Five years after marriage, we had no child. We had travelled far and near for a solution, but the best we got were encouragement, motivation, and medicines that tasted more bitter than the life we were living. My husband gave up. He said maybe we were not meant to have children. But as the woman, and the bearer of all the accusations, I couldn’t give up on myself.

I kept trying, praying, taking my herbs religiously, and hoping month after month that I would one day miss my period. Every end of the month was red for me. My eyes got red from tears while my menses travelled peacefully, as if they didn’t know the harm they were causing me and my marriage.

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My mother-in-law called one morning. She said calmly, “Someone showed me a place. If what you’re facing is spiritual, it will be solved in days. Are you ready to go with me?”

God bless Aunt Hannah’s soul for the kind of in-law she was to me. She brought me peace, encouraged me to disregard every accusation, and live my life. It was the reason that when she called, I quickly listened. I went to her place the next day, and she called her friend, who led us to a woman somewhere.

She didn’t look fetish. She mentioned the name of God at every given opportunity. She gave me something small and said, “Use this. If it’s God’s will, you will bear children, and your smiles will never fade.”

We put a little money on the floor and left her place. She said we shouldn’t look back until we were out of her area. We did just that. I used what she gave me for three days, and it was finished. To be honest, I didn’t think anything was going to result from it. I’d been through enough and had seen big people, but nothing resulted.

Two months later, my menses delayed. I checked, and they had delayed for two days. I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “Hey, keep calm. Don’t jubilate yet. You might break your own heart.”

Then a week passed quietly without my menses. I whispered into my husband’s ear, “It looks like I’m pregnant.”

He chuckled and turned away from me. Then he said, “This is what you do and later cry when you see your menses.”

I responded, “I haven’t seen them in one week. Can’t I afford to be hopeful?”

He turned back to face me again. “Really?”

Then he quickly got up and started dressing. I asked where he was going, and he said, “To get you pregnancy kits. What’s the name of the best one?”

We checked together, and the two strips went red as soon as we dipped them.

“It looks like it’s happening,” he said.

I answered, “It has happened.”

We started jumping like kids in preschool. We couldn’t catch our breath when we stopped jumping. I kept saying, “Wow, wow, wow,” until I picked up the phone and called my mother-in-law. She screamed out of excitement. She said she would go back and say thank you on my behalf.

When she returned, she told me the woman was happy for me and said there were more raindrops coming, so I should look for an umbrella.

We had a girl. We named her Akyedie, like the gift she was to us. Two years later, Adom arrived, and then there was Aseda. We used five years to have three kids. After Aseda, we put a stop to having kids.

Akyedie started school when she was three. I had complaints from her teacher that she liked to keep to herself, and whenever a child approached her, she would push the child away. In the house too, she was very calm, liked to keep to herself, and played all day. At five, the school authorities called to tell me they couldn’t keep her in the school. She was a danger to the other kids.

She had beaten every child in the class, so the kids were afraid of her. No one sat next to her. Even the boys were afraid.

We took her to another school close to our house, where we knew the teachers very well. One month later, she had fought everyone in the class. When she was beating someone and a teacher tried to interfere, she would bite the teacher so hard that the teacher had to let go. One teacher showed me her teeth marks, and my heart sank.

“Akyedie, why are you doing this to your friends? Don’t you want to be in school?”

She would tell us the children in her class were all devils and they tried to beat her. Sunday school was even worse. She would bite and fight everyone. When other kids sang, she would tell them they were making noise and start beating them. Her favourite victims were the boys. She fought them as hard as she could. So on Sundays, she stayed with us in the adult church.

I told my husband she needed prayers. He said we should take her back to the woman and see if she could help. I was not comfortable taking her back. I didn’t know what else might happen when we got there, so I kept postponing until she bit the leg of a teacher who was trying to discipline her.

I called my mother-in-law. She already knew what was happening, but she always said Akyedie was just a kid and would grow out of it. That day, after she had bitten the teacher, she agreed we should go and see the woman. The arrangement was that she would go and see the woman first and report back. If the woman asked us to bring Akyedie, then we would send her there.

She came back and said, “The woman is dead. She has been dead for over a year.”

So we turned to pastors for prayers, but the more they prayed for her, the more violent she became. She’s currently eight years old but doesn’t have a school. She stays less than two terms in a school. There’s no advice we haven’t given her. There’s no punishment we haven’t given her.

The two other kids are not like that. They are very calm, very intelligent, and strong. Akyedie is all that and also very violent. If, at her age, she can’t get a school, then I’m scared about the future. We have a teacher who comes to teach her in the house, and she’s very respectful of the teacher. She does everything she’s asked to do and relates very well with her siblings too, but out there, she’s a terror.

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Currently, we are homeschooling her, but how about tomorrow? Can we do this forever? Where does it change? Someone says therapy, but I thought therapy was for people who have gone through a lot of pain and trauma. Akyedie hasn’t gone through anything. In fact, she’s the trauma and pain. How is therapy going to work?

This is causing me sleepless nights. We don’t talk about how we got her, how we suffered for five years without a child until she came along. My husband, again, thinks it has nothing to do with where we went for the child. According to him, if that was the case, then the rest of the kids should have turned out the same too.

I feel that’s the case, and it burdens my heart that the woman is dead. Maybe she had the manual and the key to unlock the nonviolent heart of my daughter. For Christ’s sake, she’s a girl. How can a girl be this much of a terror? I cry sometimes, but I hope it’s just a childhood glitch and she will grow out of it. But until then, I don’t know what will calm my heart.

—Mavis

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