The Birth of Rain

The rain has no friends.

Her old body fought with the life inside her; it wanted to slide out, but so aged was she that her pelvis had not a clue how to relax and release. The midwife felt inside, two fingers sliding where five should have fit; she shook her head and coached the old woman, “Relax, and breathe.”

“I feel like I’m dying and you want me to relax!” she screamed. Both hands were on her belly pushing; the sheets were soaked with sweat.

“You’re not dying,” crooned the midwife, trying to hide the worry in her voice. Her attempt was feeble at best. Her words caught in her throat and her voice rose an octave higher than it should. She focused on the old woman’s pelvis. “Has she never had a child before?” she asked herself.

“But I am dying. A woman as old as I am should not have a child.” She turned her head to the side, staring blankly at the walls. The pain subsided but the heaviness in her belly still pushed down on the unyielding pelvis. It ached. She wanted that ache to go away.

“Your body has been through this before. Just relax and let go.” The midwife put a cloth to the old woman’s forehead and wiped away the sweat that stung her eyes. Much longer and neither mother nor baby would live.

“I’ve never been through this before,” she whispered, too weak for more than that. “This is my first child.”

Those were the last words she spoke that night; words that left the midwife’s mouth open the size of a deep yawn. “This is her first child? What is she? Almost fifty?” The old woman’s eyes fluttered shut, and a sleep almost as deep as death came to her; mercifully, she felt no pain as her pelvis cracked and spread, freeing the child. The leathery skin between her legs ripped softly as the head pushed through, and then the shoulders; so in shock was the midwife that she barely caught the wet infant before the rest of its body slid from between the old woman’s legs to the bed.

The boy born that night was a strange creature: it was feeble and frail like all newborns, its arms trembling with its first weak cries. He was born with skin darker than the blackest charcoal; and his eyes were pools of ink so thick there was no difference between his iris and pupils. Even the soles of his feet and hands were black, and the gentle folds of skin, which should have been lighter, matched the all-over darkness of his complexion. He had a thick head of curly hair coarser than a sheep’s wool, more of it than a child three times his age. Only the whites of his eyes gave contrast to the dusky skin, and the whites were that of a snowcapped mountain, or a cumulous cloud hanging low against a clear blue sky. As his first cries twisted his face he seemed a caricature of a child, not real.

The midwife shuddered.

Relatives came later: aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters who lived in the surrounding villages. They were surprised when word was sent that she was having a child, her first child, and at her age. For even though she was the baby of her siblings, she was close to her half-century mark, way too old to be having children. The midwife was a wet nurse as well, thankfully, because the mother slept, weakened from giving birth. One by one her family passed the child among them, their eyes narrowing as they saw that the boy’s skin was just too dark for a newborn. “Who is the father?” one of the male relatives asked.

The midwife shook her head as she took the boy from his arms. “I don’t know. No one does except for her, and she’s not talking.”

They spoke of the child in whispers that night, laughing and taunting the old woman for giving birth at her age, and to a child so . . . dark. Unknown to them, she lay awake in the bed and smiled. From the next room she heard them; their words left her unfazed. He was her first son, her only son, and he was her pride and joy.

A mother’s love is unconditional like that.

For years this old woman had been barren until she went to see the orisha priests and their diviners. With tears in her eyes but hope in her heart, she sat on the mat and listened patiently as the old men told her about her woe, and without her saying a word to them. They wrenched her heart for every word was true. When they explained her ebó it was not if she would make it, but when. It took some time but the old woman brought a black ram to be shared between Shangó and Yemayá and black male goat for Elegguá. She brought a bolt of black cloth and tubs of a black soap, and she carried a bag of machetes thrown over her shoulder. All this she brought; and after her ebó was complete she went home without tears but with faith.

Elegguá felt her sorrow more deeply than he should; both her empty heart and womb moved him that day. “She will bear a child,” he promised her although he spoke not to her. “She will bear a child, and I will give him great ashé. Longing like hers to love another should not go unrewarded.” Before she walked out of sight, Elegguá blessed her. Before long her womb was ripe with life.

And to her, the child born that night was miraculous.

She secluded him for years, and he was happy with his mother as his only friend. No one, not even her own family, got to see the child as he matured from an infant to a young boy; but children cannot be kept locked up out of sight forever, and the day came that he was expected to join other children for his lessons. She dressed him well in the finest of fabrics and sent him to his teachers. In school, he was taunted for the blackness of his skin.

Every day he came home from his lessons with tears; his clothing torn and his face twisted in a grimace of grief much too old for the face of a child to bear. It broke her heart, and it was not long before she believed that her ebó was a curse, not a blessing.

Elegguá saw all this. It angered him.

He came to the young boy; he found him sitting by the forest alone, tears streaking his face and making his skin both shiny and salty. When the child saw a man as black as he walking up to him he froze, and before the orisha could speak his little voice cracked as he asked, “You are as dark as me. Are you my father?”

Elegguá’s heart broke. He had given the old woman a son, but he had forgotten to give him a father. He smiled and trembled just a bit as he said, “Yes. I am your father, in a way. Why do you cry?”

He clutched Elegguá’s red and black robes, the tears flowing again, staining the cloth. “They say I’m too black. They say it’s not natural. They hate me.”

