Mma Etim was 71 years old and she had the best garden in all of Use Offot.
Her garden did not have flowers. It had bitterness. Scent leaves, bitter leaves, atama, afang, and one small corner that nobody was allowed to touch. That corner was for poison.
Not for killing people. For killing pain.
Every evening, children would come to her compound with their mothers.
"Mma, my son has fever."
"Mma, my husband cannot sleep."
Mma Etim would enter her garden, cut three leaves, whisper something that nobody understood, squeeze the leaves into a small cup and say, "Drink."
And they would get well.
But last dry season, something strange happened.
Her own son, Udeme, came back from Lagos. He came back with big car, big shoes, but with a big sickness inside his head. He was not sleeping. He was not eating. He was shouting at night. "They are inside my head! They are inside my head!"
The hospital in Uyo said it was depression. The church said it was demons. Udeme said nothing. He just sat down and looked at the wall............💔😔
Mma Etim tried everything. She boiled all her leaves. She prayed. Nothing worked.
One night, Udeme held his mother's hand. His eyes were clear for the first time in monthss.....
"Mama," he said, "inject the poison."
Mma Etim shook.
"What poison?" she asked.
"The one you keep for the garden. The strong one. The one you said can kill a sickness by killing the place where the sickness hides. Inject it inside my head. I am tired."
Mma Etim cried. A herbalist mother crying because for the first time, she did not have an answer.
That night, Mma Etim did something she had never done in 40 years. She went to her secret corner. She took the blackest leaf. The one she never gave to anyone at alllll..... The one her own mother told her, "This one is not medicine, this one is judgement."
She squeezed it. The juice was thick and black like oil.
She carried it to her son's room.
Udeme was sitting on the floor, shaking.
Mma Etim did not give him the black juice to drink.
She poured it on the ground. She took a broom. She swept the room clean. She opened all the windows. She brought out his old radio, the small one he loved as a boy, and played old Highlife music.
Then she sat behind him and started pulling out the grey hairs on his head, one by one, like she did when he was 5 years old and had head lice.
Udeme started to cry. Not shouting. Crying like a baby.
Mma Etim whispered, "Sometimes the poison is not what you drink. Sometimes the poison is the thought you have kept inside for too long. Let it come out."
That night, Udeme talked. He talked for three hours. About Lagos. About losing his job. About losing his wife. About feeling like a failure.
Mma Etim did not judge. She just listened and continued pulling his grey hairs.
By morning, the black juice had dried on the ground, and Udeme was sleeping on the floor, his head on his mother's lap, snoring small small.
He did not need the poison injected into his body.
He needed the poison injected out of his mind.
My freewrite for today's prompt: inject the poison
Prompt link: @freewritehouse/dailyprompt