we are able episode 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It pained me to the marrow that Mrs Omotayo would no more
look at me with good eyes, having believed that I took her son
out to beg for alms. To her, begging was a taboo. She hated it
so much. She really lived by it because she hadn’t had any
course to come to our apartment to seek any assistance
whatsoever, but she had forgotten that she came to beg for me
when her son, Biodun, was becoming sickly.
Toyosi crowned it up that Mrs Omotayo even vowed to harm
me if she set her eyes on me. I was scared of stepping out of
our apartment because of her. I had wept all the tears I thought
I had in my lachrymal gland, so there was not a reason to cry
anymore.
I set my crates of eggs on my head and headed for my lonely
spot beside the road to start my trade. As usual, Chinedu came
to drop his showglasses, but it didn’t work. Where was the
voice of Biodun to call people’s awareness to what I had to sell?
I was dejected and confused. When Chinedu came two hours
later, he was disappointed at the little sales I had recorded. He
just took up one of the showglasses and left. He came for the
other one later, without paying me any commission for the
ones I had sold.
I couldn’t sell more than two crates, thanks to those who knew
me earlier. Those ones just came to the spot directly to buy the
eggs. When they asked me where Biodun was, I just waved
speechlessly at them.
Around 3pm, Albert came close to where I was. He was a
student in the SPECIAL SCHOOL where I was attending with the
children of Mrs Omotayo earlier. Albert signed to me that he
was the one who reported Biodun’s deed to his class-teacher.
“Why did you do that?” I signed to him in annoyance and he
replied me.
“Is it right to beg for alms just because we are disabled? Did our
teachers not warn us to abstain from any act that would make
people pity us, thereby making us look inferior? Yet, you were
the same person who took it upon yourself to preach it in the
school those days, but here you are, begging for alms.”
“I am not begging for alms!” I told him in annoyance. He
laughed.
“Am I blind? I saw you yesterday with my two eyes; you were
both begging for alms aside what you were selling. People
gave you money without picking up an egg,” Albert said.
“We are not!” I signed to him but he signed back to tell me that
I should shut up.
I got angry. I rose up and locked him up by the collar of his
shirt. People were already gathering around us. Earlier, they
had been captivated by the way we were moving our hands to
communicate. But now, they had to rush to us to separate us.
“You are a hypocrite!” Albert told me. “You don’t practice what
you preach. You said we are special and we are able and we
shouldn’t in any way draw up people’s pity towards us, yet
you were doing it in broad day light. So good, nemesis has
caught up with you.”
I submitted to the elderly people around us who separated us,
else I would have shown him my true colour, I thought. I
wanted to weep, but I laughed instead as I went back home
around 7:30pm with two full crates of eggs. I came with four in
the morning but two was left, whereas the day before, I
successfully sold twenty crates with the help of Biodun. Indeed,
two heads are better than one, I thought.
I thought Toyosi would have arrived, but I was surprised she
wasn’t home. Even John too was not at home. I wondered
where they were. Taiba saw me and turned her head away
from me. She didn’t want to have anything doing with me in
her life anymore, perhaps heeding the warning of her mistress.
I walked briskly into the apartment and I was more surprised
when Bode was absent too. What could have happened? I put
the crates of eggs aside and went back to the parlour to have
my buttocks on something, the sofa. I stretched my legs and
put my right hand over the back rest. In a flash, I had
disappeared in the spirit to the dreamland.
My dream was not sweet at all. It was something unspeakable.
My mouth trembled when I woke up. I shook like leaf. The
same friend who brought food for me on New Year Day, Mrs
Omotayo, was the one I saw chasing me about in my dream.
Now it wasn’t Toyosi anymore, but Mrs Omotayo, why
couldn’t she forgive me? I thought.
To my surprise, it was 9pm and my guardians had not
returned. I was afraid to sleep alone in the whole house. How
would I be able to do that when Mrs Omotayo had crept into
my dream to torture me too? I wondered why my enemies
seemed to be more than my friends. I really missed these three
people, Hannah my mother, Mrs Oyin my class-teacher and
Rachael my aunty. My heart yearned to have them back. I
wished I could hook up with them in the dream and never
wake up again. Even, the last dream I saw my mother in it, she
was asking me to come with her to the land of the dead.
I picked up a pen and a paper and began to write something
down, a poem. It would soon be May 29, next two days, so I
needed to write something about it, though I was not expecting
anyone to read up my write-up. I had just finished writing a
poem about the Children Day which would fold up in the next
few hours from now.
