We are able episode 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
It pained me so much that I missed Uncle James’ visit. He
should have at least left his home address, but he didn’t. I
began to long for him. He was such a kindhearted man. He
would be very angry at John his brother if he knew everything
he did to me.
My halcyon days had returned, but a recurring thought kept on
creeping into my mind to destroy my joy. It was the thought
of my mother. The only way I could see her was to locate the
prison first, which she was taken to, or at least the court of law
from which she was sentenced. Those days I didn’t have the
chance to put into memory the actual place where the court
was located. All I knew was that my aunty and my class-
teacher took me on a long ride to a place out of town.
I began to pray for God’s intervention. If only he could answer
my request on time and wouldn’t let my mother spend too
long in the cell, I would tell thousands of people my testimony,
I vowed to God, expecting him to answer me just the next
moment. After waiting for a week without any response, I
almost began to doubt if God was really there, but then I
remembered how he answered my prayer during the New
Year Day of the past year and my faith was stronger.
I approached Bose concerning the advice of Moses’ father, who
told me to put Bose’s true life story in my work to be published
but under another name. I thought Bose would jump at the
idea, but I was making a big mistake.
“So, Bose, do you agree with that?”
“Don’t even mention it Rose,” she said. “If you can’t put my
name there, then forget about putting my story there,” she
said.
“But I—em—it is not proper to paint you black in— ”
“Don’t let us keep arguing about this, Rose,” she said. “I have
told you what I want—period!”
Moses had come close to us unawares. If we could hear
sound, perhaps we would have heard the sound of his feet as
he walked into the empty classroom. We sat up when we saw
him.
Moses dropped the books in his hands and sat down on a chair
after shifting it close to us. He smiled.
Moses had been teaching us for the past one month now. He
could teach so well. He was the one who motivated us to make
a move towards having the sign language added to the school
curriculum of the normal people, though I was the person who
gave him the idea. Moses enlightened us more on the
advantages of this great move:
“If the normal people can learn the sign language as a normal
language in their school curriculums at tender ages, it would
become a part of them and the gap between the deaf people
and the normal people would be bridged. Everyone would be
able to speak in sign language with each other,” Moses said.
We agreed to pay a visit to the governor’s office to make this
idea known so that it could be considered for implementation in
the school curriculum of the normal people. We had decided
on a date for such.
Moses tapped me, because I had been absentminded. He
wanted me to watch him speak:
“Rose, Bose, why are you both fussing about with a little
issue?” Moses said. We didn’t respond.
“My father told me that you said you don’t want to publish
your story anymore because Bose wanted her bad past life in
it. Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “How sensible is it to write her past bad
behaviours when she is no more an enemy but the closest
friend to me?”
“That’s the reason why you should do what I want,” Bose said.
“If I am your closest friend, then do anything to please me.”
Moses laughed and asked me why I didn’t go ahead with what
Bose wanted. I told him it was not good enough.
“Bose is changed, so let me only put her new life in my stories
because bygone is bygone; her old lifestyle can no more reflect
in my memory. I can only put it there in another person’s
name as the principal your daddy advised me.”
“No!” Bose disagreed.
Moses faced me and said, “Rose, are you sure you really want
to publish your story?”
“Y-yes of course!” I said.
“So, what if Mrs Toyosi and Mr. John your father show up a
day to the launching of your book and beg for your
forgiveness? Will you delete their own evil part of the story
from the book and write only their new good part?”
I was stunned by Moses’ assumption. Even if two million
angels come with Toyosi and John to beg me, I would still go
ahead and publish the story without erasing their villainous
characters, I thought. I didn’t know how to answer Moses.
Bose was already smiling.
I shook my head. Moses would make a good lawyer, I thought
as I submitted to Bose’s wish.
“Okay, okay, I will leave it there,” I said and Bose was glad. I
wondered why she insisted on something as defamatory as
that. How would people who knew her look at her? Would they
not call her a thief who stole her schoolmate’s schoolbag?
It was already a week since I prayed to my creator to show me
the address of the court my mother was taken to, maybe in
my dreams. I had faith that I would see it inside a vision or
anything like that. I began to imagine the scene—the day I was
demonstrating with my sign language in front of the audience
in the court that day. I came out of my long imagination when
an idea sped past my brain.
The next day I told Moses the idea.
“Sir, please can you take me in your car to my former school?”
“For what purpose?” Moses asked me.
