WE ARE ABLE Episode 42 – 43

WE ARE ABLE
Episode 42

I came out of our apartment and walked to Biodun’s apartment, knowing quite well that Mrs Omotayo would accept me. She had accepted me back since the day she discovered how I saved her children from death by feeding them with tea to recover them from their multiple shock—Bode’s rough-handling and the bomb blast.
I was surprised to see that they had a guest. Mrs Omotayo had travelled to the village so that she could tell the villagers the misfortune that had befallen their daughter, Taiba. She had to get someone to take care of her children in her absence.
Biodun and I had all the day to play. The nanny didn’t restrict us. She was amazed at the way we were doing. She just stood somewhere watching and laughing. I was tempted to tell Biodun what exactly I was to John, but I tried to hold it until Mrs Omotayo would be around.
Biodun’s mother returned the day after. She came with good news; Taiba was there in the village. She fled when the bomb would not stop blasting, telling everyone in the village that there was a terrible war in Lagos. So, now, it was only Bode who lost his life of everyone I knew. Maybe I would have been dead if not for the bomb blast, because I was almost going to give up in the hands of Bode and Obinna just when the first sets of bombs blasted.
I opened up to Mrs Omotayo who I really was. She was angry that I kept it that late. She wrote at length to me that we were going to fight to the end. She wanted me to take her to the court of law where my mother was judged, but I didn’t know where because when we were going there then, I was asleep throughout the journey. I was only eleven years then, so I knew little, being a homebody who hadn’t even been to places.
Mrs Omotayo was worried. She took me as her own child and I began to live with her. My father’s own apartment had been rented out for another tenant.
Biodun and I became inseparable. Mrs Omotayo noticed our sexual intimacy and called us to order. She addressed a note to me to that end:
“Rose, I have adopted you as a daughter and not as an in-law. You either choose what you want to be to my son—a lover or a sister? If a lover, then maybe you will have to step aside for him to get matured first because I wouldn’t want to see you get pregnant for him and then many complications attached. But if you are an adopted daughter of mine, you will have to live with my children like a sister and not a lover-girl. Make a choice![/i]
Indeed, Mrs Omotayo had a cogent point. I was already becoming spoilt and I could really do an undo at the moment. If Biodun wasn’t feeling any sexual urge for me, I was already feeling it, a fourteen year old girl who was introduced to freedom for the first time in her life. Perhaps, Biodun may not know as much as I knew in this kind of game because he was blind. I have seen too much on TV which he hadn’t seen for once, perhaps he must have heard too, something I haven’t had the chance to hear myself—but it is seeing that is believing and not hearing, I thought.
I wept when Mrs Omotayo said this. She was really right because my feelings for him had really gone out of hand—just using some extra effort to contain myself earlier.
I agreed to be a sister to Biodun. She spoke to him as well and in tears she agreed to be my brother. It was Laide who had all the joy in the end. We had sidelined her long ago, but now she would have two siblings and not one—Biodun and I. I would be her elder sister.
I began to attend school again after leaving it for more than a year now. My mates had become seniors to me because I had to start from JSS 1 again. I was surprised when I discovered that Bose was in JSS 3 in the new school I now attended. I knew I had just been initiated into fresh trouble because Bose would do anything to frustrate me now, putting in mind how I beat her black and blue that day I discovered that she was the one who stole my books.
My new school was a private one, founded by a philanthropist. It also had primary school and a college too, for higher learning. I shook my head when I discovered that Obinna was now in primary 3 in our school. I felt pity on him because he was not supposed to be in primary 3, but primary 6, but since he wasn’t exposed to the sign language, he would have to learn it from a lower class.
Obinna came to me and apologized for his evil deed to me. He was weeping terribly as he signed the little he knew:
“Senior Rose, I am very sorry,” he signed and wept.
I felt embarrassed. How soon was he calling me a senior? I forgave him at once.
Bose made a scapegoat out of me. She would be out near the gate to order me about. She would ask me to pick all the papers in the school vicinity. I was ashamed of myself. Bose would laugh at me and flog me with cane at the slightest provocation. She was a prefect in the junior school. First it was Bode, now it is Bose; when would I be free from all these people with ‘Bold and Bossy’ names? I thought.
My school was a day and boarding school. Bose was a boarder but I was a day student. I felt like telling my guardian that I didn’t want to go to school anymore, but how would I say so? It would make me look irresponsible before her. I decided to cope anyhow. If I could really cope with all the tortures in Toyosi and John’s hands in those days, I don’t think anything could stop me from coping with this, I thought.
Bose would call her friends to bully on me. They would call me to a private place and ask me to do some odd chores for them. Bose wanted me to clean the school toilets and at the same time sweep the floor. She wanted me to come to her place during every break time to scratch her back. That was exactly where she got it all wrong—that I was a Junior student doesn’t mean that I am a slave, I thought.
I stood before Bose as she gave me the command:
“Rose, are you deaf? I say scratch my back!” she signed, turning her back to me. She had unzipped her uniform, waiting to have my fingers on her back. She turned around at me and I signed to her that I was deaf of course:
“We are both deaf and dumb.”
“Rose, don’t you realize that I am your senior? Scratch my back before I show you my true colour,” she threatened.
“If you know you have an itchy body, why didn’t you take your bath with an iron spoon?” I spoke with audacity. I was ready for her that day.
Bose was angry. She threw her right hand forcefully at me to dish me a ‘dirty’ slap, but I gripped it tight. She was surprised that I wasn’t caught off-guard. She tried everything she could to get her hand off my grip, but no way. I twisted her hand and she went on her knee in pain. It was not all. I would not let her go unpunished for everything she had done to me, so I blew up her stomach with punches. She fell flat.
I had made history. It hadn’t for once happened in the school, a junior student beating up his or her senior. Even the junior boys dared not beat up the senior girls, but I had just breached the rules and regulations of the school. I knew what would follow but I wouldn’t care.
I was caught red-handed by a teacher passing by. She had seen the action already. Now she began to lead me to the Principal’s office as she ordered that someone else should help Bose to her feet for treatment.
The principal was mad at me when he heard it. I was asked to stool down and I obeyed.
“Rose, do you know the implication of what you have just done?” the principal signed to me.
“N-no s-sir,” I said.
“You just beat up your senior—a prefect for that matter…”
“But she was the one who…”
“Shut up!” the man shouted at me. “You shall be expelled from this—” the man stopped signing as he looked above my head and smiled. Seemed he had a guest.
A young man hugged him. The young man was his son who was in the higher institution, University of Lagos. I have heard about him but haven’t set my eyes on him since I came to the school.
The young man turned to me and then we both gaped for shock when we set eyes on each other. It was Immaculate Moses, the boy who helped me across the road over two years back!