I prayed a little prayer before I slept, confessing my sin of
fighting. It was not my fault that I fought with Albert, I thought
as I prayed. Was he not the one who started it by lying to my
face that I did what I didn’t do?
I imagined how Biodun would be feeling right now. I felt for
him. If only I could hook up with him in my dream tonight, I
would be glad. When I finally slept off around 11:30pm, I
hooked up with someone other than Biodun and that was
Bode. As usual, he was tormenting me. He was even bigger
than me in that dream. I was like a two-year old girl before
him, yet in the real life, he had quite a small stature compared
to mine.
When Bode gave me a punch on the face in the dream, I
screamed and woke up, only to discover that I was alone in the
parlour. Where is the whole family? I thought. Sleep had been
deleted off my face by fear. I didn’t want to sleep, else I would
see something more horrible than the one I saw in that
nightmare. I was going to make the TV my companion,
perhaps I would be kept company by those ‘dumb’ people on
the screen (or maybe I was the one that was deaf). As I
switched on the TV, a horrible creature brandished its teeth
before me as if it would jump out of the screen. I screamed.
Nobody told me that I had to switch the thing off before I did.
I slept off around 2am. When I woke up, it was in the cruel
hands of Toyosi I found myself.
“Since when did you begin to sleep in the parlour?” she signed
vehemently at me. Her sign skill was good. I didn’t have the
idea how she was able to master the language as such, since it
was only a little I taught her back then.
“Get out of here!” she signed at me in annoyance and I fled.
When I turned my head backward, I discovered that she was
weeping. I was shocked. What could be the cause of her tears?
Did anything happen to my father or Bode? I sensed that
someone had died, perhaps it was her husband who was
abroad, I thought. Maybe he had plane crash on his return to
Nigeria. I kept on flipping through the leaves of the imaginary
magazine of thought in my heart.
As I soon learnt later, it was all about Bode who slumped when
he was on a swing playing with his friends the day before,
which was the Children Day Celebration. Bode’s head hit hard
against the swing and he bled to unconsciousness. That was
the same day I was asked to hawk, not regarding that it was
our day (Children’s Day).
John my father didn’t return home because somebody must
have to stay with Bode in the hospital. Toyosi who returned
early the next morning had only come to prepare something
for her son.
If not that I asked her where Bode and my father was, she
wouldn’t have told me. I had pity for them when I heard the
misfortune. Was it not the same Bode who was healthy and
kinky just the day before? Wasn’t he the one who made fun of
me the most? I thought. I silently prayed to my God to spare
Bode’s life because I would not wish anyone dead.
John and Toyosi lost their joy. They had to spend many days
without going to their places of work, all in the name of
wanting to cater for the health of their sons. With the confused
look on the faces of the illegal couple, I thought they had
repented, therefore I approached them to ask them if they
would let me come with them to the hospital where Bode was,
but my father refused blatantly. As for Toyosi, she had
softened. Her eyeballs had popped out, just because of
incessant tears.
I watched my father’s wealth gradually fading. I could do
nothing but pity. Maybe God is fighting for me, I thought. But
this war seemed too much for them to bear. Bode had already
spent a month in the hospital, between life and death.
As if that was not all, Toyosi’s womb began to swell up. I
thought it was another ailment until I got to know, somehow,
that she was already pregnant for my father. They were
confused, not knowing what exactly they would do with the
pregnancy. If I hadn’t seen the doctor’s report where she kept
it, I wouldn’t have discovered this. She was two months
pregnant.
John and Toyosi began to have some quarrels regarding
whether the pregnancy should be kept or aborted, because any
moment from then, Toyosi’s husband would return from
South Africa where he was. John wanted the pregnancy kept
while Toyosi wanted it aborted. John believed that a bird at
hand was worth two in the bush. Since they didn’t know if
Bode would survive it, then John had easily passed him for two
birds in the bush and ironically, the one in the womb would be
the bird at hand.
The confusion was much for the illegal couple such that they
even resorted to physical fight. John threatened to visit Toyosi’s
home at her husband’s return and tell him the truth of the
whole matter if Toyosi aborted the pregnancy.
I was surprised that John could regard a foetus still in the
womb that myself, a child who was of legitimate birth. John
lost his job and depended only on whatever Toyosi earned
from her business. Whenever Toyosi refused to give him
something, John would come to me and collect some of the
profits I made from the egg sales and whenever Toyosi
returned, she would pour out the content of her mouth, but
who cared? I had no ears to hear her shouts.
