Things began to fall apart the day my sister went for cleansing and never returned. Mama and I had sat inside the Obi in front of our house, watching the girls walk past in twos and threes. Mama would pat my thigh whenever a group approached and Obianuju's slender figure was not among them. My sister was the light in our home; her yellow skin, her throaty laughter. Mama almost died having her, after years of trying and failing to conceive.
"Okwa mmuo mmiri, she's a mermaid," people had said after she was born. Some nosy villagers prophesied she would be a boy, Papa's reincarnation, since he had died six months before she came.
"The gods answered my prayers, nnam. Look at her," Mama always said to me. She wanted a girl.
I shook my head now as I cleaned Mama's body. The smell of the rot was becoming more fetid by the day. It was her punishment for trying to steal my sister from the shrine. She was chosen to serve the gods.
For me, the stillness of the night had become my refuge, for my dying mother and for a sister I would never see again.
My entry for Stach's Short Story Contest#23. View original post here https://steemit.com/contest/@stach/stach-short-story-contest-23-199-words-5-winners-15sbd-prize-pool