We are Able Episode 24 and 25

We are Able
Episode 24 and 25

Toyosi and the rest of the family left me alone to fend for myself on Christmas day. Before she left, she told me that I should not go near the food she had prepared. She didn’t feed me that morning, yet I was the one who helped them pack their plates to wash.
I entered the kitchen and opened the pot when they had left. I saw chicken parts drowning in the aromatic stew. It oozed into my nose and I almost drooled inside the pot. Only God knew how many chickens were slaughtered that day. I didn’t even know they bought life chicken, perhaps they bought already prepared ones.

I closed the pot back and adjourned to the parlour. Hunger came knocking hard at my stomach around 12pm. I wondered why a Christmas day should be turned to Lent for me. My mother’s memory came to my head and I felt blood rushing to my head.
When will my mother be back from the prison? I thought. If only I knew the prison where she was, I would have made effort to get there to either get her out or stay in there with her. I lay on the floor, in the parlour and wept. I rolled from side to side as hunger made my stomach its residence.

I reached for a notebook and began to write a poem:

My Life Without You, Mother
Poem was not food, so I dropped it at the second stanza. All I needed right now was something solid to feed on. Childishly, I prayed that manna would fall from heaven to satisfy my hunger. What manner of manna would fall on a Christmas day? Maybe chickens, I thought. I remembered the bible story we were taught back then; the children of Israel were fed with quails from heaven. I wouldn’t want quail this time around, but chickens, I said as I shut my eyes. Beggars have no choice; even if it were vulture I saw falling down, I would eat them like that, alive or dead.
I opened my eyes, nothing had happened. I began to doubt if faith worked at all, because my faith was just too strong that moment. If actually faith worked, then I should have the things I asked for, I thought.

Faith, they say, is dead without work, I thought. Right now I knew what to do. If I needed food from heaven, why can’t I put an empty plate on the table and put cutlery beside it? Perhaps, after saying a short prayer, I would meet the plate filled up with food. Yes, that was the work I needed to do.
Quickly, I rushed to the kitchen. I almost slipped as I ran. The tiled floor was too smooth to do any hasty movement upon. I regained my balance and began to make for the kitchen to get a plate.
Why go for a plate? Why not a pot? my mind spoke to me.
“Hmm,” I sounded within me. I would go with such idea so that I would be able to eat three square meal. I knew Toyosi and her family wouldn’t be available until late in the evening, so it had been better for me to request a potful of food so that I could be ‘bellefilled’ I thought like a child.
I took an empty pot and began to walk to the parlour. I was filled with faith. Something great must happen today, I thought. I placed the pot on the table and shut my eyes. Childishly, I placed my hands on my face and peeked at the pot from the spaces between the digits of my hands. I wanted to see the hand of God putting in the food.
I opened my eyes. Nothing was inside the pot. I shut my eyes again and changed the direction of my prayers, speaking in my mind:
Father in heaven, even if your hands are too holy to handle the laddle and the chicken, why don’t you at least send Angel Gabriel or Angel Michael to bring the food? Amen!”
My eyes flashed opened. Nothing was there. I almost wept. My faith was still strong within me, so I shut my eyes again:

“Why not send Holy Mary then? Send her to bring me the food because I am very hungry right now and I will die soon,” I signed with mu hands this time around. I hope God understood signed prayers.
I flashed my eyes out of their lids. Slowly this time, I began to lift the pot cover. I checked it and nothing was there. It was just as empty as it was. I wept.
It was 2pm already, still there was no food to eat. I knew what to do; maybe I would just escape the house and locate my classteacher’s house. Yes, that is what I would do, I thought.