The two began to behave like Tom and Jerry. They would pick
offences at the slightest provocations. Toyosi threatened to
abort the pregnancy without my father’s consent but John
threatened to kill her if she did.
Amidst their piteous state, Toyosi received a letter. Her husband
would be returning to Nigeria in seven months time, which
would be February of the following year, 2001. Already, Bode
had completed three months in the hospital without
improvement.
Mrs Omotayo had become my enemy. She would turn her
face away from me anytime she saw me. I even took a step to
apologise, but she refused blatantly and shouted at me. I
wondered why it seemed too difficult for her to forgive me.
Toyosi’s fear was that her husband would come when she
would be eight months pregnant already, then it would be too
late for her to abort the pregnancy and she would eventually
lose him. Toyosi didn’t want to lose her husband because he
was very wealthy, so she needed to abort that pregnancy on
time.
South Africa? I pondered. That was where John’s younger
brother went and never returned to Nigeria till date. I had
missed him so much because Uncle James, as he was called
then, was a very good friend of mine. Sometimes I had
wondered why he wasn’t wicked like John my father. I
remembered how Uncle James used to get angry at my father
anytime he was maltreating me. He would nearly punch John
on the face. Even the day I saw him last, it was through a hot
brawl he left our house, threatening to jail my father for ill-
treating me. That day, John slapped his face and he raised his
hand too to send a hot slap on my father’s face in return, but
when my mother entered the room, he retreated just for her
sake.
James, who had been staying with us all the while because of
accommodation problem, was sent packing by his elder
brother. When my mother was pleading with John to let uncle
James be, that wicked man slapped her and pushed her out of
the way, accusing my mother of having sexual relationship
with his brother. Uncle James left eventually. The day I saw him
last, he only came to secretly tell us that things had eventually
worked out for him and he would be travelling to South Africa.
He told us to keep it secret from John his brother and my
mother did. That was the last time we saw him; the only times
I thought of him was whenever Toyosi was talking about
South Africa where her own husband had gone too.
Surprisingly, Bode recovered from the illness and was
discharged. It was then that John my father agreed with Toyosi
to abort the pregnancy. She did and took ill for a whole month.
All she could do was cry all day. John also cried along as well
as Bode, but it was I alone that wouldn’t cry though I tried to,
but tears wasn’t just going to come out of my eyes.
It pained me to the marrow that Mrs Omotayo would no more
look at me with good eyes, having believed that I took her son
out to beg for alms. To her, begging was a taboo. She hated it
so much. She really lived by it because she hadn’t had any
course to come to our apartment to seek any assistance
whatsoever, but she had forgotten that she came to beg for me
when her son, Biodun, was becoming sickly.
Toyosi crowned it up that Mrs Omotayo even vowed to harm
me if she set her eyes on me. I was scared of stepping out of
our apartment because of her. I had wept all the tears I thought
I had in my lachrymal gland, so there was not a reason to cry
anymore.
I set my crates of eggs on my head and headed for my lonely
spot beside the road to start my trade. As usual, Chinedu came
to drop his showglasses, but it didn’t work. Where was the
voice of Biodun to call people’s awareness to what I had to sell?
I was dejected and confused. When Chinedu came two hours
later, he was disappointed at the little sales I had recorded. He
just took up one of the showglasses and left. He came for the
other one later, without paying me any commission for the
ones I had sold.
I couldn’t sell more than two crates, thanks to those who knew
me earlier. Those ones just came to the spot directly to buy the
eggs. When they asked me where Biodun was, I just waved
speechlessly at them.
Around 3pm, Albert came close to where I was. He was a
student in the SPECIAL SCHOOL where I was attending with the
children of Mrs Omotayo earlier. Albert signed to me that he
was the one who reported Biodun’s deed to his class-teacher.
“Why did you do that?” I signed to him in annoyance and he
replied me.
“Is it right to beg for alms just because we are disabled? Did our
teachers not warn us to abstain from any act that would make
people pity us, thereby making us look inferior? Yet, you were
the same person who took it upon yourself to preach it in the
school those days, but here you are, begging for alms.”
“I am not begging for alms!” I told him in annoyance. He
laughed.
“Am I blind? I saw you yesterday with my two eyes; you were
both begging for alms aside what you were selling. People
gave you money without picking up an egg,” Albert said.
“We are not!” I signed to him but he signed back to tell me that
I should shut up.
I got angry. I rose up and locked him up by the collar of his
shirt. People were already gathering around us. Earlier, they
had been captivated by the way we were moving our hands to
communicate. But now, they had to rush to us to separate us.
