We always died before turning twelve. Then we returned to the afterlife, lived briefly, and became flame souls again, reborn only to repeat the cycle of dying. We wore skin and moved like ordinary humans, but we are not like other children. We are Abikus, spirits of the dead who visit the living. Mist that lingers a moment in our parents’ lives, only to vanish back to where we came from.
The day I crossed to the other side, I watched my mother weep, clutching my lifeless body in her arms. Her tears fell on my skin as she rocked back and forth on the living room floor, shoulders slumped, eyes cast down. She whispered, “Omo mi, my child, why has God taken you from me again? How many times must I go through this thing called motherhood before I experience its joy? People call me a barren well. A woman cursed to lose her children. Ah, what shame it is to be childless.”
My death was not the first. Six sisters and five brothers had come and gone before me—some vanishing as soon as they arrived, others living just long enough to know what it means to be loved. Six died of mysterious illnesses no medicine could cure; five were lost to brutal accidents. I was number twelve. A cursed number, they said. I died a day before my twelfth birthday. To my family, I was not the child they named. I was an Abiku, one who comes only to leave, born to bring grief.
I first learned what Abiku meant in the kitchen, where my mother was cooking efo riro and talking with her friend, Aunty Sade. I had just come home from school and crept toward the kitchen, hoping to surprise her. But before I could step inside, I heard Aunty Sade ask, “What if this one dies too? His twelfth birthday is near. The mark from your other children—the blade scar—is still on his chest. Why must you suffer so, Atinuke? Why won’t they stay?”
“Sade, I have told you not to talk about this matter in my house? What if my son hears this? Please, be mindful of how you run your mouth? Is it not enough like you said? My son will be home any min—” My mother had tried to shush her but stopped at the sound of my backpack dropping on the tiled floor outside the kitchen, behind the door. I had fallen to the ground too and cried. Hearing Aunty Sade talk about me leaving my mother had made me so afraid.
My mother had rushed out to meet me, leaving the soup boiling on the gas cooker. She bent down, and used her wrapper to wipe my snotty face and tears. My crying refused to stop even after she had pleaded with me and tucked a piece of fried beef into my fisted palm.
“No! Mommy. I don’t want anything. I don’t want to die . . . I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here with you forever. Please let me stay. I’ll be a good boy and I’ll study harder, and stop playing the games you don’t like.” I had thrown the meat across the room and shook my body relentlessly, afraid that I would disappear. Still, my mother had begged me to stop crying. Even Aunty Sade had tried to explain that it was not my fault, that no one knew what would happen the next day, and that I had no choice in deciding whether I wanted to live or die. She had meant well, but her words only frightened me the more because to me, it meant I had no choice in wanting to stay with my mother. That day, my tears stopped only after I had fallen asleep on the floor.
Two months after that day, the night before my birthday, I died. One moment I was laughing at Tom and Jerry on the TV, the next I was standing over my own body, trying desperately to slip back into it. Again and again I tried, but I could not return. My father found me first. Then my mother. She fell to the floor beside my corpse, her cry the sharp, ragged kind that breaks open a soul.
The following day, I watched as the entire family gathered in the living room to bury me. A funeral ceremony was not needed for an Abiku who dies repeatedly. A few of my family members stood in the living room where my mother still mourned me. I could see them, while I was invisible to their eyes.
“How can a child be so wicked? This woman has suffered. Atinuke, life has been unfair to you.” A woman younger than my mother whom I recognized as my aunty Jummy crouched in front of my mother and hugged her. She was one of my favorite relatives. We were very close in life and I loved her. But in death, she loathed me. If a corpse could speak, I would have told her I was only a child.
“Kilode ti Olorun ko ni se aanu fun mi? Have I not tried? Was I not a good mother? Why do my children leave me alone to bear this pain? I’m tired, Jummy. This child was very good to me. He was very healthy. It would have been better if something horrible happened to him. But he died watching his favorite cartoon, ahn! Ahn!” She wept, beat her stomach, and pierced her fingernails into my swelling skin. Even in death I could feel her pain. “I can’t carry a child again, even the doctor said so. Am I not a woman too?” she asked her sister, teary-eyed.
