WE ARE ABLE Episode 6 by SammyHoe
Daddy didn’t pay attention to us for one week. Mrs. Oyin accommodates us throughout those times. Every evening we will go to our house to beg him, but he is adamant.
However, he allowed me to enter the house and pick all my clothes, including my school uniform. Bode sticks out his tongue at me, mocking me.
We left the house again on the seventh day, but only Mrs Oyin returned to speak to him. He agrees to take us in.
— — — — — — —
Bode didn’t stop to offend me. But I did all I can do to avoid having
trouble with him. At an instance, Bode slaps me. It is a big shock for
me. Nobody has ever slapped me and go scot free before. Even Bose, the
big girl everybody fears in school, is not up to my standard. I can
remember the day I beat her and poured sand in her mouth.
Bode is four years younger than me, yet he will not respect his senior. He is becoming very pompous, maybe because Daddy is overprotecting him.
Bode is too dull for my liking. His exercise books are painted all over with zeros. Maybe he is having that dullness in common with his mother, because as for me, I am not dull in school, meaning that my parents are not dull too. But if it works that way, why then am I deaf and dumb when both of my parents are normal? That is a question for my science teacher.
It has been better if Bode’s pomposity is all the pain my mother has to cope with. Toyosi his mother always come to check on him every weekend. Bode will tell lies to her about me and the woman will begin to blab and threaten me. She says that if anything bad happens to her son, then I should count myself dead.
It’s like daddy still likes Toyosi a lot. Anytime she comes around, daddy will take her to his room and lock the door. Then they will send my mummy out of the room. They must have been having extramarital affair.
One day I ask my mummy to divorce daddy, but she refused.
“Rose, I can’t do that,” she says. “God doesn’t like divorce.”
“If God doesn’t like divorce then why can’t he also prevent things that can lead to divorce?” I grumble over my nose.
“Don’t say so, Rose!” mummy shuns me. My eyes are wet already. I am going to shed tears. She comes around me and put her arms around my neck. Her long hair falls on my nape. She doesn’t like seeing me in tears. “Rose, in the end we shall overcome,” she says eventually.
I advise my mummy to trace Toyosi to her husband’s house and reveal the secret once and for all, but she waves away the idea. Instead, she picks up that boring song again ‘We Shall Overcome’.
My Common Entrance Examination will soon be here, but daddy refuses to get past questions and answers series for me. Mummy tries her best and gets them for me.
My school is Ejigbo Standard School. It is both for the normal people and the special ones. Since the day I make that resolution that I will be calm, I haven’t fought anybody. I didn’t even talk to anyone let alone quarrelling with them and this again becomes my classteacher’s headache. She will call me into her office and ask me why my name doesn’t make the name of noisemaker list anymore.
“But you have told me to cease from making noise many times, and now I’m doing that, what again?” I say.
Mrs Oyin keeps quiet. She doesn’t know what to say any more.
… … … … … … …
One day, I iron my white cloth as I get prepared for school. That particular morning, I wake up happy. I don’t know why. Mother notices it before she leaves for work. Now I go to school myself because I am twelve. I am the one to take Bode to school as usual. His own school is just a stone throw from our house, but I have been mandated to take him there before going to my own school.
Bode has been yawning since the time mummy wakes him up to take his bath. The last time I check on him, he just got into the bathroom. I didn’t want to be late because I am the Time Keeper of my school. Sometimes whenever I ring the bell it looks funny to me because I can’t hear the sound of what I am ringing. But I have come to learn something: the blind cannot become a time keeper because they don’t have eyes to check the time. Yet, they are always the first set of people to come out of their classes at the sound of the bell, touching the walls for guidance and support. It’s like the walls themselves are useful. Nothing in the world is a waste Mrs Oyin will tell us many times, just to make us know that WE ARE ABLE.
As a Time Keeper, I am supposed to be in school early, but this morning I haven’t seen the possiblity; not when Bode hasn’t taken his bath not to talk of eating his food, yet it is 7:24am already. It is obvious I will be late to school this time around. I can’t really remember the last time I go late to school.
I leave my cloth to check on Bode if he has finished taken his bath, to my surprise he is not in the bathroom. I check the toilet to see if he is there. No, he is not there. I resign and return to the table where I am ironing my cloth, to my surprise, the cloth has been soaked up with red oil.
I raise the cloth up. Tears flow down my cheek when I see that my cloth has been burnt up with iron. I did put off the pressing iron when I went to look for Bode, so how come my cloth is now burnt up?
