WE ARE ABLE Episode 4 & 5
SammyHoe
Mother was discharged after two weeks. Her right hand is bandaged and attached to her neck so that her bones can heal up fast. She has her right leg in POP. Now I feel the real meaning of being deaf and dumb. I have to be at home to take care of her, but home was hell to me. No one to communicate with me.
Mother watches me as I do my sign language before her face. She can only shake her head vertically or horizontally to either concur with me or disagree to any matter I raise. Now I have to endure the true meaning of suspense: if you ask me, I can’t understand what really transpires between daddy, mummy and the other woman in question, but it seems mummy now knows all because I see daddy talking to her at length. She weeps endlessly and her face swells when father speaks then.
My teachers have come to pay my mother a visit when they discover my absence in school. Mrs Oyin, my classteacher comes around and rapports with my mother. She then tells her the whole story:
John, my father, begins to deal in extra marital affair when I was three–then it has just been confirmed that I am completely deaf and dumb. John needs an able child desperately then, such that he has to spread his tentacles to a woman whom I will refer to as a prostitute; her name is Toyosi.
Daddy so much keeps his affair away from my poor mother such that she didn’t suspect that he is doing such a thing. It seems that Toyosi in question is a young teenager who is not through with her secondary school education then. She gets pregnant and daddy asks her to abort her pregnancy because my mum was also having her second pregnancy by then also (mummy’s pregnancy was not successful).
That’s the end of their affair–Toyosi disappears without the knowledge of my father. He can’t tell if she has aborted the pregnancy or not. Things goes on normally for my daddy until Toyosi shows up in his life again two weeks back–the day we find them kissing each other.
Toyosi, whom I have only seen once, is a light-skinned, wide browed pretty lady in her twenties. Going by my teacher’s narration of the story, she should be about twenty-five years now, because she tells me that Toyosi gets pregnant when she was in J.S.S 3.
Toyosi has a lionesslike waist and the hair on her head that only day I see her makes her take the form of a lady in a beauty contest. Her teeth are spaced at the centre to add to her pulchritude. Her purplish-brown tinted eyelashes must have been artificially brushened up to exude such lustrous appearance. To call a spade a spade, Toyosi looks angelic (or maybe I should say demonic) in her make-ups.
The cleavages she reveals alone could have made my father go lusting for her again. Her miniskirt is what I would refer to as a minipant if there is anything like that. But why is my father so bold as to rough-handling his real wife because of a mere outlandish appendage as her? She is supposed to be punished under the law for her act, but she is spared. That is even too much for her, let alone treading the path of my mother, coming into her matrimonial home and kissing my dad with those red lips of hers.
My teacher doesn’t want to hide anything from me regarding the matter despite the fact that it can be very bitter.
“You see, Rose, you have to be a strong lady and take heart. How old are you now?” Mrs Oyin signals to me.
“Eleven,” I signal back and protrudes my lips in dissatisfaction.
“Good! You are already mature–puberty, everything,” she says and sighs at my bust as if she is just discovering the development on me. “Rose, your mother doesn’t want me to hide anything from you as regards that matter.”
“Which matter?” I ask.
“That matter now; that woman you see with your daddy, ehn, that woman.”
“Okay, go on ma, I’m all eyes,” I say. She smiles. She must have been
wondering how I come about some idioms let alone using it to suit my
taste.
‘I am all ears’ is what I turn around to ‘I am all eyes’.
“So, Rose this is what actually happened: your daddy went into extramarital affair eight years back for reasons best known to him…”
That reason is best known to me than John himself, I think. Then I am just three, that year it is confirmed that my eardrums weren’t in place at all. So dad must have gone into the extramarital relationship because of me.
“Your daddy impregnates T-o-y-o-s-i, a Yoruba girl from…” she pauses as she sees me trying to spell out the name with my hands since such name hasn’t been in my vocabulary of words earlier.
“Toy? Is she a toy?” I ask strangely. Mrs Oyin signals the name to me again; there is no break between the letters when she is spelling the name, so she is not Mrs Toy Osi as I have thought earlier, but Toyosi is just a single name.
