THE BABY FACTORY E5
Eno understood why everybody who had been mean to her became nice and friendly , rude nurse Amaka became polite and friendly, the men stopped coming to her room to force into bed . And the chef would serve her meals I bed , and soon come to clear the plates . Her pregnancy had given her rest from constant abuse and resentment.
Her stomach had protruded, she added weight and was glowing, she was afraid putting to bed in that foreign land. She kept praying for a root of escape .
One afternoon when most of the ladies were resting in theif quarters, Eno was making her rounds of the compound, looking for a place of escape, when she saw that Ugochukwu and Magnus were not at the gate , she sneaked pass fhe gate , she began to run towards a strange road , she didn’t know which way to go , because for over a year she got into the compund she had never seen outside of the fenced compound.
Magnus and Ugochukwu saw in the CCTV camera footage that Eno had escaped. They began to chase her .
“How could you leave the door open? You know Madam Gold will kill us if we don’t find the girl Magnus? I just stepped out for a minute to buy cigarettes and you let everything go wrong!”
Ugochukwu said .
“Let’s focus on finding her , every minute we spend arguing she’s getting further away ,she would not have gone too far .”
Magnus and Ugochukwu got out their Ak47 riffles and Barretta pistol , started tracing her foot print and running towards her .
Eno took the bush path scared of running into madam Gold or the guard men. She had ran for over thirty minutes, without getting so far , the lurch tropical jungle surrounding the village, made it very hard for her to navigate.
Her eight months pregnancy was another weight slowing her down, her ankles were all swollen, she had to rest severally, she heard Magnus and Ugochukwu arguing behind her , she got into a bush and hide .
“Her footprint has disappeared here , could she have disappeared?”
Ugochukwu smirked at Magnus stupid remark .
“Shut up and search the bushes , if she had such power to disappear, why has she not disappeared for the one year , she’s been locked in the graveyard? You’ll be talking nonsense, I’ll shoot you myself before Madam Gold shoots me .”
Magnus panicked and began to search for Eno , he got to the spot Eno was hiding , he started opening the bush covering her, Eno heart was beating very fast . His mind told him, that she was hidden there . He peered into the grass, Eno held her breathe.
“Magnus! I hear something down there , let us check it hurry up .”
Magnus slowly got up from and began to move away slowly, he kept looking at his back as he went away . Eno sighed a sigh of relief. She got up and ran the opposite direction.
Madam Gold had been to the facility, when she was informed of Eno’s escape , she had called the village youth head to help her get the escapee , she promised to reward them with a hundred thousand naira. The villagers partially knew something wrong was happening in the compound but couldn’t report , because the Igwe , The elders and Youth leaders were in madam Gold’s pocket .
Eno ran out of the bush , she was out of breath , she saw a car golloping down the rough untared road, she flagged him down , the driver couldn’t understand English, but she begged him to take her to a police station, the driver was telling her in broken English mixed with Igbo that the nearest police station was one hour away . They were going down the bad road filled with potholes, and and crevice filled with water.
Madam Gold was driving at top speed to block them before they got on the main road , she had asked some people who told her that they saw a pregnant woman that match her description going down the road in a blue car. They caught up to the car ten minutes to the main road , madam Gold overtook the vehicle and packed .
She started speaking Igbo dialect with the man , explaining to her That Eno was a mentally unstable woman , brought by her family for treatment at her facility, Eno began to cry , she got down from the vehicle and began to run, Magnus and Ugochukwu grabbed her and threw her into the facility, she was locked in isolation for over week. Madam Gold told Magnus and Ugochukwu , that if such repeat itself, they’ll never go home to see their family.
Auntie Emabong came with a set of new girls, one of the girls Atete refused to be enslaved, she fought with Aunt Emabong, Banjamin and Emaka couldn’t hold her down, they dragged her and locked her up in a separate room, next to Eno’s room ,when the man came to welcome her in the night she fought with him to a standstill, that Banjamin and Emaka had to be called to come and restrain her . In their presence Chibuzor deflowered her , asked Emaka and Benjamin if they wanted to have a taste of her , they were scared of Madam Gold, he warned them never to get close to the girls. Chibuzor convinced them , they both had unprotected s*x with her , and Chibuzor went another round, Atete was weak when they left , Nurse Amaka came in and gave her pain killers and went away . Eno left her room to go and see her when everybody was gone .
Embraced her , the girl was barely sixteen .
“I want to die ! I can’t live on , he rap… They raped me…. What did I do wrong??? ”
Eno knew this girl, too she was a Junior student at their community secondary school while she was there.
“Atete you have to be strong, we’re all trapped here , we’re looking for a way out , you cannot give up now .”
Atete couldn’t be consoled , she kept weeping, trembling as she cried , mucus discharge mixed with tears flowed down her body. She was stark n***d, the men had tore up her clothes. Ekaite later came to see Atete , they both spoke to her . She kept telling them she couldn’t live with the trauma . Benji came and asked them to live at twelve AM
.
Atete tore her bed sheet and made a strong rope, she tied it to the ceiling fan, she asked God to forgive her , she climbed on the bed , put the knotted noose on her neck and jumped from the bed, she struggled,and made some choking sounds , her eyes and tongue bulged out, Eno had heard her struggles she ran to her door , I was locked from outside ,before she could go to call Emaka she was dead, they pulled her down the rope , Nurse Amaka was called in to check If she was still alive, after checking for vital signs, she only saw
“The thing has died .”
The next morning Emaka and Benjamin were instructed to dig a grave Behind the clinic close to other girls who lay there and bury Atete .
Eno had given birth a week after Atete’s death . It was a bouncing baby boy, Enobong looked at her poor child , and sadness swept her her soul, when she thought of what lay ahead of her child .