Moses’ mouth went wow when he saw me. He demonstrated before me in sign language and I was awed. The last time we met, being the only time, he wasn’t able to do the sign.
“How is it, Rose?” he had asked. I was surprised that Moses still knew my name.
“I’m fine, sir,” I replied him. Moses’ father was very shocked to see that we knew each other. He began to speak with his son.
Moses signed to me that I should be up on my feet. At first I didn’t listen to him, fearing what his father could do to me. I got up eventually when the headmaster himself gave me the go-ahead. Moses asked me why I was involved in a fight.
“Rose, don’t you know that fighting is bad?”
“Yes I know sir,” I signed back.
“So why are you fighting—with your senior for that matter?”
“She—she…” I knew it would be a very long story.
Moses said he wanted to be alone with me because he was perceiving that I had a lot of troubles going on within me.
“Rose, I have been willing to have a heart to heart talk with you since two and half years back when we met, that was why I gave you my home address. You didn’t show up there, why?”
“I came, but…I was told you have relocated,” I responded.
“You came? Oh! Sorry!” Moses signed. “Come, let’s go.”
I was looking at his father who was not interrupting his son. I wondered what he would say if he saw me going with his son. Moses led me to a car just outside his father’s office. The Toyota Camry glistened in the early morning son. It was smooth to the core. Moses ordered me to get in. I was afraid and shy.
Bose was close by, gaping like a monkey whose banana was lost. Others, her friends, were gaping too. I plodded in, beside the driver’s seat and began to fasten my seat belt. Moses sat behind the wheel and drove off.
We pulled up in a very big restaurant. I was shy because my school uniform was still on me. People would take me for something else, seeing me in a school uniform. As we sat before a table, I saw eyes staring at me. I knew they were saying some contumelious words but since I had no functioning eardrum I didn’t hear them.
“Rose, do you know something?”
“No sir,” I replied.
“Since two and half years back that I met you, I have been feeling like I should know you better. That day, you looked very troubled. I wanted to know everything concerning you but that day was so short—we couldn’t talk at length—you know I was deaf those days…”
“Deaf? How sir?” I asked him. I thought he was making fun of me.
“Yes, I was!” Moses maintained. “I was deaf to the sign language you knew how to speak. The barrier in communication pained my heart so much that I began to learn it from my dad as soon as I got home that day. Now I can do it even better than him—I can sign the American and even the British. Can you sign the ASL too?”
“Yes sir,” I replied. “It’s quite easy.”
Moses coughed over a fist set before his mouth. Then he changed the topic:
“Rose, that day when I saw you, you were very worried. What was wrong?”
“It is a very long story,” I said. My eyes went gloomy. I was not ready to dig into those story of the old memories.
“I’m all eyes, Rose,” Moses said. “I’m not going back to the campus today, so I have all the time on earth.”
I began to tell Moses everything I could. When I ended my story, Moses was already shedding tears in sympathy.
“Rose! We must find them! We must find them!” he signed vigorously.
Moses wanted us to swing into action immediately. He paid for all our expenses and off we went.
A lady asked for Moses’ attention and he halted to speak with her. I set my face few metres ahead and saw a couple. The husband got into the driver’s seat and the wife also bent to get in. The two of them appeared familiar. I was shocked when I discovered that the woman was Toyosi but the man didn’t look like John—of course I was sure the man was not John, but he looked familiar to me.
I screamed. When Moses heard me scream, he left the lady alone and rushed to me.
“Rose! Rose! What’s the matter?”
“She’s the one!” I signed and pointed to the car which was already zooming off!
“Gush! Rose, get inside the car!” Moses signed. He was going to give them a chase.

