WE ARE ABLE written by SammyHoe
Episode 1
I feel a cold touch at my back. It is harmattan period. I just want to be left on my bed. I turn around like a fat cake, but mother turns me around again. I can see her mouth moving. I wonder what she is saying. But certainly she can’t be saying anything more than the fact—I am lazy.
My school is in Ejigbo, Lagos. They say we are special people, yet I haven’t perceived anything special about us. Some of us can’t talk. Some of us can’t walk; some of us can’t see, yet they say we are special. Well, I am not moved a bit by those flatteries.
I look at mother’s hand movements. It is funny to me. I smile. I wonder when she will be able to master the sign language.
“Rose, get out of bed,” she has managed to communicate with her hands. She has to repeat each word just to put them at their best. I could remember challenging my teacher some times back that…
I rise up lazily and go straight for my bath. When I get to the bathroom, I see a basin filled with water there. Wow! It is warm. I splash the water on my body. I observe that the door is shaking but I didn’t really think about it. I continue pouring water on my body. Today in particular, I spend around thirty minutes in the bathroom. The water is just exactly as I want it to be—warm.
When I step out of the bathroom, daddy
gives me a scornful look. The grotesque on mother’s face also suggests
to me that I have done something wrong again. Why me all the time?
My father gets into the bathroom and begins to open his mouth. Since I
am deaf, I didn’t hear what he is saying, but my mother is opening her
mouth too in return. They understand each other—it’s only we, the
special one so called, that can’t understand them.
Mother helps
father to carry a bucket of water into the bathroom. That man—always
angry. I don’t know his problem. He is far away from me more than a
stranger. I wonder why he is my father. Mother quickly taps me and I
face her when that man has entered the bathroom.
“Rose, you used
your father’s water,” mother says to me in her amateur sign language,
yet she claims that she has learnt the language while I was five years
of age. I wonder what is still keeping her in the amateur level till
now, after six years.
“I used his water? How?” I ask. Sometimes my hands just get tired of speaking. I wonder how I will be able to speak if I become paralyzed in my hands or a bad accident claims them.
“I put his water in the bathroom first because he must be in Ikeja as early as possible.”
“Why don’t you tell me that before I entered the bathroom?” I ask.
“Em…Rose…erm…” my mother’s face is clugged up with tears. I know she is a very tender person—not wanting to raise anything that will remind me of my status—deaf and dumb.
“Em what? What has letter ‘M’ got to do with this?” I am confused.
“When you were leaving, I was calling you, but you were too fast. You have already entered the bathroom. I only woke you up so that you could go and brush your teeth and not to take your bath. Your daddy will be angry with us. He has been kicking at the bathroom door for a long time to break it if he could.”
I know what mother is talking about: she wakes me up; I rush to the bathroom without looking at her to hear from her (you have to look at someone to see his/her communication). But if that is the only thing that has happened, does it warrant my dad frowning at me in that manner as if I am nothing but a fart?
“Is he my daddy? I doubt it,” I say. Mother doesn’t want my eyes to get those tears in them again. She comes on time to wipe them off for me. I don’t believe I have a daddy yet. The only pictures I took with that man mother calls my dad are the ones during my one year and two years birthdays. No recent pictures, yet I am already eleven. Maybe if he knew that I would never speak in life, he would not have snapped those pictures with me then.
Who creates me? I am sure it is not the same God who creates the other people on earth. I have approached my mother once and said, “Don’t you think it is satan who creates me?”
“Don’t say that again Rose!” mother replies me. The vigour with which she moves her hands shows to me that she is shouting.
“But why can’t I hear and speak?” I challenge her. “I thought that they say that all the things he creates were good.”
“You are good either,” she says to me.
“Good?” I laugh mockingly. Those lips of mine, what can they do other
than eating, laughing and crying? I have been advised by my teachers to
laugh always, since it will prevent my mouth from smelling. But I don’t
seem to see the reason for laughing at all. I only laugh to make jest of
people sometimes. Nothing again can make me laugh, even if you tickle
me I won’t.
I didn’t feel like going to school that day again. That
man in the bathroom has killed my joy. How I wish I am not born into
this family. If I am born into another family, it’s only my mother I
will miss. Who cares about John, that wicked man? I think.Reluctantly, I sit at the table. If only mummy can allow me have my own meal inside my room and not at the dinning table. Or what is the essence of eating at the dinning table when my daddy is having his own food in a separate dish? It’s only my mother and I who eat together in the same plate. I see the way John is leering at me as if he should just lock me up somewhere. He is guzzling the food as if he hasn’t eaten since the day before yesterday. He can’t even communicate with me since he has refused to learn the sign language like my mother. He will only tell my mother to tell me anything he wanted to tell me, yet if he has written them down I would have understood him. I have perceived that mother doesn’t use to tell me what my father was asking her to tell me. Perhaps my father’s words will be too harsh on me. She has to come out clear one day when the preacher in our church condemns the act of lying in all its ramifications. That day, mother said to me that she has been telling me the opposites of what father has been asking her to tell me. I didn’t need to ask her what exactly he has been saying since commonsense is there in me to know that they were unpleasant things.
