I Ended My Pregnancy in College—Years Later, Two Little Girls Appeared at My Window Every Night Crying, “Mom, Why Didn’t You Let Us Live?”

Chapter 6

The devil beans became our family’s shame.

News spread through the neighborhood faster than fire through dry grass. Mothers pulled their children away when my twins walked past. Whispers followed me to the market, to the church, to the very doorstep of my house. “Elizabeth’s children are witches.” “Don’t let your kids play with them.” “Those girls are not normal.”

David came home one evening, his jaw tight. “The office is talking about my children,” he said quietly, not looking at me. “My own colleagues. Laughing. Asking if I have taken my daughters to any church.”

I had no words.

That night, I decided I had been too gentle. Too soft. Maybe that was the problem. I had coddled them, spoiled them, treated them like they could do no wrong. Perhaps that was why they had grown so bold.

The next morning, I went to the backyard, cut a strong cane, and came back into the living room. Julia and Junia were sitting on the sofa, watching me with… nothing. Not fear. Not guilt. Just two pairs of eyes, steady and flat.

“Stand up from that chair!” I screamed, tears of frustration rolling down my cheeks.

I grabbed Junia first and flogged her legs until welts rose. Then I moved to Julia and flogged her too. I hit them and I shouted and I cried, and the cane whistled through the air, and I thought—I prayed—that the pain would knock some sense into them.

“Do you people want to kill me before my time?!” I screamed, pointing the cane at their faces. “Look at me! I am your mother! From today, that gentle life is over! If you ever cause trouble again in this neighborhood, I will beat you until you cannot walk!”

Julia and Junia did not cry.

They did not flinch.

They simply stood there, looking at me with those strange, flat eyes, as if the cane had whistled past someone else entirely.

The flogging did not enter their ears at all.

Because the very next day, they did something worse.

I found out two hours after it happened, when a crowd gathered outside my gate and a voice that could split stone began screaming my name.

“Elizabeth! Bring out those your witch children!”

I rushed outside, trembling. Madam Silas stood there, sweating heavily, clutching her chest like she was about to faint. Behind her was a crowd of neighbors—and behind them, three stern police officers in uniform.

The neighbors had come with their children, the way you bring children to see a fire. They were not angry, exactly. They were hungry. There is a particular hunger in watching someone else’s life catch fire, and I could see it in every pair of eyes that followed me as I walked back outside to face them. Madam Silas waved her hands at the crowd, recounting her losses to anyone who would listen, and the crowd murmured and shook their heads and looked at me like I had taught my children to steal.

“Madam Silas, what is the problem?” I asked. “Why are you shouting like this?”

“Your twins are thieves!” she wailed. “They came to my shop to buy salt, and they stole my market money! Over fifty thousand Naira that I placed beside my chair—it is gone! And they cleared my provisions, my chocolates, my soaps—everything!”

My blood went cold. I ran inside, calling their names. “Julia! Junia! Where are you? Come out right now!”

I searched under the beds. I searched inside the kitchen. I searched behind the wardrobe. The house was empty. The back door was wide open, swinging in the wind.

They had known what they did. And they had vanished before the crowd arrived.

I stood at the back door for a long time, staring into the empty yard where they had disappeared. There were no footprints. No sound of running feet. Six-year-old girls do not simply dissolve into thin air. But mine had, and as the crowd’s shouting grew louder behind me, I understood that I was not dealing with children at all. I was dealing with something that wore my children’s bodies the way a traveler wears a borrowed coat.

I walked back out to the veranda, my hands shaking. “Officer, please… I can’t find them. I haven’t even seen the girls today. It’s obvious they ran away.”

David, just arriving home from work, tried to step in. “Officers, please, they are only six years old. Let us find them and return the money.”

The leading officer pulled a pair of iron handcuffs from his pocket. His face was tight and without mercy.

“We don’t want to hear stories, Mr. and Mrs. David. Your children are not here, so the law will take its course. You are their parents. You are responsible for their actions.”

The handcuffs clicked shut around my wrists.

As the police pushed me into the back of the van, I thought about the warning I had ignored six years ago, when I stood in a dark bedroom with a bitter cup in my hands and two small voices telling me not to outsmart them.

And the question that rose in me was colder than the iron on my wrists:

*I forced my way to a child against their command—and now my children are criminals at six years old. Is this their punishment? Or is the worst still ahead?*