The nurse's name was Wakonda. She spoke with a confidence that reassured me. She held my stomach, rubbed it and asked if I knew what sex the baby was. I said I didn't know, the father and I wanted it to be a surprise. She smiled, showing jarringly large teeth, and then asked if I was comfortable.
"Very much so," I said, although I wasn't. The contractions were getting stronger with each blink of the digital clock at the top of the door of the ward. Light poured in from a diamond-shaped window, a weak illumination that made everything in the room look, somehow, like it had a face. The other beds were abandoned. My face must've screwed up as I tried sitting in a way to reduce pressure on my lower back, because Wakonda said, "If you're feeling uncomfortable - "she glanced at her clipboard "- Maguri - I suggest you tell me. Childbirth is no joke."
I looked into the yellow eyes that reminded me of expensive cufflinks, both because the Yellow-eyed people were privileged enough to be able to buy something as unnecessary as cufflinks and because her eyes were like the gold cufflinks they sold at Freeda's shop in the heart of the City. Wakonda eyed me rather sternly.
"My back. My back sort of hurts." "That wasn't so hard, was it?" she said, tilting her head. "Now, just breathe in and out. In and out. Not too fast. Yes, like that. A little slower. I hope you don't mind my asking, but how old are you?"
"Sixteen. I turned last month."
"Where is the father of the child?"
"He hurt his leg, he is in bed at home. I persuaded him to."
Wakonda's eyes narrowed and she looked for a moment like a lioness.
"Is he older than you?"
"Yes."
Her short afro seemed to crackle with surprise and disapproval. She averted her gaze and walked out of the room with an air of being highly disturbed, heels making quick thuds on the wooden floor.
Within two hours, I no longer had a voice: my shrieking had rendered me hoarse. The faces of Wakonda and the Orange-eyed doctor called Gotba or Gotpa were hazy as if behind a veil. I was aware of the flames in my belly and the green of the lamp beside my bed. I kept thinking of the reward, the eventual joy. Clutching at the sheets, clutching at the air. Excruciating, scarlet fire in my belly.
Wakonda said the name I gave him was a good one. It was musical to the ears, lyrical on the tongue. She stroked my braids and said I was a very strong young woman and that the baby was going to make a difference in the world. She said the baby would open its eyes maybe tomorrow.
His father was the one who saw it first. I had been at the fields, far away from our cottage, working with other Brown-eyed people under a hot sky as the Purple-eyed guards watched our bent backs, our cheeks wet with sweat. The Leader, a cruel man who stammered and thus was short-tempered, wanted a good harvest, for our country was approaching a very special weekend called the Druwal. The Druwal saw mighty leaders from all over the world in attendance. So we had to gather all the crop we could and quickly: we were somehow behind time. The crops would be used to make astounding dishes for the foreign guests. We would get a little, too, if we were lucky. I was expected to work two days after giving birth.
The Leader, the highest one, whose name no one knew, had eyes like the night, the supreme eye color. Twenty years ago he came up with this oppressive system. The lowest color was grey, the beggars. Second from the bottom was brown, the toilet cleaners at the City, the sweepers of the streets. Then came purple, who were mostly guards and cooks. Then came yellow, the secretaries. Orange, the lawyers, the doctors. And then black.
"Hey, get back to work, shit-eyes!" a guard said, violet gleaming threateningly in his rough face.
"Please, sir, my groin," I breathed, leaning against my hoe. " I just need - "
But my eyes fixed on a distant figure whose limp I recognised all too well. There were no trees visible in any direction - my eyes weren't playing tricks. He neared and the guards shouted for him to leave, not knowing he was of a status higher than theirs. When he was close for them to see his face, they looked embarassed and muttered apologies.
"Renga, what're you doing here?" I said, as I half-stumbled to meet him.
His orange eyes flashed in a way that said "not here!". He turned to the guards, held up his chin impressively.
"I'm taking her with me, " he announced with contempt. "It is urgent and none of your business."
"But of course," they said, looking at the large pile of maize we had created in three hours.
"What is it?" I asked with fright when we were but dots to the others we'd left behind, walking briskly. "Is it the baby?"
He didn't say anything, his mouth set.
"Renga!"
He stopped and gazed at me with a startling vacancy that was unfamiliar. Renga was, by far, and at seventeen, the most beautiful man in all of our country. His cinnamon-brown skin, wide-set golden-orange eyes, the fullness of his lips continued to overwhelm me even after two years of being married. But now, as I looked at him, as hysteria built up in me like vomit, I didn't see the muscular shoulders. I saw the death of our child.
"Is he dead?" I whispered. "Is he - ?"
"No," he said, shaking his head impatiently. "He's just... fuck, Guri, relax! He's just opened his eyes."
The wind blew dust into the air and I coughed, my legs weak with relief. Renga carried me on his back as if I were as weightless as the baby. He didn't seem to be bothered by the extra weight on his leg.
"They're red, Guri," he said, his voice trying to be steady, limping in the direction of our house. "Like fucking rubies."
"No..."
"Fuck..."
I buried my face in his afro and smelt a sweetly watery smell like cucumbers. I began to sob and Renga's body shook too as we entered the hum of the small village of wooden cottages. A dog whined somewhere, as if for my child. The air was getting cooler, the sun retreating stealthily across the sky. A dragonfly, or butterfly, landed on my shoulder. It flew away when I raised my head.
When I held him, his eyes were shut. I coaxed him awake by nudging my nose against his. I fed him, thinking of how small and vulnerable his hands were.
I looked at my reflection in a spoon. Skin like hazel, braids falling like vines. Dark brown eyes. Why did my child have the eyes our Leader hated? Why mine? Why my child?
Red eyes were a symbol of usurpation. The one with the red eyes, a medium had told the Leader years ago, would be his downfall. So the Leader, obsessively, had babies brought to him at one month to be checked. No baby had ever been known to have red eyes. Except now.
Renga came in from cutting wood, shirtless, panting, his leg at an odd angle to his body. His eyes were dulled by grief. I remembered when his family had disowned him for marrying me, "the Brown-eyed whore", how his father, so maliciously, had told him he was now a part of us and not them, and how his looks could have made him the richest man in all of our country. How he'd thrown away all he had for youthful love. I saw how similar his eyes looked to then, empty but at the same time hopeful.
"Don't worry, Guri," he said, planting a kiss on the hollow of my neck. In spite of myself, a shiver of desire coursed through me. "We will protect our child. Even if it means he's going to fucking take the sceptre from the Leader one day. We will hide him, do you hear me? I'll build a secret basement under the cottage and steal one of those things they make in City that mimics the Sun's rays for his bones. I'll train him to fight. We both will. He'll be a fucking warrior. And the Leader one day. Then this fucking system will go down the drain like it deserves to. We won't be poor anymore. I can get you something from Freeda's at last, babe."
At the same time, as if on cue, we looked down at the scarlet eyes, fierce flames that had been in my belly not long ago, and I wandered if Wakonda knew something I didn't, if it was going to be as easy protecting Lokwengolo as Renga was making it out to be.