O as in Osadebamwen
by: Klara Kalu
I know exactly when and where I am the first time my sister tells me she is pregnant. It is snowing outside, and I am barefoot in my apartment in Fairfax, watching flakes press against the window. I am one year into my MFA in Creative Writing, far along enough to sound like I belong when I say things in class like “So… is the mother a metaphor? or “The dog feels symbolic, but I’m not sure of what.”, but not so far along that I didn’t flinch when people ask me what home means.
Before I came to the U.S from Nigeria, I imagined the MFA would be a world of pure writing: coffee shops, late-night brilliance, snow like in the Christmas movies. I was partly right. There is snow—but then the snow melts, and that’s the part they don’t show you in the movies: It becomes half-ice, half-dirt and curdles at the corners of every sidewalk, and everywhere is slippery and sometimes you fall, and even when you manage to not fall, your ears sting and you can’t feel your fingers when you walk the 10 minutes to class and it gets dark way to early and you learn about seasonal depression. And it doesn’t even snow on Christmas! Hollywood lies but that’s a story for another day.
Today, my story is about finding out that my sister, who also moved to America a year ago and lives in Utah with her husband, is pregnant. And exactly how I feel when she tells me: First, it is 40% happiness, ecstatic excitement because my sister is pregnant! There is going to be a baby! I am going to an aunty for the first time! Then, 25% sheer disbelief because when? How? With whom? (Okay, that last two I knew, but still). 20% panic because: Utah!!! The baby would be the first in my family to be born outside of Nigeria, away from the whole village of mothers and aunties that raised us. My sister and I barely know how to take care of ourselves. We have zero experience with babies. Then, a 10% goes to fear because somewhere in my late-night doomscrolling, I filed away that Black mothers are three times more likely to die during childbirth. Three times! Next, 4% regret for not charging my phone before this call, because I need to Google. And finally 1% weird jealousy, because sibling rivalry never really ends, and she has managed to do something irreversible, something neither of us can take back, and that is very impressive.
That summer, I spend the long break in Utah with my sister and her husband because I want to be there, reporting live from the labor room, while the baby is born. Bad idea. Horrible idea. The things I see in that room scar me for life. I will not describe them here, because I still wake up sweating sometimes. But let’s just say that if someone ever tells you “It’s beautiful,” they must be talking about the baby, not the process. I keep thinking, How does anyone do this? And more than once? How did my own mother have 5 children? Is she a crazy person?
Again, Hollywood lies. Labor is not as easy as it looks in movies. In the hospital, I try to mirror the composure of the doctors and nurses, but mostly, I just hover, feeling useless, wishing I could take some of the pain off my sister for myself, handing her ice chips she doesn’t want and whispering affirmations I found online: "You are powerful, you are safe, you are surrounded by light." She looks at me in between screams and says, “Get away from me with your light, you demon from the pits of hell.”
The baby comes at past ten that night. a wrinkled, purpling little alien who I look at and wonder: was this really worth what we just went through? My sister looks at the baby, cries and says she wants another one. I look at her like she might be a crazy person too.
My sister and her husband name him Osadebamwen Kayden and four other really long names, but we all call him “the baby,” as if the name and the personhood are rationed, as if he isn’t quite ready for full humanity and all its trappings. I don’t blame them. Even the certificate cannot fit the whole name on one line, and the nurse looks at us, at her screen, then shrugs.
Back at the house, after they are discharged and the hospital machine spits out a baby-sized care package and a bill that looks like a phone number, we carry the baby into the house, in slow motion, like we could break him. I stay for three weeks. We learn how to burp a baby, how to bath a baby, how to swaddle a baby, develop an entire taxonomy of different cries and what they mean through videos calls with all the mothers and aunts back home.
We’re always anxious. One time, the baby doesn’t poop for a day and turns a bit yellow, so we rush to the emergency room to find out if he is dying (he was not, just constipated). But at the hospital, we spend more time giving the baby’s name to the people at the front desk than getting answers from the doctor. “Can you spell that?”, “Is that the last name?”, “Is Kayden the first name or the second?” and even “Do you have an easier name for his records?” I’ve lost how many times we’ve spelt “O as in Orange, S as in Sugar, A as in Apple…..”
My job becomes the night shift, the horrible two-to-six AM slot when the darkness seems to swallow us whole. I change diapers with trembling hands, wondering at all of the things that comes out of a newborn’s body while metamorphosing from Aunt-in-theory to, well, a marginally more functioning Aunt while the baby mostly stares at me suspiciously, sleeps or shrieks for food. And somewhere between diaper changes, a new kind of worry takes root.
Not the ordinary kind, not “is the baby eating enough?” or “is he breathing?”, but a bigger, heavier fear. What will it mean for him to grow up here? Because America looks beautiful in Hollywood, but like I’ve said, Hollywood lies. I had arrived one year earlier, full of wonder, and had already learned that the country that welcomes you can also look straight through you like. I try to put that at the back of mind, try to remind myself that we were here now, building a tiny, improvised version of the village we come from. The one filled with women who would have carried him from arm to arm, gossiping over pots of soup. We didn’t have that chorus anymore, but we have FaceTime aunties, voice notes from our mother, and the same stubborn love.
On the flight back to Fairfax, I keep thinking about how strange and beautiful it is to love someone who doesn’t yet know the world is complicated. But maybe that’s what being an aunty means: worrying on their behalf until they can do it themselves, and hoping that by then, the world has learned a little more kindness.
Now, whenever I see the Utah mountains in a photo or on a screen, I think of that summer, of a baby’s steady breathing, and of love trying, quietly, to outgrow its fear.
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Klara Kalu is an MFA Creative Writing student specializing in Fiction at George Mason University. She writes contemporary stories that enlighten and offer insights into the intricacies of African narratives, focusing on themes of love, loss, and resilience. She is a 2025 Cheuse Fellow.