Seeing my mother weep because of me, because I too abandoned her made my heart ache. It burned like the one time I spilled hot water on my foot from the kettle when I had tried to make chocolate tea for myself. I stared at my foot where the scar remained as a precious memory—one where my mother rushed to my aid to treat and plaster the wound. That day, she hugged me. Standing there as she still held onto my cold body, I closed my eyes and wished myself to return back into my body just like my friend had told me to. He had shared with me one afternoon while we played football on the field that wishes come true if they are earnest because it had worked on his bean sprout that bloomed more than every other person in our class. But no matter how earnest my request was to return into my body, wishes were figments. I opened my eyes and stomped my feet on air.
“You have to let him go. He is gone.” Aunty Jummy whispered to my mother as she carried my corpse away from her and handed it to my father. My mother cried and yearned for them to bring me back.
My father could not display his emotions as he was the man of the house. If the house was burning, it was his responsibility to run into it and save his family. Alive, I was close to him just as I was with my mother. When I was not helping my mother to pluck the vegetable leaves from their stalks, I played chess with him. Mother taught me how to use the knife without harming myself, father taught me how to use his architectural tools to draw geometrical shapes. Those stayed with me as precious memories.
As my father carried my lifeless body, he caressed my face, smiled at me, and cried a little. He wiped his face when he got outside to where a group of men, mostly unfamiliar faces, waited for him. They tapped his shoulder and watched him go to his car where he dropped my body in the backseat.
My mother ran outside and joined him in the passenger’s seat. Aunty Jummy and some others followed them to the burial site where my sisters and brothers were. My parents did not want to send me to the other side without company.
I watched as they lifted down my body into the grave and covered it up with brownish orange sand. It was a solemn ceremony. My father was the only one with the shovel used to pour the sand into the open grave. The first shovel of sand caused the wick of light in my eyes to burn very fast. It made everywhere dark and I could not see. The second made me gasp for air like someone dying for the first time. But by the third, I got used to it.
My mother could barely stand. She leaned on my father for support after he dropped the shovel on the ground. The pastor who accompanied the mourners said a brief prayer. “We pray to our God who gives and takes away. Comfort this family as they mourn their child.”
After the prayer, my parents turned to walk away. I ran with bare feet to make them aware of my presence. Meanwhile, Aunty Jummy and a couple of women sang a somber song that seemed to cause only more grief as my mother wept all the more. As I watched her fall to the ground, my heart ached. When I tried to hug her, my hands passed through her body as if threading a needle. I longed for her touch. She remained fixated on my corpse that was buried under a sand mound.
My parents walked past me with Aunty Jummy dragging my mother along. Before I could reach them again, a portal made of cloud rings colored red, saybrook sage, storm cloud, and ocean blue with a dark light and white galaxy dust at its center opened in front of me, and hands from the portal dragged me into it.
Inside the portal was another world. A world made of glass rocks, cracked honey earth, coarse red sand, rugged terrains, a cotton sky that looked like the seas of lava, and trees with deep dark green boughs and twigs.
Eleven children, around the same age as myself, appeared in front of me. Their naked short bodies marked with white chalk. Some of them crouched in front of those standing. It seemed as though they had been expecting and waiting for my arrival for a long time. The smallest and skinniest, a girl, my sister stepped forward and grabbed my arm pulling me toward our other siblings who later sat in a circle on the ground. They introduced themselves as my mother’s children, the ones before me, and my older siblings. Moths and bats danced and circled in the sky above us. They seemed unbothered by it and I acted the exact way.
In the spirit world, twelve means the Abiku’s mission is complete. We can no longer return to earth. We can no longer return to the same mother. Together, we must return to the threshold within the gate of life and death known as the underworld. It is where our spirits become different colored smoke bulbs. The smoke bulbs are placed on torches and given to the ferryman of the dead who puts us in a boat and carries us to an island of darkness made of sand, burned bones, and leaves. On the island are several bloodied statues of naked skinny children crouched on the ground with their eyes made of black stones. There our lives would begin again as an Abiku with the number one.