“Although I couldn’t remember the court where my mother
was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but I know I could
remember a teacher who went there with us that day.”
“Who’s that?” Moses was eager.
“He is Mr. Dele. He went to the court with us that day—he was
in the car with Mrs Oyin my class-teacher, myself and my
aunty.”
“Great idea!” Moses was glad. “Let’s locate him immediately.
Moses told his father about it and off we went to my former
school to search for Mr. Dele in my former school. When we
got there, we were told that the man had left the school for
quite sometimes.
“He is now in London,” a new teacher in the school said.
I was angry. Why is it that all the people who could be a source
of help to me are far away abroad? I told Moses as we were
walking away.
“Who are they?” Moses asked me as if he was ignorant of it.
“My aunty, my class-teacher, Mr. Dele and even my uncle,
James,” I responded vigorously.
“What about God and me, are we abroad too?” Moses said to
my amazement. Earlier, I thought lawyers didn’t believe in God
because they are Mr. and Mrs Know-all, but when Moses
mentioned God just now, I had to change my conception.
“But why hasn’t God answered my prayer?” I asked Moses. “I
said that he should show me in my dream the exact location of
the court of law but he didn’t show me—why?”
“Because God’s way is not our own way and his thought is not
our own thought. He knows the thought that he thinks towards
us—the thought of peace and not of evil to give us our
expected end,” Moses said. I had read those things from my
bible before but I hadn’t applied them to my life. How come
Moses could quote the bible as much as he could quote the
constitution too? His brain must be very complex and big to
accommodate too much, I thought.
“So, what is God’s way sir?” I asked Moses.
“I don’t know,” he responded with sign language and pulled
me. “Enter the car!” he spoke with his mouth and I understood
him by lip-reading.
As soon as I got into the car and winded up, the teacher who
attended to us earlier hurried to us and began to speak to
Moses. When they had spoken to a particular length, Moses
turned to me and told me what she said:
“She said that a man came to the school just last week looking
for one Rose, which I believe is you; the man said that he is
James, a younger brother to your father. He said he wanted to
locate your new address.”
I was excited. I asked Moses if James dropped his home
address with the woman. She saw my sign and responded me
in sign language:
“He wrote it in a little note and gave it to me,” the woman said.
“He said that in case you come here I should give it to you.”
The woman began to check her handbag for the note. She kept
on dancing on a spot, looking for it in her bag, but she couldn’t
locate it.
“But I put it here!” she signed. For minutes we waited for her to
produce something but nothing was coming forth. We had to
leave without the address. It was very painful began to grow
impatient. What exactly is God’s way and though about my
mother’s case? I wept at a corner. It would be a bitter
experience launching my book without my mother.
Moses’ father was ready to sponsor the publishing of the book.
It wasn’t in print yet.
I sat outside the house with Biodun and Laide receiving fresh air
when a postman arrived with a letter. My aunty would be
returning to Nigeria in few weeks. I was overjoyed when I read
it.
A day to the day my aunty would be arriving, something quite
amazing happened. My guardian entered the house and told
me I had some visitors.
“Who?” I asked eagerly.
“Come and see her,” she said and pulled me up, smiling. When
I got to the door, it was an incredible sight staring at my face—
Mrs. Oyindamola and her husband. My right hand slid over my
face three times, but the guests remained there. I knew it was
for real.
I surged forward and gave her a very tight hug. She almost got
knocked down by me. Mrs Omotayo understood the whole
emotion—I had told her earlier about my class-teacher who
was one of the first persons that made me know that I am able.
She meant the whole world to me.
Mrs. Oyindamola scrubbed my hair and then did sign language
over my head. I turned my face up and caught the last word
‘mother’. I knew she was asking for my mother. I burst into
tears.
Mrs. Oyindamola stepped back a bit and asked for her again. I
shook and wept. She was scared, perhaps taking my tears to
mean that she was dead.
“She is—” I paused and wept on. The woman swallowed her
spittle and asked me critically, “What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s a long story,” I said at last. Indeed it was; trying to tell her
my life story from the day my mother and I returned from
Abuja would be quite a long story to tell.
Mrs Omotayo invited her in. She got in with her husband and I
followed them. When I told her the whole story, she shook as
if she was going to faint.
“Jesus!” she screamed with her mouth and signed it
synchronously.
Mrs. Oyindamola soon got over the shock and got ready at
once to get into action. She said she remembered the address
of the court location very well—Agidingbi, Ikeja.
