we are able episode 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A week later, it was a New Year day. Toyosi didn’t
starve me this time around. She even told me she had
turned over a new leaf.
“Rose, this is 2001 so I have decided to be lenient with
you. If you keep being a good girl, then I will keep
doing you well. As for your mother, she will be back
soon.”
How soon could her ‘soon’ be? I can’t wait to see my
mother return to the house. I dreamt of her just the
night of the New Year Eve. She was sick in the prison.
My dreams were often the reversal of the reality, so I
just believed she was healthy there. If my dreams
were real, her apparition wouldn’t have appeared to me
earlier, telling me that she had been killed. Now, seeing
her sick in the prison was definitely a contradiction to
my first vision that she was dead.
If I was a prophetess, I would be a false one, I
thought.
I wondered what was up Toyosi’s sleeves this time
around for her to be showing this kind of affection for
me. Toyosi must be the snake who deceived Eve at
creation, I thought. Such thought would at least help me
not to be surprised whenever she revealed her real
intention. She was always good at her game of
suspense.
Toyosi even gave me the free hand to mingle with my
neighbours. She told me to be secretive about my
family.
“Don’t tell Mrs Omotayo and her children anything going
on in this family if you really want to see your mother
alive,” Toyosi warned. “You know that walls have ears;
if you do an undo, I will hear and do an undo too. So, if
you love your mother, then keep quiet about your
family. Don’t tell our neighbours anything.”
I was going to do exactly that. Why wouldn’t I do that?
I thought.
Toyosi gave me food on the New Year day, unlike the
Christmas day. She then asked me to return to my
room.
“Rose, as long as you keep your mouth shut about
everything that has happened, then you can be sleeping
inside your room instead of using the kitchen,” she told
me.
What was she up to? Did she want to take me by
surprise again, or is it that this year was my year of
freedom? Going by the sticker Toyosi pasted on the
door, I thought it was indeed a year of freedom for me.
The sticker had the statement 2001, MY YEAR OF
FREEDOM.
I spent the whole New Year day thumping here and
there; from our flat to the other flat but towards the end
of the New Year day my day was ruined by my father:
It was around 9pm that New Year day. Toyosi had left
the home to her own husband’s house because it
seemed she would be having some guests there. I got
to know this when three of her friends came to our
house and began to hurry her up. When she was
leaving, she came to my room and told me she was
leaving for her husband’s home.
I thought of asking her for the reason why she hadn’t
been staying with her husband but I didn’t because I
thought doing that would mean that I was too forward.
At least I had already been aware that her husband had
travelled to South Africa, thanks to Mrs Omotayo who
told me that earlier.
As if Toyosi was living in my mind, she turned back to
me and signed:
“Actually, my husband has travelled abroad so I thought
it would be kind of me to assist your father till he
returns. Isn’t that a good idea?”
“Yes it is,” I signed back and nodded in agreement.
Then she kissed my forehead and left.
I suddenly discovered that I was in the mood to start
writing poems. I took my paper and my pen as I began
to write one; the one whose stanzas had set in my head
since the day before. It was titled LIFE IS A PEN
I didn’t hesitate to pen down the poem as it was
coming from my brain:
Life is a pen, God is the author
You and I are the characters
Inside his fiction he writes all genres
Tragedy, comedy and romance alike
Life is a clay, God is the potter
You and I are the pottery
Inside his pottery house he moulds all objects
Pots, laddle and gourds alike
Life is a song, God is a singer
You and I are the notes in there
Inside his songs he writes all genres
Gospels, countries and pop alike
Life is knowledge, God is the teacher
You and I are the subjects taught
Inside His teachings he emphasizes
Love, morality and myth alike
Life is a race, God is the referee
You and I are the athletes there
Inside his rules He made us know
First could be last and last could be first
Life is a risk, God is the guide
You and I are to take the risk
Inside his manual you find peace of mind
Confidence, trust and all you need
Life is death, God is the judge
You and I will die someday
Inside his book will your name be found?
Heaven is real and hell is real
I checked the poem over and over again and I fell in
love with it. I kissed the paper and adjourned to my bed
to sit because I wrote it on the floor earlier.
