Ifediba Nzube
Port Harcourt, Nigeria

For Yewande, pain is Èsù slapping her head like a bata drum. But no one sees that; they see only a tumor pushing out her left eye, up her palate, and through her nostrils. Most days she smells like meat gone green. The other patients can tolerate the smell but they can’t tolerate her screams.

Yewande shrieks rhythmically, magnificently, like she is offering her screams to something bigger than herself. Her great-grandmother used to be a priestess of Yemoja, before the missionaries got her saved. Just last year her uncle announced it was time for her to serve Yemoja, too. Maybe it is because of the light skin she inherited from her great-grandmother, but she dreams of oceans all the time.

“The tumor is inoperable,” the surgeons announce.

They offer palliative care and pain relief: paracetamol tablets, morphine syrup, diclofenac suppositories, intravenous pentazocine.

Still she screams.

“Intravenous morphine?” suggests the nurse on night duty, more exasperated than worried.

The doctor scratches his head.

“Pain doesn’t kill,” he says. And for good measure, “And she’s getting addicted to the pentazocine.”

No one sees Èsù, straddled on her shoulder, thumping her head with zest.

Yewande sings in time to the drum:

“Mami, help me.”

“Doctor, help me.”

“Jesu, help me.”

Always in that order. A chant, a rabbit foot, a prayer.

This morning Yewande runs straight into a wall and breaks her neck; a sickening crack as her body crumples like a rag doll.

This is what people see. No one sees her victory; Èsù, spread-eagled on the floor, his head leaking dark fury.