Moses zoomed after the car, but we lost it eventually. Oh! So painful! Moses drove me back to school just when the closing hour bell rang. His father wasn’t pleased at all. He never knew we would spend the whole day out of school. Earlier, when I asked Moses if his father wouldn’t be angry with us, he assured me he wouldn’t.
“Rose, my father himself knew something is bothering you and he knows quite well that I know how to let people say their minds,” Moses had said.
I perceived the man was only angry because we spent too long outside the school.
I watched them speak in voice language. Perhaps they didn’t want me to hear what they were saying. When they were done, the principal smiled at me and signed, “Rose, for a better academic performance and a good frame of mind, we are changing your class.”

“Sir, please don’t change my class!” I screamed in sign language. “I am very sorry for everything I did.”

“Rose, you don’t need to be sorry at all because I have concluded that already…”

I looked at Moses…

The principal asked me to come with my guardian. I was scared. What actually did Moses tell him? Why was he asking me to come with my guardian? Would they report the case to her? She would be very much disappointed in me for fighting.
Whatever it would cost me, I would not tell Mrs Omotayo a thing, I thought. That day, when I got home, I just lay somewhere like a bunch of idle broom. Biodun himself didn’t know that I was around because the taxi left me behind when I was nowhere to be found, although the principal informed them that I had gone somewhere with his son.
I wondered how Biodun would feel. I hope he wasn’t nursing any kind of feeling towards me anymore. If so, he was surely going to be hurt if he heard that I went out with Moses, a son to the principal of the school. I had just passed beside him on tiptoes, yet he heard the sound of my footstep and spoke. I didn’t hear the sound of his speech. I was silent.
I found myself in Chi….’s class. As a matter of fact, I was happy being with him there. We were playing together as I taught him sign language. He smacked my head and I pushed him lightly. He must have accepted his fate. Afterall, being demoted does not kill one, I thought. I was shocked when Chi… suddenly gave me a hard knock on the head.
“What have I done wrong?” I signed to ask him, then my eyes flashed to life and I saw Biodun standing over me. He had just struck his stick against my head while he was walking to find his way to the toilet by himself—Laide had slept off in her bedroom. Sleep cleared off my face and I realized that I was only daydreaming. I got up from the rug and began to make for my room to have a proper sleep. Laide saw me and did some signs to me to ask where I was. She had just woken up too.
Biodun realized that it was me he hit on the head with the stick, perhaps Laide told him that just now. I didn’t answer them a word as I hurried to my bedroom. I was already getting fed up with life—those bad dreams never want to let me be. I gave up.

