took me along
with her after the court case. My hobby
became crying.
I couldn’t do without it.
Rachael asked me to stop thinking about
my mother.
She told me that my mother would just
be fine.
“I can’t live without her!” I said. “Let me
go and live
with her in the prison.”
“You can’t go there, Rose. You can’t!”
Rachael told me.
“God will see us through.”
When my aunt mentioned ‘God’ I frowned.
What was
God looking at when my mother was
incarcerated? Was
he sleeping or what? I need not ask my
aunt those
questions thumping hard at my heart,
else an endless
sermon would begin, taking me through
Genesis to
Revelation.
My aunty loved to take advantage of any
little situation
to share her gospel message. I don’t
know if Jesus was
paying her salary for that. There wasn’t
anyone I
haven’t challenged with questions that
seemed bigger
than my age. Everyone I directed my
questions to,
except her, hadn’t been able to supply
any tangible
answers. But I dare not ask her any
question, else she
would do Job’s life story into my eyes
again.
I wiped my tears and sat up to ‘hear’ my
aunty speak.
“Rose, I was in your class teacher’s home
yesterday.”
“How’s she?”
“She was fine.”
“Did you tell her about mother?”
“Yes I did,” I said. “She was mad at
Toyosi.”
“Was she there with you?”
“No, Rose, but Mrs Oyin was asking for
her home
address. She said she was going to fight
her in her
home. She asked me to give her Toyosi’s
home
address.”
“And you gave her, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t!” my aunty said. “She was going
to go to
Toyosi’s house to fight her.”
“You should have given it to her!” I said
in annoyance.
“Why didn’t you…?”
“Do I know Toyosi’s home to start with?
And even if I
knew, I wouldn’t allow somebody to go
and foment
trouble in another person’s matrimonial
home.”
“But…but Toyosi did that in our own
home!” I began to
sob. The event of that gloomy night had
set over my
face–that night mum and I were in that
dark room. I had
even composed a poem of sorrow
concerning that. I
‘sang’ it whenever my aunt was not with
me.
Beside me sat a gaze
Her hands tied with rope
Then tears down my face
There seemed not a hope.
What could she rather say?
How would I hear her speak?
I knew I could write poems but I haven’t
put my pen to
paper at any time to give it a try. Now I
just had to do it
because it seemed to be the only thing
that was
cooling off my tension.
I spent time standing in front of the
mirror,
demonstrating it.
My aunt tapped me suddenly.
“Rose, Mrs Oyin would be here tomorrow
morning,”
said my aunt.
“To see me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “And to also come and
get you ready
for your graduation ceremony next
month, August.”
I fumed. I didn’t want to here anything
concerning that
graduation. How would I be having a
graduation
ceremony without my mother’s presence?
“I don’t want to be there?” I replied her.
“Why, Rose?” my aunt said and came
close to me.
“Rose, you have to be there. Okay why
don’t you want
to attend your own graduation
ceremony?”
“Because my mom isn’t going to be
there,” I replied.
She scrubbed my hair as if I was a baby.
She began to
scratch something out of the centre of
my head with
her index finger.
“What’s that?” I asked her. She stopped
scratching and
said, “A white substance, Rose. What’s
that?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. Immediately my
aunt had
begun to bind and loose again. She
wasn’t expressing it
with sign language anyway. When she
was done with
her exercise, I asked, “What was that?
Why were you
dancing like that?”
“You called that dance?” she said.
“Anyway, it is not
dance. I was praying for you. You know,
that white
thing, who knows how it got on your
head? Toyosi your
stepmother could have done something
terrible.”
“It’s not any Toyosi,” I said. I have just
remembered
something; I was playing with chalk
earlier. “I was
playing with chalk.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” she began to laugh. I
joined her in it. It
was the first time I would laugh since my
mother was
imprisoned.
Mrs Oyin came to my aunt’s place as
promised. She
assured me that my mother wouldn’t
suffer long in the
prison.
“We are going to appeal it,” she said.
“Appeal?” my aunt said. “Will it work?”
she was just
skeptical about it.
“It should,” she said.
“I just believe that there is nothing prayer
cannot do,”
she said. “Let’s just commit everything
into the hand of
God through fasting and prayer. He will
do it.”
My teacher put out an angry face. The
next ten minutes
was a silent moment for me but a rowdy
one for them.
They had thrown the sign language
behind them and
now it seemed they were shouting at
each other. I
watched them opening their mouths in
rage. I knew
what was going on; my aunt wanted
everything settled
divinely but my class teacher was not
supporting such
idea.
After they had argued it out between
themselves, they
turned to me again with a smile. I had
shut my eyes so
I wouldn’t ‘hear’ them.
To be continued
