My Grandmother’s Bag

My grandmother spanked me with her palm

the day I refused to attend school in the village,

because my mother didn’t give me much food,

and the neighbours said I was an Ogbanje child, 

a changeling, a child of uncertain destiny.

Grandmother cooked yams porridge with chicken,

and served it to me on her grey wooden table,

that looked like half of a ravine in a valley,

beckoning me to sit at the table and eat.

I shrieked, the blood curled into my mouth. 

She smeared her eyelids with green leaves,

her green tongue lashed out like a palm leaf.

My mother said that she worshipped a python,

that’s why all her children died before her.

She had used them for sacrifice to the snake,

and my father never went close to her.

I remembered her bag of mirrors in her room;

I searched for it in her wardrobe and drawer.

I searched for it under her noisy spring bed;

I searched for it where her cat swooped down,

meowing, watching me with its paws raised.

My father told me that the bag was in her coffin,

waiting for grandmother’s wrinkled body to arrive.

Inside it were little spitting snakes and pythons, 

which guarded her bag from intruders like me.

I rose, froze, and my body was full of acne scars.

Perhaps, I was really a changeling child,

and I felt as though I walked around naked,

while grandmother watched me from her bag.

I didn’t know when I rushed out of her room.