Before we left for the threshold, we remained together under the glowing wispy weeping willow tree. There are only a few of them in the spirit world. My siblings explained to me the reason behind my early death. Their voices sounded like an echo, a thousand mouths speaking at the same time, still I understood every word they uttered.
“You can’t escape death. None of us can. We always go back as the other. I am you, you are me, we are the same people, the same spirit and soul.” The first Abiku with an emblem of a hornbill burned on the center of his chest spoke.
“We’re dead children of a living mother,” the third with an emblem of a vulture said while pointing at every one of us.
“We live in baobab trees and cotton until we are twelve that have gone to the human world and come back to the spirit world. We are the cloud and the earth.” The sixth with a crooked crocodile snout emblem added while seated in a lotus position with her eyes closed.
We all wore the emblem of different creatures. At first, I did not notice until they began to speak. As they spoke to me, I looked down at my chest and saw an owl emblem burned on my chest. At the same time, I realized we mirrored each other as we were seated in the same position as the sixth Abiku. When they stopped talking, I asked them what the emblems meant and why it was burned on our chests.
To this, the second with a hellhound emblem responded with our eyes now opened, “The emblems are scorched on our chests with Sango’s fire as soon as we arrive. It is a way of marking us based on our familiars. There are a total of twelve familiars for Abikus.”
Later, as we crossed to the other side guided by Sango, beings rose from the sea with black flames oozing out of their bodies wearing scorched skins to cover their burned bones that were rotten and flaky with thick reddish liquid masking their bodies. Their voices cried and screeched in pain around us. Smoky black slimy bodies—visible yet invisible rushed past our faces before thinning into thick clouds and nothingness. Some bones with burnt flesh flailed and kicked before turning and sinking into the misty sea of furnace that did not burn our boat or us because we were smoke bulbs on torches tucked safely into small hooks lined on the body of the boat. However, it only felt like we were locked in a prison so our souls would not suffer the harshness of this abyss filled with great darkness. Tears dropped down my cheeks as I watched the people burning, but they dried almost immediately. Or at least it looked as though they did. I was stunned by how enduring the human body was, that after many years of torment, it only became roasted flesh hanging off bones. It did not dissipate.
One Abiku talked about how the beings dancing in the fire, screaming and wailing spend eternity getting punished for their earthly crimes. In unison, we said, “Life has no end. Some suffer and others dream dreams, create worlds even in death, and others are wiped from history to begin a new life.”
As soon as we arrived on the island of darkness, we transformed back to our physical bodies from the smoky bulbs. One after the other, we walked only on the solid path made of sand with either path decorated with burned bones, leaves, and a misty blue light. My eleventh brother held onto my wrist and I could sense the fear that raged in him, the same fear that troubled me as I thought of how we were going to be recycled and the memories of our mother would become a thing of the past. After walking a while, we arrived at a tall black gate with scare crows lined on it. The gate was locked with a black padlock and a list of instructions on the only off-white object which was a signpost. Two instructions were for us to sit on the ground and wait, and that we were not to bother the scarecrows. We obeyed. But my sibling, the first Abiku, peeked through the tiny holes on the gate and we did the same. The only thing visible to our eyes was shimmering darkness.
It felt good to be reunited with them—my brothers and sisters who were also myself, but I could not help but think about our mother and how much I missed her. I longed to be wrapped in her warmth, to eat her sweet vegetable soup and fried potatoes, to watch her as she prepared dinner or did the laundry, and to go to the shopping mall with her. I missed her voice that always put me to sleep, her voice radiating the perfect worship when we were in church, her laughter whenever I practiced my dancing in front of her, and the way she held my body close hers after I woke up from a nightmare.
Trapped in the memories of our mother, I began to feel something change in my body. My hand passed through my body when I tried to clutch my chest from feeling faint and as though I was dying all over again. I removed my hand from my chest and placed it in front of my eyes and it appeared to be translucent with reddish orange light around us passing through it like a glass jar. Then it stopped, as suddenly as it happened, my body returned to its brown dust flesh. My siblings were also watching, so I asked them what was happening but they looked at me confused. Just then, four mirrors appeared in our center. We stared at it and it showed us our mother’s visits to the Babalawo, a traditional native doctor, in his shrine asking for my soul to return to earth. She had never called us from the other side before.
