Don’t Leave me
Story By Thiyam Ningol, Africa

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- She did it purposely
- No, it looks like natural death
- She was ashamed of herself. Getting pregnant at 15 years?
- But why did she kill the innocent baby?
- You think she should have informed Madona earlier for adoption?

Everybody was exercising full democracy-freedom of thinking and freedom of expression.

The police tried to shield off the house but the house itself was transparent. The torn piece of gunny bag serving as the door could not hide the scenario inside. The cobwebs were the curtains of the windows. The house was tilted; the earthen fillings of the walls were long gone.

Everybody could see clearly the still bodies of the mother and baby from outside in the pool of blood.

Asha, 14 years old, was going to work in the rice field with her grand mother. She had never known her parents. Her grand mother was all she had as a relative. When they reached the rice field, they found a group of young men spraying some sort of insecticide to kill the grasshoppers which were destroying all the rice fields of that area. Local government authorities have sent those people to save the rice plants. Asha and her grand mother were told not to work in the field that day as the poison might affect their health.

Her grand mother told her to go back home and do the laundry while she, the grand mother was passing by her employer’s place to help in some domestic works and request for some coins to buy food for them.
One of the insecticide sprayers followed her; told her she was too young to walk alone.
“ But this is my routine everyday, I come and go home alone. I am not afraid”
The man insisted that he escorts her. They went home together.

Hardly 100 meters have passed; suddenly the man grabbed her from behind and pulled her inside the thick shrubs. Nobody saw them.
When she gained her conscious, she realized what has happened.
She never mentioned about the incident to her grand mother.

She thought she had forgotten about the incident till one day, while working in the rice field, she felt something kicking, wriggling inside her belly. In the beginning she thought may be her stomach was revolting because of eating stale food. She continued working. It repeated again after few hours. It was not painful; it was rather a tickling sensation. When she felt the stomach movements four five times, she knew it had to be something not normal.

She had a habit of not getting her menstruation regularly. Sometimes for 2/3 months it would skip. After the incident with the Insecticide Spraying man, she had missed her menses few months. She thought it was her usual pattern, did not pay much attention. She had to talk to somebody but not her grand mother. Asked for an excuse from her grand mother and went to see her best friend. She disclosed about the incident to her friend.

Her friend advised her to go to the clinic and find out if she was really pregnant. She refused. Told her friend she needed some time to think about it. Two more months have passed already. Her friend forced her, dragged her literarily to the clinic

Asha was told she was pregnant. The nurses had told her she should be expecting the baby in two months time. Panic struck her. Felt dizzy. Her friend gave her some water to drink. It induced nausea, vomited there in the clinic.

She had no idea how she was going to handle the situation.

She had done her own calculation-she had enough time before the harvesting days. She could work extra hours as a helper in the neighbours’ rice fields and would collect some few coins to survive the few early days after the delivery. She wanted to break the news to her grand mother the following week.

Something went wrong. The day she was planning to tell about her situation to the grand mother, in the morning she had a backache and tummy pain. She told her grand mother to go ahead while she was resting for a while and she would join later to work in the rice field.

Her condition worsened but she tolerated. The baby arrived pre maturely.

“Don’t leave me my baby, don’t leave me”- Asha was rocking, holding her just born baby.

The baby cried once, yelled out signaling his safe arrival on the earth. Asha looked at the baby once-the innocent, pink creature was irritated; was revolting by wriggling his body and limbs.

She was still in pain but the sight of the baby lessoned her pain. She picked him up and pulled up on her chest so that she could see him closure. She smiled at him and asked the baby what name he would prefer-Ali; Hussein; Khalfan----? She felt another strong cramp on her belly. Put the baby on the floor again. Both of them were soaked with blood. She managed to push the slippery body of the baby aside.

Her vision was becoming blurred. She felt dizzy. She felt as if she had given birth to another baby but she found it was just a big chunk of meaty substance.

She looked back at her child again. The baby was trying to yell again but no sound came out. Asha gathered all her strength, dragged herself closure to the baby and picked him up.

She wanted to get up and look for cloths to cover herself and the baby. Found impossible, she was too weak.

She embraced her baby on her bare chest “Don’t worry my baby, very soon your great grand mother will be back. She will bring some food. She will give us cloths to cover. We will be fine. Just don’t leave me, OK?”

She was trying to console herself.

She noticed her baby was no more kicking and wriggling. She saw the fresh blood oozing from the meaty substance connected to her son in the umbilicus. But she did not see any wound on her child. He was safe, she thought.

She herself was bleeding but it did not bother her much. She was used to bleeding during her menstrual periods. She was humming to her son- “My son is here, my son is shining. You are my star. We will shine together. Promise, you won’t leave me.”

The dizzy spell had come back. She continued humming in her dreams “my….. son…shining….