Filling the Crack

Dear God,

Hmmm.

Her grief was raw at first, then it went quiet.

“I stopped crying every day,” she told me. “Not because it hurt less. But because I realized tears were feeding the wrong audience.”

I asked for divorce, or rather I insisted that my father return the bride price. I wanted to be free completely and totally from them. After months of negotiating for my sanity, the bride price was reluctantly returned. The man was very generous and agreed to whatever settlement my father demanded. I didn’t care, for a while I lived in a strange limbo. Neither wife nor widow. Neither mother nor childless. Just… displaced, destroyed and unable to find a rhythm for my life.

My body healed faster than my sanity. But something else was happening. I made a friend. Barrister Nkechi Nwena. You know when they say that “when God closes a door, somewhere, somehow, He opens a window, right?” Nkechi was my window. For weeks she asked questions. A young radical lawyer. She interrogated me from different angles and got all the details she needed. And set a plan.

She was bold and sassy. She told me that my worst enemy wasn’t that man or my parents, it was ignorance and that I had to get rid of that. Agreed. Now, as much as I hated this man, I am honest to say that he was good and generous to my family while I was his wife. Again, because I had no friends, and he was taking care of my family, I did not need much. But I didn’t touch the settlement money. My family urged me to take the settlement offer.

“Take the money,” an uncle advised. “Start small business.” (As if betrayal were inventory you could liquidate). I declined, not because I did not need money, but because I refused to let hush-money become my inheritance.

“I started reading, took Jamb and went back to school to read Law” she said. I read about reproductive laws. About surrogacy contracts. About women who fought and won. About women who lost but still voiced their pain.

“Nkechi told me that I needed a strong informed voice,” she explained. “Pain without a voice is prison.”

Hmmm.

(That reminded me of a quote from a book I once read… “The Angry Woman” ……It said that…… “When a woman learns the name of her cage, the lock starts trembling).

 

So, she returned to school. Quietly. No dramatic announcement. No social media rebirth. Just forms filled. Classes attended. Notes taken. Nkechi helped her pay through the initial parts of her school fees and after that, she took up some jobs and saw herself through the rest.

“At first I felt stupid,” she admitted. “Like everyone could see the word ‘surrogate’ stamped on my forehead.”

But education did something remarkable. It reminded me that I had a brain that existed beyond my womb or my reproductive organs. And that brain began connecting the dots. All the red flags, all the assumptions. I found inconsistencies in my medical file. Discrepancies in consent documentation. Signatures obtained under marital assumption. Missing disclosures.

“They never explicitly told me whose embryo was implanted,” she said slowly.

“Nkechi studied my case like she was preparing for Bar exam. She told me that we had a case, but we will build it over time, because assumption is a fragile defence in court. She was young, hungry, angry and realistic. She was what I needed.”

Together, we began building something more strategic than revenge. Documentation. Medical timelines. Legal frameworks regarding informed consent and marital deception.

“What exactly was your plan, you wanted the children back? I asked her

“It wasn’t about taking the children back,” she said. “I understood that legally and emotionally, that battle would destroy me. Do I want to keep their children? Not sure, but I wanted to make sure they never get to raise those children the same way I will not raise them. I wanted them in jail. Not for revenge, but as a precedent.”

“I don’t understand, what kind of precedent”, I insisted.

“It’s about ensuring the next girl would not walk blindfolded into a laboratory disguised as a honeymoon. It’s about teaching the guy-man a lesson, that the young shall grow. That ignorance only needs a teacher.”

The case did not explode dramatically. It moved slowly. Deliberately. The children were born in Nigeria but became Americans so they were using jurisdictions. We followed them quietly. The legal notices unsettled them. They had taught that the hush-money with my family would hold me. But I wasn’t the village girl anymore……I was a law student out for payback.

He made more offers for us to withdraw the case; he used all networks to kill the case. We refused again. Not angrily. Just firmly. I wasn’t in a hurry. I was young and intentional. I was ready to drag this for years. He came home to meet with the family. And I told them….