Bode crawls out from under the table, laughing. He gives me a note and runs away. I read it:
I don’t want to go to school today
I become mad. Is it because he didn’t want me to take him to school that he has to burn and stain my cloth? I am enraged within me. I sit quietly and fold my hands.
Bode comes and sticks his tongue at me as usual. He is taking my silence for cowardice. He should have gone to my school a year ago to ask them my name: Rose The Tiger. Even Bose the Big Boss cannot face me let alone this small Bode.
Bode
spreads his ten fingers at me. I hardly joke with my mother. How can he
be cursing my mother? Okay, what has my mummy got to do in this matter?
The tiger in me begins to form when I see those dirty fingers. His cup
is full. It is time to teach him a lesson.
No, I think. I have
resolved in my mind that I will be gentle a year back and I have endured
for that long, so let me not fight back.
Bode seems to be in the mood today. He wants to get me angry by all means. He comes behind me and taps my nape. Kpash! It sounds like thunderbolt. I become mad at him.
I raise Bode high up by the neck. The rest is a story. He falls down. Dead? Still alive? I can’t tell.
“Ah!” my brain speaks. “I have killed somebody.”
My class teacher rushes in. It is 9am already. She was very shocked when she saw Bode lying on the floor.
“What happened, Rose?” she asks me.
“I–I have k–killed him,” I tell her.
“How? What did you do to him?”
“I held his neck tight,” I say.
I explain the whole thing to my teacher. She carried him to the hospital immediately. I followed her there, shaking like a leaf.
This Bode must be an ‘ogbanje’, I think. How can he die because of that little squeezing of his neck? Have I not done something similar to Bose a female counterpart for that matter and she didn’t die?
I sit at the waiting room expecting to hear the doctor’s verdict. If Bode is dead, then I’d rather die too, else my daddy will kill me by himself. I have seen it in films how people kill themselves. They call it suicide. Maybe that is what I will also do, I ponder. God will understand.
My teacher tells me that Bode has regained consciousness. He has been diagnosed for asthma.
“Asthma?” I say. I become scared. “Did I cause it?”
“No you didn’t Rose,” she says. “You only triggered it when you choked him; it is good this happened, else the boy would keep living with it without knowing.”
I look at my teacher’s face on and on. How did she know that something was happening in my home for her to have rushed down there at the nick of time? Maybe it’s because I didn’t ring the bell in school when I should. I ask her, “Ma, why did you rush down to my home like that?”
She smile and says, “God told me to do so. Actually, I couldn’t rest in my spirit when I didn’t see you in school on time, so I decided to check on you.”
“I thought as much,” I reply.
Daddy comes around after work. My teacher must have explained what happened to him. The look on his face is as if he should tear me apart for almost killing his son. I fear what Toyosi will do if she learns about it.
My mother also calls at the hospital. This time, she speaks harshly to me.
“Rose, do you want to kill somebody?”
“I am sorry mother,” I plead.
“Shut up!” she signalled harshly to me. I weep. This time around she didn’t console me and I understand why; I am a threat to her matrimonial home, I think.
When mummy and I returned home after Bode was discharged, we met our loads outside the house. Daddy is kicking us out again.
We have to put up in my aunty’s place for weeks. Toyosi even came to the place to insult us. She hit my mother on the face with the pointed part of her stiletto.
“You want to kill my child for me? I swear, what I will do for you, you shall both regret it. I will blow whistle with your nostrils, you wicked nuisance. Ah! In my life shall I live to enjoy the fruit of my womb but I swear that deaf mute idol you are calling your daughter will die soon, as glory be to God! Call me bastard if it doesn’t happen!”
My aunty was angry. She rushes to confront her, but my weeping mother didn’t allow her do that. The sight is unbearable to me. I run down the staircase and roll over accidentally.
The woman stands over me and claps her hands over my head:
“Good! This is just the beginning for you. Call me bastard if I, Toyosi the daughter of Balogun, don’t ruin your family!”
I didn’t have much injury when I fell. I get up and my aunt comes around me to pick me up. She so much loves me such that she has mastered the sign language too. She is even the one who tells me everything Bode’s mother was yelling about.
“Rose, just be who you are. Don’t fear, she can’t do anything to hurt you,” my aunty assures me afterwards.
Mummy says it is time to divorce my daddy as I have advised her earlier. It seems okay by me, at least it will help me to steer clear of trouble every now and then.
*******TO BE CONTINUED*******