Biodun must have taken my action for malice—that I didn’t want to answer him because he struck my head with a stick, but it wasn’t the case. The threat of the principal who promised to change my class was what was really weighing me down. I tried to figure out what exactly Moses said to make him determine to change my class; maybe as a result of my immaturity in containing undeserved punishment from my supposed senior. Perhaps because Moses took me out of the school compound for too long at the detriment of my education, I pondered on. But that shouldn’t call for a grave consequence as such, I pondered.
I couldn’t sleep throughout the night. How would I feel being sent to the primary school just because I fought a senior who was actually a mate? Bose—how on earth would I admit her as my senior? Over my dead body! I snapped my fingers over my head as if my head was my dead body I was talking about.
I didn’t tell Mrs Omotayo anything about it. It would be better for her to know about it somehow by herself than for me to tell her with my own hands.
The principal greeted me with a question the following morning.
“Rose, where is your guardian I ask you to come with today?”
“She is very busy sir,” I lied. My hands shook someone, denoting that I was telling a lie.
“That’s a lie!” the man went straight to the point.
“Y-yes,” my hands stammered. “I didn’t tell her.”
The principal came close to me and looked me in the eyeballs, an impervious look though. Just then, Moses entered.
“Moses, take her to her new class immediately,” he commanded him. Moses stared at his father a little while, having no visible expression on his face too. He just held tight to my right wrist, picked up a cane with the left and led me away.
I wondered what Moses would do with the cane. Was he going to cane me? I thought he was a friend, so how come he would now thrash me with the long cane? I would have asked him what he was actually going to do to me, but I felt it would be disrespectful of me. I was only a JSS 1 girl about to be demoted while he was already in his third year in the University, studying Law. He must know how to punish someone for real, I thought, since he is a lawyer.
Moses began to lead me to my new class. I was scared that I would now be demoted, going by what I saw Moses and his father doing to each other earlier—arguing. Moses began to lead me towards the JSS 3 class, my seniors. I knew I was going to be beaten to pulp there. I made my arm strong and halted along the way. Moses kept pulling me along, just exactly the way he was doing to me two years back while taking me across the road. I wondered if he was a military man.
When Bose saw me brought amidst them, in their class, she began to babble with her hands. Her friends laughed along with her as they saw us. They were expecting Moses to command them to beat me up for beating a senior.
“Bose, come over here,” Moses called.
Bose walked majestically to the front of the classroom. She was glad seeing me. Moses asked me to lie on a desk as he handed the cane over to her. She collected it with alacrity and raised it above her head to lash me. I watched as her hand swooped down, but the cane hanged in the air. I was shocked. I raised my face to see what was happening. It was Moses. He was the one who gripped Bose by the hand, preventing her from flogging my back.
Bose and her mates were shocked. They hadn’t seen it in such fashion. They began to ask why. Moses frowned at them as he began the story:
“Bose, you deserve to be punished yourself,” Moses burst out.
“How sir?” Bose’s hands went wide agape.
“You are a very wicked fellow Bose! Rose told me all the evil you did to her while she was in your former school; how you stole her books and fought with her all the time. Rose told me that you were a bully and here you still her. You don’t deserve to be a prefect here because you are a bully and I will tell my daddy about that. He will remove you from that post before long.”
Bose was weeping.
“And from now on, Rose will be the Senior Prefect of this school.”
Moses ordered me to take my seat. I was reluctant because I felt that Moses was doing contrary to what his father had asked him to do. Moses led my by the hand to a seat belonging to someone who was not in class.
“Rose, here is your seat from now on,” Moses said. I stood before the seat but Moses forced me to be seated. I was awed, staring around me. They were looking scornfully at me.
“Do you know how much this girl has achieved?” Moses said. “Without a father and a mother, yet she won prizes in her former school, writing striking poems. Ask Bose what I meant and she will tell you,” Moses told them all. They were amazed.
Moses warned them all not to do me any harm, else they would have to face the risk of having their names expunged from the school register. I felt like a queen, but a little iota of doubt still stared at my face.
As soon as Moses stepped out of the class, I hurried after him.
“Sir, your daddy will be angry!”
“Not at all Rose, since he knows about this,” Moses assured. “I told him everything about you and he wants you commended, that is why he asked you to come with your guardian so that he could tell her that you are deemed fit for triple promotion. You’ll have to still come with her anyway—tomorrow.”
“Are you sure sir?”
“If I am not would I say it?” Moses said. “I am a lawyer and we don’t say loose things. Come with your guardian tomorrow, that’s all.” Moses hurried away.

I began to trudge back slowly to the classroom. Bose was still weeping in shame—the shame that her theft secret had been leaked to her classmates by Moses. They would soon begin to call him names such as ‘Bose the Theft Bose!’ or ‘Queen of Thieves’.
Bose buried her head on her desk and kept on weeping. I rose from my seat and began to walk to her desk. I put an arm around her back and tapped her gently with the other. She raised and face and became shocked at my sight.
“Bose, that is past tense; let’s be friends,” I signed to her and then stretched my hand before her to hold. I waited to see if she would take it or reject it.
“Bose, let’s be friends,” I used my hands once more and then stretched it before her again.