“I am not fighting for the children,” I told them. “I am fighting for my right to informed choice. I am not a lab rat; I had a right to know”

Even my family was shocked at my calm determination. I wasn’t raging, I wasn’t abusive, I was calm and controlled but determined. I had moved from the victim to the oppressor. From the wounded to the weaponized woman. And that confounded them. God bless Nkechi for me. She taught me how to transfer my rage to information.

(God, there is something terrifying about a woman who has nothing left to lose……)

Years passed. She finished her degree, got called to bar and took professional exams for her masters in the USA. And got in.

“I wanted to understand the American machinery,” she said. “If you know how a machine works, it cannot grind you.”

Nkechi had gone ahead to open a practice in the USA. As soon as she finished, she filed a formal complaint in the USA on them. If the Nigerian system won’t give her justice…she will appeal to the American system. By then, they had a complete dossier of everything that can put the couple away for years. They had hired a detective to dig, and the skeletons they found had enough bones to bury them.

(Lord, remind me to never leave a scar on a woman. How do they say it again? Hell has no fury….)

By then, the man and the woman were panicked. I don’t think they ever envisaged that I would go to that length. Their plan to intimidate a village girl built a formidable, learned woman out for justice.

One evening, years later, she received an email with just a photograph. The twins. Her children. Older. Smiling. Alive. That was the 1st and only picture of them that she had.

She stared at them for a long time.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” she told me.

“Why?” I asked softly.

“Because I realized something.”

“What?”

“That I still love them. They came through me. That cannot be erased. They are not biologically mine, but they are mine. However, I had unfinished business with whoever stole them from me. I made my peace with the photo, but I wasn’t letting up.”

“Finally, they came out. They wanted out of court, they were willing to do whatever I wanted, even up to giving up the children. The tension of my persistent pursuit had cracked the marriage, and they were on the verge of divorce. That wasn’t my business, I had a lesson to teach them, and I am not giving up on that.”

“Why? I asked tentatively

“Why What?” she countered

“If they were willing to give up everything, to settle, why didn’t you consider it? I asked softly

“Look at it this way, she said carefully. What if Nkechi did not rescue me? What if I didn’t go back to school? What if I didn’t have a chance to redeem myself? Would they have offered reconciliations? The truth is: the fight is no longer about me…. This is about every innocent girl they come to take from Nigeria and enslave because they can”. And Nigerians in America are the worst. They come and pick an innocent girl, impregnate her and run back to their safety nest. The power of the Dollar. But not again…. not anymore….”

“So, what is the status now?”, I asked totally intrigued. This story has metamorphous from the girl-victim to the girl-dragon in one sweep.

“Seeing the children again did something to me. And for the 1st time I questioned my dimensionality. How far would I really want to go? Who am I after really? Who will get hurt in all of these?”

(That, dear God, is the door slightly opened in her humanity. Motherhood is not possession. And healing is not retrieval).

“That’s good thinking. So, would you continue with the case?” I asked tentatively

“Yes, I will. There is no going back, but……” she paused.

“But what? I persisted

Silence.

I waited for her to continue but she did not. I stared at my phone for a long time after that call. There is a load of learning for me in this. Seriously, we need to educate our girls more on the need to know. Every young girl must understand her reproductive rights. Ignorance in this day and age is not an excuse. We need to be patient about reading medical documents before signing them. We need to have the presence of mind to ask uncomfortable questions before saying “I do.”

Luckily for Sussan, Pain was not the end of her story, it was the curriculum for her awakening. She awakened and became a force of nature. Not bitter, not broken. Just built.

I don’t know how this will end, I just know that you Lord, has unleased a dragon to the world. Though I have a feeling that Sussan is a very wise and sensible girl. I also have a feeling that you have started an intentional healing within her and the force of this fight will wear off to tenderness later. Maybe… maybe not….

But this is your daughter Lord; I can fully check in now.