Taye noticed them from a distance. He also was just trying to pull himself together. He was equally devastated. He just thought that he must live up to the role expected of a man, he must rise up to the challenge of the occasion. As the husband, he had to keep himself under control. But he was being put in a tight corner. He could not allow the two women to go on crying. They might soon have a flood to contend with going by the rate at which they were expressing themselves. In any case, even if he could just ignore his wife, he had no choice concerning the other woman. But where would he find the strength to console her? Where? For, he knew he himself was bound to break down should he try to rise up to the demanding occasion.

Just then Olabisi came in. She saw her friend as she wept very copiously. She saw too the helpless woman as she was being tortured by emotion. She also noticed Taye's predicament. She knew the challenge was hers.

"E se mama. O ti to." She was moved herself. She was just mustering resistance against the emotion that was threatening to overwhelm her. She was doing this with all her strength. She had to save the situation.

"Mama, please calm down. Only pray for us. Pray for us. Pray that our plantain may never die without fresh shoots to replace it. Thank you, mama. Just pray for us. And Malomo, isn't that enough? All morning and you're still at it. Won't you stop and get something done? You can't go on like this for ever."

Everybody agreed that the couple deserved to be happy.

When Malomo was delivered of Moyosore, she was in a very critical condition of ill-health. The baby was not a bouncing one either. Mother and child had to be placed under intensive care. Ajani, their doctor was a first class physician. Being himself of humane disposition, he was very patient with them. The naming ceremony had to be postponed for a considerable time as they spent several days in the hospital. Having gone through the health history of both patients, Ajani already had an opinion. Trying to confirm this, and knowing that they had already incurred heavy bills, he had to find a way of persuading them to undergo blood tests. He was proved right by the results.

Before discharging them therefore, the doctor had called both father and mother to advise them on the health of their new baby. The child, he said was likely to give plenty of trouble, not due to its own fault though. Rather, it was due to the health problem which he would have inherited from both parents who, as he suggested, must themselves have been very sickly at birth. They also had this weakness handed down to them from their own parents. Weak blood type, he called the cause, venturing a description for the layman.

The baby would need extra attention in order to survive. Susceptible, as such children were, to malaria, it must be protected from mosquitoes and other possible infections from the environment. Anything cold be hazardous to the child's health, though it should drink plenty of water. Ordinary water. He laid out other details, general and specific. He prescribed drugs and emphasized that the directions be strictly adhered to. The baby's blood type would be confirmed after one year but, as he said, and given what he had seen of those of the two parents, nothing could prove his present position wrong. In any case, he would be constantly available to advise them as occasion demanded.

Husband and wife were greatly impressed by the careful attention they received from the doctor. They also felt enlightened and educated concerning their own backgrounds.At least, he had no knowledge before of their own health history. Yet he discussed it with such preciseness. For example, Malomo was the only child left of her parents'. Her mother had had eight. Three had preceded her. She grew up to know only one of them, the one directly before her. She was eleven when he died at the age of fifteen. By that time, two of her juniors had also died. The third, at the age of four was caught by a strange illness, an illness that defied all attempts at healing: modern or traditional. The child would not eat and would not drink. He could not talk. Neither could he walk. His eyes were open, however. Lying on his back in the early stages of the illness, his eyes would glow at the sight of a familiar figure. But only in the early stages. As time wore on, his body began to shrink: the limbs, the frame, even the hand. His eyeballs shrank also and the sockets became too large for them. He grew thinner and thinner until he was no fuller-bodied than copper wire. There could be only one interpretation. Some punishment, totally undeserved, inflicted by people who would prefer nobody should be successful. The child died after sixteen months, hard as the parents tried to see that he lived.Soon after, the mother became pregnant again. This resulted in a stillbirth and she almost lost her life in the process of delivery. Thus the parents gave up and Malomo became their only hope.

She herself was very sickly at childhood and was taken ill almost every other day. Her illness each time lasted approximately two weeks after which she was up for a few days.Due to this fact, she did not begin schooling on time. She started at the age of eight and picked up gradually from then on.

It was as if she had been waiting to start school. She was a very interesting girl, highly talented and brilliant. She was a good sprinter, could sing very well and was beautiful. In fact ravishingly beautiful, with her ebony black complexion, her moderate height, her long, shapely legs, her glowing eyeballs and her jet black hair. She mixed freely with boys and would expend her energies playing with them. Then she would arrive home only to complain of acute pains in her bones. Then she would go back to school with her parents warning her against any rigorous exercise. It was all futile as she would do the same thing all over again and the same story would repeat itself. Inspite of her being so brilliant, Malomo stopped schooling after primary six. The fact that there was no secondary school as at then in their immediate locality contributed to this. The closest one was located at least five kilometres from them. Asking a girl in her condition to do that to and fro on a daily basis would, simply, be tantamount to inviting trouble. And it would be equally risky to ask her to stay away on her own especially given the dangers she was capable of exposing herself to. So her parents reasoned that she had had enough school education.

But the young mother was excited to know the cause of her health problem: weak blood type inherited from both parents! The doctor certainly knew his job. So the young couple decided to repose all their trusts in him regarding the health of their child. They were frequently in the hospital and Ajani never disappointed them.

Tongues soon began to wag. People could not understand what was wrong with Taye and his wife; how they got so easily brainwashed. It perhaps would have been pardonable for two different partners. Certainly not Malomo and Taye. Being themselves Abiku, how could they fail to recognize the same spirit in their child? Or had they forgotten their own history? Impossible. The wife carried it about in the name she answered to. Malomo. That was a desperate plea. She kept coming and going like that, defying all efforts to make her stay. Until her mother begged her. 'Don't go again, please. Stay with me, please.' She begged in helpless agony. With tears. Poor woman.

Or could it be possible that Taye's parents did not tell him what it cost them to make him stay. Kehinde, his twin sister, having died at the age of four, Taye began to give his parents trouble. He was missing his partner. His real illness, however, did not come until he was nine. It was a prolonged illness. For several months his parents ran from public hospital to private clinic to professional mullahs and later to Christian evangelist homes.But none was able to cure him.

Until they brought him before alayewo. The babalawo said they came just in the nick of time. A little delay further, he went on, and the child would have died. He confirmed that the child was being attracted to the other world by his partner, twins being inseparable as they had the same spirit. It was very wrong of the parents not to have let the child know this, the people pointed out. And how about this: how about the eventual sacrifice, the most expensive ever in the village, with a whole ram killed? This in addition to other things which included a gallon of palm oil, seven metres of white terelene cloth, two hundred and one kolanuts and even money; seven hundred and seventy-seven naira, seventy-seven kobo.