When she beamed at her watch, she banged hard at her knee.
It was already late. The court would have closed for the day.
Mrs Oyindamola and her husband were to lodge in a hotel
initially, but the woman begged her husband to stay in the
house with us while her husband left to the hotel.
“Why did you come all the way from London?” I asked her,
because it was such a surprise to me seeing her in Nigeria
where they hadn’t built a house, having sold the one they had
earlier.
“I could not sleep at night because I was just thinking about
you and your mother. My mind kept thumping hard to see
you. I could not rest, such that my husband began to get
scared.”
“Since when have you been having such disturbance?” I asked
her, just to confirm something.
“Over a month ago now,” she said. “I sent a letter to you to ask
for your well-being and also included my home address in the
letter so that you could reply my letter and tell me how you
were faring. Didn’t you get the letter?”
“We didn’t get any letter?” I told her. “It was only Aunty
Rachael’s own we got.”
“Rose, I’m happy that I could set my eyes on you again,” she
said happily as she began to yawn. She was very tired.
I looked at her as she laid her back on the bed in the visitor’s
room. I smiled as I remembered Moses’ statement that day
—‘God’s way is not our own way and his thought is not our
own thought. He knows the thought that he thinks towards us
—the thought of peace and not of evil to give us our expected
end’. My expectation was to get a way of getting to the court of
law through which we could locate the prison, but now more
than my expectation is here. I estimated the time she said she
began to have that feeling of coming to see me in Nigeria and
found out that it was around the time I prayed to God to show
me the address of the court of law through a vision. My prayer
is definitely answered in another dimension, I thought.
In the morning the next day, Mrs Oyindamola went to her
husband after calling her with a device which I later knew to be
cellular—it was strange to me, since I hadn’t seen it before—a
wireless telephone. The ones I had seen were landlines and not
mobile one, though I hadn’t used any and I would never use
any, since my ears wouldn’t pick a sound from the earpiece
and my mouth wouldn’t be able to voice out words into it.
Mrs Oyin returned to our house and then we began to get
ready to visit the court. Just then, Rachael my aunty came to
the house with her husband. I hardly recognized her.
My aunty’s appearance had changed so much. Her flesh had
grown too smooth and thick and some traceries lined her
plump neck as a folded flesh sat beneath her lower jaw. She
looked gorgeous in her attire, a shiny goggle on her face. She
was almost forgetting the sign language.
“Where is my sister?” she signed slowly to me. “I was having
bad dreams about her.”
“It is a long story,” I said as tears took over my eyes. She was
stunned when I finished narrating the story to her.
Without any further ado, we set out for the court, myself, Mrs
Oyindamola, Mrs Omotayo and my aunty. I wished Moses
was with us, but it was an emergency. We met a Justice there
and he telephoned the actual Justice we were looking for—the
one who judged the case that day. He promised he would be
with us in few minutes, but it took eternity before he showed
up. He didn’t even apologize. My aunty and my class-teacher
presented the matter and the Judge was surprised.
“She should have been released since last year!” the man said
and my aunty signed it to me. She still remembered to be kind
as usual. Back in those days, she would always sign every
voice language to me as they come. She wouldn’t even wait for
us to get home before doing that.
“Do you mean that that woman in question released her
mother for a moment and sent her back there?” the Judge said,
pointing at me.
“Yes sir,” Mrs Oyindamola replied.
“That is not possible!” the man said harshly.
“Toyosi did!”
“Evidence!” the judge asked. My aunty asked me to present the
long note addressed to me three years back by Toyosi and I
did. It was the note into which Toyosi wrote the exact place she
took my mother to after the Abuja trip. The judge read it and
was stunned.
“I am very busy today—and…it’s late already,” he said. “I will
go with you to the prison tomorrow to confirm this.”
The crossover to the next day seemed like eternity—my eyes
were wide open all through the night. My aunty and her
husband had to put up with our neighbor, Mrs Eunice who was
very accommodating, while Mrs. Oyin stayed with us again. I
thought I was the only one who couldn’t sleep until I saw Mrs
Oyindamola sitting down on her bed and clicking the floor with
her toes. I knew my aunty would be feeling same way too.
I had a nightmare, just when sleep knocked me off my
consciousness. The dream was indeed terrible—my mother
was having the noose on her neck and was going to be
hanged. It appeared as if she was swapped for an inmate who
had a ‘death by hanging’ sentence. I woke up and screamed.