Something about me is that I am too outspoken. Maybe God knows that I will turn out to be a parrot if he has created me with a mouth that can talk that is why he didn’t do that. Well…I am still waiting to hear either my mother or my teacher tell me the gain of being disabled since they have both said that there are gains in it.
“Rose, listen, Rose,” my teacher says after pulling me to see her speak. I was looking away earlier. “When your father impregnates Toyosi, he gave her money to terminate her pregnancy because your mother was also pregnant at that time. Toyosi collected the money and since then your father didn’t know her whereabout until last two weeks when she showed up in your home as you can see.”
“Did I hear you say my mother was pregnant?” I ask her at once.
“Yes, she was pregnant at that time,” she nods in affirmation.
“Where is my sibling then?” I ask.
“A stillborn, Rose. It was dead at birth.”
I am ‘mute’. So I should have had a brother, a younger brother, I thought and shook my head in self-pity.
“Ahh!” I yell as if a big bedbug has just punctured my skin. “So I should have had a brother or sister!” I intensified my response to show my utmost displeasure.
“Yes Rose, you should have had a brother,” she says. “Well… goodnews Rose, now you have a brother,” she smiles. “And your brother will be here any moment from now,” she adds.
“A ghost brother? Stillbirth?” I am horrified.
“No, no, no, Rose. Your brother will be here any moment from now–your brother from another mother, Bode by name.”
“What! Who is Bode?” I ask and shout with my useless mouth.
“Bode is Toyosi’s son she had for your daddy. He would be here soon to live with you. He’s only seven years, Rose, so take care of him very well when he comes. Don’t fight him at all. You are from the same father, so please take good care of him.”
My head begins to knock like a car engine as sweat covered me up. I begin to envisage the beginning of torture for myself and my mother. That Toyosi in question, a second wife? Yes, this is the beginning of torment for myself and my mother, I think.
I leave my teacher in the parlour and go straight into my mother’s room. She is sitting on a wheelchair, being confined to such since the day she was pushed by my daddy.
“Mummy is it true?” I ask with utmost seriousness written on my face.
She shook her head in affirmation, weeping.
“Aargh!” I scream in sign language.
WE ARE ABLE by SammyHoe
Episode 5
I feel a bit relieved when I learn that Toyosi herself isn’t going to be staying with us. Only her son will be staying.
Toyosi has just met with a man she will marry but she isn’t going to let that man know that she has a child, that is why she wants to return Bode to his father.
With the knowledge I have, my father begs her that she should stay with him. Mother says she eavesdrops on them and hear them speak.
My father kneels down before her, begging her to be his wife; he is even ready to throw my mother and I out for her sake.
“Toyosi, please come home. This place is a hell to me. Please stay with me, Toyosi,” John laments.
“You have a wife already,” says Toyosi. “I can’t be a second wife; I mean it’s too early for me to get into rivalry with another wife. Please let me just leave Bode here. Joseph is my husband. He loves me a lot,” Toyosi says.
“Listen Toyosi, I quite understand you, okay. If you don’t want to be a second wife, that’s right. I can drive Hannah and her useless good-for-nothing child out of the house immediately…”
Good-for-nothing! If only my mum tells me that immediately my dad says it, I would have taken it hard with him. Maybe God doesn’t want me to go wild, that’s why. I only hear that few days back after my mother has recovered. She says she eavedrops to hear that.
Well, ‘Good-for-nothing’ is what I am afterall. Dad hasn’t told any lie. When Bode comes to the house and discovers I am deaf mute and my mother is on a wheel chair, the boy runs back and holds his mother tight, saying, “Is this where you want me to stay, aunty? I can’t stay in the house where everybody is disabled.”
“Ssh! Bode, shut up! At least your daddy is not disabled,” Toyosi says and blinks her eyes.
“But aunty, why can’t you be staying here with us? So that that woman on wheelchair will not ill-treat me.”
