Erin. That's what they called me. They couldn't have been more wrong. Where I come from, they say a name plays a huge role in the life of the bearer. A name bestowed is like an already decided destiny. Mine means "Laughter". What inspired them to do so, I do not know.
My mother used to say I came out stiff-faced, as if angry that my peaceful womb-existence had come to an end. It took a few hard spanks from the midwife to make me cry and I didn't stop for a long time afterwards. On my name day, I was given Erin in the hopes that my life would be filled with laughter and bring joy to those around me. I have come to know that laughter is of two kinds.
There is the kind you laugh while you play with your friends in the mud on a rainy day as if you have no care in the world. There is the kind you laugh when gossiping with your female friends about the village boy who has caught your fancy. It is this same kind you laugh during your wedding ceremony while you are receiving gifts from family and well-wishers and one says may your husband love you and cherish you and may your home be filled with children. This same kind that you laugh when you finally hold your newborn child in your arms after hours of painful labour. I think this is what they wanted for me. Somehow, I came to know the other kind.
The kind you laugh when you do not have tears in your eyes. The mirthless kind you laugh when they say something else has been taken from you, seemingly inconsequential in the face of all you have lost already. The kind you laugh because there is nothing more you can do. The wicked kind, where you are cackling like a witch about to devour an innocent child. The sadistic, maniacal laughter of a mad woman. Ahh! Erin! Laughter indeed!
I laughed a lot in my lifetime. For the wrong reasons and in the most unexpected of situations. When I was eight and I was playing with my friends at the village river, I pushed Aderonke who could not swim into the water and watched in amusement while she struggled. She floated lifeless a few minutes later. I laughed because I was only playing with her. I didn't mean for her to die. They all thought I was mad. I didn't know why I laughed either. Maybe somewhere in my head, I knew that this was only the beginning of my dance with misery.
When I was twelve, I was gathered with a few village girls who sought to defy their parent's strict orders to stay away from me. I was telling them a story about a man who fell from a palm tree. It was nearing nighttime and my father was not back from his farm. I was just rounding up my story when they came to deliver the news. My father had fallen from a palm tree. My mother started wailing on the floor. I began to laugh and the village girls surrounding me shrank back in fear.
“Aje ke lana, Omo ku loni, tani o so wipe ko mope ana lo pa omo je?”
I just wondered why the story had to be oddly similar to the one I was just telling.
At 17, I found love. Durotimi the handsome hunter that stole my heart,who made my toes curl with his words of endearment and his kisses. They told him I was not sane, he didn't mind. He said we would be insane together. We got married against the wishes of most people but we did not care. The foolishness of youth! I wish we had listened, at least he'd have been alive even though he wasn't mine. Anything would have been better than watching that strange illness slowly and painfully take him away after just a few years of our married life. I cried and cried. The good ones said it wasn't my fault. How so? I, Erin, who was cursed with misfortune and known to laugh about it? I laughed at those ones because they refused to see.
But then I had a son, A child who looked exactly like his father. I had to be strong for him, they said. The locusts came and destroyed farmlands. Not just mine but trust me, I knew it was just a coincidence. I laughed because I knew the truth. Another song was starting and my dance partner misfortune had found me again. I nursed my child, I loved that boy. He reminded me so much of his father. But Life decided I didn't deserve him too so he was taken away from me. Even when they buried him, I sat looking. There was no fight left in me.
I just sat, my eyes dark and soulless. I was void of emotion. Those ones with no sense of self-preservation who stayed to comfort me didn't know what to do. They fed me, I'd eat, even though food tasted like chalk in my mouth. They left after a while. But I was gone, there was no saving me. I had lost the will to live, there was nothing to live for.
Then those preachers came. The ones who held big books and spoke of a God. The villagers sent them to me as a last resort. Somehow I heard them. They said there was a story similar to mine in their big book. A man who lost everything and had them restored double fold to him. I cursed them and the stories in their big book. I cursed those who named me laughter. I cursed life for being unfair. I cursed those who might have cursed me. And then true to my name......I laughed, laughed until death deemed it fit to take me too.
KUFRE-MFON EFFIONG-ROBERT
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