Everyone rushed into my room—even those in the other
apartment rushed in.
“What is the matter, Rose?” they kept asking me. I was too
shocked to speak. When I spoke eventually, my aunty began to
bind and loose. She was still on her high spirituality.
“Rose, I have cancelled the dream, just go back to bed,” she
told me confidently and smiled.
Moses joined us the next day, but Mrs. Omotayo had to get
back to her workplace. My aunty had rained showers of praises
and prayers upon her for taking good care of me. She also
confessed that she didn’t have rest of mind since a month and
half ago when she started to think of her sister—my mother.
She said she had sent some letters in the past, putting her
home address abroad there so that we could reply the letter
and indeed she got replies for them all. While we were in the
car, going to the court just now, my aunty showed us one of
the letters of reply she got from my mother:
Dear Rachael,
I got your letter. Did you see the one I sent to you earlier? As I
said before, we are all fine here. Rose is doing very fine right
now and she is now a very big girl. She received scholarships
and double promotion and John is now happy with us. As I
speak, I am in Abuja with John and Rose. He will send Rose
abroad soon to continue her education. That woman, Toyosi,
has finally returned to her husband after setting me free from
the prison. In case you come to Nigeria at any time, don’t check
us in that house anymore because we have packed
permanently to Abuja. I will forward the address to you later.
Take good care of yourself my sweet sister.
Your Sister,
Hannah.
I was shocked. So, Toyosi had been sending false letters to my
aunty all the while. I compared the letter with the handwritings
in the notes she gave to me and there was no difference. She is
indeed a criminal, I thought.
“But here, she said that we have relocated, so why did you still
check us here, or did you first go to Abuja?” I asked her.
“We have no choice than to come here first because she didn’t
send the address of the purported Abuja residence.”
Soon, we got to the court. Moses took pleasure in
communicating with the Judge and the choleric man began to
pick interest in us. The day before, he was frowning
throughout, but now he was brandishing his teeth in deep
smiles. He loved the way Moses was speaking intelligently as if
he was already a professional lawyer. Truly, they were
speaking the language they both enjoyed—the language of the
jury.
We set out for the prison where my mother was detained and
to our shock she was not there. Is my dream already a reality?
I thought. We were all afraid!
It pained me so much that I missed Uncle James’ visit. He
should have at least left his home address, but he didn’t. I
began to long for him. He was such a kindhearted man. He
would be very angry at John his brother if he knew everything
he did to me.
My halcyon days had returned, but a recurring thought kept on
creeping into my mind to destroy my joy. It was the thought
of my mother. The only way I could see her was to locate the
prison first, which she was taken to, or at least the court of law
from which she was sentenced. Those days I didn’t have the
chance to put into memory the actual place where the court
was located. All I knew was that my aunty and my class-
teacher took me on a long ride to a place out of town.
I began to pray for God’s intervention. If only he could answer
my request on time and wouldn’t let my mother spend too
long in the cell, I would tell thousands of people my testimony,
I vowed to God, expecting him to answer me just the next
moment. After waiting for a week without any response, I
almost began to doubt if God was really there, but then I
remembered how he answered my prayer during the New
Year Day of the past year and my faith was stronger.
I approached Bose concerning the advice of Moses’ father, who
told me to put Bose’s true life story in my work to be published
but under another name. I thought Bose would jump at the
idea, but I was making a big mistake.
“So, Bose, do you agree with that?”
“Don’t even mention it Rose,” she said. “If you can’t put my
name there, then forget about putting my story there,” she
said.
“But I—em—it is not proper to paint you black in— ”
“Don’t let us keep arguing about this, Rose,” she said. “I have
told you what I want—period!”
Moses had come close to us unawares. If we could hear
sound, perhaps we would have heard the sound of his feet as
he walked into the empty classroom. We sat up when we saw
him.
Moses dropped the books in his hands and sat down on a chair
after shifting it close to us. He smiled.
Moses had been teaching us for the past one month now. He
could teach so well. He was the one who motivated us to make
a move towards having the sign language added to the school
curriculum of the normal people, though I was the person who
gave him the idea. Moses enlightened us more on the
advantages of this great move:
“If the normal people can learn the sign language as a normal
language in their school curriculums at tender ages, it would
become a part of them and the gap between the deaf people
and the normal people would be bridged. Everyone would be
able to speak in sign language with each other,” Moses said.