Mr Immaculate, Moses’ father was amazed at my poems and the true life story of myself I had been writing for over two years. He was in a hurry to see it published.
“This is so amazing!” he screamed. “Do you mean to say you write all these all alone?”
“Yes sir,” I humbly replied.
“Are you sure of what you are saying?”
“Yes sir, I did them all by myself.”
The man walked in slow motion to me and ran his index finger around my face, my lips, my ears, my nose. When his finger got to my forehead, he clicked it twice and turned his ear to me as if he wanted to detect the sound from there. He turned to his son and said something. They laughed.
Bose had become my best friend. We began to do everything together. She had even come around with me to the house twice. She never knew I could be better as a friend than as an enemy. Bose was the first person to edit my works. She saw her part of the story in the manuscript, but fortunately for me, I had ruled a line on it to show that it had been cancelled. How would I portray her as a bad character in my book? Afterall, she isn’t a bad girl anymore.
It was Bose herself who brought the manuscript to me and opened to those parts where her villainous characters were portrayed.
“Rose, why did you cancel out these?” she flipped the book.
“Oh! I’m sorry I wrote them there in the first place,” I apologized.
“You don’t need to be,” she said. “I want them there.”
I thought a bullet had just sunken into my skull when I heard her.
“What do you mean?”
“Leave it there as it is Rose, I want to be in there.”
“As a bad character?”
“Yes, a bad character turned to a good one,” Bose said. “Just let it be!”
“Impossible!” I shouted with my hands.
Bose was laughing. She must be very crazy.
“Never!” I said. “In fact I’m tearing off those pages.” I grabbed the book.
“You can’t!” Bose held my hands. We began to struggle. She overpowered me and got it.
Laide thought we were fighting. We had to smile to her to show that we were on top of the matter. She calmed down.
Mrs Omotayo was the first to come into the matter:
“Rose, if she says you should leave it there, then leave it there!” she communicated in sign language. In the past six months she had kept late nights learning it.
“Why ma?” I asked her.
“Do you know how many bad characters will turn over a new leaf by reading about her bad lifestyle turned good?”
She had a point, but it wasn’t enough reason for me to admit. It was the past, so Bose should not show up in my story as once bad. I would only bring in her story right from that point we become friends, I thought.
The principal knew about our friendship, myself and Bose. But he was amazed not seeing us together for almost six days. He called us to his office and asked why. I narrated the whole incident and he laughed.
“Two funny kids,” he said. “Rose, do exactly as Bose said to you,” the man supported her. “So, this is what is causing quarrel between you two?”
“Yes sir,” Bose said. “And I promised not to be her friend anymore if she doesn’t start my story in her book from the beginning.”
“I won’t!” I screamed in sign language. “Better we go separate ways than putting it in black and white for the whole world to see that my friend once steals and do all sorts of evil!”
“I want it just that way!” Bose spoke for herself. We eyed each other.
“It’s better I don’t publish that poo at all—I mean the whole book for that matter.”
“You can’t do that, Rose!” the principal said.
“Watch me sir; I’m no more interested!”
“You can’t do that, Rose. If you’re no more interested, I am!”
“But you don’t have the manuscript sir.”
“From where?”
“You of course!”
“I’ll flush it off today.”
“Don’t dare that Rose!”
“That’s what I will do sir. It’s better for me not to publish it at all!”
The principal knew I was bent on doing it. He persuaded me not to. I felt proud. How come someone who didn’t know me was now showing keen interest in my write-ups tagged nonsense by those who knew me? Hmm…would I ever forgive my father and Toyosi his miserable wife if I saw them again?
“Okay, Rose, why can’t you go ahead and publish it; all you need to do is to replace the name ‘Bose’ with another name entirely and no one would know she is the one.”
I didn’t give the principal any reply. I left his office with the mind to do my own will; perhaps I would consider his latest suggestion.
Our neighbor who was now occupying our apartment told Mrs Omotayo that someone came asking for Mr. John’s family who were once occupying her flat previously. Mrs Omotayo asked her who the guest was and she said he was the younger brother to the head of the family.
“Rose, do you know your father’s younger brother?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “He travelled to South Africa some years back. Do you see him?”
“No! He came here this morning to ask for your family!”
“What! Where is he?”
“I wasn’t at home as you know. He only delivered his message to Mrs Eunice and…”
“Ha! Uncle James! Is he back in Nigeria?”
“Wait, let me land,” Mrs Omotayo said. “Mrs. Eunice told him that your family is no more living there.”
“Gush!” I banged my hands against each other.

