We are Able
Episode 36
Toyosi returned home sad after
one month. John begged her every now and then for forgiveness, but she
wouldn’t listen. Was there more to it which I didn’t know? Why did she
keep crying all days? Did she not get what she wanted? At least my
father had succumbed to her will by letting her abort the pregnancy, so
what more? I thought.
The day they reconciled was the exact day John
took ill; that was around September. John was admitted in a hospital as
Toyosi expended all her profit in treating him. Then Toyosi begged me
to go to the streets and beg for alms but I refused blatantly. She
couldn’t touch me now, perhaps she had already realized that her nemesis
was caused by her evil deeds to me in the past. Toyosi said she would
release my mother from if only I could render that help to her. I had
pity on my father who was between life and death and then went begging
in the streets. Now I hung a laminated write-up on my neck too,
indicating that I was deaf and dumb and I needed help.
When Albert saw me begging, he called me a pretender.
“Did you not lie that you didn’t beg for alms that day, pretender?” Albert spoke harshly to me. I was speechless.
This time around, it wasn’t Albert alone who saw me begging but many of
my former school mates too, including Bose, who was my arch-enemy back
then in the former public school I attended. Each time I saw Bose
mocking me, I would feel as if I should strangle her once and for all,
because she had done a lot of evil to me in the past.
I could
remember what Bose did to me while we were in primary four. Back then,
Bose came to me to say that she no more wanted any fight with me, but
she would want us to be close friends since we were the only two people
in the class with the same surname, John. She is John Bosede and I was
John Rose. I readily accepted Bose’s proposal and we became close pals.
Our friendship was sustained for the whole term until the beginning of
the next session when we got promoted to Primary 5. Back then, when we
were friends, I lost my bag in which all my books were kept. Everything I
had, including my textbooks, where in it. I wept because I knew what my
father would do to me if he discovered that I had lost my bag and all
the new books I had in them. As expected, my father dealt brutally with
me for my carelessness and refused to get me another bag and books for
replacement. I had to do the rest of my class without any textbooks and
exercise books.
During the beginning of the next session, Bose began
to come to school with some familiar books (exactly the types of books I
had in my back the session before). I began to sense something fishy
because of her reluctance to borrow me her books. I would have pointed
accusing fingers at her if only I had seen any cancellation at the back
of those books because I wrote my names on them those days; at least if
they where mine, she would have cancelled those names before writing
hers.
Something kept telling me they were mine because the writings
looked exactly like mine. But when did I write Bose’s name with my own
handwriting? Was I drunk while I was doing that? I wanted to know the
fact, so I continued to observe. I knew the books were actually mine
when I got one of her storybooks one day. I saw some marks I did inside
the storybooks and now I was convinced. It had just occurred to me how
easy it was for her to alter the ‘R’ starting my name and change it to
‘B’. She wouldn’t have had any problem converting them at all since the
right leg of my letter ‘R’ were always curved somehow, not straight.
Thus, she changed my name ‘John Rose’ to her own name ‘ John Bosede’
with ease, having added a ‘d’ and an ‘e’ to it to make me never suspect
her(Bosede was the long form of the name Bose).
I was angry with her
and took laws into my hands, fighting with her after school hour one
day, just because the teacher I reported the case to ignored me for lack
of clear evidence. We fought that day and I defeated her, putting sand
into her mouth, contrary to the thought of everyone that Bose was the
boss then, because she could bully on both boys and girls alike as a
result of her rapid development.
The next day, her mother came to
school with her and reported the case to my class teacher (not Mrs Oyin)
and I was scolded and suspended for two weeks. I wondered why Bose’s
mother backed her daughter up in lies as such. Sometimes parents could
be the cause of their children’s bad manners, I thought.
I was shy
when Bose made fun of me and promised to bring all our schoolmates to
make fun of me the next day. When I returned home that day, I told
Toyosi that I didn’t want to beg anymore.
“You must do it for your father, or you want him dead?” she said.
“No, I want him to live, but…but I can’t just do it anymore; my schoolmates are making fun of me,” I said.
“You have to do it if you want to see your mother alive,” she said. I
was weighed down deep down my heart, but I couldn’t cry. She was the one
doing the weeping.
Episode 37
I kept on begging for alms,
all because I needed to see my mother alive as Toyosi promised. John
returned home healthy after one month. The family had been rendered
penniless by the emergence of those sicknesses which happened to them in
turn. Now I feared that it was going to be my turn. If it happened to
me, I was sure no one would show any iota of concern. Didn’t they want
me dead earlier? I thought.
Toyosi and John depended on me to have
them fed. They would collect the money I made from my begging business
each day and use it to get food for the family. Toyosi had written a
letter to her husband abroad, but she hadn’t received a reply yet.