We agreed to pay a visit to the governor’s office to make this
idea known so that it could be considered for implementation in
the school curriculum of the normal people. We had decided
on a date for such.
Moses tapped me, because I had been absentminded. He
wanted me to watch him speak:
“Rose, Bose, why are you both fussing about with a little
issue?” Moses said. We didn’t respond.
“My father told me that you said you don’t want to publish
your story anymore because Bose wanted her bad past life in
it. Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “How sensible is it to write her past bad
behaviours when she is no more an enemy but the closest
friend to me?”
“That’s the reason why you should do what I want,” Bose said.
“If I am your closest friend, then do anything to please me.”
Moses laughed and asked me why I didn’t go ahead with what
Bose wanted. I told him it was not good enough.
“Bose is changed, so let me only put her new life in my stories
because bygone is bygone; her old lifestyle can no more reflect
in my memory. I can only put it there in another person’s
name as the principal your daddy advised me.”
“No!” Bose disagreed.
Moses faced me and said, “Rose, are you sure you really want
to publish your story?”
“Y-yes of course!” I said.
“So, what if Mrs Toyosi and Mr. John your father show up a
day to the launching of your book and beg for your
forgiveness? Will you delete their own evil part of the story
from the book and write only their new good part?”
I was stunned by Moses’ assumption. Even if two million
angels come with Toyosi and John to beg me, I would still go
ahead and publish the story without erasing their villainous
characters, I thought. I didn’t know how to answer Moses.
Bose was already smiling.
I shook my head. Moses would make a good lawyer, I thought
as I submitted to Bose’s wish.
“Okay, okay, I will leave it there,” I said and Bose was glad. I
wondered why she insisted on something as defamatory as
that. How would people who knew her look at her? Would they
not call her a thief who stole her schoolmate’s schoolbag?
It was already a week since I prayed to my creator to show me
the address of the court my mother was taken to, maybe in
my dreams. I had faith that I would see it inside a vision or
anything like that. I began to imagine the scene—the day I was
demonstrating with my sign language in front of the audience
in the court that day. I came out of my long imagination when
an idea sped past my brain.
The next day I told Moses the idea.
“Sir, please can you take me in your car to my former school?”
“For what purpose?” Moses asked me.
“Although I couldn’t remember the court where my mother
was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but I know I could
remember a teacher who went there with us that day.”
“Who’s that?” Moses was eager.
“He is Mr. Dele. He went to the court with us that day—he was
in the car with Mrs Oyin my class-teacher, myself and my
aunty.”
“Great idea!” Moses was glad. “Let’s locate him immediately.
Moses told his father about it and off we went to my former
school to search for Mr. Dele in my former school. When we
got there, we were told that the man had left the school for
quite sometimes.
“He is now in London,” a new teacher in the school said.
I was angry. Why is it that all the people who could be a source
of help to me are far away abroad? I told Moses as we were
walking away.
“Who are they?” Moses asked me as if he was ignorant of it.
“My aunty, my class-teacher, Mr. Dele and even my uncle,
James,” I responded vigorously.
“What about God and me, are we abroad too?” Moses said to
my amazement. Earlier, I thought lawyers didn’t believe in God
because they are Mr. and Mrs Know-all, but when Moses
mentioned God just now, I had to change my conception.
“But why hasn’t God answered my prayer?” I asked Moses. “I
said that he should show me in my dream the exact location of
the court of law but he didn’t show me—why?”
“Because God’s way is not our own way and his thought is not
our own thought. He knows the thought that he thinks towards
us—the thought of peace and not of evil to give us our
expected end,” Moses said. I had read those things from my
bible before but I hadn’t applied them to my life. How come
Moses could quote the bible as much as he could quote the
constitution too? His brain must be very complex and big to
accommodate too much, I thought.
“So, what is God’s way sir?” I asked Moses.
“I don’t know,” he responded with sign language and pulled
me. “Enter the car!” he spoke with his mouth and I understood
him by lip-reading.
As soon as I got into the car and winded up, the teacher who
attended to us earlier hurried to us and began to speak to
Moses. When they had spoken to a particular length, Moses
turned to me and told me what she said:
“She said that a man came to the school just last week looking
for one Rose, which I believe is you; the man said that he is
James, a younger brother to your father. He said he wanted to
locate your new address.”
I was excited. I asked Moses if James dropped his home
address with the woman. She saw my sign and responded me
in sign language:
“He wrote it in a little note and gave it to me,” the woman said.