At a second thought, I jettisoned the idea.
Toyosi is a witch; she would double-cross me on the road and kill me. I assured myself that Toyosi would definitely get hold of me on the road.
“That same way she spotted Moses and I running in the rain that day, she would spot me now,” I signed and resigned to fate.
I remembered the pot in the kitchen again. Why can’t I just make do with a chunk of meat alone and forget about the rice? I doubted if Toyosi would know that I took one out of the many pieces of meat in the large pot. They were so many in that pot, laps, gizzards, abdomen–just name it.
I made a quick move and headed for the kitchen. I wouldn’t care this time around. I didn’t even care to look for the big spoon. It had fallen down from the top of the pot but I didn’t notice it because I didn’t hear the sound of its tintinnabulum.
I put my hand right inside the pot and held a fat chicken lap, as fat as my lap. Time to feed my belly with something. I lifted the meat close to my lips and then a thought pierced through my heart like needle:
Yield not to temptation
Says who? I thought. I made the second move without paying attention, then I felt the piercing thought once more. I dropped the meat right inside the pot and began to make for the parlour. Then I saw the shadow of a lady.
It was strange. I had to rush in to see if anyone was there. To my shock, I saw no one. I looked at the empty pot on the table and it was not the way I left it. The cover was partially opened.
I was awed by what I saw!
I wasn’t scared of feasting on the content of the pot since I had already prayed for it. A half part of chicken laid across a heap of rice. The stew was inviting too. I began to tear the meat apart, not remembering to say a word of thanks to God who had sent Mary to deliver the meal.

I was still feeding on the meal when a woman entered, this time not a shadow. She was a black woman. I was scared! I thought she was Toyosi. Initially, before seeing her skin, I thought she was Holy Mary.
It beat my imagination when I saw who she was; my mother? No, my neighbour. The mother of blind Biodun and lame Laide!

My lips went apart for shock. She smiled and gave me a note:
I came in here when you were praying over your empty pot. Then I knew that I could be an answer to your prayers, so I turned in the remainder of our Christmas food. I fled when you came in and now I am back.
Happy Christmas!

EPISODE 25
Mrs Omotayo took me to her flat in the other apartment. It was well arranged. There was a Christmas tree at one corner of the room. The little bulbs on it twinkled like stars. It seemed they were performing a rhythm.
Mrs Omotayo was not looking too healthy, going by the look of her face. I wondered why she was this skinny if the chicken she gave me was actually bought with her own money. Even her apartment had a very nice look.
Her son Biodun and her daughter, Laide sat beside each other. They had already put off their Christmas cloth. I wondered if they went out to celebrate the Yuletide or not.
Biodun had a dark glass on his face. He was a bit taller than me. Biodun looked handsome in his early teens, yet he had one but–eyesight.
Biodun wasn’t born blind. He came by it. A little scar stood on his left eyelashes, separating it right and left. Biodun had a solid face and looked older than his age. He was fair in complexion like his mother.
Laide wasn’t born lame too. She had a devastating twist to her fate when her legs and her arms became numb. They were the only two children of their mother who was a widow. She had chocolate skin.
Laide was just a year younger than me but we had exactly the same stature.
Mrs Tayo must be a very strong woman, being able to raise the two children, despite their situations. When I took a close look at the family setting here, I knew that my own fate was nothing.
Mrs Tayo began to write an autobiography when she saw that there was no other way to share her life story with me other than putting it in black and white:

I made the greatest mistake of my life by plunging into polygamy at an early age of twenty-two. It was my mother who propelled me into it, though it wasn’t her fault anyway.
Actually, the family of Adeyemi Omotayo my husband was not a polygamous one at the inception, but it was I who made it so. I wasn’t prepared for marriage at all. I was waiting to be admitted into the tertiary institution. I have waited and waited for years but it was just very difficult because my mother and father were church rats–meaning they had no money. My father died of ulcer eventually.
We had no money to buy a digger let alone dig a grave, let alone cement it after digging, let alone burying a coffin in it, let alone burying my father in the coffin. A man offered to have sex with me and give my mother a coffin in return because he was a coffin carver. My mother rejected the offer and my father’s corpse refused to lie in state.
Around that time, I got admission into the higher institution to read banking and finance. My father’s body was neglected in the mortuary. We needed to do something fast, else we would continue to incur more debt for his long stay in the mortuary.
A man fell in love with me and pressurized me to marry him. He was honest though, letting me know that he had a wife at home already. I refused to listen to his woos since he was already a married man. When I got home that day, I met my mother in tears.
“Ayoola, your father’s corpse would be brought to us tomorrow from the mortuary, yet we don’t have a dime to bury him. Even a digger we don’t have. What should we do?”
I was speechless.
I couldn’t stand the tears on my mother’s face. She was growing leaner and leaner day by day. She was sick. I was afraid that I would lose her, so I decided to tell her about Omotayo who proposed to me.
“Mum, I don’t know if I should tell you this, but…”
“What’s that? Tell me my daughter,” she said and coughed.
“Em…em…I–I met a man. He proposed to me but I refused.”
“You refused? Is he rich?” my mother asked without premeditating.
“Yes, very rich,” I replied.
“Marry him then, Ayoola. What are you waiting for?”
“Mummy, that man has a wife already. He wants to make me his second wife.”
My mother melted. She didn’t know what to say. I saw her lips shaking. Eventually, she asked me to go ahead and marry him.
“Did you not say that he is also ready to sponsor your tertiary education?” my mother asked thoughtfully.
“Yes mummy,” I replied.
“Did you not also say that his wife knew about it already?”
“Yes, mother. Omotayo said that his wife was even the one who brought the idea when she couldn’t have a child for him.”
“Good!” my mother said and clapped as she thumped up and began to dance to a native song she was singing:
*Emi la o ni yo si? Emi la o ni yo si. Bi a ti fe o ri, be naa lo ri, emi la o ni yosi…
*Why won’t we rejoice? Why won’t we rejoice? As we crave, so is it, why won’t we rejoice?…
Hastily, we did the introduction, and my father had a very good interment. Adunni my senior counterpart took it upon herself to see to it that the burial ceremony was an elaborate one. The heaven danced and the earth sang. The birds of the air flew around to show their satisfaction at us for giving our father a happy ending.
I was in my third year in school when I gave birth to Biodun, my first child. My senior wife took him with her to take care of her while I continued with my school. I left him whole but met him blind. How come?
I wasn’t suspicious of her, because she had never revealed any questionable trait since the day I knew her, so I didn’t do anything concerning that. I gave birth to my second child the same year I was leaving the University.
When Laide was three, he went lame. He could no more move his legs and one of his hands. It was shocking to me when I came from my workplace that day and discovered that Laide could not move. I rushed her down to the hospital and her condition improved, at least she didn’t die, but ny mother died instead, at the thought that her second grandchild was disabled like the first too.
My husband died two years later, that was six years back. After his death, the senior wife took care of us continually until last year when she had a heart attack and died.
Before her death she confessed that she was the one responsible for all the mishaps in the family: she buried my first baby’s face in a bucket salt water mingled with pepper until the little baby went blind. She was also the one who put a bag of rice on my 3-year old baby, such that the baby couldn’t move her body any longer.
As though it was not enough, she said she was the one who poisoned our husband. She then said she was coming to suffocate me to death with a pillow when she slipped and had her chest striking hard against the hard edge of our central table.
She was asking for my forgiveness, but it was too late for her. She said she did all these as a result of jealousy. I was mad at her. She died before my heart could soften to think about forgiving her.
The memory of those plights were so heavy on me that I couldn’t bear it any longer. Her people came to worsen it all by casting aspersions on me. They said I was the one who killed the whole family and also responsible for my children’s physical disabilties. I told them the true life story but they denied it.
They got me remanded but I took up the case in court. My lawyer was competent so I wasn’t jailed. In fury, I left my husband’s home and came here to have my abode. That is the story of my life, Rose.

I couldn’t help my eyes. It had soaked the paper in my hands. Now I knew I wasn’t the only one in life faced with challenges, thousands others are.
If she could withstand it all, then I am able too,
I thought. I hugged her and wept.