Elegguá knelt and held the young boy at arm’s length by his shoulders; the child looked at the ground with shame, wiping tears from his eyes. “They’re wrong,” Elegguá said, shaking him gently so he would look up. “Do you hear me? They’re wrong. Your blackness is a gift from Olódumare in heaven, and it is beautiful. It is also your power.”

The child did not understand the concept of power; nor did he believe his blackness to be a gift. It was his curse, and he clutched the orisha Elegguá as he sat on the ground with him. All afternoon he cried and sobbed; and with each little wail, the sky rumbled. Clouds thickened, and gentle drops of water fell from them. The child did not notice them, so deep was his grief, but Elegguá did, and he thought, “Yes, your power will be great, indeed.”

It was long after sunset before Elegguá brought the boy home. His mother was frantic with fear. “All the boys at his school are so mean to him,” she thought in her panic. “Have they done something to him?” She was about to run out into the darkness screaming his name when he burst through the door, his little hand in Elegguá’s. Together they marched in the house and sat on the floor, he in the orisha’s lap.

She was about to scream with both fear and anger when Elegguá held up his hand to silence her. “Why?” he asked.

“Why what? Who are you? And where have you been, young man?” She pulled him away from the orisha who still sat on the floor grinning. She twisted him around and hugged him in her arms protectively. “Get out!” she told the orisha.

“You are angry with me?” Elegguá stood defiantly. “It is I who should be angry with you. This boy is tormented every day of his life. The boy for whom you prayed; the boy for whom you made ebó. Not once have you considered bringing him back to us . . . and making ebó for him. You really are quite a selfish woman.”

“What?” her voice rose in pitch and cracked with that one word. Her son looked up at her curiously.

“What is power, Mama? He says I have it. And what is . . .” he formed his lips around the word carefully, “ebó?”

“How do you know these things?” She looked down at her son who was looking up at her. It was then she realized that his skin was as dark as the strange man’s skin, the stranger who stood in front of her.

“Because I am Elegguá!” He held his arms out at his sides and bowed just a bit.

Her hands went to her mouth. Through her fingers she said, “Oh. My.” Slowly, she tried to put her head to the floor, but before she could do more than bend at the waist Elegguá caught her.

“No need.” He hugged her instead. When they stood at arm’s length, she smiling at him, she said, “I need to thank you. He is my pride and joy. But the other children, even the other adults, are so mean to him. They say it is unnatural for a child to have skin and eyes and hair so black. But you . . .” her voice trailed off, “. . . but yours is just as black. How can this be?”

“That’s not important,” said Elegguá. “What is important is that we finish your ebó tonight. Years ago you began something very powerful, and now that power begins to manifest. After tonight, no one will ever taunt him again.”

The young boy stared at Elegguá. Something primal stirred behind his eyes and his young mind knew the orisha’s words were true. There was something powerful inside of him; it was growing as the adults spoke. He heard wind outside his home, and he knew, somehow, he made it blow. “Are you ready?” Elegguá asked.

The young boy shook his head. Thunder rumbled outside.

Throughout the night Elegguá put his ashé in the young boy. He ripped off his dirty clothes, cloth that was already ripped and torn by the beating his classmates had given him that day. Gently, he washed him with the black soap from head to toe, the dirty looking lather foaming and dripping over his thin, wiry body. Outside the winds continued to blow; they howled through the trees; and dirty clouds gathered in the night sky blocking out the moon and stars. Elegguá washed and lathered; washed and lathered; washed and lathered; and when the sun rose the next morning its light was muted by thick, black clouds that gathered and blocked out its light.

The world was afraid—something stronger than the sun was in the morning sky.

Elegguá rinsed the young boy’s body with buckets of water; and gentle drops of rain fell from those clouds. The water crashed and slopped loudly in the metal washtub; and outside thunder rumbled through the sky.

People hid in fear from the strange noise.

While rain fell gently, and thunder rumbled hungrily, Elegguá dressed him in the black cloth. Outside the clouds grew even darker until the world was thrown into a twilight not unlike the moments before sunset. In spite of their fear, the villagers peered from their windows and wondered, “What evil is afoot?” Fathers hugged their wives; mothers hugged their children; and one by one families crept outdoors to have a better look at the strange things unfolding in their skies.

Finally, Elegguá gave the young boy two machetes. “You are ready to show the world who you are. Go out there and beat everything that stands in your way with these. No one will ever torment you again!”

With a smile on his face and lightness in his step, the boy, who was the Rain, did as he was told. He walked out the front door and started beating at the earth, the plants, and the trees that stood before him. Each strike brought lightning from the sky, fire that charred it but left him unharmed. The winds bore down from heaven pushing him each step of the way, and sheets of rain sliced through the sky, splashing and soaking the earth. Those who tormented him all his days, the boys and even their fathers, these he smacked with his machetes and watched them run in fear of the child who had fire in his eyes. And when he had shown everyone who ever tormented him his power, he lifted both arms to heaven and screamed—lightning, so bright it was blinding, flashed, and amid the wind and the rain and the thunder, he rose to heaven and took his place in the clouds.

His mother rejoiced that day, and for the first time the tears she cried over her son were not of sorrow, but happiness. For she had given birth to a powerful child, the Rain, and no one dared torment him again.

This is why we say that the rain has no true friends. For while he walked the earth as a mortal child, truly, he had no friends. And the water that falls from the skies, or the lightning that razes the earth, torments all equally and without discretion.

It made Elegguá very happy that day.