WE ARE ABLE
Episode 43

It pained me so much that I missed Uncle James’ visit. He should have at least left his home address, but he didn’t. I began to long for him. He was such a kindhearted man. He would be very angry at John his brother if he knew everything he did to me.
My halcyon days had returned, but a recurring thought kept on creeping into my mind to destroy my joy. It was the thought of my mother. The only way I could see her was to locate the prison first, which she was taken to, or at least the court of law from which she was sentenced. Those days I didn’t have the chance to put into memory the actual place where the court was located. All I knew was that my aunty and my class-teacher took me on a long ride to a place out of town.
I began to pray for God’s intervention. If only he could answer my request on time and wouldn’t let my mother spend too long in the cell, I would tell thousands of people my testimony, I vowed to God, expecting him to answer me just the next moment. After waiting for a week without any response, I almost began to doubt if God was really there, but then I remembered how he answered my prayer during the New Year Day of the past year and my faith was stronger.
I approached Bose concerning the advice of Moses’ father, who told me to put Bose’s true life story in my work to be published but under another name. I thought Bose would jump at the idea, but I was making a big mistake.
“So, Bose, do you agree with that?”
“Don’t even mention it Rose,” she said. “If you can’t put my name there, then forget about putting my story there,” she said.
“But I—em—it is not proper to paint you black in— ”
“Don’t let us keep arguing about this, Rose,” she said. “I have told you what I want—period!”
Moses had come close to us unawares. If we could hear sound, perhaps we would have heard the sound of his feet as he walked into the empty classroom. We sat up when we saw him.
Moses dropped the books in his hands and sat down on a chair after shifting it close to us. He smiled.
Moses had been teaching us for the past one month now. He could teach so well. He was the one who motivated us to make a move towards having the sign language added to the school curriculum of the normal people, though I was the person who gave him the idea. Moses enlightened us more on the advantages of this great move:
“If the normal people can learn the sign language as a normal language in their school curriculums at tender ages, it would become a part of them and the gap between the deaf people and the normal people would be bridged. Everyone would be able to speak in sign language with each other,” Moses said.
We agreed to pay a visit to the governor’s office to make this idea known so that it could be considered for implementation in the school curriculum of the normal people. We had decided on a date for such.
Moses tapped me, because I had been absentminded. He wanted me to watch him speak:
“Rose, Bose, why are you both fussing about with a little issue?” Moses said. We didn’t respond.
“My father told me that you said you don’t want to publish your story anymore because Bose wanted her bad past life in it. Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “How sensible is it to write her past bad behaviours when she is no more an enemy but the closest friend to me?”
“That’s the reason why you should do what I want,” Bose said. “If I am your closest friend, then do anything to please me.”
Moses laughed and asked me why I didn’t go ahead with what Bose wanted. I told him it was not good enough.
“Bose is changed, so let me only put her new life in my stories because bygone is bygone; her old lifestyle can no more reflect in my memory. I can only put it there in another person’s name as the principal your daddy advised me.”
“No!” Bose disagreed.
Moses faced me and said, “Rose, are you sure you really want to publish your story?”
“Y-yes of course!” I said.
“So, what if Mrs Toyosi and Mr. John your father show up a day to the launching of your book and beg for your forgiveness? Will you delete their own evil part of the story from the book and write only their new good part?”
I was stunned by Moses’ assumption. Even if two million angels come with Toyosi and John to beg me, I would still go ahead and publish the story without erasing their villainous characters, I thought. I didn’t know how to answer Moses. Bose was already smiling.
Re: We Are Able(a Touching Story) by Nobody: 11:45pm On Dec 08, 2014
I shook my head. Moses would make a good lawyer, I thought as I submitted to Bose’s wish.
“Okay, okay, I will leave it there,” I said and Bose was glad. I wondered why she insisted on something as defamatory as that. How would people who knew her look at her? Would they not call her a thief who stole her schoolmate’s schoolbag?
It was already a week since I prayed to my creator to show me the address of the court my mother was taken to, maybe in my dreams. I had faith that I would see it inside a vision or anything like that. I began to imagine the scene—the day I was demonstrating with my sign language in front of the audience in the court that day. I came out of my long imagination when an idea sped past my brain.
The next day I told Moses the idea.
“Sir, please can you take me in your car to my former school?”
“For what purpose?” Moses asked me.
“Although I couldn’t remember the court where my mother was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but I know I could remember a teacher who went there with us that day.”
“Who’s that?” Moses was eager.
“He is Mr. Dele. He went to the court with us that day—he was in the car with Mrs Oyin my class-teacher, myself and my aunty.”
“Great idea!” Moses was glad. “Let’s locate him immediately.
Moses told his father about it and off we went to my former school to search for Mr. Dele in my former school. When we got there, we were told that the man had left the school for quite sometimes.
“He is now in London,” a new teacher in the school said.
I was angry. Why is it that all the people who could be a source of help to me are far away abroad? I told Moses as we were walking away.
“Who are they?” Moses asked me as if he was ignorant of it.
“My aunty, my class-teacher, Mr. Dele and even my uncle, James,” I responded vigorously.
“What about God and me, are we abroad too?” Moses said to my amazement. Earlier, I thought lawyers didn’t believe in God because they are Mr. and Mrs Know-all, but when Moses mentioned God just now, I had to change my conception.
“But why hasn’t God answered my prayer?” I asked Moses. “I said that he should show me in my dream the exact location of the court of law but he didn’t show me—why?”
“Because God’s way is not our own way and his thought is not our own thought. He knows the thought that he thinks towards us—the thought of peace and not of evil to give us our expected end,” Moses said. I had read those things from my bible before but I hadn’t applied them to my life. How come Moses could quote the bible as much as he could quote the constitution too? His brain must be very complex and big to accommodate too much, I thought.
“So, what is God’s way sir?” I asked Moses.
“I don’t know,” he responded with sign language and pulled me. “Enter the car!” he spoke with his mouth and I understood him by lip-reading.
As soon as I got into the car and winded up, the teacher who attended to us earlier hurried to us and began to speak to Moses. When they had spoken to a particular length, Moses turned to me and told me what she said:
“She said that a man came to the school just last week looking for one Rose, which I believe is you; the man said that he is James, a younger brother to your father. He said he wanted to locate your new address.”
I was excited. I asked Moses if James dropped his home address with the woman. She saw my sign and responded me in sign language:
“He wrote it in a little note and gave it to me,” the woman said. “He said that in case you come here I should give it to you.” The woman began to check her handbag for the note. She kept on dancing on a spot, looking for it in her bag, but she couldn’t locate it.
“But I put it here!” she signed. For minutes we waited for her to produce something but nothing was coming forth. We had to leave without the address. It was very painful began to grow impatient. What exactly is God’s way and though about my mother’s case? I wept at a corner. It would be a bitter experience launching my book without my mother.
Moses’ father was ready to sponsor the publishing of the book. It wasn’t in print yet.
I sat outside the house with Biodun and Laide receiving fresh air when a postman arrived with a letter. My aunty would be returning to Nigeria in few weeks. I was overjoyed when I read it.

