WE ARE ABLE by SammyHoe
Episode 16 and 17
I began to live in my aunt’s place. She took me along with her after the court case. My hobby became crying. I couldn’t do without it.
Rachael asked me to stop thinking about my mother. She told me that my mother would just be fine.
“I can’t live without her!” I said. “Let me go and live with her in the prison.”
“You can’t go there, Rose. You can’t!” Rachael told me. “God will see us through.”
When my aunt mentioned ‘God’ I frowned. What was God looking at when my mother was incarcerated? Was he sleeping or what? I need not ask my aunt those questions thumping hard at my heart, else an endless sermon would begin, taking me through Genesis to Revelation.
My aunty loved to take advantage of any little situation to share her gospel message. I don’t know if Jesus was paying her salary for that. There wasn’t anyone I haven’t challenged with questions that seemed bigger than my age. Everyone I directed my questions to, except her, hadn’t been able to supply any tangible answers. But I dare not ask her any question, else she would do Job’s life story into my eyes again.
I wiped my tears and sat up to ‘hear’ my aunty speak.
“Rose, I was in your class teacher’s home yesterday.”
“How’s she?”
“She was fine.”
“Did you tell her about mother?”
“Yes I did,” I said. “She was mad at Toyosi.”
“Was she there with you?”
“No, Rose, but Mrs Oyin was asking for her home address. She said she was going to fight her in her home. She asked me to give her Toyosi’s home address.”
“And you gave her, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t!” my aunty said. “She was going to go to Toyosi’s house to fight her.”
“You should have given it to her!” I said in annoyance. “Why didn’t you…?”
“Do I know Toyosi’s home to start with? And even if I knew, I wouldn’t allow somebody to go and foment trouble in another person’s matrimonial home.”
“But…but Toyosi did that in our own home!” I began to sob. The event of that gloomy night had set over my face–that night mum and I were in that dark room. I had even composed a poem of sorrow concerning that. I ‘sang’ it whenever my aunt was not with me.
Beside me sat a gaze
Her hands tied with rope
Then tears down my face
There seemed not a hope.
What could she rather say?
How would I hear her speak?
I knew I could write poems but I haven’t put my pen to paper at any time to give it a try. Now I just had to do it because it seemed to be the only thing that was cooling off my tension.
I spent time standing in front of the mirror, demonstrating it.
My aunt tapped me suddenly.
“Rose, Mrs Oyin would be here tomorrow morning,” said my aunt.
“To see me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “And to also come and get you ready for your graduation ceremony next month, August.”
I fumed. I didn’t want to here anything concerning that graduation. How would I be having a graduation ceremony without my mother’s presence?
“I don’t want to be there?” I replied her.
“Why, Rose?” my aunt said and came close to me. “Rose, you have to be there. Okay why don’t you want to attend your own graduation ceremony?”
“Because my mom isn’t going to be there,” I replied.
She scrubbed my hair as if I was a baby. She began to scratch something out of the centre of my head with her index finger.
“What’s that?” I asked her. She stopped scratching and said, “A white substance, Rose. What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. Immediately my aunt had begun to bind and loose again. She wasn’t expressing it with sign language anyway. When she was done with her exercise, I asked, “What was that? Why were you dancing like that?”
“You called that dance?” she said. “Anyway, it is not dance. I was praying for you. You know, that white thing, who knows how it got on your head? Toyosi your stepmother could have done something terrible.”
“It’s not any Toyosi,” I said. I have just remembered something; I was playing with chalk earlier. “I was playing with chalk.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” she began to laugh. I joined her in it. It was the first time I would laugh since my mother was imprisoned.
Mrs Oyin came to my aunt’s place as promised. She assured me that my mother wouldn’t suffer long in the prison.
“We are going to appeal it,” she said.
“Appeal?” my aunt said. “Will it work?” she was just skeptical about it.
“It should,” she said.
“I just believe that there is nothing prayer cannot do,” she said. “Let’s just commit everything into the hand of God through fasting and prayer. He will do it.”
My teacher put out an angry face. The next ten minutes was a silent moment for me but a rowdy one for them. They had thrown the sign language behind them and now it seemed they were shouting at each other. I watched them opening their mouths in rage. I knew what was going on; my aunt wanted everything settled divinely but my class teacher was not supporting such idea.
After they had argued it out between themselves, they turned to me again with a smile. I had shut my eyes so I wouldn’t ‘hear’ them.
Episode 17
It had been decided between them. We would visit the court of appeal, but there wasn’t enough money to do that.
My class teacher promised to run around to see how much she could raise; my aunt would do the same.
“Hannah cannot go to jail, God forbid!” my classteacher said.
To bring up the case in the court of appeal we had to pay a certain amount. To also hasten up the case we paid another huge sum. Then the case was heard in the court of appeal first week of August. It was adjourned till the month of September after they had rendered my aunt and my teacher penniless.
My class teacher bought the clothing material I would need on my graduation day. I loved it so much. She said she couldn’t wait for that day to come.
The elites had been invited to the graduation ceremony. Even the incumbent governor of the state would be there. It would just be great.
To say that I was sad would be an understatement. What should I be happy about? My mother would be absent, yet she was the one always reminding me of the great event before me.
