We are Able
Episode 26 and 27
Toyosi and her family returned late in the evening. Then, I had ensconced myself inside the kitchen, sleeping. Toyosi tapped me. When I woke up, she began to scold me.
Toyosi pointed into the stew and complained.
“Rose, tell me, did you take the stew?”
“No!” I said.
“So, why is the stew sour like this?”
I was speechless. I knew I put my bare hands right inside it to take a chunk of meat earlier, but I dropped the meat back there.
Toyosi had counted all the pieces of meat in the soup before asking me the question, else she wouldn’t have even asked me anything before beating me up if any of the pieces of meat was missing.
She drove home my point when she uttered, “I knew you didn’t take the meat because I counted eighteen pieces there before I left and now it is still complete. Tell me now, did you touch the stew?” she asked again.
I trembled. I hated lie, but now it seemed I was in a very tight corner. How would I be able to say that I was the one who put my bare hand into it? It would mean that I was digging my own grave by myself.
I needed to look for a way out of this without lying or saying the truth directly. I was still in deep thought as regards what to say when she left me hurriedly.
I stood like a human being without skeleton, leaning on the wall. My heart was thumping faster than it had ever been. I hadn’t envisaged being beaten on a Christmas day. I didn’t want my day to be marred with her madness.
Maybe I should flee the house right now, I thought. Perhaps I should go and seek solace in the next flat. She wouldn’t have the inkling that I was there, I thought.
Staying with the Omotayo family seemed to be the ideal solution. The
moment I spent with them during the day was like heaven on earth.
Everyone of us was happy back then.
Mrs Omotayo even made me know
some things that were dark to me initially. She had told me that Toyosi
had come to stay with my father until further notice.
“Why?” I asked her and she responded in black and white:
I got to know this when Toyosi came to ask me about my husband. I told her that he was dead. Toyosi then asked me if I was seeing other men and I said no. Toyosi seemed angry with me. She doubted it initially. I told her that no man was ready to take me and my children because of their conditions. Toyosi hissed at me and said that I was probably insane.
“You are going about with two useless kids instead of dumping them somewhere and getting a new life by marrying one of your suitors,” Toyosi said. “Don’t you know that you are not too old to remarry? Body is not stone my sister…even myself could not hold my body again since my husband travelled to South Africa. I had to pull up with my former boyfriend here, hoping to return to my husband when he arrives.”
“Do you mean to say that this man, baba Bode, is not your legitimate husband?”
“Yes and no…”
“How? Is Bode not your son? If not who then is his real wife?”
“That’s why I said yes and no earlier; yes because Bode is my child. I gave birth to Bode through John, but it was done in an extra-marital relationship. My husband didn’t know that I was having an extra-marital affair. If he knew then I would be dead. But you know, body is not firewood now.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “So, where is John’s wife?”
“Dead some months ago.”
“Oh! I feel sorry for her,” I said. “Didn’t she have a child for John?”
“She didn’t,” Toyosi said. Silence prevailed for a while until Toyosi broke it:
“Neighbour, let me lend you the coins I have. It’s better you take this children to their grandmother and then begin again, or don’t you have a mother?”
“I dont have,” I replied.
“Oh, sorry about that, neighbour. Try the first idea then,” she said and whispered something into my ears. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard it. I frowned and shouted at her:
“What! How could you be so mean?” she had just advised me to strangle my children and wrap them in one black and tall polythene material given to us by the government of the state to put our dustbin in, just because they would remain useless for the rest of their lives.
“Are you out of your mind?” I kept yelling at her. Then she apologized and said that she didn’t mean it.
“I was just joking, mummy Laide,” she said. “How could I mean such a mean act?” she added and held me tight.
“Please don’t joke that kind of joke with my children again!” I said vindictively.
“Okay ma,” she said and asked that I forgive her.
“Have you forgiven me?” she kept asking until I replied her that I have done so. Since that time, Toyosi had been showing much care for my children. Sometimes, she would help me push Laide’s wheelchair and crack jokes with Biodun.
My aunty tapped me out of my thought. When I looked at her I was shocked. She had a calabash with her. It was similar to the one my mother smashed that day we were locked in the dark.
She dropped the calabash on the kitchen table and said, “If you don’t confess to me now, then you will die when I blow the sand inside this calabash on your body.”
I was afraid. I shivered. A sudden feeling of coldness had taken over my body system. I jittered like the string of a guitar. My legs were no more firm to the earth and I thought I would just crash.
“Confess or you die by the sand!” she yelled at me. I read her mouth to know what she had said.
I had no choice than to confess. She was mad at me.
“How dare you put your disabled hand into my pot?” she said as she turned the whole stew into the sink and flushed it with water. Then she threw the pieces of meat inside the waste basket.
Just then, my father began to smile towards the kitchen. Bode followed him. Seemed they were very much hungry.
My father’s mouth moved. Toyosi had just told them what happened. Bode was furious. He rushed at me and gave me some kicks in my stomach. I fell. He sat on my back and twisted my neck as if I was a child under the mercy of a brutal father–this time around Bode was the father in question.
My father left the kitchen in fury but his son remained to watch me being punished to the end.
Toyosi ordered me to eat all the meat in the dustbin. I was reluctant at first.
“Eat them all!” she screamed! I didn’t hear her but I lipread her.
I forced myself into it. They were just too much. How would I be able to eat them all? It was as though I was consuming a sacrifice for the gods, perhaps the gods of dirt. The meat had mingled with the dirt inside the dustbin. I could feel my tongue soiled with dust and sour substances. Oil ran down my mouth like blood.
At the third meat, I gave up. It was too much for me. Toyosi said I must finish it up overnight. When she was leaving me, my daddy was coming to meet me there with a note he had written. He dropped the note before me and ordered me to read it. While I was reading, he left me and walked away.
We are Able
Episode 27
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!
*******TO BE CONTINUED*******