I am looking away while eating. Mother taps me. A mould of amala is still in her grip, but she has something to tell me. With the food in her hand, mother gestures to me, “Rose, your daddy says you should stop looking away from your food.”
I frown.
I know that what he said is more than that. His face can tell it all—many wrinkles on his forehead. If only he can speak in a mild manner to me, it had been better.
I quickly readjust and eat my food, silently as usual, since there isn’t any noise I want to make. I see daddy speaking to her again. This time, mummy speaks back with an angry face. It seems as if they are on my matter again. At last, mummy speaks to me:
“Rose, don’t get angry, but your dad says that I should tell you that if his boss gets angry at him for coming late to office today, then you are in trouble. But don’t mind him, Rose, he can’t do anything for you.” That is how my mummy will always say, yet that man will beat both of us together whenever it is time for him to do so.
My father looks at us as if he is suspecting that my mother is saying more than he said to her. I look at his mouth and I am able to figure out the first word he says:
“Hannah…” That is the name of my mother.
I fold my
hands and didn’t eat again. Father didn’t even care. He has finished
eating the amala. He has begun to rush out of the house. That Volkswagen
he has, he hasn’t used it to take me to school once. Sometimes my mummy
will use it to take me there if he is on afternoon duty, since he will
be sleeping in the morning by then.
Father points to me as if he
is threatening me when he gets to the door. Mother is just looking at
him. When he leaves, she rushes to me and hugs me tight. She was
shedding tears as she presses her lips firmly against my cheek.
I am
off to school. Mother takes me there herself before going to her own
work too. Throughout the school period, I didn’t speak a word. Mrs Oyin,
our class teacher is surprised. How come Rose’s name didn’t enter the
name of noise maker today? she must have thought (we write names of
noise makers in our school too; making unnecessary sign language is a
noise).
Mrs. Oyin is a second mother to us. She likes everyone of
us in Primary Six B. When she comes into the class to punish the noise
makers, she calls me out and takes me out of the class. If only I can
hear, then she would not have taken me out of the class. She would just
have whispered into my ears.
In the office, she says, “Why are you not speaking today?” I tell her there is nothing.
When I get back home, daddy was already inside. I am surprised. He is supposed to be in the office by then.
I go on my knees to greet him, but then, he slaps me on the face. I
scream with all the power inside me. He will be the only one to suffer
the sound from my throat. He didn’t leave me alone. He has come on me,
punching me like a punching bag. Mother rushes in at once and begin to
prevent him. But it is too late. My eyes are swollen already, yet I
didn’t know my offence.
It is the next day I know what has happened.
My father has been suspended from office for two weeks for getting late
to work that day. But does that call for dealing with me brutally that
way?
God should kill me once and for all, I think.
I bet u, you wont regret reading this Very Interesting Inspirational Story….
WE ARE ABLE
Episode 2
I watch as mother and father argue over the matter. My father moves close to her and pointed a finger at her eyes. I feel blood rushing to my head.
Mother tells me that two weeks pay will be deducted from father’s salary. I laugh.
“Good for him,” I tell mother. Father sees the smile on my face and he was suspicious.
Why should I not be glad that my dad is going to lose part of his money? If I am not glad about it, who then should be? That man isn’t the one paying for my school fee. He has stopped doing that since the year before. From the onset of my schooling, he objected to my schooling, believing it is an effort in futility.
John won’t see anything good in having a handicapped educated.
“What is the usefulness of a disabled child?” he would tell my mother.He began to militate against my remaining in school. He wants me out by all means, complaining that it is a sheer waste of money.
I feel useless when John gives me the reasons why I shouldn’t remain in school. It was the first time he would communicate with me through letter:
What do you intend doing after school? Doctor? Nurse? Lawyer? Engineer? Pilot? You can’t do any of those or anything in life without your ears and mouth, I hope you know. Rose, I hereby want to advise you to pull out of school and master house works because that is the only thing you can do without your ears and mouth.
I have wanted these ever since; only that mother insisted I should remain in school. I am not an education enthusiast, but I am not bad in school at all. Now, father says he won’t pay my fee, so what is the essence of arguing with him now?
I know John is only trying to hurt my feeling, but he was shocked when I laughed for the first time and wrote back to him, “Thank you so much. I have been looking forward to that.”
I had only stayed two weeks away from school when my mother came with a big shock.
“Rose, you are returning to school?”
“What!” I responded in my sign language. My oval-shaped mouth also synched the word. I have learnt a lot from lip-reading my teachers in school, such that I could figure out some things people are saying with their mouths.
“You have won a scholarship!” Mother said.
“How?” I asked, puzzled. I haven’t applied for any scholarship.
“Last year when your father began threatening to pull you out of school, I decided to apply for a scholarship for you and…”
I held my mother’s hands. I didn’t want to see more of her speech. I didn’t buy the idea of returning to school.