For the first time in my life, I did some attachments. My hair(or perhaps someone else’s hair) settled on my shoulders. One would think I was a goddess. I had also dabbed my lips in a pink ink. My eyelashes were made purplish. My class teacher had smeared the inner part of my dimples with red rouge. The earrings on my ears, they were like the size of the bangles worn on my wrists. She said I looked like a river goddess.
I appeared like a bride. I paraded myself before my aunt.
“Aunty, am I not beatiful?” I asked her. She gave a cold response. I knew why- she doesn’t support excessive make-up. She’d have preferred I appear natural.
I smacked my smooth lips as the event unfolded. I was going to present my poem. My face was no longer a smiling type.
Someone was at the high table–Honourable Daniel as I later got to know. His eyes weren’t looking in the direction of the graduands. His mind had wandered far. He stood up eventually and made for that spot where my aunt was sitting. He pulled at a seat before her and I could see them speak.
My class teacher was the MC of the day. She announced over the microphone that I had a poem to recite. I was welcomed upstage with claps. I wouldn’t know if the sound was thunderous or not, since all I knew was lightning and never thunder, except for the fact that I’ve seen it in books that thunder comes after lightning.
I began my poem in sign language. First, I pulled off my graduation gown, scattered my hair and scrubbed off the paint on my lips. Then tears came in drops. All heads shook. They must have thought that I was going to present an elegy.
The DJ offered me a microphone. Everybody laughed. It took a little while before the ridiculous DJ could realise his folly.
With my hands in the air, I began:
Beside me sat a gaze
Her hands tied with rope
Then tears down my face
There seemed not a hope.
What could she rather say?
How would I hear her speak?
Darkness around us,
Light takes long to come
No offence, no defense,
Darkness prevailed for long.
The only sound to hear
Was gnashing of teeth.
For nothing we did
We suffered indeed
And in the end,
In prison she ended.
Better I had been dead
Than be at dead end.
Who have we offended?
None, yet we’re not defended
My mother remanded
Myself left upended
My father’s bad deed
Was what his wife demanded.
Nobody cared, nobody cared
Not even my God.
Judges in the court
Saw not beyond their noses
Convicting the just
Vindicating the guilty.
Is God for real?
Where was he when
The innocent suffer
And the guilty laugh?
There is never God
Or maybe God is an idol
He created me deaf
And dumbness with me
In the smoke of the earth
I stood to face terror
If there is God,
He is a partial one
I had broken into tears as I threw the sheet of paper away, dashing out of the stage. I was running out of the place. The whole place was in pandemonium.
My class teachers’ lips had gone inches apart. She never knew my poem would end in a note of blasphemy. She must be feeling guilty now that she had used her voice to support blasphemy since she was the one interpreting my poem in voice language.
My aunt’s face had folded up in disappointment where she was seated. She didn’t come after me, knowing quite well that the security men wouldn’t let me leave.
I was at the gate asking for allowance.
“You can’t leave this premises, Rose,” the boys scout at the gate told me. He was one of our school boys scout. I knew his medicine–give Jackson a hundred naira note and he would pave way.
“Jackson, what do you want from me?” I asked.
“The usual,” he replied. He tilted his head to one side of his lopsided neck. He was fond of that posture. Jackson is just about six feet tall, with a nose I would call oblong. He is slender and handsome.
I didn’t hesitate. I handed Jackson a hundred naira note. He gave me way.
It was the first time to be on the road all by myself. I couldn’t hear any sound. How would I know if a car was coming behind me when I wouldn’t hear them horning. Someone pushed me out of the road. I had just escaped being grinded to slurry by a gallivanting ‘Molue’. The conductor was enraged, shouting. Who knew what he was saying?
Everyone just minded his or her business on the busy road of Ejigbo market. The only thing I had to cope with was their jostlings. Someone would just push you aside from behind.
Egbeda was my destination, but how would I get there? I couldn’t even hear the conductors speak. How would I hear them? How on earth would I get to my destination right now?
Everyone I approached to ask them to show me the way didn’t afford themselves a little time of patience. I scribbled what I wanted in a sheet of paper. I would give it to whoever cared.
The sun was hot on my head. It also drizzled alongside it. A tiger must be hiding somewhere in a labour room, I thought superstitiously.
A young boy of around eighteen came close to me. He was putting his mouth to use. I did what my mouth could do–sounding out my gibberish!
The boy was astounded, going by the look on his face. He was having a blue bag strapped to his back. He unzipped it and gave me a paper. He pointed to the paper and handed me the pen.
I wouldn’t need it, I gesticulated and gave him the one I had scribbled earlier. He read and nodded.
He took me by the wrist and began to walk me to the Egbeda park. I didn’t like the way he held me like a baby. I am twelve for Christ sake!
I turned my face down and saw that the boy was in a big white pair of canvases. To me then, everyone in canvas was rich. It was Kitto people like me wore to school. Not that my father couldn’t afford something better, but only that I had no father, or did I have any?
Rain began to come down in torrent. The young teenager held tighter to my wrist and fled with me. He wouldn’t even care if I fell and got injured. We couldn’t get to our destination–we just had to pull up under a shade to allow the rain stop.
Somebody’s image flashed through my eyes. It looked like Toyosi’s. She had just passed off like a shadow. It must be my imagination because I didn’t see any Toyosi around. All I saw was a bike fleeing past me with a passenger sitting at the back.
*******TO BE CONTINUED*******
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