I was still in the euphoria when my father entered in
with his bare chest covered with hair. His chest was
broad. I began to wonder what he had come for at such
late hour and my heart missed a beat. The man was on
boxers, a very skimpy one for that matter. I didn’t even
hear his footstep because I am deaf. He was an inch
close before I could spot him.
John looked mysterious as he shut the door and bent his
neck at me, his hand pushing against the wall beside my
bed.
I was scared! I shifted back on my bed and leaned
against the wall with my pillows on my chest. My teeth
had begun to do some exercise as they gnashed
against one another.
John came on the bed and smiled as he crawled
towards me. I put my pillow on my face in horror!
My father rose up suddenly and began to laugh. He was
saying something as he dipped his right hand into the
pocket of his boxers and produced a note. He pointed at
my horrified face and kept laughing at me. The only
thing I thought I successfully lipread was the
expression USELESS CHILD.
I let my father leave the room before peeking at the
note he gave me. My heart had begun to come down
now. That man really gave me a big scare because I
had thought he wanted To Molest me. I had heaved
sighs of relief on and on. That man had only come to
scare me.
I began to read:
Re: My Father, why have you forsaken me?
My useless daughter Rose, as a reply to your questions
that day, I have come up with this. It is the proper
write-up that would suit your question. Imagine, it took
me more than a week to compose this wonderful
write-up.
The last time when I said you have never been of help
to me, you said you have on Democracy day, just
because you translated sign language to text for me.
Well, if that is what you call a help, then you are a great
fool. How dare you open your ‘dumb mouth’ to say that
in the first place? Do you realise how much I have
spent on you? If that is what a father should expect
from a daughter after spending fortune on her, then it
had been better he didn’t spend on her at all.
I’m glad you aren’t schooling anymore because at the
end of the day you will graduate and remain useless in
the society. Nobody will employ you, nobody will
benefit from you, nobody will speak with you because
you will just remain as useless as a rock.
You are not supposed to be living among the living but
among the animals because as much as I know, only
animals don’t speak. At the right time I will take you to
the jungle to live the rest of your life there.
Imagine, what is the essence of a daughter who will
never be wooed by a man? What is the essence of a
lady who will never have anyone to get married to her?
Rose, If you ever get married, then let the earth bury
me alive…
At that juncture, I stopped reading as I wept my
eyeballs out. I had only read the note to one-third but I
tore it without intending to read more. The little I had
read had already torn my heary apart.
I began to feel inferior and depressed once more.
Earlier, I had thought I wouldn’t put myself in inferiority
complex. Now it was inevitable. I had begun to
consider some of the things my father said. It had just
dawned on me that I can’t have a normal person as a
husband. Maybe I would start making love with blind
Biodun as from now on so that we could end up
marrying each other, I thought. It was the first time in
my life I would think about love and that feeling was
now towards the birthday celebrant of yesterday, 31
December, year 2000.
I began my love search at once the next day as I
started moving close to the children of Mrs Omotayo
so that I could show them I cared, especially Biodun
the blind boy. I wished we ended marrying each other,
at least to prove my father wrong. John would be
shocked when Biodun and I bring our wedding invitation
card to him, I thought childishly. A strong fear stared at
my face when I envisaged the reply John could give:
A disabled marrying a disabled, ha! ha! ha! Perfect
combination of disabled I imagined John saying that,
then I sulked.
Mrs Omotayo said she had never felt so happy in life.
Seeing me playing with her kids, she was glad. She
wanted me to always come around them.
Mrs Omotayo had been finding it very difficult sending
them to school. They were in a boarding school the
year before, but she had to pull them out and bring them
back home when they took ill all the time and almost
died. She prefered them illiterate and alive instead of
being literate and dead.
At the moment, Mrs Omotayo was on sabbatical so that
she could have enough time at hand to care for her
children.
Things hadn’t been smooth for her, being the only one
to run around to do this and that. Unfortunately, there
wasn’t any tangible help her two children could render.
Mrs Omotayo wanted to employ the service of a
housemaid because she would soon be resuming work.
When she told me about it, I assured her that I would
do my best.
