an insane murderer?’ I said, ‘I do.’ He nodded his head and said, ‘I agree too, But we can’t possibly go against the crown. I’m sure you’ll have your time soon.’ I was angry and petrified. He had thought I needed the story to prove a point or advance my career, but that wasn’t the point, I seriously felt I owed her, and I needed to let people know what happened. The atmosphere was tense. The mothers of her victims wanted her head, everyone also wanted her head, but no one could tell her story. No one even acknowledged her story. I stormed out of the office and spent the night in the bar, drinking away my misery. I went home late and drunk. I woke up to the words on the radio late afternoon, 'The suspected baby killer is dead, she died by suicide, in the early hours of today...’ I was numb.
A few days later, everyone else moved on. To be fair, I also moved on. I remember this story today because, according to her death note, today was the day she predicted I tell her story she had her reason(s). After all, the government would never let it get published, I never understood why she chose today, but I think it had something to do with one of my puzzles. So this is me telling her story in her words. She got what she deserved. The victims got their justice. However, poetic, it was justice. But, the truth went unknown for years. Some might not want to hear it, others uninterested, but if you’re at this point, then you were interested. This essay is dedicated to the ‘Baby Killer’ and all the other women who at some point or the other suffered Postpartum depression alone, while everyone called them crazy. You were never alone.
Kindly note: This story is pure fiction. All characters, places and events represented do not represent anyone dead or alive. You’re solely responsible for how you wish to interpret this story, and the author isn’t liable.
Deep.
I love this!