Since the day I was allowed to see Biodun, I had my freedom again, but I was never returned
to school,despite all the pleadings of Mrs Omotayo. When I begged Toyosi to allow me see outside the compound occasionally, she pondered over it and later said that she had a better idea.
Toyosi and John colluded together and arrived at the conclusion that I should become a
hawker. I was surprised at their decision. How on earth would I hear customers calling me? I thought. Maybe it was another way of punishing me. I blamed myself for asking for freedom. I should have let sleeping dogs lie, I thought.
I sat down and began to think of what to
do if I could
just be allowed out of the gate. I would
flee the house
permanently, I thought. I would begin to
search for my
mother. I would visit my school and tell
them
everything, perhaps they could help me
out. While still
lost in my thought, I felt a hand on my
body. When I
turned my face up, it was Toyosi
standing there.
“Rose, don’t ever think of running away
from the house
when you step out of the gate,” she said
as if she was
living right inside my heart. I was
shocked and
dumbfounded. How did she know? I
thought. Rose, the
same way I saw you on the road with a
boy that day,
that is the same way I will monitor you
everywhere
you go.
My mind began to thump. Is Toyosi a
witch or what?
Perhaps she is just trying to scare me by
playing on my
intelligence. Perhaps she has something
she was using
to read my mind; alright then, I was
going to be doing
things without thinking about them as
from now, I
thought. By so doing, I wouldn’t have any
problem. She
would not detect what was going on
right in my mind, I
thought childishly.
It was eggs I would sell. Toyosi had
given me a target
I must meet daily. It was a scary one. I
must sell all my
eggs before returning home every day,
and I mustn’t
stay longer than 6pm.
Mrs Omotayo had found someone else to
stay with her
children. The nanny would be with them
after the taxi
driver had brought them back from
school. It took Mrs
Omotayo a whole month to make the
decision, having
obtained a compulsory leave in her
workplace to stay
with her children while I was not allowed
to step
outside. She would now return to work
since Taiba, a
young girl of around eighteen would now
be staying
with the children. As for me, I would be
too busy
hawking.
I summoned the courage, believing that I
was able.
Expectedly, I sold nothing on the first
day, after
trekking about for hours under the angry
sun. When the
sun was in the east I was under it, yet I
remained until
it had travelled to the west. My head
ached greatly.
How would I have heard people calling
for my service
when I was deaf? I thought. Those who
even came
close to buying got frustrated when I
couldn’t tell them
the price. Some people even seemed to
be having
phobia for the deaf and dumb. They just
walked away,
pushing their lips out, maybe hissing at
me or not, I
couldn’t tell.
I walked on and on, never wary of
vehicles passing by.
I couldn’t hear their horns, so I just
moved on like I
didn’t care. I wanted to cross to the other
side of the
road when a car screeched to a halt
before me. My
heart had gone. I thought it would hit
me. It was indeed
a miracle that the car didn’t gore me
down, but
unfortunately, I staggered and the whole
eggs went
crashing at the floor.
Toyosi came around and discovered that
I hadn’t sold a
single egg. She beat me up.
“Where are my eggs?” she signed. When I
told her that
everything got smashed, she raged.
I wondered when all these tortures would
end. I began
to think of telling Mrs Omotayo my true
life story,
perhaps she would pick up interest in my
case. If she
knew I was not a housemaid as she
thought, she would
have fought for my freedom to the last.
Toyosi didn’t give me time to recuperate.
She had hurt
me internally. I was feeling some pains
right inside my
heart. Perhaps something in me had
snapped. Maybe I
had even damaged my organ, I wouldn’t
know.
I coughed blood when Toyosi hit me hard
on the chest.
I felt my life was over. I couldn’t bear the
pain any
longer. It was time to die.
That night, I wept bitterly, asking God to
kill me within
one week or allow me kill myself and still
make it to
heaven. I slept that night and dreamt. It
was a sweet
dream. When I woke up, I had much
strength. The heart
pain had vanished.
I wondered why each time I prayed at
night I always
slept well and in the morning after it, I
always felt light
and happy. If it was God helping me get
such comfort
each time I prayed, why couldn’t he wipe
off all my
troubles permanently once and for all?
Perhaps God was
trying to prolong my life for more
troubles, I thought.
The next day, the tray was set on my
head again. How I
wished I could raise up my voice to
advertise what
was on my head? I had no voice. Who
would be a voice
to my voiceless self? I thought. No one.
I had only sold six eggs the next day
after walking up
and down the streets from 8am to 3pm.
As usual, those
who wanted to price my eggs got pissed
off whenever
they discovered that I was deaf and
dumb. Only the
very patient ones would wait for me to
write my
responses into a note.
My head began to force itself into
reasoning out a way
of bridging the communication gap
between the deaf
and dumb and the normal people. I
pondered so much
on the thought that I forgot that I was
hawking.
“How can one easily bridge this gap?” I
thought on and
on again. No way!
I returned home and got enough slaps to
my shrinking
cheeks as expected. It seemed as if I had
committed a
very big crime for selling just twelve eggs
out of forty
for the whole day.
I kept getting slapped and kicked and
punched on the
face by Toyosi and her son each day.
Bode would do to
me exactly what Toyosi was doing.
John wrote a note to me as usual:
Can you now see that I was right by
saying that you are
a useless person? You can’t successfully
sell forty eggs
in a whole day. I am happy that I have
stopped
spending on your education for more
than a year now.