All the while, she thought I was a housemaid according
to what Toyosi told her. I would have opened up to her
the person I really was, but for the warning Toyosi
gave me.
However, Mrs Omotayo wondered in silence how
come I was a housemaid. To clear her doubt about my
identity, she took a step to know a little about me. I
read the note she gave me and remained ‘mute’:
Rose, I’m sorry to ask you these few questions; please
it would do me a great good if you could answer me
accordingly: first, I would like to know when actually
you began to be a housemaid, because with the look of
things you are even too young for that, considering
your condition too. You look like thirteen or fourteen
years to me, so how come you are in this? Did you start
being a house girl at ten or eleven or when? I also
want to know why and who released you to be one. Is
your mother still alive? If she is, where does she
live?…
I couldn’t finish the whole writeup as tears welled up in
my eyes. They began to drop. Mrs Omotayo must have
thought that she had hurt my feelings, going by the way
she tightened herself on me and rubbed my head with
her hands.
I wasn’t weeping because she asked those questions
but because I couldn’t supply an answer since Toyosi
had warned me against doing such. Now I knew I
wasn’t free yet, opposed to my thought earlier. I had no
freedom of speech yet.
Mrs Omotayo told me she needed to enroll her children
back in school, but she didn’t want to enrol them in a
boarding school because she didn’t want them to fall
sick. She wished they could be attending a day school,
but it would be difficult for them returning from school
everyday, because herself would be in her workplace
by the time they would be returning from school.
An idea struck my mind. I wrote it down and gave it to
her. She took a glance at me when she read it.
“Will you be able?” she asked me.
“Yes I will be,” I replied her.
Then I have to seek the permission of your mistress,
she wrote.
Please go ahead, I replied.
I have missed school so much and I had wished to
return. A whole term had passed without me being
enrolled in a school. I needed to be out there again and
that was the idea I gave Mrs Omotayo my neighbour. I
told her that I would be able to take care of her
children; take them to school and bring them back as
long as I would also be schooling together with them.
Mrs Omotayo approached my stepmother and told her
about it. She did not agree to it at first, but after too
much badger from my neighbour, she consented to it.
A week later, it was a New Year day. Toyosi didn’t
starve me this time around. She even told me she had
turned over a new leaf.
“Rose, this is 2001 so I have decided to be lenient with
you. If you keep being a good girl, then I will keep
doing you well. As for your mother, she will be back
soon.”
How soon could her ‘soon’ be? I can’t wait to see my
mother return to the house. I dreamt of her just the
night of the New Year Eve. She was sick in the prison.
My dreams were often the reversal of the reality, so I
just believed she was healthy there. If my dreams
were real, her apparition wouldn’t have appeared to me
earlier, telling me that she had been killed. Now, seeing
her sick in the prison was definitely a contradiction to
my first vision that she was dead.
If I was a prophetess, I would be a false one, I
thought.
I wondered what was up Toyosi’s sleeves this time
around for her to be showing this kind of affection for
me. Toyosi must be the snake who deceived Eve at
creation, I thought. Such thought would at least help me
not to be surprised whenever she revealed her real
intention. She was always good at her game of
suspense.
Toyosi even gave me the free hand to mingle with my
neighbours. She told me to be secretive about my
family.
“Don’t tell Mrs Omotayo and her children anything going
on in this family if you really want to see your mother
alive,” Toyosi warned. “You know that walls have ears;
if you do an undo, I will hear and do an undo too. So, if
you love your mother, then keep quiet about your
family. Don’t tell our neighbours anything.”
I was going to do exactly that. Why wouldn’t I do that?
I thought.
Toyosi gave me food on the New Year day, unlike the
Christmas day. She then asked me to return to my
room.
“Rose, as long as you keep your mouth shut about
everything that has happened, then you can be sleeping
inside your room instead of using the kitchen,” she told
me.
What was she up to? Did she want to take me by
surprise again, or is it that this year was my year of
freedom? Going by the sticker Toyosi pasted on the
door, I thought it was indeed a year of freedom for me.
The sticker had the statement 2001, MY YEAR OF
FREEDOM.
