IF ONLY THEY KNEW WHY SHE ALWAYS BACKS HER BABY ON HER HEAD

 If ONLY They KNEW Why She ALWAYS BACKS Her Baby ON HER HE@D  

         

  Part 1✅

“The baby is not breathing.”

Grace froze.

She didn’t hear the cries. Just that one sentence. Whispered like smoke in the dark.

“Check again!” she screamed, grabbing the old midwife by the arm. “Check him! Please! ”

But the woman just lowered her eyes and stepped back. “I’m sorry, Grace.”

The world spun. Her ears rang. She wanted to faint, to scream, to die with her child. But all she could do was fall to the ground and hold the baby’s cold little body against her chest.

Her husband, Jude, stood at the door. His face was tight. He didn’t come close. He just said, “Again?”

Grace looked up slowly, her face wet with tears. “Please... Jude... I don’t know why... I don’t know why this keeps happening...”

He turned away. “My mother was right. Something is wrong with you.”

Grace felt like the air had been punched out of her. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m tired, Grace. Tired of digging small graves.”

Thirteen years of marriage. ten  sons. Ten tiny graves.

Each child came with singing and dancing… and left in silence. No one had answers. Not the doctors. Not the pastors. Not the herbalists.

Grace had prayed. Fasted. Rolled on church floors till her clothes tore. She had begged God every night, “Please, let just one child live.”

But hope was a dangerous thing. Every time it came, it left her more broken.

“Witch!”

She turned in the Jameset. A woman spat on the ground near her.

Grace lowered her eyes and walked faster, clutching her basket.

“She eats her own children,” another voice hissed. “That’s why they all die.”

“I hear she buries them under the mango tree at night!”

Laughter followed.

Grace reached her stall and sat. Her hands shook. She looked at the fruit she had come to sell but could barely see through her tears.

“Why me?” she whispered. “What did I do?”

That night, her husband’s family held a meeting.

“She has failed,” Mama Jude said sharply, wrapping her wrapper tighter around her chest. “Ten  dead babies? Do we wait for the eleventh?”

Grace sat on the floor, quiet, head bowed.

An uncle nodded. “Bring in another wife.”

Jude didn’t argue. He didn’t even look at Grace.

“Get out,” Mama Jude said the next morning. “Leave this house. Go back to your father’s home. You have nothing here.”

Grace didn’t speak. She packed her few clothes in silence and walked out, barefoot, stomach empty, heart shattered.

“Back so soon?” her stepmother hissed when Grace arrived at the gate.

Her father was silent, just shaking his head. “This girl brings sorrow wherever she goes.”

Grace lived in the small back room. Every day, she cooked, cleaned, swept — trying not to be noticed, not to be hated more than she already was.

Children played outside and sang songs. One had her name in it.

“Grace has a womb like a basket, every baby falls out!”

 “Grace the ghost-mother!”

She covered her ears. But the words always found her.

One night, she sat alone in the backyard, watching the moon. A soft voice broke the silence.

“Is this seat taken?”

She turned. A man stood there — tall, gentle eyes, holding a small bag.

“No,” she said quietly.

He sat beside her. “I’m James. I live down the road.”

“I’m Grace,” she said, then added with a bitter smile, “The baby killer.”

James frowned. “Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? They all die.”

He didn’t answer right away. Then he said softly, “That’s not your fault.”

Grace’s eyes filled with tears. No one had ever said that before.

Weeks passed. James kept coming. He brought food, stories, jokes. He made her laugh again — just a little.

One evening, he said, “Grace, I want to marry you.”

She stared at him. “You’re not serious.”

“I am.”

“I can’t give you children.”

“We can try. Or not. I just want you.”

Grace cried for hours that night. Then she said yes.

They married quietly. No music. No crowd. Just two hearts trying again.

She got pregnant two months later.

“I won’t hope,” she told James. “Hope is dangerous.”

But James smiled. “I will hope for both of us.”

They painted the baby’s room sky-blue. They bought tiny clothes. They whispered names in the dark.

And when the child came, a sweet little boy with eyes like his father, Grace wept with joy.

But that night, the room went quiet.

No cries. No heartbeat.

Gone.

Again.

Grace stood in front of the grave. Her hands shook as she held the shovel.

James touched her shoulder. “Let me do it.”

“No,” she said. “I have to.”

She dug. And dug. Until her hands bled.

Then she fell on the ground and screamed to the sky, “WHY?! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!”

James knelt beside her, holding her close.

She whispered, “I can’t do this anymore.”

And for a long time, neither of them said a word.

The next morning, her stepmother called her into the kitchen.

“You will go with me,” she said.

“Where?”

“To someone who can help. An old man. Deep in the forest.”

Grace blinked. “Why now?”

Her stepmother’s eyes were strange. “Because I had a dream last night. And your name was in it.”

They left before sunrise. They walked for hours, past streams and hills and trees that whispered secrets in the wind.

At last, they reached a hut with smoke curling from the roof.

An old man sat outside. His eyes were white as milk, but somehow… he saw.

Without being told anything, he said, “You want your child to live?”

Grace nodded slowly.

“Then you must carry him on your head.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Wrap him with red cloth. Place him on your head. Every day. For ten years.”

Her stepmother gasped. “That’s madness!”

But Grace…

Grace stepped forward.

“I’ll do it.”

Grace stood outside the herbalist’s hut, still hearing the words in her head.

“Wrap him on your head. Every day. For ten years.”

James shook his head as they walked back home.

“This is too much,” he muttered. “He didn’t even touch you. He didn’t even ask questions!”

“He didn’t have to,” Grace whispered.

James looked at her. “You really believe what he said?”

Grace nodded. “I’ve tried everything else. This is all I have left.”

He sighed and didn’t argue again.

Months  passed. Grace got pregnant once more. She didn’t tell anyone, not even her stepmother. She barely told herself.

Each day, she walked slowly, carefully, like holding a secret made of glass.

James smiled and sang to her belly at night.

But Grace didn’t smile back. She couldn’t. Not yet

Tbc… 

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