The Sender: a Creative Response to "The Message" by Ama Ata Aidoo

I have written a short vignette as a creative response to Aidoo's short story "The Message," in which a grandmother of a woman undergoing a caesarian makes the journey to the hospital to see her. I would recommend reading the short story first, since it's excellent and it's a very quick read. Feel free to comment, and enjoy.

 The pain. The pain, the pain. O, God, am I dying? Is my baby dying? My child, the only child of an only daughter of an only son, and my baby is dying. Oh god, there’s blood. It hurts!

The night was oppressive. The humidity was so fierce that it beaded on my bare arms and forehead. The heat was butter-thick and made every motion impossible. I don’t remember screaming; I just remember the heat and damp of the night and the wetness of my bed, and the pain and the cold in my bones despite the heat. At first I thought it was the water, but the moonlight shone hazily through the window, and the moisture on my fingertips was black in the glare.

* * *

When the darkness left me I was face up, and laying prone, and staring at a canvas awning, and I was being jostled violently. A man’s face came into view, and he spoke. Or, his lips moved, and sounds came out, but I didn’t understand. I am dying. My baby is dead, and I am being sent to the hospital. My only thoughts are grief and sorrow and shame, for my grandmother and my father, now dead, and my husband. And the pain is unbearable. It’s so cold.

My eyes open again, to another new ceiling, this time whitewashed, with long rows of lights, and all around me white. White sheets, curtains, and ceilings, as well as walls; all but the floor was white, and shocking. No blood. No pain, at least not the same. I wanted to sit up, and with my arms under me, palms on the bed, I started to hoist, but the strange, different pain increased, concentrated in my belly. With fear for the baby, I lifted the sheet, and saw only perfect little stitches, in a neat line from navel to pelvis, where the bulge used to be…where the baby lived.

I called for the nurse, who came in surprisingly promptly; she bustled over hurriedly and checked me. She lifted my sheets unceremoniously and touched me. I inquired about my baby, and was informed that not one, but two, were delivered successfully by caesarian, and were being fed. She left the room, bustling as ever. And then, another angry nurse entered the room, followed by whom else but my grandmother. She rushed to my bedside, her face buried in the mattress, and she began to moan. Her moaning echoed through the hallways, and it was a moan of grief released, of nauseated waiting and worrying; for it had been three days since the incident, and I could only assume of her journey to Cape Coast to see me, assuming to claim my corpse all the way. Her old frame shook with emotion and her feet shuffled under her as she stood to stare at me, her eyes tired and red.