THE VISITOR
(A CHRISTIAN STORY BY DE-RACONTEUR)
EPISODE 4
I entered into the sitting room and threw my bag on one of the settees, yawning as I did.
“Hello everybody! I’m home!” I announced. The whole atmosphere was eerie and the silence in the house was loud.
Where is everybody?
I walked briskly to my children’s room but they were not there. Their school bags and lunch boxes littered the whole floor.
“Jedidiah!” I called out, walking towards our bedroom. “Jemimah!” I called out again but there was no answer.
Opening the door to our room, nobody was in there. The only sound I could hear was from the TV.
I removed my blazer and dumped it in the laundry basket.
“Honey!” I called out as I checked the bathroom and even the closets!
When I couldn’t find them, I jumped out of the room to go search the other rooms in the house. I was about climbing the stairs to the penthouse when I heard a shrill cry.
From the visitor’s room!
Jeddy?
I ran as fast as my legs could carry me to the entrance of the room. Opening the door suddenly, I found my husband seated in one of the chairs, looking lost. Jeddy was in another chair, sobbing quietly. Jemmy was lying down on the bed, motionlessly and Bode’s aunt iwas doing something in her closet.
“What is happening here?” I asked to announce my presence. Jeddy ran to my side and hugged me tightly, weeping as she did.
“Mummy, is Jemmy going to die?” She asked and my hair stood straight as my eyes like laser shot at the bed. I ran to the bed and touched my baby. She was almost lifeless.
“What is happening here?” I screamed as I pulled my gasping baby into my arms.
“Woman, just shut up and let’s concentrate on what we have to do. We have been coping before you came, noisemaker!” Bode said and I frowned angrily at him.
“What have you done to my daughter?”
“She will be fine” Bode’s aunt said as she walked close to my side with a black cup, obviously containing something hot as the steam ascended out the cup. “When she drinks this thing now, she will be fine” She said and my eyes widened.
“Drink what?” I asked suddenly. “What is in this cup?”
“It is herbs. It is just herbal tea. When she takes it, she will be fine” Bode said. I jumped up quickly, trying to lift Jemmy out of the bed.
“My daughter is drinking no herbal tea!” I said firmly. “What have you people done to my ever vibrant baby girl? What?” I asked as tears laced my eyes.
Jemmy was very hot- hotter than the hottest pressing iron!
She had turned pale- almost white.
And then, she was bleeding from her nose!
And from her ears!
“Jessssuuuuuuuus!” I screamed loudly.
“Mummmy!” Jeddy cried too.
“Leave this girl alone, let me treat her” Bode’s aunt said, bringing the cup over. I looked her in the face and smiled ruefully, gently lifting my baby across my shoulder.
“Mama, are you a medical doctor?”
“I am more than a qualified doctor” She said, handing the cup over to me. “Give her to drink now!” She said authoritatively.
“In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I refuse to collect this cup from you and give it to my daughter” I said and started moving to the door.
“What is wrong with you?” Bode’s voice stopped me halfway. “Why are you always ‘overspiritualizing’ things? What is your problem?” He raged on.
“You, Bode are my problem! A girl, our daughter is in such an emergency situation like this and you can still be allowing a woman who…” I stopped in my track as I looked at the floor.
Drops of blood from my baby’s nose and ears filled the floor.
“Oluwa gba mi oooo (Lord, save me!)” I screamed as I tried to open the door.
“If you dare take my daughter out of this house, you will pay dearly for it” Bode roared suddenly.
“Bode, do you know what you are doing?” I asked, my chest tightening.
“Question me na! Call me names!” He said and I shook my head.
“Bode, what is happening here? Bode, see me, I am your wife. What is making you to treat me like…” I cried, sincerely desiring his fatherly and loving care at the crucial moment.
“Who are you? Tell me, who are you?” He asked, irritatingly. “You asked me to see you? Who the hell are you?” He asked again and I shook my head in sorrow. “When I see you, I see filth!”
“Whaaat!” I exclaimed, my heart shattering into pieces.
“What did I see in you that even made me marry you? What?” He asked, looking at me with so much disgust in his eyes. My brain went on a break and my vision blurred.
“Bode, you love me! I am your wife! The Lord gave me to you!” I still managed to say.
“Gibberish! That is what you are saying!” He said, so much hate in his eyes.
“Bode, I do not understand what is going on here.” I started, a newer confidence falling upon me. “But on a norm, if any of us is sick or sorrowful or worried, the first thing you would do is pray. What happened to that authority, my husband? What has happened to…”
“How dare you challenge my authority in this house!” He screamed suddenly as if I had touched the most painful part of his sore.
“My consolation is that, I will get my husband back!” I said and shot a look at the woman seated on the bed. She gave me a wry smile, her cup of herbal tea still in her hands.
“You have lost me!” Bode said. “You have lost me, since” He said.
“Never! I cannot lose you! You are mine! None can take you from my hand” I said with authority, my spirit really charged. Bode burst out laughing falling into the chair as he did.
“This girl can like to feel herself!” He laughed on. His aunt joined him.
“Orisirisi! (Wonders shall never end!)” She exclaimed. “Just go. Take your daughter with you and go. Go anywhere you want to go” Bode’s aunt said and I smiled.