“Why now? Why is she calling for you to return?” The first Abiku said with a deep sigh and looked at me. Then they all turned their gaze towards me too for a lingering moment, before we resumed watching our mother’s interaction with the small, old man whose entire chest was painted with white chalk symbols of animal and line shapes.
Inside, I felt really warm knowing that my mother wanted me back. At the same time, an overwhelming anxiety kept me stuck to where I sat. Are we allowed to return? Who is even in charge of recycling us? What about my siblings? Is it even possible to return if my siblings have been here for a very long time? I shook my head and my siblings’ heads shook too. We stamped our feet together and said unanimously, “Our mother loves us, wants us, and is fighting for us, that’s what matters.” Tears crawled down my face and I could not believe it as I wiped them away with my arm. It felt as though we were spirits, yet humans. As though we were dead, yet alive, and I could not help but wonder if our mother’s grief was keeping us alive on earth and in the afterlife.
Through the mirror, we listened to our mother’s strange request back in the real world, asking the Babalawo to call us from the afterlife where we awaited our fate of being born to another mother. She sat with her legs tucked under her buttocks, dark eye bags that weighed heavily on her face, tears that glistened in the dimly lit room, and voices that no longer sounded sonorous. She spoke in a teary voice, “Baba, if the spirit can return twelve times, it can return again.”
Without looking at our mother, but rather studying the cowries scattered on the low table, the Babalawo—a small, middle-aged man with a pot belly responded in a harsh, resonating voice “Are you so hungry for a child that you abandon everything? Why must you get this spirit child, not another one?”
“Baba, twelve is enough, my womb has worn out. I can’t carry another child.” Our mother squeezed her stomach.
“Ah!” He spat on the ground beside him. “Thirteen is bad luck, don’t you know, woman? You ask for the impossible. And the impossible comes at a great cost.” He packed the cowries and tossed them back on the table, before opening a calabash bowl from which he took red earth to sprinkle on the table.
“I’ll do anything if my child can come back.”
For the first time since they started the conversation, he looked up and stared at her. “Have you not buried him?”
“Yes . . . yes . . . we have but if you agree, we can dig him up. It was only two days ago that we buried him. There should be some flesh left.”
“Rotten flesh, you mean.”
“Flesh, nonetheless.”
“If it is the same child, the same spirit, he must have buried their orb of life in your compound. A small glass marble containing a green liquid. With that ball, your child’s spirit can return to his body. You must find it before the next full moon. Bring it, a white vulture, and a hornbill. We will use the items and a drop of your blood. You are to drink only water between now and the next full moon in two days.” He emphasized his words.
“That can be done. That won’t be a problem.”
“That’s the problem. Everything done out of the ordinary has a conse—” she hurried out of the Babalawo’s shrine before he finished his sentence. He shook his head before mummering the words, “Foolish woman . . . tsk tsk . . . the power of misery and pain. What a sad life the gods have cursed her with.”
The next full moon, our mother returned to his shrine with all the required items—the sparkling moonshine green orb, a white vulture, and a hornbill. She bent her head, entering into his tiny bungalow apartment with the white vulture gawking. They greeted each other with nods before she settled on the mat laid in front of the long stool where the Babalawo placed a big calabash bowl, cowries, Tiger’s teeth, and a small bowl of sea salt.
Hanging on the walls of the room were dried skins of animals, raffia bags with slim, long handles, palm leaves, and bells. A thick earthy smell filled the atmosphere. Looking around the room, our mother glanced over her shoulder as though afraid a familiar face like our father’s might show up and stop her. Sweat beads rolled down her forehead. Her thoughts were running rampant from our father to her church’s pastor, family, and neighbors. Meanwhile, the native doctor checked the items to make sure everything was complete.
“I’ll ask again, because once we begin, there’s no going back. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Our mother wiped the sweat from her face, tucked her legs under her buttocks to kneel, and in a quavering, quiet voice, she answered, “I’m ready.”