“She dare not,” says Toyosi to my mother’s face. “If she will do that to you my son, then it had been better for her not to be able to get up from that wheelchair forever.”
When mother shares the experience with me, I wept sore and began to hate little Bode and his mother. How could they say such a thing? I will teach him a lesson of his life. Bode must be mute like myself too, I think.
I put a knife on fire and pour some red oil. I will put that knife down his throat. He will lose his voice.
Bode has finished eating. He is fond of making fun of me. He has even plucked a leaf and put it inside his mouth to mock me. Then he writes something down in a paper and tucks it inside my hand. I read:
You are as deaf as a goat
Am I the one this small boy is calling a herbivore? I think. The boy laughs and runs about when I wanted to catch him to deal with him. I wonder who teaches this boy to be so heartless. Despite how my mother cares for him, he still does this to me. Why?
Bode soon return when his eyes are heavy with sleep. He falls on the bed and off he goes. I make sure he is fast asleep and ties him firmly to the bed. Then I put a knife on fire and pour red oil on the hot knife.
I will teach Bode what it means to be permanently speechless in life. Perhaps he doesn’t know that the most painful thing in life is the inability to express yourself as you wish. That is why people always complain that the deaf and dumb people are the most rebellious, because we get angry when we are very much pushed to the wall because of our inability to speak out our mind.
I am going to teach Bode that I am even more terrible than a stammerer. How can anybody encroach on our right and go scot-free? I should have done this thing earlier. Why did I delay up to this time? This is not the first time Bode will be ridiculing me by putting a leaf in his mouth. I have signalled to him several times to stop that but he won’t. Now he will have to bid his vocal cord a goodbye.
I sit at the edge of the bed and then stretches my body towards Bode who is fast asleep. I wouldn’t know if he is snoring because I can’t hear a thing. I hold the hot knife close to his face. Nothing is going to stop me from dipping it inside his throat.
I can’t do it. I begin to weep. No! This is not happening. This is not me. How dare me? My hand shakes. I begin to retreat.
Bode’s eyes flashed open. He was terrified. I see the movement of his mouth. He must have shouted, “Murderer!”
Bode shakes the bed vigorously. I cut the rope with the hot knife and the boy flees in horror. He didn’t return until father arrives.
My father becomes enraged. He beat me black and blue. I’m done for it.
Father locks me out of the home. Mother herself isn’t allowed to come inside. He accuses my mum of bringing a bastard to his home and calling her a child. That is me daddy is calling a bastard.
That day we have to pull over in Mrs. Oyin’s house. The woman becomes disappointed in me.
“Rose, how many times have I warned you to always behave gentle? You are mature for christ sake! Take a look at your bre*ast, Rose. You are a big girl.”
I couldn’t say anything. I just keep weeping. I know my mother doesn’t deserve to be locked outside her matrimonial home. I feel very guilty.
“Rose, why did you want to kill your brother? He is your brother, no matter what? And you raised a knife to his neck to cut off his neck? Rose, Haba!” Mrs Oyin speaks on. I have no strength to raise a finger, let alone my two hands to speak. I am not in the mood to say a word.
“Do you remember what happened to Cain when he killed Abel his brother in the bible? Rose, don’t you ever be pushed by anger to do evil in life, because the result of such doing will remain a stigma forever in your life…”
That is all my eyes could grab and send to my brain for interpretation: don’t you ever be pushed by anger to do evil in life, because the result of such doing will remain a stigma forever in your life.
I resolve to be calm, no matter the situation. I didn’t gesture it out for them to see, but in my mind I have made the decision not to bother myself over offenders. I will never raise my little fingers, let alone my hands, to fight back anymore. I will be calm like a peaceful river.
“Mrs John, we shall return to beg her father to take you back very early tomorrow morning,” says my classteacher.
“Thanks so much Mrs Oyin. We are grateful,” my mother says. I wonder why she doesn’t blame me for whatever happens. Is she a caring mother or she is just in the process of spoiling me?
*******TO BE CONTINUED*******
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