I
confronted Toyosi again to release my mother or else I would kill
myself with a knife. I was only trying to threaten her, because I was
their only hope of sustenance at the moment, since none of Toyosi or
John my father would be able to beg alms as I was doing.
When Toyosi heard that, she put her hand on my head and rubbed it in a passionate way as she wept.
“Rose, I have already put everything in place for your mother’s release,” she said in tears. “She will be here very soon.”
“I don’t accept that,” I replied her in an unconvinced manner. “Take me to her if you can’t bring her to me!” I signed in a vigorous manner. “I must see my mummy, or else…”
Toyosi held me tight to herself. I
wriggled in her grip. I was already fed up with her unnecessary show of
concern to me, knowing quite well that she was just an impostor. I
submitted in the end and watched her drinking her tears like a cup of
garri.
Laide and Biodun were on holiday. I was happy I would be able
to see Biodun now, since he would no more be going to school. When I
went to their apartment, it was Taiba who met me at the door and waved
me off. She didn’t want me near Biodun at all; perhaps she was following
the instruction of her mistress.
I wrote a letter in Braille and
went back to their apartment. When Taiba came to the door, I gave her
the letter, but she took it and shredded it to pieces. Taiba didn’t want
anything to endanger her job and I understood vividly, but I couldn’t
contain the feeling I was having towards Biodun anymore. We haven’t seen
each other for the past three months, yet we lived in the same house.
Toyosi suddenly held her stomach and groaned in pain. She was rushed
down to the hospital by her jobless illegitimate husband. I wondered
what was going on. It was her second time she would be calling at a
hospital within three months with the same complication. I began to
guess that her ailment had something to do with the abortion she
underwent some months back. Maybe it had affected her womb somehow, I
thought, but since there was no one to give me an answer, I forgot about
it.
While John and Toyosi were in the hospital with Bode, I took a
day out to rest. I was going to keep it holy by not begging for alms
that day. It was a Friday morning. I had stepped out of the apartment to
take fresh air. I was looking towards Biodun’s flat, wishing deep down
my heart to see Biodun appear. How would that happen when Taiba wouldn’t
stop policing him everywhere? I thought.
The violent breeze blew
some dust into my eyes and I began to blink to get the dust away. It
took me sometimes to recover from the pain. When I did, I saw Biodun
standing close. I was surprised.
Biodun touched me with his walking
stick as he made his way to our door. I smiled. I went close to him and
touched his nape. He knew at once that I was the one. Who would touch
the back of his neck that way except me?
Biodun smiled.
I led Biodun in. He made a sign to me—my own language, something I had taught him a little of.
“Let us flee together,” Biodun had signed. When he asked me in Braille
to teach him that statement in sign language in the eatery three months
back, I didn’t know he was going to use it for real. Now that was the
exact statement he was demonstrating to me with his hands.
It was
amazing that he could come up with such suggestion. I touched him at the
back of his head. It was a sign we both formulated together to mean
‘no’. Biodun’s face grew pale. He was disappointed somehow. Soon he was
shedding tears. He did the sign again to say that we should flee. It was
something I had least expected, myself fleeing with Biodun to continue
our love affair somewhere else? Too funny to think about!
Biodun was
serious about it. He began to weep. I clutched his head in my hands, a
way of pacifying him, but his tears didn’t end. He asked for those
Braille materials I had with me and I provided them. Biodun began to
punch the paper with it. He was done with it after five minutes. I read:
Though I may not have seen it but I have heard it; when people can’t
get what they want, they kill themselves. When you see me dead before
tomorrow, then you should know why. Bye.
Biodun rose up. He took
his walking stick and began to feel his way out of the parlour. He
lingered a little while at the door and then went through it. I rushed
towards him and stood on his way.
I never wanted him dead, else I
would die too. Somehow, his soul had fused into mine. I was his sight
and he was my voice. There was no one at the moment I understood more
than Biodun, despite the fact that he was blind and couldn’t see me do
my signs and I was deaf and couldn’t hear him speak.
I touched
Biodun’s forehead. It was our self-formulated sign to mean agreement.
Biodun didn’t believe it. He reached out for my forehead, but his two
fingers couldn’t get there because he couldn’t see me. I knew what he
wanted to ask, so I held his arm and set the two fingers there myself.
He was going to ask if I was sure of what I had just communicated to him
by my ‘touch sign’.
I touched his forehead with two fingers in
return to tell him that I was sure. If I was not serious about it, I
would have touched his forehead with just a finger and not two.
I
rushed back inside to take my bag. I took the money I had in a purse and
set out. I held Biodun’s right wrist as we began to hurry towards the
gate. I opened the gate carefully so that Taiba who should be inside
their apartment wouldn’t hear its sound. In no time at all, we were out
of the house. All we needed to do at first was to get onto a motorcycle
to take us to somewhere far from home. I waved down one and Biodun spoke
with the rider. They didn’t agree at a price, so he left. Another soon
came close and we mounted on that.
