My father rose up suddenly and began to laugh. He was saying something as he dipped his right
hand into the pocket of his boxers and produced a note. He pointed at my horrified face and kept
laughing at me. The only thing I thought I successfully lipread was theexpression USELESS CHILD.
I let my father leave the room before
peeking at the
note he gave me. My heart had begun to
come down
now. That man really gave me a big
scare because I
had thought he wanted To Molest me. I
had heaved
sighs of relief on and on. That man had
only come to
scare me.
I began to read:
Re: My Father, why have you forsaken
me?
My useless daughter Rose, as a reply to
your questions
that day, I have come up with this. It is
the proper
write-up that would suit your question.
Imagine, it took
me more than a week to compose this
wonderful
write-up.
The last time when I said you have never
been of help
to me, you said you have on Democracy
day, just
because you translated sign language to
text for me.
Well, if that is what you call a help, then
you are a great
fool. How dare you open your ‘dumb
mouth’ to say that
in the first place? Do you realise how
much I have
spent on you? If that is what a father
should expect
from a daughter after spending fortune
on her, then it
had been better he didn’t spend on her at
all.
I’m glad you aren’t schooling anymore
because at the
end of the day you will graduate and
remain useless in
the society. Nobody will employ you,
nobody will
benefit from you, nobody will speak with
you because
you will just remain as useless as a rock.
You are not supposed to be living among
the living but
among the animals because as much as I
know, only
animals don’t speak. At the right time I
will take you to
the jungle to live the rest of your life
there.
Imagine, what is the essence of a
daughter who will
never be wooed by a man? What is the
essence of a
lady who will never have anyone to get
married to her?
Rose, If you ever get married, then let the
earth bury
me alive…
At that juncture, I stopped reading as I
wept my
eyeballs out. I had only read the note to
one-third but I
tore it without intending to read more.
The little I had
read had already torn my heary apart.
I began to feel inferior and depressed
once more.
Earlier, I had thought I wouldn’t put
myself in inferiority
complex. Now it was inevitable. I had
begun to
consider some of the things my father
said. It had just
dawned on me that I can’t have a normal
person as a
husband. Maybe I would start making
love with blind
Biodun as from now on so that we could
end up
marrying each other, I thought. It was the
first time in
my life I would think about love and that
feeling was
now towards the birthday celebrant of
yesterday, 31
December, year 2000.
I began my love search at once the next
day as I
started moving close to the children of
Mrs Omotayo
so that I could show them I cared,
especially Biodun
the blind boy. I wished we ended
marrying each other,
at least to prove my father wrong. John
would be
shocked when Biodun and I bring our
wedding invitation
card to him, I thought childishly. A
strong fear stared at
my face when I envisaged the reply John
could give:
A disabled marrying a disabled, ha! ha!
ha! Perfect
combination of disabled I imagined John
saying that,
then I sulked.
Mrs Omotayo said she had never felt so
happy in life.
Seeing me playing with her kids, she was
glad. She
wanted me to always come around them.
Mrs Omotayo had been finding it very
difficult sending
them to school. They were in a boarding
school the
year before, but she had to pull them out
and bring them
back home when they took ill all the time
and almost
died. She prefered them illiterate and
alive instead of
being literate and dead.
At the moment, Mrs Omotayo was on
sabbatical so that
she could have enough time at hand to
care for her
children.
Things hadn’t been smooth for her, being
the only one
to run around to do this and that.
Unfortunately, there
wasn’t any tangible help her two children
could render.
Mrs Omotayo wanted to employ the
service of a
housemaid because she would soon be
resuming work.
When she told me about it, I assured her
that I would
do my best.
All the while, she thought I was a
housemaid according
to what Toyosi told her. I would have
opened up to her
the person I really was, but for the
warning Toyosi
gave me.
However, Mrs Omotayo wondered in
silence how
come I was a housemaid. To clear her
doubt about my
identity, she took a step to know a little
about me. I
read the note she gave me and remained
‘mute':
Rose, I’m sorry to ask you these few
questions; please
it would do me a great good if you could
answer me
accordingly: first, I would like to know
when actually
you began to be a housemaid, because
with the look of
things you are even too young for that,
considering
your condition too. You look like thirteen
or fourteen
years to me, so how come you are in
this? Did you start
being a house girl at ten or eleven or
when? I also
want to know why and who released you
to be one. Is
your mother still alive? If she is, where
does she
live?…
I couldn’t finish the whole writeup as
tears welled up in
my eyes. They began to drop. Mrs
Omotayo must have
thought that she had hurt my feelings,
going by the way
she tightened herself on me and rubbed
my head with
her hands.
I wasn’t weeping because she asked
those questions
but because I couldn’t supply an answer
since Toyosi
had warned me against doing such. Now
I knew I
wasn’t free yet, opposed to my thought
earlier. I had no
freedom of speech yet.
Mrs Omotayo told me she needed to
enroll her children
back in school, but she didn’t want to
enrol them in a
boarding school because she didn’t want
them to fall
sick. She wished they could be attending
a day school,
but it would be difficult for them
returning from school
everyday, because herself would be in her
workplace
by the time they would be returning from
school.
An idea struck my mind. I wrote it down
and gave it to
her. She took a glance at me when she
read it.
“Will you be able?” she asked me.
“Yes I will be,” I replied her.
Then I have to seek the permission of
your mistress,
she wrote.
Please go ahead, I replied.
I have missed school so much and I had
wished to
return. A whole term had passed without
me being
enrolled in a school. I needed to be out
there again and
that was the idea I gave Mrs Omotayo
my neighbour. I
told her that I would be able to take care
of her
children; take them to school and bring
them back as
long as I would also be schooling
together with them.
Mrs Omotayo approached my stepmother
and told her
about it. She did not agree to it at first,
but after too
much badger from my neighbour, she
consented to it.
To Be Continue
