The Woman Next Door
It is 2:00 am. again, and a woman is wailing in the room next door. It is not the usual cry or call for help—it is guttural as if it came from a wounded animal. Her wails are always high-pitched cutting through the stillness of the night. Sometimes she makes low moans, like the tongue from an alien country—it seeps in through the walls, crawls under my skin and gives me a sickening feeling in my stomach.
Many nights the neighbours try to get into her room to figure out what could be happening to her. They bang on her door, and their concerned pleas blend with her unnerving shriek, but she does not open for anyone. On my way back from work, I stopped by a mall to get earplugs, but that night, as I was preparing to sleep, I couldn’t bring myself to wear them. It feels like running away from a part of me that I ought to fix. I hate the wailing with every part of my being but I can’t avoid it. It feels close to home, like unearthing a pebble I have tried to keep buried all my life.
I have not spoken to anyone since I moved here—not to the woman who wails every night. On my days off, I sit at my desk typing or I stand by my kitchen window watching everyone in the yard. I love to watch people from a distance—observe their quirks and check how they match a character in one of the stories I am trying to develop. But I have vowed not to write about her. Regardless of how much she haunts me, I have sworn that she will never be one of my characters. Never.
The wailing reminds me of everything I have tried not to think about. At night, I sit on my couch thinking of home and the other lives I could have lived. Her cries make me wonder if I am living or just passing the time, like she was reaching from eternity. I guess it reminds me of the fragility of existence.
I often imagine what it would be like to be another person. It is insanity to be somewhat jealous of this woman who sees things others cannot. She speaks to imaginary characters, and there are weeks when she does not leave her room. Her daughter comes to see her, and I wonder why she did not move in with her daughter and her family. Anytime the young woman comes, she would braid her mother’s hair, wash her dirty clothes and make some food for her. I bet she had gotten used to the awkward stares she gets from neighbours who peep through their window as she spreads the washed laundry on the clothing line in our yard. She comes and goes. Breezing in and out of the house on days you least expect her.
***
I have lived here for a month, but I don’t know the name of any of my neighbours. I wonder if my recluse lifestyle is getting out of hand. The neighbours sometimes look at me in a strange way or maybe it is just my brain over analysing again. But I try to be friendly as much as I can. I keep quiet and mind my business. I make sure I do not leave the apartment at the same time as anyone, that means they would talk to me and I don’t want it.
The woman is wailing again. Some neighbours are trying to tie her up and take her to a church for exorcism. “Aje ni!” they shouted as she tried to free herself from their hold.
She thrashes around and scratches them with her long fingernails. As I peep from my window, I notice something. The first day I saw her, her eyes were like burning coals; now, they look lost and confused. Her movements are jittery, a desperation to escape from a world only visible to her.
The daughter comes in the middle of everything, gathering her large boubou with her left hand, shouting at the top of her lungs, “Let her go!” She walked as if her feet had suddenly grown little wings, her loosely tight scarf fell to the floor but she did not bulge. “Let her go!” She held one of the men back with her free hand, “She is not possessed, it is schizophrenia! She does not need an exorcism, she needs to take her medication.”
The words hovered above us, sending an unusual calmness into the chaos. Schizophrenia. It sounded so foreign and yet instantly, her wails made some sense.
I sit at my desk and search for the words. Delusional. Hallucination. Altered reality.
That next day, the wailing ceased. Her daughter took her away, carting her off shortly after the confrontation, and everyone seemed to be happy about it. No more guttural sounds at night. But the silence was loud, deafening even. Some nights, I hear her wails in my head, resounding across the yard, pulling me into a void. The guilt nudges my heart when I walk past her door. Someone placed a big lock on it.
A month later, when I returned from work, I found her door wide open, the room empty, and not a single item left, not even rags. The neighbours said the daughter had come to move all her things. That emptiness haunted me more than her wails.
In the evening, the neighbours would sit on the porch to talk about the wailing woman and the relief they felt after she left. But I carry this weight with me, her wails keep ringing in my head. I wonder if any of the neighbours really understood her pain. Schizophrenia, her daughter told us, but to the neighbours she was just a demon-possessed tenant.
And who was I?
Who was I?