A day to the day my aunty would be arriving, something quite amazing happened. My guardian entered the house and told me I had some visitors.
“Who?” I asked eagerly.
“Come and see her,” she said and pulled me up, smiling. When I got to the door, it was an incredible sight staring at my face—Mrs. Oyindamola and her husband. My right hand slid over my face three times, but the guests remained there. I knew it was for real.
I surged forward and gave her a very tight hug. She almost got knocked down by me. Mrs Omotayo understood the whole emotion—I had told her earlier about my class-teacher who was one of the first persons that made me know that I am able. She meant the whole world to me.
Mrs. Oyindamola scrubbed my hair and then did sign language over my head. I turned my face up and caught the last word ‘mother’. I knew she was asking for my mother. I burst into tears.
Mrs. Oyindamola stepped back a bit and asked for her again. I shook and wept. She was scared, perhaps taking my tears to mean that she was dead.
“She is—” I paused and wept on. The woman swallowed her spittle and asked me critically, “What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s a long story,” I said at last. Indeed it was; trying to tell her my life story from the day my mother and I returned from Abuja would be quite a long story to tell.
Mrs Omotayo invited her in. She got in with her husband and I followed them. When I told her the whole story, she shook as if she was going to faint.
“Jesus!” she screamed with her mouth and signed it synchronously.
Mrs. Oyindamola soon got over the shock and got ready at once to get into action. She said she remembered the address of the court location very well—Agidingbi, Ikeja.
When she beamed at her watch, she banged hard at her knee. It was already late. The court would have closed for the day.
Mrs Oyindamola and her husband were to lodge in a hotel initially, but the woman begged her husband to stay in the house with us while her husband left to the hotel.
“Why did you come all the way from London?” I asked her, because it was such a surprise to me seeing her in Nigeria where they hadn’t built a house, having sold the one they had earlier.
“I could not sleep at night because I was just thinking about you and your mother. My mind kept thumping hard to see you. I could not rest, such that my husband began to get scared.”
“Since when have you been having such disturbance?” I asked her, just to confirm something.
“Over a month ago now,” she said. “I sent a letter to you to ask for your well-being and also included my home address in the letter so that you could reply my letter and tell me how you were faring. Didn’t you get the letter?”
“We didn’t get any letter?” I told her. “It was only Aunty Rachael’s own we got.”
“Rose, I’m happy that I could set my eyes on you again,” she said happily as she began to yawn. She was very tired.
I looked at her as she laid her back on the bed in the visitor’s room. I smiled as I remembered Moses’ statement that day—‘God’s way is not our own way and his thought is not our own thought. He knows the thought that he thinks towards us—the thought of peace and not of evil to give us our expected end’. My expectation was to get a way of getting to the court of law through which we could locate the prison, but now more than my expectation is here. I estimated the time she said she began to have that feeling of coming to see me in Nigeria and found out that it was around the time I prayed to God to show me the address of the court of law through a vision. My prayer is definitely answered in another dimension, I thought.
In the morning the next day, Mrs Oyindamola went to her husband after calling her with a device which I later knew to be cellular—it was strange to me, since I hadn’t seen it before—a wireless telephone. The ones I had seen were landlines and not mobile one, though I hadn’t used any and I would never use any, since my ears wouldn’t pick a sound from the earpiece and my mouth wouldn’t be able to voice out words into it.
Mrs Oyin returned to our house and then we began to get ready to visit the court. Just then, Rachael my aunty came to the house with her husband. I hardly recognized her.

