Food for the gods

My name is Ego. And I have buried love thrice.

The first was Chief Uzor, forced into my bed by Uncle Ibe, who had declared that women without fathers were best settled with marriage. I was barely seventeen. Uzor was already halfway to his grave, his belly round with palm wine and pride. I cried on my wedding night, then again two weeks later, on Eke market morning, when I found him stiff on our mat with bloodshot eyes.

The dibia said the gods had taken him. No wounds. No sickness. Just red eyes and silence. The kind of death only the gods can give. Why the gods would choose to take him, no one knows.

People said Obinna, my childhood sweetheart, had something to do with it. He had disappeared the day before the wedding and returned only after Uzor was in the ground. But no one had proof.

A year later, Obinna and I got married.

For a time, I knew joy. Real joy. I laughed again. I didn’t feel watched or owned. I felt . . . home.

Until he died. One year in. Bloodshot eyes. Eke market day.

The village panicked.

Women spat three times when I passed. Men crossed the road. Mothers warned their sons: “She carries death between her legs.”

Only Amaka didn’t flinch.

She was my friend since girlhood, sharp-tongued and broad-shouldered, with laughter that echoed through walls. She came every day after Obinna died. She cooked, cleaned, held me at night when grief choked me.

She was also there when Nnamdi, Obinna’s best friend, started visiting more often. He brought me fruits and firewood, and when he asked to marry me, I said yes. Not because I loved him. But because it silenced the whispers. For a while.

Until he, too, died. Eke market day. Bloodshot eyes.

This time, Amaka screamed louder than I did. She swore she had seen a shadow leaving the compound. Said she had a dream of a dark woman dancing with blood on her feet.

The villagers began to murmur.

Not about me this time.

But about Amaka.

“She’s always there,” they said. “Always close. Even her own father died with red eyes.”

Some claimed she was possessed. Others claimed she was jealous, that she had been in love with Obinna too. That she was punishing the men who dared to touch me.

One day, as I walked toward the village square, I overheard two men whispering that Amaka, the possessed one, was hiding poison in the beads she always wore around her waist.

She knew about the rumours. She laughed them off. But I saw the way her hands trembled whenever I talked about my late husbands. The way she stopped sleeping over. How her eyes lingered too long on the dibia’s shrine whenever we passed it.

She began avoiding mirrors. Refused food unless she cooked it herself. Once, I saw her watching me, long and hard, like she was trying to find something behind my smile.

And one night, she whispered, “What if the rumours are true, Ego? What if I’m the reason they die?”

I pulled her into my arms, stroked her hair. “Then you will stop coming close to any man who comes near me,” I said, smiling, “Until then, I need you by my side.”

After that, she started spending more time in the stream, offering gifts to the water spirits. Burning herbs.

And then, the Igwe summoned me.

He had heard of all the deaths and had ordered that I be cleansed by the village priest. I did not object when the guards came to take me away. Amaka tried to protect me, but I assured her that I was fine. The Igwe is a good man, he only wants to be certain I’m not a threat to his people.

As I followed the guards, I heard Amaka’s light sob, and all I could think of was how she’d sleep off after eating the meal she made—but I laced with just enough spice—and how she’d be found dead with bloodshot eyes tomorrow morning.

The first one? I hated.

The second? I loved, but he caught me with the third.

And the third? He was secretly messing with my best friend, whom I’m about to send to him.

They were not secretive enough.

Whoever started the tale that bloodshot eyes meant the gods had visited must have been a woman like me.

Cover photo by Taylor Flowe