And another.
Bella stopped giving the babies full names. She simply called them “my son.”
She feared names brought death.
Seven boys she gave birth to.
Seven coffins she followed.
Each one like a firefly—bright for a moment, then gone.
People began looking at her strangely.
“Maybe it’s not just bad luck,” one woman whispered.
“Maybe it’s an ogbanje,” another said.
But Bella refused to believe it.
“My God will give me one that stays,” she said.
But inside her chest, her heart was breaking slowly.
After the seventh child died, Bella’s husband changed.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t cry.
He simply became quiet.
Too quiet.
One afternoon Bella heard laughter outside the house.
A woman’s laughter.
She looked through the window.
A young, beautiful woman stood in the compound holding a little boy’s hand.
Bella’s legs trembled.
That night her husband came inside and said calmly,
“That woman is moving in. I have made my choice.”
Bella said nothing.
The next morning she packed her clothes and left.
She returned to her father’s house like a thief returning empty-handed.
Her stepmother opened the gate, hugged her, and said only one thing:
“Come inside.”
Two years passed quietly.
Then one market day a man named Mark came to the village to buy palm oil.
He noticed Bella.
“She is beautiful,” he said.
People warned him.
“Sorrow follows her like a shadow.”
But Mark didn’t care.
He married her quietly.
Bella never told him about the children who died.
She buried that story deep inside her heart.
Soon she became pregnant again.