My aunty’s appearance had changed so much. Her flesh had grown too smooth and thick and some traceries lined her plump neck as a folded flesh sat beneath her lower jaw. She looked gorgeous in her attire, a shiny goggle on her face. She was almost forgetting the sign language.
“Where is my sister?” she signed slowly to me. “I was having bad dreams about her.”
“It is a long story,” I said as tears took over my eyes. She was stunned when I finished narrating the story to her.
Without any further ado, we set out for the court, myself, Mrs Oyindamola, Mrs Omotayo and my aunty. I wished Moses was with us, but it was an emergency. We met a Justice there and he telephoned the actual Justice we were looking for—the one who judged the case that day. He promised he would be with us in few minutes, but it took eternity before he showed up. He didn’t even apologize. My aunty and my class-teacher presented the matter and the Judge was surprised.
“She should have been released since last year!” the man said and my aunty signed it to me. She still remembered to be kind as usual. Back in those days, she would always sign every voice language to me as they come. She wouldn’t even wait for us to get home before doing that.
“Do you mean that that woman in question released her mother for a moment and sent her back there?” the Judge said, pointing at me.
“Yes sir,” Mrs Oyindamola replied.
“That is not possible!” the man said harshly.
“Toyosi did!”
“Evidence!” the judge asked. My aunty asked me to present the long note addressed to me three years back by Toyosi and I did. It was the note into which Toyosi wrote the exact place she took my mother to after the Abuja trip. The judge read it and was stunned.
“I am very busy today—and…it’s late already,” he said. “I will go with you to the prison tomorrow to confirm this.”
The crossover to the next day seemed like eternity—my eyes were wide open all through the night. My aunty and her husband had to put up with our neighbor, Mrs Eunice who was very accommodating, while Mrs. Oyin stayed with us again. I thought I was the only one who couldn’t sleep until I saw Mrs Oyindamola sitting down on her bed and clicking the floor with her toes. I knew my aunty would be feeling same way too.
I had a nightmare, just when sleep knocked me off my consciousness. The dream was indeed terrible—my mother was having the noose on her neck and was going to be hanged. It appeared as if she was swapped for an inmate who had a ‘death by hanging’ sentence. I woke up and screamed. Everyone rushed into my room—even those in the other apartment rushed in.
“What is the matter, Rose?” they kept asking me. I was too shocked to speak. When I spoke eventually, my aunty began to bind and loose. She was still on her high spirituality.
“Rose, I have cancelled the dream, just go back to bed,” she told me confidently and smiled.
Moses joined us the next day, but Mrs. Omotayo had to get back to her workplace. My aunty had rained showers of praises and prayers upon her for taking good care of me. She also confessed that she didn’t have rest of mind since a month and half ago when she started to think of her sister—my mother. She said she had sent some letters in the past, putting her home address abroad there so that we could reply the letter and indeed she got replies for them all. While we were in the car, going to the court just now, my aunty showed us one of the letters of reply she got from my mother:
Dear Rachael,
I got your letter. Did you see the one I sent to you earlier? As I said before, we are all fine here. Rose is doing very fine right now and she is now a very big girl. She received scholarships and double promotion and John is now happy with us. As I speak, I am in Abuja with John and Rose. He will send Rose abroad soon to continue her education. That woman, Toyosi, has finally returned to her husband after setting me free from the prison. In case you come to Nigeria at any time, don’t check us in that house anymore because we have packed permanently to Abuja. I will forward the address to you later.
Take good care of yourself my sweet sister.
Your Sister,
Hannah.
I was shocked. So, Toyosi had been sending false letters to my aunty all the while. I compared the letter with the handwritings in the notes she gave to me and there was no difference. She is indeed a criminal, I thought.
“But here, she said that we have relocated, so why did you still check us here, or did you first go to Abuja?” I asked her.
“We have no choice than to come here first because she didn’t send the address of the purported Abuja residence.”
Soon, we got to the court. Moses took pleasure in communicating with the Judge and the choleric man began to pick interest in us. The day before, he was frowning throughout, but now he was brandishing his teeth in deep smiles. He loved the way Moses was speaking intelligently as if he was already a professional lawyer. Truly, they were speaking the language they both enjoyed—the language of the jury.
We set out for the prison where my mother was detained and to our shock she was not there. Is my dream already a reality? I thought. We were all afraid!

*******TO BE CONTINUED*******

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