I spent the whole New Year day thumping here and
there; from our flat to the other flat but towards the end
of the New Year day my day was ruined by my father:
It was around 9pm that New Year day. Toyosi had left
the home to her own husband’s house because it
seemed she would be having some guests there. I got
to know this when three of her friends came to our
house and began to hurry her up. When she was
leaving, she came to my room and told me she was
leaving for her husband’s home.
I thought of asking her for the reason why she hadn’t
been staying with her husband but I didn’t because I
thought doing that would mean that I was too forward.
At least I had already been aware that her husband had
travelled to South Africa, thanks to Mrs Omotayo who
told me that earlier.
As if Toyosi was living in my mind, she turned back to
me and signed:
“Actually, my husband has travelled abroad so I thought
it would be kind of me to assist your father till he
returns. Isn’t that a good idea?”
“Yes it is,” I signed back and nodded in agreement.
Then she kissed my forehead and left.
I suddenly discovered that I was in the mood to start
writing poems. I took my paper and my pen as I began
to write one; the one whose stanzas had set in my head
since the day before. It was titled LIFE IS A PEN
I didn’t hesitate to pen down the poem as it was
coming from my brain:
Life is a pen, God is the author
You and I are the characters
Inside his fiction he writes all genres
Tragedy, comedy and romance alike
Life is a clay, God is the potter
You and I are the pottery
Inside his pottery house he moulds all objects
Pots, laddle and gourds alike
Life is a song, God is a singer
You and I are the notes in there
Inside his songs he writes all genres
Gospels, countries and pop alike
Life is knowledge, God is the teacher
You and I are the subjects taught
Inside His teachings he emphasizes
Love, morality and myth alike
Life is a race, God is the referee
You and I are the athletes there
Inside his rules He made us know
First could be last and last could be first
Life is a risk, God is the guide
You and I are to take the risk
Inside his manual you find peace of mind
Confidence, trust and all you need
Life is death, God is the judge
You and I will die someday
Inside his book will your name be found?
Heaven is real and hell is real
I checked the poem over and over again and I fell in
love with it. I kissed the paper and adjourned to my bed
to sit because I wrote it on the floor earlier.
I was still in the euphoria when my father entered in
with his bare chest covered with hair. His chest was
broad. I began to wonder what he had come for at such
late hour and my heart missed a beat. The man was on
boxers, a very skimpy one for that matter. I didn’t even
hear his footstep because I am deaf. He was an inch
close before I could spot him.
John looked mysterious as he shut the door and bent his
neck at me, his hand pushing against the wall beside my
bed.
I was scared! I shifted back on my bed and leaned
against the wall with my pillows on my chest. My teeth
had begun to do some exercise as they gnashed
against one another.
John came on the bed and smiled as he crawled
towards me. I put my pillow on my face in horror!
My father rose up suddenly and began to laugh. He was
saying something as he dipped his right hand into the
pocket of his boxers and produced a note. He pointed at
my horrified face and kept laughing at me. The only
thing I thought I successfully lipread was the
expression USELESS CHILD.
I let my father leave the room before peeking at the
note he gave me. My heart had begun to come down
now. That man really gave me a big scare because I
had thought he wanted To Molest me. I had heaved
sighs of relief on and on. That man had only come to
scare me.
I began to read:
Re: My Father, why have you forsaken me?
My useless daughter Rose, as a reply to your questions
that day, I have come up with this. It is the proper
write-up that would suit your question. Imagine, it took
me more than a week to compose this wonderful
write-up.
The last time when I said you have never been of help
to me, you said you have on Democracy day, just
because you translated sign language to text for me.
Well, if that is what you call a help, then you are a great
fool. How dare you open your ‘dumb mouth’ to say that
in the first place? Do you realise how much I have
spent on you? If that is what a father should expect
from a daughter after spending fortune on her, then it
had been better he didn’t spend on her at all.
I’m glad you aren’t schooling anymore because at the
end of the day you will graduate and remain useless in
the society. Nobody will employ you, nobody will
benefit from you, nobody will speak with you because
you will just remain as useless as a rock.
You are not supposed to be living among the living but
among the animals because as much as I know, only
animals don’t speak. At the right time I will take you to
the jungle to live the rest of your life there.
