The hit and run driver was caught at the next junction. The traffic warden who is stationed outside the school to control traffic especially when school is closed and children need to cross the busy road to get to their homes, called for backup and informed his colleagues on duty of the accident using his walkie-talkie.

My husband rushed Doo and Soo to hospital. The school proprietor called me. I was out of the house in a flash. I still remember hearing my heart beat in my ears throughout the taxi drive to the hospital. I’d forgotten that I owned a car. My husband was sitting on the steps leading to the porch of the hospital, his head in his arms. He looked up at me and his eyes spoke the words I was dreading to hear.

I was down on the concrete floor in the next minute, rolling and crying. I felt my husband’s arms holding me down sometime later. I think I also remember him saying something like “Dodo, I’m so sorry. They’re gone. I texted you. I didn’t want you to come here. I’m so sorry.” I can’t recall what happened in the hours that followed but I remember seeing a teary eyed Shughun in the car and a smoke filled kitchen when we arrived. The cake had burnt in the oven.

That was how my children left me, on the same day, just as they were born. They were ten years old. Life has never been the same since. I’m forty-three now with no children and a husband to call my own. If it hadn’t been for that tubal ligation, I know I would’ve been able to have another child. I blame it all on my husband.

“Mummy, good morning.”

I look up from the stained spot on the centre rug where Doo had once spilled my coffee. It is Ngusuur, my husband’s new wife, padding to the kitchen in her flimsy pink nightgown. She is twenty-five years old, and I heard, pregnant already with his child. He brought her home two weeks ago. My children died a month ago.

I nod in response to Ngusuur’s greeting. I don’t resent the girl. I resent my husband for moving on so fast, for not having the decency to mourn our children, for ruining my life and chances of having children again.

Shughun walks down the stairs and into my arms. One look at her face and all I see are Doo and Soo. She loved them so much and helped take good care of them too. I can see she’s also suffering. “Mummy, I want to go home,” she says in my blouse. “I see Doo and Soo everywhere.” I find myself smiling slightly as I remember how this little girl could only speak Tiv when my mother-in-law brought her to my home.

We cry into each other’s arms as the memories we shared with my children wash over us. You can ask me why I’m still in this marriage but I still don’t have an answer. I was blinded by the love I had for my husband even before we tied the knot. I fear that the scales are yet to fall off my eyes till now.

THE END