We are Able Episode 28

We are Able
Episode 28

My father rose up suddenly and began to laugh. He was saying something as he dipped his right hand into the pocket of his boxers and produced a note. He pointed at my horrified face and kept laughing at me. The only thing I thought I successfully lipread was the expression USELESS CHILD.

I let my father leave the room before peeking at the note he gave me. My heart had begun to come down now. That man really gave me a big scare because I had thought he wanted to rape me. I had heaved sighs of relief on and on. That man had only come to scare me.

I began to read:

Re: My Father, why have you forsaken me?

My useless daughter Rose, as a reply to your questions that day, I have come up with this. It is the proper write-up that would suit your question. Imagine, it took me more than a week to compose this wonderful write-up.

The last time when I said you have never been of help to me, you said you have on Democracy day, just because you translated sign language to text for me. Well, if that is what you call a help, then you are a great fool. How dare you open your ‘dumb mouth’ to say that in the first place? Do you realise how much I have spent on you? If that is what a father should expect from a daughter after spending fortune on her, then it had been better he didn’t spend on her at all.
I’m glad you aren’t schooling anymore because at the end of the day you will graduate and remain useless in the society. Nobody will employ you, nobody will benefit from you, nobody will speak with you because you will just remain as useless as a rock.

You are not supposed to be living among the living but among the animals because as much as I know, only animals don’t speak. At the right time I will take you to the jungle to live the rest of your life there.

Imagine, what is the essence of a daughter who will never be wooed by a man? What is the essence of a lady who will never have anyone to get married to her? Rose, If you ever get married, then let the earth bury me alive…

At that juncture, I stopped reading as I wept my eyeballs out. I had only read the note to one-third but I tore it without intending to read more. The little I had read had already torn my heary apart.

I began to feel inferior and depressed once more. Earlier, I had thought I wouldn’t put myself in inferiority complex. Now it was inevitable. I had begun to consider some of the things my father said. It had just dawned on me that I can’t have a normal person as a husband. Maybe I would start making love with blind Biodun as from now on so that we could end up marrying each other, I thought. It was the first time in my life I would think about love and that feeling was now towards the birthday celebrant of yesterday, 31 December, year 2000.

I began my love search at once the next day as I started moving close to the children of Mrs Omotayo so that I could show them I cared, especially Biodun the blind boy. I wished we ended marrying each other, at least to prove my father wrong. John would be shocked when Biodun and I bring our wedding invitation card to him, I thought childishly. A strong fear stared at my face when I envisaged the reply John could give:

A disabled marrying a disabled, ha! ha! ha! Perfect combination of disabled I imagined John saying that, then I sulked.

Mrs Omotayo said she had never felt so happy in life. Seeing me playing with her kids, she was glad. She wanted me to always come around them.

Mrs Omotayo had been finding it very difficult sending them to school. They were in a boarding school the year before, but she had to pull them out and bring them back home when they took ill all the time and almost died. She prefered them illiterate and alive instead of being literate and dead.

At the moment, Mrs Omotayo was on sabbatical so that she could have enough time at hand to care for her children.

Things hadn’t been smooth for her, being the only one to run around to do this and that. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any tangible help her two children could render.

Mrs Omotayo wanted to employ the service of a housemaid because she would soon be resuming work. When she told me about it, I assured her that I would do my best.

All the while, she thought I was a housemaid according to what Toyosi told her. I would have opened up to her the person I really was, but for the warning Toyosi gave me.

However, Mrs Omotayo wondered in silence how come I was a housemaid. To clear her doubt about my identity, she took a step to know a little about me. I read the note she gave me and remained ‘mute’:

Rose, I’m sorry to ask you these few questions; please it would do me a great good if you could answer me accordingly: first, I would like to know when actually you began to be a housemaid, because with the look of things you are even too young for that, considering your condition too. You look like thirteen or fourteen years to me, so how come you are in this? Did you start being a house girl at ten or eleven or when? I also want to know why and who released you to be one. Is your mother still alive? If she is, where does she live?…

I couldn’t finish the whole writeup as tears welled up in my eyes. They began to drop. Mrs Omotayo must have thought that she had hurt my feelings, going by the way she tightened herself on me and rubbed my head with her hands.

I wasn’t weeping because she asked those questions but because I couldn’t supply an answer since Toyosi had warned me against doing such. Now I knew I wasn’t free yet, opposed to my thought earlier. I had no freedom of speech yet.

Mrs Omotayo told me she needed to enroll her children back in school, but she didn’t want to enrol them in a boarding school because she didn’t want them to fall sick. She wished they could be attending a day school, but it would be difficult for them returning from school everyday, because herself would be in her workplace by the time they would be returning from school.

An idea struck my mind. I wrote it down and gave it to her. She took a glance at me when she read it.

“Will you be able?” she asked me.

“Yes I will be,” I replied her.

Then I have to seek the permission of your mistress, she wrote.

Please go ahead, I replied.

I have missed school so much and I had wished to return. A whole term had passed without me being enrolled in a school. I needed to be out there again and that was the idea I gave Mrs Omotayo my neighbour. I told her that I would be able to take care of her children; take them to school and bring them back as long as I would also be schooling together with them.

Mrs Omotayo approached my stepmother and told her about it. She did not agree to it at first, but after too much badger from my neighbour, she consented to it.

Mrs Omotayo enrolled me and her children in a school for special people. She arranged a taxi to be taking us to school and bringing us back everyday.

It was already second term but I had to begin with them like that.

Toyosi had also found something doing, therefore she wouldn’t be home every time, unlike before.

I was enrolled in Jss 1 with Laide, the lame daughter of Mrs Omotayo, while Biodun was in JSS 2. We all had our different classrooms. Biodun was in the class of the blind where they had to use Braille for reading.