Imagine, what is the essence of a daughter who will
never be wooed by a man? What is the essence of a
lady who will never have anyone to get married to her?
Rose, If you ever get married, then let the earth bury
me alive…
At that juncture, I stopped reading as I wept my
eyeballs out. I had only read the note to one-third but I
tore it without intending to read more. The little I had
read had already torn my heary apart.
I began to feel inferior and depressed once more.
Earlier, I had thought I wouldn’t put myself in inferiority
complex. Now it was inevitable. I had begun to
consider some of the things my father said. It had just
dawned on me that I can’t have a normal person as a
husband. Maybe I would start making love with blind
Biodun as from now on so that we could end up
marrying each other, I thought. It was the first time in
my life I would think about love and that feeling was
now towards the birthday celebrant of yesterday, 31
December, year 2000.
I began my love search at once the next day as I
started moving close to the children of Mrs Omotayo
so that I could show them I cared, especially Biodun
the blind boy. I wished we ended marrying each other,
at least to prove my father wrong. John would be
shocked when Biodun and I bring our wedding invitation
card to him, I thought childishly. A strong fear stared at
my face when I envisaged the reply John could give:
A disabled marrying a disabled, ha! ha! ha! Perfect
combination of disabled I imagined John saying that,
then I sulked.
Mrs Omotayo said she had never felt so happy in life.
Seeing me playing with her kids, she was glad. She
wanted me to always come around them.
Mrs Omotayo had been finding it very difficult sending
them to school. They were in a boarding school the
year before, but she had to pull them out and bring them
back home when they took ill all the time and almost
died. She prefered them illiterate and alive instead of
being literate and dead.
At the moment, Mrs Omotayo was on sabbatical so that
she could have enough time at hand to care for her
children.
Things hadn’t been smooth for her, being the only one
to run around to do this and that. Unfortunately, there
wasn’t any tangible help her two children could render.
Mrs Omotayo wanted to employ the service of a
housemaid because she would soon be resuming work.
When she told me about it, I assured her that I would
do my best.
All the while, she thought I was a housemaid according
to what Toyosi told her. I would have opened up to her
the person I really was, but for the warning Toyosi
gave me.
However, Mrs Omotayo wondered in silence how
come I was a housemaid. To clear her doubt about my
identity, she took a step to know a little about me. I
read the note she gave me and remained ‘mute’:
Rose, I’m sorry to ask you these few questions; please
it would do me a great good if you could answer me
accordingly: first, I would like to know when actually
you began to be a housemaid, because with the look of
things you are even too young for that, considering
your condition too. You look like thirteen or fourteen
years to me, so how come you are in this? Did you start
being a house girl at ten or eleven or when? I also
want to know why and who released you to be one. Is
your mother still alive? If she is, where does she
live?…
I couldn’t finish the whole writeup as tears welled up in
my eyes. They began to drop. Mrs Omotayo must have
thought that she had hurt my feelings, going by the way
she tightened herself on me and rubbed my head with
her hands.
I wasn’t weeping because she asked those questions
but because I couldn’t supply an answer since Toyosi
had warned me against doing such. Now I knew I
wasn’t free yet, opposed to my thought earlier. I had no
freedom of speech yet.
Mrs Omotayo told me she needed to enroll her children
back in school, but she didn’t want to enrol them in a
boarding school because she didn’t want them to fall
sick. She wished they could be attending a day school,
but it would be difficult for them returning from school
everyday, because herself would be in her workplace
by the time they would be returning from school.
An idea struck my mind. I wrote it down and gave it to
her. She took a glance at me when she read it.
“Will you be able?” she asked me.
“Yes I will be,” I replied her.
Then I have to seek the permission of your mistress,
she wrote.
Please go ahead, I replied.
I have missed school so much and I had wished to
return. A whole term had passed without me being
enrolled in a school. I needed to be out there again and
that was the idea I gave Mrs Omotayo my neighbour. I
told her that I would be able to take care of her
children; take them to school and bring them back as
long as I would also be schooling together with them.
Mrs Omotayo approached my stepmother and told her
about it. She did not agree to it at first, but after too
much badger from my neighbour, she consented to it.
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