“Mama, I will overcome!”
“Ah ah, are you in a battle?”
“Yes ma. Since you entered into this house, things have not been…”
“Ah, so I am the witch now?” She asked and clapped her hands together. “This lady is fearless!”
“Afefe ti fe mama, a ti r’idi adiye (Nothing is in the secret anymore mama) That is why I am not fearless. My confidence is in Christ. Jesus has been placed far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name…”
“Who are you chanting incantation for now?” She cut in and I smiled.
“That is what I have mama. If I cannot use the Word God, what then can I….” I was saying when she raised her nose at me.
“Life has gone out of the child you are holding, Mrs. Principality” She said and my eyes widened. I had forgotten that I was caring a child. Bode sat up.
“Lailai! (Never!) See, arabinrin (Woman) I am warning you now! My daughter must not die o” He screamed, raising his hands at me.
Panicking, I touched the side of Jemmy’s neck and noticed there was still a weak pulse. I opened the door quickly and started running out of the room, Jeddy following me closely.
“Mr. James! Mr. James!” I called out, crying as I ran out of the house. After driving me into our compound, I had asked him to please still stay behind praying for us in case of anything. So, I was hoping and praying that he hadn’t left.
“Mr. James!” I shouted as I opened the front door.
“If anything happens to my daughter, I will kill you with my bare hands o. I am saying my own now o!” Bode shouted after me but I wasn’t going to allow my daughter drink herbal tea that I knew nothing about, especially after my mother-in-law’s instructions.
As I approached the garage, I saw Mr. James praying, sweating profusely.
“Mr James, we need to go to the hospital immediately” I announced and he quickly jumped to my side, helped to place my daughter in the car and entered into the driver’s seat. Jeddy and I found our ways into the car too.
“Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!” Mr. James muttered as we journeyed to the hospital.
“Jeddy, what happened? What happened?” I cried, holding my baby’s hands and looking into her pretty teary eyes.
“It was Jemmy that poured that mama’s powder away.” She said in her babyish voice.
“Where did she keep her powder that Jemmy’s hands were able to reach there?”
“On the dining table. It was black powder so Jemmy thought that it was the charcoal we were playing with yesterday”
“Black powder?” Mr. James and I exclaimed together.
“Yes.” Jeddy nodded. “Jemmy threw it away so that it will not stain the white sofas”
“So, what happened?” I asked, anxiously.
“That mama was angry when she saw Jemmy’s black hands”
“Okay”
“And she carried that your white shoe…”
“The one with the heel?”
“Yes”
“Ah! To do what?”
“To beat Jemmy on her head.” She recounted and my heart stopped beating at once.
“Whaat!” Mr. James and I exclaimed. Jeddy burst out crying.
“Jemmy fell down and started crying. ‘Mummy, mummy.’ That was what she was saying. And blood started coming out of her nose and her ear” She cried the more.
“God, just have mercy on us! I don’t even know what to do now. Just have mercy Lord” I cried bitterly.
Jemmy’s hands had become cold as ice, stiff and scaly.
“Who is the woman? Your mother-in-law?” Mr. James and I shook my head.
“My mother-in-law? Never!” I said and suddenly remembered that I was supposed to inform her of the latest development. “Thank you for reminding me. Please lend me your phone sir” I said and he handed it over to me.
I dialed her number.
“Mummy, where are you?”
“I have reached Bariga. What happened?”
“We are on our way to the hospital o” I cried.
“What is the matter?” She asked, very shocked. I explained quickly to her and she asked me to place the phone on Jemmy’s ears. I did. She started to pray. She prayed and spoke in tongues. She wept and quoted the scriptures.
As if the prayer was a poison, Jemmy suddenly coughed out very thick, clotted blood. She started gasping for breath as she gripped my hand weakly. I flung the phone away and started crying.
“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” I screamed.
“Hello, hello Lara” Mummy called out from the phone.
“Mummy, I am losing her already. Mummmmyyyy! Mummy!” I wept as I pulled at the headrest of the seat.
“Never!” She exclaimed. “Scream it into her ears. You are her mother. Use that authority and the one you have in the Name of Jesus to scream at death. We are not losing Jemimah!”
“Amen!” I shouted vehemently, losing my voice. “Jemmy, I am not losing you! I am not releasing you to death in the Power that is in the Name of Jesus!”
“I will soon be there. You are going to your hospital at Lekki, right?” She asked and I nodded as if she could see me.
“Yes ma” Mr. James replied on my behalf. My mother-in-law sighed.
“This is where we need the father’s authority. Ah! But where is Bode now? Bode, where are you now? Ah! Let me call him” Mummy exclaimed hopelessly, hissed regrettably and dropped the call.
“We are now at the hospital” Mr. James announced as he sped to the front of the reception.
I ran like a mad woman after the stretcher wheeling my daughter to the theatre, tears strolling down my face like a fountain.
Holding my chest firmly with one hand, I held onto the door knob leading to the emergency ward as the realization that I might get a lifeless Jemmy in few minutes dawned on me.
Nooooooooo!
I fell to the ground, beating my laps as fear crippled my bones.
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