The rider didn’t move. Instead,
he turned his head backward and it was a shock to us. When Biodun tapped
him to ask why he wasn’t moving, he told Biodun something which I
didn’t hear. Biodun tapped me and pointed backward. He was asking me to
look behind me since I was his eyes. I looked behind me and saw horror!
Taiba! She had probably been shouting and waving at the bikeman to get
his attention earlier. Biodun must have heard her shouting and didn’t
know she was the one.
Our plan was shattered. Now we had to beg
Taiba not to tell Biodun’s mother what had happened. Taiba didn’t accept
it until she got some money from us and pulled our ears, warning us
that we shouldn’t dare try such a thing in our life. Biodun actually
sneaked out of their apartment while she was having her bath.
Episode 38
We began to live from hand to mouth for the rest of the year. My father
and her illegal wife had sold most of the property—Television, Radio,
Refridgerator, yet they couldn’t meet up. Now they began to appear
religious, trying to attend vigils and other church services. However,
Toyosi didn’t cease from going to herbalists to get solution, but they
had none.
December was drawing close, but we had nothing at home.
Toyosi threatened to walk out of the relationship to wait for her
husband’s return but John persuaded her to stay to take care of Bode
with him for the moment.
Toyosi would weep all alone sometimes. I
wondered what actually was wrong with her. Did anything go wrong again? I
would ponder. I thought all was getting better, but I never knew
something had gone wrong between the illegal couple which I didn’t know.
I intensified my asking for my mother, but I didn’t get any direct
answer. Toyosi asked me to see my father concerning my mother’s issue.
When I did, John didn’t reply me. I wondered how someone could be so
stubborn. After all these ‘nine plagues of the Egyptians’ which had come
upon him and his family (except me), this man still refused to let my
mother go. Certainly my father is another Pharaoh in the making, I
thought.
It was soon going to be New Year day, yet there seemed to
be nothing at home to use to do the New Year day. Bode was complaining
vehemently. The evil hand of malnutrition seemed to have had much grip
of him than any other person in the family. Bode’s once bulgy cheeks had
shrunken so much. His neck had gone thin for lack of balanced diet and
one might easily pass him for a kwashiorkor patience. The sicknesses
which swept across the family, sparing me those times, really did much
to their financial status.
Toyosi expected a response from her husband in form of money, but she got nothing.
The New Year gradually dragged in. It was all hunger-strike for us. If
not for Mrs Omotayo who gave us some cooked food, we wouldn’t have had
anything to eat throughout the New Year day. Toyosi humbly took the meal
from her that day and shed tears. Bode shed tears too, asking his daddy
why he didn’t perform his responsibility as a father to take care of
the need of the family in the New Year. It was then John joined in the
cry. I wanted to cry too, but all I had was laughter. My father was
angry with me. He thought I was laughing at their calamity, so he
ordered me out of the room.
I clutched to my pen and then began to write something:
NEW YEAR HUNGER
Glancing at life sometimes
You are left to wonder
Is it worth living?
Yes to some it is,
Cos they have what it takes
To make life worth living
But to some it’s not,
A capital NO,
Cos to them it is but
A moment spent in woes
While some celebrate
A New Year indeed,
Others Celebrate
A New Year of Hunger…
I flipped back. I had written over fifty poems so far. I remembered how
I begun those days; how Toyosi tore my first sets of poems. But I wrote
them again and she didn’t get to know. If only I knew where that
Judimax was, I would take my manuscript to them and get published. It
would be a dream come true. I would make the whole world ask Toyosi and
my father where exactly they kept my mother; six feet under the earth or
where else?
I remembered my mother again. My patience was no more
in place. It was already more than a year since she was jailed for no
reason at all. Something made me think of committing patricide. I was
going to thrust a knife through my father’s belly at the dead of the
night and end it all at once. I wouldn’t be without my mother all day.
It would be better to kill my father and then get killed in return than
to allow this sinner go scot-free.
I went to bed, waiting for my
father to sleep as well. I was going to rise up and walk straight to his
room to do the job, I thought.
I got up from bed and reached for a
knife close by, a kitchen knife. I began to walk stealthily to his
room. Toyosi left the door ajar. I didn’t care where she was. I opened
the door gently and found my father dozing on the bed. I walked straight
to him and lowered the knife into his body with all my strength. I
watched him grope for death. Now I needed to escape into the night,
never to be seen again, but then Toyosi appeared at the door and
screamed! I knew she screamed. going by the raised muscles on her neck.
I woke up from my nightmare. So it was a dream, I sighed. How on earth would I have killed my own father?
*******TO BE CONTINUED*******
