I created the work of art you see above as a way of memorializing an amazing experience of mine.
I once had an amazing wife, deeply loving, ravishingly beautiful, potently erotic, deeply satisfying.
But we had no child.
I wanted a child very badly. A little one of my own to love, to experience the fulfillment of their soft body as I held their diminutive form against mine, watch the filling of gaps in their teeth as they grew, stretching out to vigorous teenage years and adulthood, the ascendance of their life force as mine reached its zenith and dwindled, the rejuvenation of life across time.
It was also an abomination not to have a child where I come from. Someone to carry on the lineage.
My wife and I tried every medical and herbal approach we could. Yet no success in decades of effort.
One day, as I sat at a bar relaxing with friends, one of them suggested my wife and I should see a traditional spiritual specialist, in this case a dibia, a specialist in Igbo spirituality in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where I lived.
What did I have to lose?
My wife and I had tried everything.
We both went to see the dibia recommended by my friend.
The dibia consulted his divination instruments and gave us a date to return.
A week after he called me on the phone, asking me to come over. I told him my wife was busy at work and could not come with me. He urged me to come anyway.
On arrival, he bade me sit.
After I had settled down, he told me the most awful thing anyone could say.
He told me my wife and I could not have children because she was a snake.
"Nonsense!", I shouted. "Such bullshit is why I avoid people like you!". "Nonsense!" I screamed.
He watched me calmly.
"You need to see for yourself", he said. "Take this colorless powder and place under her pillow."
"I will never do that! Nonsense!". I could not say more. I was so enraged.
"You can take it as an experiment that will prove how foolish I am", he stated. "You have already tried everything else possible. You and your wife can later laugh together at my stupidity."
Put that way, I was divided. Should I do this and betray my wife by even giving this idiocy any form of respect?
After much struggling with myself, I took the powder.
After further battles with conscience, I placed the colourless powder under her pillow and slept off. I could not be bothered about thinking further about the folly I saw myself as engaged in though my heart was heavy with the sense of betrayal of my loved one.
Deep into the night my wife woke me up.
"What is it?", I responded. She did not answer. I came awake to her staring at me.
She asked, "Why?"
"About what?" I responded.
She did not respond but kept gazing at me.
Was the white of her eyes becoming red? Were my eyes playing tricks with me?
Before my horrified eyes, my beloved wife transformed, head, neck, body, into what the dibia had said she was.
I became like a dead man. I could not move. I could not think.
In languid, graceful motions, she slid off the bed and headed for the door. It opened by itself.
The paralysis left me and I gathered my dazed body and mind. I followed.
She traveled a long distance, using streets deserted at that time of night.
Eventually, she reached the river and entered.
On reaching a rock at a point where I could still see her clearly, she coiled on the rock and looked at me a long time, in a deeply sorrowful manner, after which she slid into the river and was gone.
It took me years to recover from that terrible experience.
In my quiet moments, however, I recall my wife's exquisite presence, her skill at transforming our home into a wondrously welcoming and inspiring place, her mesmerizing scent, her magnificent tenderness and the life affirming joy of holding her and lying with her, my best friend whose deepest self was unknown to me but who loved me with all her soul.
I don't know if I needed to know what I learnt with the help of the dibia.
Story told to me by Tony Umez. Elaborated on by myself. Elaboration inspired by Abraham Madu's posting of the image above on a social media group.
