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.
To be continued