“Please tell the scholarship sponsors to stop wasting their monies on disabled like me,” I say. “No matter what they spend, I will remain disabled in life.”
I rushed to my room and held tight to my pillow. Tears was soaking the soft pillow in my grip. I took a little time gazing at the wall. My thought began to speak out:
They teach us that God is kind, but here am I…I can’t speak. If he is kind, why can’t he make me like the other people? I came to the world, useless. How am I different from the animals in the jungle? I learnt that animals can’t speak too. Little wonder Bayo keeps putting leaf inside his mouth every time, just to show me that I am a herbivorous animal…
My nape felt a touch. The sensation slid down and rested on my left shoulder. I have shut my eyes long ago, only feeling the seepage of my tears on my cheeks.
It was mother’s touch. If I knew she would be coming in, I would have bolted the door. I don’t want to go to school.
“You are able, Rose,” mother says.
“A proof or I don’t believe it,” I respond.
“A proof?” Mother said. She was confused.
“Tell me what a deaf person can do that a normal person cannot do. Tell me the job I can be offered without my ears and mouth functioning. After then, I might reconsider schooling.”
Mother racked her brain. She scratched her braided hair for answer such that the bobby pins on them began to fall off. Still, no answer to give.
“Tell the sponsor of that scholarship to transfer it to a normal person. I am done with schooling,” I say.
Mother sat on the bedside. I could see her throat moving up and down like a jangrover. Her red lips come out to lick her tears intermittently.
“For how long, Rose, for how long will I keep begging you to stop being inferior? Rose, just…just…”
I have buried my face in the pillow. I don’t want to go to school. Period!
In the end I decided to comply. Ever since, I’ve been on scholarship, so John’s salary could keep on decreasing, how should I care?
But I still want to know what brings the disabled at par with the normal people. If my mum and my class-teacher can’t give me the proof that I am able in three weeks time, I shall go on personal strike.
Episode 3 We Are Able
It is such a great hell for my dad while he was at home those two weeks. The man loves to go to work. If possible, he will make his workplace a permanent abode, just to avoid what he calls a sick home.
John tells my mother to allow me remain at home with him, but the woman rejects blatantly.
What is my father’s motive for demanding such thing? I am just eleven, so what do I know?
At school, I begin the question again:
“Is there any reason for God creating us like this?” I ask my clasateacher. She was rash at saying yes, yet she couldn’t state a reason.
“Rose, you ask too much. Stop thinking of what you can’t do; think of what you can do.”
“What can I do?”
“You can see, walk and…”
“That’s normal,” I say. “Everybody else can do those things too.”
“But Joshua and Gbade can’t do any of those things,” she says.
My hands drop. To raise them, no vigour. Each time I remember the case of Joshua and Gbade, I always feel like climbing a ladder to heaven to pull God down and fight him.
Joshua is paralysed and at the same time blind. Gbade’s case is the worse; he is deaf and dumb as well as blind and lame. If John is Gbade’s father he would have thrown him inside the Oke Afa canal.
Some sweat pour down my neck and soaked my school uniform. Now I begin to imagine how Gbade has been able to survive the hardship he is into.
It is just two days left for my father’s suspension to be over when something strange happens. That day, mother carries me home in father’s blue volkswagen car. We open the door of the house and to our surprise, daddy and another lady were kissing each other in the parlour.
They see us but did as if they didn’t.
I began to see many mouths moving. I began to imagine the conversation they were making:
“What is happening?” my mother cries out.
“Is she your wife?” the woman says. It seems she has just come out of her senses.
“Em…you are my real wife, not her,” daddy says without any humane feeling.
“John!” my mother cries. The man just looks away lackadaisically and hissed.
“Em…Toyosi, leave that scallywag alone and let’s continue our love.”
Right before my eyes my mother is being denied of her marital right. This is not right. I made a shrilled sound. At least I can shout even though I am dumb.
Daddy gets irritated and comes for me at once. Mother stands in his way. The wicked man pushes his wife out of the way. She loses balance and falls. I guess mother must have broken some bones in the process.
Now I remain still, harden myself so I can be prepared for daddy’s beating. He looks on at me and I don’t know why he didn’t pounce on me as his manner is. He stands gazing at me for a while, then he carries my mother up. She can’t stand on her own anymore.
I have to check on my mother in the hospital the next day. I have missed school that day. She is on wheelchair, her hands and legs on bandage. We look on at each other. She can’t communicate with me right now because she can’t move her hands.
“Get well soon mummy,” I say, kneels before her and went down on her laps, weeping.
“Mummy, what is the matter with daddy?” I ask in tears. My mother can’t move her hands so there is no way she will signal her response to me……
Do you have someone who is battling with inferiority complex?
Or are you in close contact with people that don’t believe in their capacity to become successful ?
This story is a life changing story
It’s a story that brings out the best in people .
Bring them to read this story and you will definitely be a BLESSING
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