when my father
returned with some police with Toyosi.
They loosed
my mother and replaced the rope on her
hands with
handcuffs.
I screamed. No one paid attention to me.
John pushed
me out of the way. My mother was led
away despite all
the gesticulation she was making.
Rachael my aunt came to time. She was
shocked when
she saw my mother on handcuffs. Her
head gear
toppled over and fell on the table in the
sitting room.
She put her hands on her head.
What was the count charge against
mother? Who would
let me know? My father began to point at
my face. His
face was coarse. He must have been
shouting, going
by his Adam apple which was bouncing
up and down in
his jugular.
My aunt held me by my right wrist and
began to pull me
out of the house. It was as if my father
had instructed
her to take me with her. I weep when I
saw my mother
being sandwiched into the police peacock
van.
“What happened?” I asked my aunt.
“Let’s get home first,” she said.
As soon as we arrived Aunty Rachael’s
home, she
changed her clothes and got prepared to
go out.
“Where are you going aunty?”
“To the police station,” she said.
“Aunty, what’s my mummy’s offence?” I
asked.
“Wait for me to return,” she said and
began to hurry
away.
I folded my arms. My eyes had seen too
much already.
To die is better than to live. If only I have
my life in
control I would rather have taken it.
Tears poured out of my eyes; maybe
blood I didn’t
know. I wiped my tears with the back of
my left hand. I
felt lonely.
It was getting to 11am before my aunt
returned.
“Welcome,” I said in haste. “What about
mum?”
“She’s–she’s there…” my aunt said and
burst in tears.
“Rose, tell me…tell me…what really
happened?”
I narrated the whole event.
“It’s your fault, Rose, yourself and your
mother’s fault.
I–I told you Toyosi is dangerous, you
didn’t listen to
me…”
Rachael patted me on the back. She told
me exactly
what the charge against my mother was.
“Rose, do you know what really
happened? Your father
charged your mother for attempted
murder.”
“What!” I screamed.
Rachael told the story to detail: Bode
saw a woman
sitting beside a herbalist and moving her
hands over a
calabash of water. He said that the
woman he saw was
your mother. His own image was inside
the water they
were looking at. Bode woke up and
rushed to meet his
father in fright.
“Hmm,” I sighed with my hands when my
aunt ended
the story. “Aunty, that woman Bode saw
is his own
mother, not mine.”
“But who in this world will believe that?”
Rachael
replied me. “It was your mother and
yourself they
heard your voices in the night calling
Bode’s name;
when your mother made use of sign
language to call
Bode to death in the spiritual, the boy
didn’t respond
because he is ignorant of the sign, so
you resorted into
calling his name in the physical!”
“Aunty!” I shouted in sign language. “Do
you believe
that?” I was in great shock. My mouth
remained open
wide as I expected a response from my
aunt.
She burst into tears and arched her back.
She grabbed
me and folded me in her bossom. My
head was right
below her bony chin. Her long hair
carressed my unclad
shoulders. Her tears fell in drops and
then in excess on
my body. They were cold. She
disentangled. I knew she
was about to use the sign language–the
British sign
language:
“I don’t believe every bit of their story,
Rose, but no
one else wouldn’t believe it; indeed Bode
had the
dream because he fled to his daddy’s
bedside: your
mummy wasn’t beside your daddy at that
dead of the
night, where was she?”
“Em–em, she was beside me on my own
bed,” I said.
“And what were you both doing in Bode’s
room in the
dead night? They said your mother
wanted to kill me
physically when he didn’t die spiritually,
that was why
you were in his room. They said you
didn’t find him and
then resorted into searching his room,
perhaps he was
hiding somewhere in the corner of the
room–so you
scattered his bed, his wardrobe and
everything in there
in desperation.”
I sobbed. I didn’t seem to see a way out
of this.
“And lastly, your father said he found
your mother
carrying a calabash. Rose, what’s that
for?”
“We found it there,” I said.
“Did you people do all these things at
all? Why did you
go scattering Bode’s room?”
“It was true we were looking for Bode,
just because of
the dream I had; it was the same dream
Bode claimed
he saw, but it is a blatant lie that it was
my mother who
did the sign language in it; rather it is
Bode’s mother,
Toyosi.”
“Toyosi?” How? Why would she be calling
her son’s
name?” she asked.
“Yes she’s the one. She was asking me to
tell her my
name in sign language; I told her Bode’s
name instead,
remembering that you have asked me not
to tell her my
name if she asked. Then she was calling
her son’s
name in the dream unknowingly.”
“Hmm. Now I understand, my aunty
said.”
We were silent for some minutes.
“So what next?” I asked.
“Your mother would be charged to court
for attempted
murder next week.”
I screamed and fell to the floor.
To be continued