“You are a hypocrite!” Albert told me. “You don’t practice what
you preach. You said we are special and we are able and we
shouldn’t in any way draw up people’s pity towards us, yet
you were doing it in broad day light. So good, nemesis has
caught up with you.”
I submitted to the elderly people around us who separated us,
else I would have shown him my true colour, I thought. I
wanted to weep, but I laughed instead as I went back home
around 7:30pm with two full crates of eggs. I came with four in
the morning but two was left, whereas the day before, I
successfully sold twenty crates with the help of Biodun. Indeed,
two heads are better than one, I thought.
I thought Toyosi would have arrived, but I was surprised she
wasn’t home. Even John too was not at home. I wondered
where they were. Taiba saw me and turned her head away
from me. She didn’t want to have anything doing with me in
her life anymore, perhaps heeding the warning of her mistress.
I walked briskly into the apartment and I was more surprised
when Bode was absent too. What could have happened? I put
the crates of eggs aside and went back to the parlour to have
my buttocks on something, the sofa. I stretched my legs and
put my right hand over the back rest. In a flash, I had
disappeared in the spirit to the dreamland.
My dream was not sweet at all. It was something unspeakable.
My mouth trembled when I woke up. I shook like leaf. The
same friend who brought food for me on New Year Day, Mrs
Omotayo, was the one I saw chasing me about in my dream.
Now it wasn’t Toyosi anymore, but Mrs Omotayo, why
couldn’t she forgive me? I thought.
To my surprise, it was 9pm and my guardians had not
returned. I was afraid to sleep alone in the whole house. How
would I be able to do that when Mrs Omotayo had crept into
my dream to torture me too? I wondered why my enemies
seemed to be more than my friends. I really missed these three
people, Hannah my mother, Mrs Oyin my class-teacher and
Rachael my aunty. My heart yearned to have them back. I
wished I could hook up with them in the dream and never
wake up again. Even, the last dream I saw my mother in it, she
was asking me to come with her to the land of the dead.
I picked up a pen and a paper and began to write something
down, a poem. It would soon be May 29, next two days, so I
needed to write something about it, though I was not expecting
anyone to read up my write-up. I had just finished writing a
poem about the Children Day which would fold up in the next
few hours from now.
I prayed a little prayer before I slept, confessing my sin of
fighting. It was not my fault that I fought with Albert, I thought
as I prayed. Was he not the one who started it by lying to my
face that I did what I didn’t do?
I imagined how Biodun would be feeling right now. I felt for
him. If only I could hook up with him in my dream tonight, I
would be glad. When I finally slept off around 11:30pm, I
hooked up with someone other than Biodun and that was
Bode. As usual, he was tormenting me. He was even bigger
than me in that dream. I was like a two-year old girl before
him, yet in the real life, he had quite a small stature compared
to mine.
When Bode gave me a punch on the face in the dream, I
screamed and woke up, only to discover that I was alone in the
parlour. Where is the whole family? I thought. Sleep had been
deleted off my face by fear. I didn’t want to sleep, else I would
see something more horrible than the one I saw in that
nightmare. I was going to make the TV my companion,
perhaps I would be kept company by those ‘dumb’ people on
the screen (or maybe I was the one that was deaf). As I
switched on the TV, a horrible creature brandished its teeth
before me as if it would jump out of the screen. I screamed.
Nobody told me that I had to switch the thing off before I did.
I slept off around 2am. When I woke up, it was in the cruel
hands of Toyosi I found myself.
“Since when did you begin to sleep in the parlour?” she signed
vehemently at me. Her sign skill was good. I didn’t have the
idea how she was able to master the language as such, since it
was only a little I taught her back then.
“Get out of here!” she signed at me in annoyance and I fled.
When I turned my head backward, I discovered that she was
weeping. I was shocked. What could be the cause of her tears?
Did anything happen to my father or Bode? I sensed that
someone had died, perhaps it was her husband who was
abroad, I thought. Maybe he had plane crash on his return to
Nigeria. I kept on flipping through the leaves of the imaginary
magazine of thought in my heart.
As I soon learnt later, it was all about Bode who slumped when
he was on a swing playing with his friends the day before,
which was the Children Day Celebration. Bode’s head hit hard
against the swing and he bled to unconsciousness. That was
the same day I was asked to hawk, not regarding that it was
our day (Children’s Day).
John my father didn’t return home because somebody must
have to stay with Bode in the hospital. Toyosi who returned
early the next morning had only come to prepare something
for her son.
