Abiku

Her screams were blood curdling, rising and falling as she parted the curtains to life. Her perspiration had made her wrapper sodden, sweat trickled down her forehead and fell noiselessly to the ground. Wide eyes fixed on the thatched roof of Agbebi’s hut. Agbebi had plucked four others from her loins in this room. The first three were girls, and the fourth a boy, bouncy and full of life. She still remembered.
Jagunlabi had had the strongest cry at birth. The moons favored him, crawling by the eight and walking by the tenth. He was a full sack of energy. The most energetic of his peers. By his third name-day the tale would change, as all the energy he had once exuded seemed to burn out and all his weight with it. The plays with his peers had stopped, when fever made him hot as red coal. Ifaleye, the town healer, was brought in to make him well, but the gods were not good and his fever worsened. After weeks of his sickly status, his lips trembled as he seemed to speak with beings hidden from us. And the beings took him, nearly an hour past. So it was that Jagunlabi breathed his last.
Jagunlabi died two name-days shy of five, so custom held that his father would mark him.
Asake was brought out of her remembering and back to Agbebi’s hut by the pain in her mid-section. She pushed again as guttural screams pierced the black of night, and again and again till baby cry mixed with hers. Asake fainted.
It was a boy, she saw, when she had come to. Joy filled her soul as she held him in her arms. But joy died when she saw that he lacked of the little finger on his right hand.