Whenever we were back from school, we would stay within the compound and have fun. I began to fall in love with Biodun, not minding the fact thay there was no way we could communicate since he had no eyes to see my sign language and I also had no ears to hear his speeches. Love is blind indeed, I thought, since the love of my heart, Biodun, is blind. Having true love is not when you fall in love with people with riches or with people in perfect conditions, but when you fall in love with those who are not perfect, overlooking their imperfections.

Laide became our middleman. She would relay anything I wrote on paper for Biodun by speaking directly to him and Biodun would speak back to her, then she would write whatever Biodun said in a paper and give it back to me.

I also had my functions. I would lead Biodun around, holding his hands. Sometimes I would put my left hand around his neck to show affection but he would recoil, removing it for me. I would feel embarrased.

Are we not old enough to play love? I thought. I am already thirteen and Biodun is fourteen, so what else are we waiting for before starting a relationship? I thought childishly.

I also helped Laide push her wheelchair around the house. She loved being pushed around because it always gave her the feeling that she was walking.

However, we always came across one confrontation and that was Bode. Whenever Bode was back from school, then for sure trouble was around. Though the youngest, he would brag around us, trying to show false seniority.

Bode was just eight years, but his wicked acts seemed too much for his age. Bode would pinch Laide on her back and push Biodun out of his way. They would shed tears sometimes and curse him.

I couldn’t do anything to him because of his mother. Each time he was oppressing us, I would clench my fist as if to punch his face, but my muscles would relax again at the thought of what Toyosi could do. Toyosi could pull me out of school again, despite the fact that it wasn’t her but Mrs Omotayo that was paying my school fees.

My childish love for Biodun developed so much. I had already derived pleasure in leading him around.

I had watched the television and had learnt how to kiss in it. I was going to practise that on the love of my heart, Biodun. But each time I wanted to do it, my heart would thump for fear.

I knew what to do; I would tell him that I loved him and I wished to be his wife in the nearest future. I wondered how Laide would feel.

That particular day, I entered the toilet to pass excreta. Laide and Biodun were in their parlour because they wanted to avoid Bode who was a thorn in their flesh.

I had to rush everything I was doing so that I could go to them and have fun with them. Perfunctorily, I cleaned myself up and began to rush to their room. I met a mess–both Biodun and Laide had fallen down. I had to quickly help them up. It was an accident; Biodun fell while he was walking around in the room. He fell on Laide who was on wheelchair and both of them fell to the ground.

I couldn’t show Laide the loveletter again. I was disappointed. The loveletter was supposed to be read into Biodun’s ears, but since they were not in a good mood, I couldn’t do that again.

Biodun and Laide began to speak to themselves, weeping profusely. I couldn’t hear them but I perceived they were depressed. It seemed they were very bitter against someone, perhaps against God for not preventing them from the evil which befell them when they were still babies.

I made a signal to Laide that she should tell me what happened. She understood my hand movement so she requested a pen. I got it for her. If Laide’s left hand was also paralysed like the right one, there wouldn’t have been a way the three of us could communicate. I thought that was something to thank God about; he would always leave a space of thanks in everything.

Laide was left-handed so she had no problem writing. She passed the note to me when she was done. I began to read:

Rose, this life is too hard on us the disabled people. Why are we not able to do what able people do? Imagine, if danger arises how do we run? I have no legs, he has no eyes and you have no ears. Why? We are tired of living, Rose. Yet Bode would keep complicating issues for us by beating us up and kicking us. I and my brother wish him nothing but death. Bode would not stop at that; he would also call us names and make us go mad…

I felt their heartrending pain. I wept with them and began to write something. Laide would read it in Biodun’s ears.

My write-up was geared towards making them know that if they put their minds on something, they would do it better than the able people. At that juncture, I remembered my class-teacher and my mother who kept telling me that I was able, but I kept telling them I was not back then.

Now, I needed no one to tell me that I am able, having lived without my parents and guardian for over ten months. I had even checked Mrs Oyin in her home some weeks back but I met another family there. I got a note and asked them where she was. They told me she sold the house to them.
I left with the understanding that she had travelled to London to join her family there.

Laide read my write-up and began to frolick on her wheelchair as she read it in the ears of her elder brother, Biodun. The boy was also happy, laughing with all his strength.

My Write-up

Oh how I missed my teacher, Mrs Oyindamola. She is a honeycomb with sweetness. She is an eagle with foresight. She is an elephant with intelligence. She is a Lion with courage. She is a horse with strength. She is my mentor and my monitor; my hope and the reason why I could cope. Last year, when I didn’t stop calling myself a deaf and dumb, she told me to stop saying that. She even told me that I could hear and speak. She told me that there are too things, either everybody is deaf and dumb or everybody can hear and speak. I disagreed and asked her to show me the practicality of her argument.

My clasteacher did something funny. She invited a normal person who could speak and hear to our classroom and told us to ask him questions in our usual sign language. We began to bombard him with a lot of questions but the man appeared dumb to us because he couldn’t respond a word. He couldn’t understand us.

What is your name? Where do you live? What are you here to do? Would you like to eat something? Do you have kids? So and so went our questions but he pulled up a confused face, then we began to laugh him to scorn, pushing at ourselves as we used him to catch fun.

He is dumb! He is dumb! we signed to each other that day until the man hurried away from our presence. My classteacher then told us that being deaf and dumb doesn’t contain in the lack of using the mouth to speak alone. So far we could use other means to communicate, then we are not deaf and dumb.

So, Laide you are not lame because you could move with your wheelchair and Biodun is not blind because he could use his foresight and his inner eyes.
WE ARE ABLE!

TBC!

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