If not that I asked her where Bode and my father was, she
wouldn’t have told me. I had pity for them when I heard the
misfortune. Was it not the same Bode who was healthy and
kinky just the day before? Wasn’t he the one who made fun of
me the most? I thought. I silently prayed to my God to spare
Bode’s life because I would not wish anyone dead.
John and Toyosi lost their joy. They had to spend many days
without going to their places of work, all in the name of
wanting to cater for the health of their sons. With the confused
look on the faces of the illegal couple, I thought they had
repented, therefore I approached them to ask them if they
would let me come with them to the hospital where Bode was,
but my father refused blatantly. As for Toyosi, she had
softened. Her eyeballs had popped out, just because of
incessant tears.
I watched my father’s wealth gradually fading. I could do
nothing but pity. Maybe God is fighting for me, I thought. But
this war seemed too much for them to bear. Bode had already
spent a month in the hospital, between life and death.
As if that was not all, Toyosi’s womb began to swell up. I
thought it was another ailment until I got to know, somehow,
that she was already pregnant for my father. They were
confused, not knowing what exactly they would do with the
pregnancy. If I hadn’t seen the doctor’s report where she kept
it, I wouldn’t have discovered this. She was two months
pregnant.
John and Toyosi began to have some quarrels regarding
whether the pregnancy should be kept or aborted, because any
moment from then, Toyosi’s husband would return from
South Africa where he was. John wanted the pregnancy kept
while Toyosi wanted it aborted. John believed that a bird at
hand was worth two in the bush. Since they didn’t know if
Bode would survive it, then John had easily passed him for two
birds in the bush and ironically, the one in the womb would be
the bird at hand.
The confusion was much for the illegal couple such that they
even resorted to physical fight. John threatened to visit Toyosi’s
home at her husband’s return and tell him the truth of the
whole matter if Toyosi aborted the pregnancy.
I was surprised that John could regard a foetus still in the
womb that myself, a child who was of legitimate birth. John
lost his job and depended only on whatever Toyosi earned
from her business. Whenever Toyosi refused to give him
something, John would come to me and collect some of the
profits I made from the egg sales and whenever Toyosi
returned, she would pour out the content of her mouth, but
who cared? I had no ears to hear her shouts.
The two began to behave like Tom and Jerry. They would pick
offences at the slightest provocations. Toyosi threatened to
abort the pregnancy without my father’s consent but John
threatened to kill her if she did.
Amidst their piteous state, Toyosi received a letter. Her husband
would be returning to Nigeria in seven months time, which
would be February of the following year, 2001. Already, Bode
had completed three months in the hospital without
improvement.
Mrs Omotayo had become my enemy. She would turn her
face away from me anytime she saw me. I even took a step to
apologise, but she refused blatantly and shouted at me. I
wondered why it seemed too difficult for her to forgive me.
Toyosi’s fear was that her husband would come when she
would be eight months pregnant already, then it would be too
late for her to abort the pregnancy and she would eventually
lose him. Toyosi didn’t want to lose her husband because he
was very wealthy, so she needed to abort that pregnancy on
time.
South Africa? I pondered. That was where John’s younger
brother went and never returned to Nigeria till date. I had
missed him so much because Uncle James, as he was called
then, was a very good friend of mine. Sometimes I had
wondered why he wasn’t wicked like John my father. I
remembered how Uncle James used to get angry at my father
anytime he was maltreating me. He would nearly punch John
on the face. Even the day I saw him last, it was through a hot
brawl he left our house, threatening to jail my father for ill-
treating me. That day, John slapped his face and he raised his
hand too to send a hot slap on my father’s face in return, but
when my mother entered the room, he retreated just for her
sake.
James, who had been staying with us all the while because of
accommodation problem, was sent packing by his elder
brother. When my mother was pleading with John to let uncle
James be, that wicked man slapped her and pushed her out of
the way, accusing my mother of having sexual relationship
with his brother. Uncle James left eventually. The day I saw him
last, he only came to secretly tell us that things had eventually
worked out for him and he would be travelling to South Africa.
He told us to keep it secret from John his brother and my
mother did. That was the last time we saw him; the only times
I thought of him was whenever Toyosi was talking about
South Africa where her own husband had gone too.
Surprisingly, Bode recovered from the illness and was
discharged. It was then that John my father agreed with Toyosi
to abort the pregnancy. She did and took ill for a whole month.
All she could do was cry all day. John also cried along as well
as Bode, but it was I alone that wouldn’t cry though I tried to,
but tears wasn’t just going to come out of my eyes.
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