“I can’t promise that this will work,” says the Babalawo. “These children never pledge to stay put in life. I’m sure you know this by now. They destroy themselves . . . They are implacable.”
“But this last one promised to stay. He wanted to remain with me here on our earth,” our mother pleaded in tears for the Babalawo’s understanding.
He stared aghast, then sighed. “Can a leopard change its spots woman?! It is their destiny to live and to die after completing a life cycle and before they are of a ripe age. That is the ephemeral nature of their lives. You can’t keep them here with you. Before coming, they have already made a certain pledge regarding their life span and no Abiku ever pledges longevity. We can try but—”
“Try, please. It’s better than nothing, at least then I’ll know I’ve used up my last hope.” She caressed her belly as though it bore life.
The man stood up from the small stool he was seated upon. He went outside the shrine to the backyard where he spilled the blood of the animals into an empty calabash bowl. Then he returned into the shrine where he slit our mother’s right index finger to collect thirteen drops of her blood before taking sand from the same bowl as the previous time which he tossed into the bowl of blood along with the Tiger’s teeth, and a pinch of salt. The cowries were used to draw a circle around the bowl containing the ingredients. He ordered our mother to get on her knees and close her eyes, while he danced around the room, chanting incantations. His small body flailed in the air, with his movements almost ghost-like as though he had become one with the night wind.
On the other side where we gathered, waiting for them to call on me, we held onto each other. My siblings wanted to experience the other side again. They talked about not wanting to be recycled. “No matter what happens, don’t let go.”
Recycling is how we are born to another mother who is only expecting her first child. The Abiku rule in the afterlife is that we cannot be born to the same mother after twelve times. Our life span lasts for twelve years on earth. When we are created before we enter our mother’s womb, the creator and ruler of our world whom we call Death’s Chief, “Olúwa Iku” forms a total of twelve Abikus that share one soul but different bodies. The twelve of us are one and the same, yet different when we take shape as a newborn baby. Our faces in the afterlife are exactly alike but in the pictures our mother kept of us back on earth, we all looked different. Some of us were girls, others were boys. Some short, others were taller than the age of their death. My siblings offered this explanation to me when I asked what it meant to be recycled. Their voices when they spoke at the same time resounded.
While we waited, I asked my siblings, “Are we allowed to enter the same body at the same time?” afraid that I would lose my only chance to return to our mother because of them. My palms felt sweaty and slimy.
“We won’t know unless we try,” the eighth Abiku retorted. He added, “No Abiku has ever tried it. Before you joined us, we heard from other older Abikus who have had four mothers, if not more that no Abikus ever return to the same mother. It is the law of Olúwa Iku. It has never been broken. We don’t know what’ll happen since it has never been done. We’ve always been sent separately to our mother, never together at the same time. Who knows? If we share the same soul, who says we can’t share the same body?” He grabbed some red earth in his folded palm, while his other hand gripped the ninth Abiku’s wrist that held onto the tenth. This way how we stayed close to each other.
Before we could utter any more words, a bright light appeared in place of the mirrors, and at its center was a dark abyss swirling like ocean waves. In front of it, our souls turned to dust, and the light ate us together. We traveled so far, for so long that when our souls came as one, expecting to re-enter my rotten body, and to reunite with our mother, we found ourselves in a forest where lost souls embark on a journey of no return.
I fell to the ground by myself and only me. I could not help but feel empty and scared. All around us, the whispery sound of the wind and spooky chill from unknown presences dwelled. My siblings gathered and stood in front me as they stared down at me.
The second Abiku whispered, almost to himself, “What now? This is the worst place in the afterlife. Even Olúwa Iku can’t find us here. The other Abikus told me that this place is filled with restless souls and if they touch you, touch us, we disappear. Here is where our life truly ends.”
A shiver crawled down my spine. My mother’s last image of her eyes closed in desperate prayer clung to me. My siblings’ fear weighed heavy in the silence. If this forest of no return was where we would remain, then here we would die again, after dying. I slumped against a tree, hopeless. But at least, I thought, I am not alone. One by one, my siblings joined me, forming a circle, with me at the center.
