Summary

While Zikora is in labor, her mother sits nearby, but never touches her. Zikora cannot believe the pain, how wicked it feels. Her mother dismisses her cries. The doctors keep telling Zikora she is "not progressing" (2). When the nurses give her instructions, Zikora feels angry. She wishes she knew more about "maternal mortality" rates, suddenly convinced she will die like her "cousin's cousin" (3).

Dr. K assures her everything she is feeling is normal. Zikora snaps: as a man, there is no way he can know what she is feeling. Zikora senses her mother's disapproval in the background. She knows her mother feels disgraced, as she had when Zikora asked for food at her father's second wife Aunty Nwanneka's house. Zikora's mother never allowed her to show pain even as a child. Women were meant "to endure pain with pride" (4).

Finally the man with...