Two Strange Twins Stand Outside My House Every Day Claiming I’m Their Real Mother — But I Already Have a Daughter and Never Gave Birth to Them

Chapter 4

“You rejected blood that cried out to you,” he said, and his voice had iron in it now. “You called them demonic. You threw curses at them and chased them into the road with your husband. Their pain has gone into that house and wrapped itself around your daughter’s spirit. While their hearts stay broken, your daughter’s eyes stay closed.”

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. Beside me, Isaac had gone the color of ash.

“Is there a way — ” Isaac started.

“There is one way,” the old man said. “Find them. Kneel before them. Ask their forgiveness from the bottom of your heart — and mean it. And when they forgive you, your daughter will rise again.”

“But we don’t even know where they are!” I cried. “We chased them away and we don’t know where they went!”

“That,” he said, “is your problem, not theirs.” And his eyes closed again, dismissing us into the world.

—

The same sun that had risen over my daughter’s silent room also rose over a long, empty road at the edge of town, where two small figures were walking.

Faith and Hope had been walking for hours. The hot season had baked the earth and split it into a thousand cracks, and their bare feet had been cut in a hundred places. Their throats were dry as paper. They had no water, no food, no slippers, no place in the world to belong.

They had knocked on doors that morning, two doors, three. The people inside had looked at their torn clothes and dirty faces and closed the doors again. One woman had thrown a crust of bread at them and shouted at them to go and bathe. Another man had called them mad and swung a broom in their direction.

“Nobody believes us,” Hope said, her voice a thread. “They look at us and they see mad children. Nobody will ever believe us.”

Faith squeezed her sister’s hand. “We have to keep going, Hope. We can’t stop. If we stop, we die on this road.”

“I don’t know if I want to keep going,” Hope whispered.

Faith did not have an answer to that. She kept walking anyway, and Hope followed, because that is what hope does when it has nothing left — it follows.

The sun climbed higher, and the road grew longer. By noon their shadows were small dark pools at their feet and there was nowhere left in them to be thirsty. Faith stopped beside a broken culvert and helped her sister down into the shade, and they sat with their backs against the rough concrete, and neither of them spoke.

Hope had begun to shiver even though the air was hot. Faith looked at the small tremor in her sister’s hands and felt something cold move through her own chest. She had been the strong one. She had always been the strong one. But she had no water, no food, no roof, and no mother who would look at her twice, and the strength in her was running out like sand through a torn bag.

A market woman passed with a basket of mangoes on her head. Faith watched her, and the hunger rose in her throat so sharply that she had to look away.

Later that afternoon they came to a small church with an open door, and Faith thought — maybe here. Maybe holy people will see us. They stood in the doorway, ragged and barefoot, and a woman in a white lace veil turned and looked at them with a face that went stiff with fear.

“Go away, children,” the woman said, backing up. “We don’t want beggars in the house of God.”

“We only want water,” Hope said, her voice small. “We only want to sit down for a little while.”

Another worshipper came and stood in front of the door, arms folded. “This is a church, not a shelter. If you have no shoes, go to the market.”

Faith took her sister’s hand and led her out of that holy doorway, and as they walked away she looked back once at the white building and felt something harden in her chest. She did not know, then, that God does not live in the walls. She only knew that nobody inside had looked at them like children.

They came eventually to a wide street where the houses were tall and the gates were black and the cars were shinier than the water in their memories. It was the kind of street where money lived. And there, at the corner, parked under a tree, was a huge black Jeep with tinted windows, and inside it a woman was typing on her phone.

Faith stopped. She looked at the woman, then at her sister.

“Hope. That woman. Let us talk to her. Maybe she will listen.”

“Maybe she’ll chase us like Daddy Isaac did,” Hope sobbed, wiping her nose on the edge of her torn dress.

“Let us just try. What do we have left to lose?”

They crossed the road and stood by the car window, knocking gently, crying. The glass rolled down, and a woman’s face appeared — a soft face, with kind eyes that went wide with surprise.

“Awọn ọmọ, what is wrong with you? Why are you crying like this?” she asked.

Faith began to talk fast, the words tumbling out of her like water from a burst pipe. “Mummy, please help us. We have been suffering so much. We found our real mother — Mummy Rebecca — but she chased us away. She threw money at us and told us she doesn’t know us. Her husband threatened to deal with us if we ever came near their house again. We have nobody in this world. We have nobody, Mummy.”

“Yes, ma,” Hope added, sniffling. “She gave birth to us, and now she is denying us because we are poor and dirty. They keep saying we are mad. We have been walking for hours and we don’t know where to go.”