The blessing that looks like a curse

The first omen came as a hush.

Rotvok, streets rarely fell quiet, not at dusk when vendors bartered over last bowls of waakye, not when tro-tros rattled and hawkers threaded the traffic like bright threads through a crowded loom. But on the evening Benjamin turned eighteen, sound folded in on itself. The neighborhood rooster stopped mid-crow. A radio preacher’s voice thinned to silence. Even the ocean, somewhere beyond the city’s ribs, held its breath.

Benjamin sat on the concrete steps outside his family’s apartment, elbows on knees, the day’s dust on his laces. The sky was that tender blue that makes you forgive the heat. He felt watched, not by a person but by the vast arithmetic of night. Nothing visible, yet every small hair on his arms knew the sum.

“Benji,” Christel called from the doorway, dangling a lopsided cupcake dressed in candles the color of fresh chalk. “Before the light goes.”

He stood, managing a grin he didn’t entirely feel. “You baked this?”

“I supervised the mix. The oven did the rest,” Christel said. “Come before I eat it on principle.”

Inside, the living room was a collage—family photos, paperbacks with curled spines, a basket of oranges pretending to be a centerpiece. Ciska sat cross-legged on the floor with a plastic lighter, scowling as if fire owed her a favor. Nathaniel leaned against the wall by the window, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a phone he wasn’t really looking at. Louis had taken over the role of DJ, soft music hovering like a patient guest.

“Happy birthday,” Louis said, his smile gentle and private, like a door only Benjamin knew the knock for.

Benjamin’s grin found its backbone. “You’re all ridiculous,” he said, in a voice that meant: don’t leave.

Ciska finally coaxed the lighter into cooperation. Five candles caught, stubborn flames steady in the warm air. “Make a wish,” she commanded. “And don’t do that thing where you wish for more wishes. It’s tacky.”

Nathaniel lifted his gaze just enough for their eyes to meet. In that half-second was a whole language: the jokes they didn’t tell, the afternoons spent studying under a tree that couldn’t decide if it was shade or ornament, the way a crush can be a soft ache that you carry like a secret coin.

Benjamin looked at the cupcake. He thought about the hush outside. He thought about his mother, the absence shaped like a presence who had left when he was small enough to be told “later” and believe it. The only story his father ever told about her had sounded like a warning. Not a woman, but a tide. Not a past, but a door standing on its own in a field.

He closed his eyes. The wish came with no words, then poured into one: belong.

He blew. The room cheered. The hush held.

The first candle re-lit itself.

Louis laughed, then saw Benjamin’s face and stopped. “Static,” he offered. “Or a trick lighter?”

Ciska swore she’d checked. Nathaniel moved closer, intent sharpening his features. Christel tilted the cupcake, a candle guttered, a small comet of wax trembling on the cheap icing. Then the flame lifted again, drawing itself tall. The silence outside thickened until they could hear the refrigerator hum like a thoughtful insect.

Something shifted in the air. The apartment was suddenly too narrow for what had arrived to stand in it.

“Benji,” Christel whispered. “Do you feel that?”

He did. He felt the room like a throat and the flame like a word someone else was speaking through him. He smelled ashes that had never been here and metal that wasn’t a scent so much as a memory of rain on corrugated roofs. He put out his hand over the stubborn wick.

“Don’t,” Louis said, a hand at Benjamin’s elbow. “It’s hot.”

“It won’t burn,” Benjamin said, and knew it would not. He lowered his fingers until the heat nipped without harm, like a kitten biting without claws.

The flame bowed, a little ceremony. Then the world blinked.

Darkness, not from the loss of power but like a hand cupped over their eyes from the outside. Every corner of the room wore another room under it, deeper and older, as if reality were a palimpsest and the ink beneath had decided it was tired of being second. Benjamin saw the outline before he saw the form: a tower of presence, a silhouette bristling with arms like branches on a thunderstruck tree, a necklace that might have been moons, a skirt that moved as if it were made of the night’s edge. Not flesh, not shadow. A thought wearing a body.

Christel’s breath made a small sound and then refused to be sound at all. Ciska, who has faced down the cruelest of schoolyard tyrants, pressed both palms to the floor as if anchoring herself to the city. Nathaniel straightened, something in him stepping forward, brave or foolish or both. Louis took Benjamin’s hand like a person who reaches for the railing on a moving bus, both to steady and be steadied.

The presence addressed only Benjamin, and yet everyone heard. The voice was not loud. It was wide.

Child, it said, and the word was both name and inventory. You have come of the count, where the days you borrow begin to tally.

Benjamin’s throat tightened. His mother’s absence stood up and became a doorway. “Are you—” The question wouldn’t choose its last word. Mother. Myth. Mercy.

The presence unfolded like a night blooming flower. Six arms held six tools that were not weapons only, but instruments: a blade sharp enough to cut lies from truth, a drum that sounded like the first heartbeat, a bowl that caught spilled futures, a bell in which quiet lived, a thread that could unspool time, a mirror that returned you to yourself. Six faces watched from one crown, each seeing from a slightly different tomorrow.

I am Badra-Kali, the voice said, and the name filled the room the way dawn fills a glance. I am old enough to be your ending and young enough to be your start. I am your mother.

Something like laughter ran through the walls. Not mockery. Relief. As if the building had been holding this secret and was glad to share the weight.

“I thought—” Benjamin began. He had thought a thousand things. That he was ordinary. That belonging meant shrinking. That love would make him smaller to fit it.

Badra-Kali’s lower right hand set the stubborn candle finally, blessedly, to rest. Smoke curled like a question mark, then straightened into a line.

You will be blessed by death, she said, and the words did not bruise. It is not endings I give you, but crossings. You will learn to lay endings down like bridges. You will learn to speak with what has been lost. There is a cost. There is always a cost. But you are not alone.

She turned—no, she was turned already, every face seeing what it needed to see. Louis felt courage settle in his palm where it held Benjamin’s. Christel felt the sharpness of fear soften into a fierce sort of caretaking. Ciska felt the itch of in-between moments turn into a map. Nathaniel felt his gaze become a lantern he could set down without losing.

Benjamin’s knees wanted to argue with gravity. He remained standing out of stubbornness and awe. “Why me?”

Because you asked to belong, Badra-Kali said. Belonging is a road. I am giving you shoes.

Outside, the hush broke like a wave. The radio preacher picked up mid-syllable. Somewhere a rooster remembered it had a job. Light returned as if it had only been taking a breath.

Badra-Kali was both here and gone, the way a true thing is when you stop arguing with it. On the table, the cupcake waited, imperfect and urgent.

Benjamin exhaled. The room exhaled with him. He looked at his friends, at his sister, at Louis whose eyes carried a question that sounded like I’m here if you are.

“I think,” Benjamin said, voice steadying around the shape of the evening, “that my life just changed.”

“Understatement of the year,” Ciska muttered, giddy with terror.

Nathaniel’s mouth quirked. “So… what do we do?”

Benjamin lifted the cupcake, broke it into five uneven pieces, and passed them around. “We eat,” he said. “And tomorrow, I buy shoes.”

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