Useless daughter!
I was not moved by his insult. I was used
to such and
much more.
A thought suddenly pierced through my
mind. Is my
mother really still alive? Isn’t Toyosi
telling a lie that
she is back in the prison? My heart
thumped at the
thought. She must have been killed by
Toyosi that day
they went shopping. All indication was
pointing at that
fact–the fact that she was no more on
earth.
I had seen her three to four times in my
dream, telling
me that I should fight hard not to come
to the grave
where she was. She assured me that I
could make it
despite my disabilities. She told me that I
was able.
Toyosi kicked me. It was time for me to
go hawking. I
knew it was time.
I set the tray on my head and began to
make for the
gate. Taiba came close to me and
delivered a thick
note to me, it was written in Braille by
blind Biodun.
When I read it, my heart went in pieces.
It was
heartrending:
Rose, why did you leave me alone all
these days? Not
even a visit anymore. What is my offence
so high like a
mountain that you can’t forgive? What is
my fault so
sharp like a sword that you can’t
overlook? You are the
only angel I know, not any Angela in the
world. Rose,
you are my angel, the flower of my life.
Please reply
my letter and tell me if you still love me
or not.
I wept and smiled all at once. How could
a blind folk
compose a letter as wonderful as this? I
thought. The
Biodun I knew earlier was a shy type who
wouldn’t
even want to punch any writing into
paper. How did he
change drastically as this?
I could remember challenging Biodun and
Laide
sometimes back when they were getting
frustrated. I
told them of Nick Vujicic, the torso who
could do
everything a normal person could do. I
told them of
Akin, the blind drummer boy in a fiction I
read. I also
challenged them with something Mrs
Oyindamola my
classteacher used to say all the time:
How many medals have our normal
people won in the
Olympic games? Rose, if you know how
many gold
medals the normal people have won for
this country,
please tell me because the last time I
checked it was
three or four; ask me what our
Paralympics athletes
have won and I would say it is countless!
YOU ARE
ABLE, ROSE, BOSE, ELIJAH, EMMANUEL,
JOY, FATIMA,
JOSHUA…
Those days whenever she was signing
our names, I
would be the only one who wouldn’t shed
tears of
emotion because I found it very hard to
believe that I
was indeed able. Now I needed no one to
tell me that I
am able.
Since the day I told Laide and Biodun
these, the latter
had grabbed his writing materials,
making much effort
to develop himself. It really affected his
overall
performance in school such that he
became the best
overall in his class after that school
term. Maybe that
was one reason Biodun couldn’t stop
thinking about me.
My heart lurched at the conclusive part
of Biodun’s
letter. How on earth would I tell him that
I no more feel
romance love for him when I was actually
the one who
began it? Wouldn’t I be breaking a heart
at my tender
age?
I was soon on the street, hawking. As
usual, nobody
cared, perhaps many have called for my
service but I
didn’t hear them. I held tight to my
crates of eggs to
avoid losing them.
I saw a crowd. What an interesting sight
to behold!
Somebody was performing magic at the
centre of a
gathering. I wanted to feed my eyes, so I
fell in after
dropping my crates of eggs somewhere
around. Amidst
the gathering, a young boy of around
sixteen years saw
me and began to glance at me on and
on. I didn’t know
why he was making me the cynosure of
his eyes
instead of the conjurer at the centre of
the gathering. I
felt uncomfortable and began to leave
the crowd.
As I turned to leave, I sighted him turning
too, from the
corner of my right eye. He began to move
close to me.
I hasted towards the culvert where I
placed my crates
of eggs. He drew close too.
I halted, perhaps he would just pass by
me. He didn’t.
The boy reminded me of Moses in his
outfit. He was 5
feet 8 inches as I perceived. His eyes
were narrow on
his face as well as his nose too. He had
a curly hair and
a dark skin. His teeth appeared square in
shape when he
opened his mouth and said something I
didn’t hear as he
extended his right hand for a shake.
My inferiority complex came to play. I
shrugged my
shoulder and moved away from him. Just
then, a little
boy of around seven years fled from my
crates of eggs.
He had picked like six eggs and was
running away with
it. I screamed and pointed at the boy
who was
escaping. He ended up in the grip of the
other boy who
was following me.
I became more and more ashamed as
this saviour took
each step towards me with the nylon of
eggs he had
just retrieved from the thief. My heart
pounded because
I felt the boy was getting sexually
attracted to me.
The teenage boy handed over the eggs to
me. I
collected it and bent to lift my crate of
eggs to my
head. He held my hand and began to
speak to me
tenderly. He was shocked when I didn’t
respond. Tears
rolled down my face.
“Let’s be close friends,” the boy uttered
and I
understood him by the movement of his
lips. I
summoned courage to communicate in
the only way I
could–through sign language.
The boy was confused when I signed to
him that I was
deaf and dumb. However, he understood
me with the
way I kept touching my mouth and my
ears to signal
what I was to him. He frowned and spat
on the floor.
Then his lips protruded as other people’s
too. He turned
and left me in haste.
I clutched my chest in my hands and
wept on the spot.
Now I thought my future had just been
played to me–
no normal person will propose to me.
They will all run
at first sight.
I lifted my crates of eggs to my head and
headed
homeward.
To Be Continue
