Toyosi was extremely annoyed with me.She beat me with everything she could lay her hands upon.I screamed, perhaps Mrs Omotayo would hear my voice and come to my rescue. John returned from
work too and began to beat me. He locked me up in a room after kicking me severely.
When John released me, somebody bumped into our parlour. It was around 9pm. I was shocked to see that she was Mrs Omotayo.
She came close to Toyosi and they pointed fingers at each other. I could see her mouth moving as if she was pronouncing ‘Bode’. Applying my commonsense, I interpreted what was going on. Mrs Omotayo was angry with Bode for treating her children badly.
If John hadn’t come in between the two of them, they would have fought physically. Toyosi even threw a blow and it caught my father on the face. She then relaxed to tend the swelling on his forehead.
I shook where I stood. I knew that they
would
eventually come back to me to deal with
me. They
would pay back everything she did to
them on me.
As envisaged, John treated me badly. He
made me to
sit down in space, without a chair. It was
a form of
punishment. My legs and my waist
pained me so much.
Each time my hip was going down, he
would whip me
with a wire.
I wept bitterly as I served the
punishment. If only I
could have my way, I would run away
from home, I
thought.
Nobody needed to tell me that I had lost
the privilege
of schooling once more. Over and above
all, I had lost
the love of my heart. However, I wouldn’t
regret that I
fought Bode back since I was doing it for
my future
husband, I thought.
My room was relocated once again, this
time it was the
store room. The kitchen was filled up
with foodstuff
and other things, therefore I would be in
the store
room. The room was stuffy. It had a little
opening high
up. Our farm equipments were in there;
rakes, watering
cans, cutlasses, brooms, hoes and more.
I picked up a broom and swept the dusty
room. I had
catarrh as the dust rose and got into my
head through
the orifices of my nostrils.
I had resigned to fate long ago. Whatever
came my
way I would just accept it that way. I
knew I would
overcome someday. I took my note and
began to write
my poems once more:
I remembered the letter Biodun wrote in
Braille. I
smiled as I produced it and set it before
my face.
Seeing it was making my heart glad. I
closed my eyes
and began to feel around it with my
fingers. Reading in
Braille was fun to me.
Rose, I have never imagined that the
blind could hear
the deaf speak. I have never thought that
the deaf
could communicate with the blind, but it
was such a
huge shock to me that you crossed the
bridge, or let
me say you bridged the gap. Even when I
couldn’t learn
your own language, you learned mine.
You were not
self-centred. You have travelled miles in
my heart
already and my heart is already for you.
Rose, I LOVE
YOU even if you can’t defend me and
nothing shall
separate us henceforth. Biodun.
I halted around the L-O-V-E and felt
them over and over
again with my fingers. With that letter
close to my
heart, I slept off.
Biodun was riding a bicycle. I sat behind
him on the
bicycle. We rode on and on, yet he was
blind, having a
dark goggle set over his face. I wondered
how he was
able to manoeuvre his way through the
bumpy road.
Laide was running on foot beside our
bicycle, lame, yet
we couldn’t leave her behind. Although
deaf I was, I
began to scream on the top of my voice:
WE ARE ABLE! WE ARE ABLE!!
I woke up from sleep. It was all a dream!
I wanted to
empty my bladder, so I rushed to the
door, but it was
shut from the outside. I was confused. I
needed to
pass out the urine. I wondered who
locked me in.
I turned my head around and noticed a
watering can. I
would use it. In a flash I had eased
myself.
Early the next morning, it was Saturday,
environmental
sanitation time. Around 7am, Toyosi had
ordered me
out of the store room.
“Go to the garden now!” she signed to
me. Bode was
still asleep. I began to hurry down there.
She followed
me.
“Rose, I haven’t called you out here to be
playing with
those handicapped children, okay.”
“Yes ma,” I replied. “If I see you together,
then you are
doomed, okay?”
“Yes ma,” I replied. Toyosi began to take
her leave.
I stooped to begin work. I knew what I
should do, so I
didn’t hesitate. I was to uproot the weed
with my bare
hands. That had always been my
undeserved
punishment every last Saturday of the
month.
We had hoes and cutlasses but I was not
allowed to
use any. John soon joined me in the
garden, carrying
two watering cans. He was going to wet
the
vegetables.
John dropped the watering cans and
went further into
the garden. He plucked some garden
eggs and came
back to where I was weeding. He ordered
me to take
the watering cans to the tap to fetch
water there. I
picked them up but he ordered me to
wait a little while.
He wanted to wash one of the garden
eggs to eat.
John picked up one of the watering cans
and shook it.
Seemed there was a little water in that.
He would use
the water to wash his hands and the
garden eggs. John
hastily poured the liquid on his right
hand and rinsed the
garden eggs. I perceived the odour of
urine and
remembered what I did last night.
I watched John as he squeezed the
garden eggs into
his mouth. I turned my head around and
smiled. John
was stingy, he wouldn’t share them with
me. Even if he
wanted to do that this time around, I
wouldn’t receive
them.
I picked the watering can and went to the
tap to fetch
water. When I returned, John was holding
his stomach
in pain. I never knew what evil my urine
could cause
until now.
John spent the rest of the week in a
hospital, explaining
to the doctors that he ate a salty garden
egg. Nobody
on earth was able to understand the
mystery of the
salty garden eggs except myself. I AM
ABLE, I thought.
To be Continued