“He said that in case you come here I should give it to you.”
The woman began to check her handbag for the note. She kept
on dancing on a spot, looking for it in her bag, but she couldn’t
locate it.
“But I put it here!” she signed. For minutes we waited for her to
produce something but nothing was coming forth. We had to
leave without the address. It was very painful began to grow
impatient. What exactly is God’s way and though about my
mother’s case? I wept at a corner. It would be a bitter
experience launching my book without my mother.
Moses’ father was ready to sponsor the publishing of the book.
It wasn’t in print yet.
I sat outside the house with Biodun and Laide receiving fresh air
when a postman arrived with a letter. My aunty would be
returning to Nigeria in few weeks. I was overjoyed when I read
it.
A day to the day my aunty would be arriving, something quite
amazing happened. My guardian entered the house and told
me I had some visitors.
“Who?” I asked eagerly.
“Come and see her,” she said and pulled me up, smiling. When
I got to the door, it was an incredible sight staring at my face—
Mrs. Oyindamola and her husband. My right hand slid over my
face three times, but the guests remained there. I knew it was
for real.
I surged forward and gave her a very tight hug. She almost got
knocked down by me. Mrs Omotayo understood the whole
emotion—I had told her earlier about my class-teacher who
was one of the first persons that made me know that I am able.
She meant the whole world to me.
Mrs. Oyindamola scrubbed my hair and then did sign language
over my head. I turned my face up and caught the last word
‘mother’. I knew she was asking for my mother. I burst into
tears.
Mrs. Oyindamola stepped back a bit and asked for her again. I
shook and wept. She was scared, perhaps taking my tears to
mean that she was dead.
“She is—” I paused and wept on. The woman swallowed her
spittle and asked me critically, “What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s a long story,” I said at last. Indeed it was; trying to tell her
my life story from the day my mother and I returned from
Abuja would be quite a long story to tell.
Mrs Omotayo invited her in. She got in with her husband and I
followed them. When I told her the whole story, she shook as
if she was going to faint.
“Jesus!” she screamed with her mouth and signed it
synchronously.
Mrs. Oyindamola soon got over the shock and got ready at
once to get into action. She said she remembered the address
of the court location very well—Agidingbi, Ikeja.
When she beamed at her watch, she banged hard at her knee.
It was already late. The court would have closed for the day.
Mrs Oyindamola and her husband were to lodge in a hotel
initially, but the woman begged her husband to stay in the
house with us while her husband left to the hotel.
“Why did you come all the way from London?” I asked her,
because it was such a surprise to me seeing her in Nigeria
where they hadn’t built a house, having sold the one they had
earlier.
“I could not sleep at night because I was just thinking about
you and your mother. My mind kept thumping hard to see
you. I could not rest, such that my husband began to get
scared.”
“Since when have you been having such disturbance?” I asked
her, just to confirm something.
“Over a month ago now,” she said. “I sent a letter to you to ask
for your well-being and also included my home address in the
letter so that you could reply my letter and tell me how you
were faring. Didn’t you get the letter?”
“We didn’t get any letter?” I told her. “It was only Aunty
Rachael’s own we got.”
“Rose, I’m happy that I could set my eyes on you again,” she
said happily as she began to yawn. She was very tired.
I looked at her as she laid her back on the bed in the visitor’s
room. I smiled as I remembered Moses’ statement that day
—‘God’s way is not our own way and his thought is not our
own thought. He knows the thought that he thinks towards us
—the thought of peace and not of evil to give us our expected
end’. My expectation was to get a way of getting to the court of
law through which we could locate the prison, but now more
than my expectation is here. I estimated the time she said she
began to have that feeling of coming to see me in Nigeria and
found out that it was around the time I prayed to God to show
me the address of the court of law through a vision. My prayer
is definitely answered in another dimension, I thought.
In the morning the next day, Mrs Oyindamola went to her
husband after calling her with a device which I later knew to be
cellular—it was strange to me, since I hadn’t seen it before—a
wireless telephone. The ones I had seen were landlines and not
mobile one, though I hadn’t used any and I would never use
any, since my ears wouldn’t pick a sound from the earpiece
and my mouth wouldn’t be able to voice out words into it.
Mrs Oyin returned to our house and then we began to get
ready to visit the court. Just then, Rachael my aunty came to
the house with her husband. I hardly recognized her.
