Child Bride

We found her by the roadside.

Soaked, shaking, barely breathing.

She looked like she'd been poured out of a storm.

Her body curled into itself, trying to disappear.

She smelled of blood, urine, and something heavier.

Despair, maybe. Or silence.

We stopped.

We didn’t speak.

We just carried her.

No one asked how she got there.

No one questioned the trail of blood drying on her legs, or the bruises fading into her skin.

We took her to the hospital.

We called the authorities.

She was unconscious.

The nurses hooked her up to fluids.

The doctors whispered. Words like internal trauma, infection, and fistula drifted between clipped instructions.

I stood in the doorway, praying. Not for a miracle. Just for her to live.

That night, she opened her eyes.

She didn’t scream.

She didn’t thrash.

She just wept silent, shuddering sobs that made her body shake beneath the blanket.

The nurses moved gently.

She flinched at every touch.

She clutched her wrapper like it was the last thing she owned.

The next morning, she whispered her name.

Aisha.

She was fourteen.

The number stuck in my throat.

She looked younger. Tiny, hollow-eyed, too fragile for this world.

She didn’t remember her mother.

She said she died when she was small. Before she could even talk.

Her aunt raised her. Cooked for her. Then sold her.

She was married off at nine, to a man old enough to be her grandfather.

She didn’t cry when she said it.

She didn’t even blink.

Like she had long stopped expecting sympathy.

Alhaji was wealthy, respected, and old.

She became his fourth wife.

The obedient one. The silent one.

The child.

She got pregnant at ten.

The baby didn’t survive.

It’s God’s will, he said.

At eleven, it happened again.

Another pregnancy. Another stillbirth.

She was told to keep trying. That a child would finally come and bring her favor.

At twelve, she got pregnant a third time.

The pain was worse. The labor was longer.

It lasted three days.

There was no hospital.

Just two old midwives from the village.

They tried herbs.

They pushed.

They pulled.

They tore her.

The baby didn’t make it.

And neither did her body.

The next morning, she woke to find the bed soaked.

She thought she was still bleeding.

But it wasn’t blood. It was urine.

She washed. She changed wrappers. But the leaking didn’t stop.

She never healed.

The smell followed her everywhere.

So did the whispers.

They called her cursed.

They said she brought death into the house.

The other wives stopped speaking to her.

The compound grew quiet when she walked through it.

Alhaji left on a trip.

When he returned and smelled her again, he didn’t ask questions.

You’re bad luck, he said.

You’ve killed my children. You’ve infected my home with your witchcraft.

He hit her.

Then he threw her out.

They bundled her into a car and dumped her hours away, far from the village.

No money. No name. No mercy.

That’s how we found her.

In the hospital, she spoke little.

When she did, her voice was flat. Like her soul had fallen asleep inside her.

She told us fragments. Her name. Her age. Her story in pieces.

Enough to understand.

Never enough to trace.

She had VVF, Vesicovaginal Fistula.

A tear caused by prolonged, obstructed labor.

It’s common among girls like her.

Girls whose bodies are still growing, but are forced into womanhood.

Girls who don’t see hospitals.

Only midwives with tired eyes and rusty hands.

The doctors said she could be repaired.

But it would take time.

Surgeries. Patience. Hope.

She smiled once.

Just once.

When a nurse brought her pineapple slices and called her my baby.

We thought she was healing.

Then one evening, she stopped talking.

She just stared at the ceiling.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t cry.

Her fingers grew cold in mine.

The next morning, she was gone.

Her heart stopped sometime during the night.

Quietly. Without sound. Without anyone to call her back.

No family came for her body.

No documents.

No full name.

Just Aisha.

We buried her with flowers.

We said her name aloud.

And I cried.

Not just for her.

But for all the Aishas we will never meet.

Girls married before they understand their own bodies.

Girls who carry life too soon, and carry death even sooner.

Girls who are blamed for the very pain forced upon them.

They call it shame.

They call it punishment.

They call it God’s will.

But it isn’t.

It’s ignorance.

It’s silence.

It’s everything we choose not to see.

She didn’t die from a curse.

She died from being a child in a world that treated her like a womb on legs.

A ghost in a living body.

A cry no one wanted to hear.

Please, let her story not die the way she did.

Quietly.

Painfully.

Alone.