My aunty’s appearance had changed so much. Her flesh had
grown too smooth and thick and some traceries lined her
plump neck as a folded flesh sat beneath her lower jaw. She
looked gorgeous in her attire, a shiny goggle on her face. She
was almost forgetting the sign language.
“Where is my sister?” she signed slowly to me. “I was having
bad dreams about her.”
“It is a long story,” I said as tears took over my eyes. She was
stunned when I finished narrating the story to her.
Without any further ado, we set out for the court, myself, Mrs
Oyindamola, Mrs Omotayo and my aunty. I wished Moses
was with us, but it was an emergency. We met a Justice there
and he telephoned the actual Justice we were looking for—the
one who judged the case that day. He promised he would be
with us in few minutes, but it took eternity before he showed
up. He didn’t even apologize. My aunty and my class-teacher
presented the matter and the Judge was surprised.
“She should have been released since last year!” the man said
and my aunty signed it to me. She still remembered to be kind
as usual. Back in those days, she would always sign every
voice language to me as they come. She wouldn’t even wait for
us to get home before doing that.
“Do you mean that that woman in question released her
mother for a moment and sent her back there?” the Judge said,
pointing at me.
“Yes sir,” Mrs Oyindamola replied.
“That is not possible!” the man said harshly.
“Toyosi did!”
“Evidence!” the judge asked. My aunty asked me to present the
long note addressed to me three years back by Toyosi and I
did. It was the note into which Toyosi wrote the exact place she
took my mother to after the Abuja trip. The judge read it and
was stunned.
“I am very busy today—and…it’s late already,” he said. “I will
go with you to the prison tomorrow to confirm this.”
The crossover to the next day seemed like eternity—my eyes
were wide open all through the night. My aunty and her
husband had to put up with our neighbor, Mrs Eunice who was
very accommodating, while Mrs. Oyin stayed with us again. I
thought I was the only one who couldn’t sleep until I saw Mrs
Oyindamola sitting down on her bed and clicking the floor with
her toes. I knew my aunty would be feeling same way too.
I had a nightmare, just when sleep knocked me off my
consciousness. The dream was indeed terrible—my mother
was having the noose on her neck and was going to be
hanged. It appeared as if she was swapped for an inmate who
had a ‘death by hanging’ sentence. I woke up and screamed.
Everyone rushed into my room—even those in the other
apartment rushed in.
“What is the matter, Rose?” they kept asking me. I was too
shocked to speak. When I spoke eventually, my aunty began to
bind and loose. She was still on her high spirituality.
“Rose, I have cancelled the dream, just go back to bed,” she
told me confidently and smiled.
Moses joined us the next day, but Mrs. Omotayo had to get
back to her workplace. My aunty had rained showers of praises
and prayers upon her for taking good care of me. She also
confessed that she didn’t have rest of mind since a month and
half ago when she started to think of her sister—my mother.
She said she had sent some letters in the past, putting her
home address abroad there so that we could reply the letter
and indeed she got replies for them all. While we were in the
car, going to the court just now, my aunty showed us one of
the letters of reply she got from my mother:
Dear Rachael,
I got your letter. Did you see the one I sent to you earlier? As I
said before, we are all fine here. Rose is doing very fine right
now and she is now a very big girl. She received scholarships
and double promotion and John is now happy with us. As I
speak, I am in Abuja with John and Rose. He will send Rose
abroad soon to continue her education. That woman, Toyosi,
has finally returned to her husband after setting me free from
the prison. In case you come to Nigeria at any time, don’t check
us in that house anymore because we have packed
permanently to Abuja. I will forward the address to you later.
Take good care of yourself my sweet sister.
Your Sister,
Hannah.
I was shocked. So, Toyosi had been sending false letters to my
aunty all the while. I compared the letter with the handwritings
in the notes she gave to me and there was no difference. She is
indeed a criminal, I thought.
“But here, she said that we have relocated, so why did you still
check us here, or did you first go to Abuja?” I asked her.
“We have no choice than to come here first because she didn’t
send the address of the purported Abuja residence.”
Soon, we got to the court. Moses took pleasure in
communicating with the Judge and the choleric man began to
pick interest in us. The day before, he was frowning
throughout, but now he was brandishing his teeth in deep
smiles. He loved the way Moses was speaking intelligently as if
he was already a professional lawyer. Truly, they were
speaking the language they both enjoyed—the language of the
jury.
We set out for the prison where my mother was detained and
to our shock she was not there. Is my dream already a reality?
I thought. We were all afraid!
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