I punched something at the back of the special paper Biodun gave me earlier. I had to do that so that Biodun wouldn’t have to wait till eternity for my reply:
If I don’t love you, Biodun, who else should I love? Infact, I will love you till death… Since that day I was despised by that teenager, I had made my mind strong again, settling for the thought of rejuvenating my relationship with Biodun.
A bird at hand
is worth two in the bush, I thought.
Taiba was our middleman. She would
take my note to
Biodun and bring his reply back to me on
daily basis. As
a matter of fact, it was only one
conversation we were
able to do per day through the note
because of his
school and my own hawking business. I
often returned
from the streets around 7pm daily and
Toyosi would
have returned from wherever she had
been by then, so
there wouldn’t be any opportunity to see
Biodun.
Taiba brought a note as a reply to the
one I sent to
Biodun. I read it:
Now I am happy again, my dear Rose. I
thought you
want to leave me alone. Perhaps you
have seen
another boy in the streets. How is your
hawking faring?
I replied him:
Nothing shall separate us, Biodun. Till
death do us part
we shall be together, if not in body, then
in soul. The
hawking business is not going well at all.
I don’t sell
well and my mistress and her husband
beat me up for
this everyday.
How dare she? And why don’t you sell
well? My Rose,
you are able as you always sing, but why
are you not
able to sell well?
At this juncture, I halted. His question
was beyond the
blue. It was such a great challenge. Our
conversation
had spanned almost one week already.
We only get to
do one conversation daily.
In my next reply, I made Biodun know the
reason why I
was not able to sell well. If only I had
voice, then I
would do well. If only everyone in the
world could
learn the sign language, then the
communication gap
between the deaf and dumb and the
normal people
would be bridged, I thought. Yes! Eureka!
If I could only
become the Minister of Education, I
would incorporate
sign language in the school curriculum of
the normal
people and the solution would come.
Biodun replied me:
My Rose, I will help you out. We are able!
We are able!
We shall sell well together. We shall not
only sell all
the eggs in the tray but we shall also
return home to
get more. By tomorrow we shall do it
together.
Taiba gave me this one around 7pm
when I was
returning from my hawking business. I
was surprised at
the content. The next day would be
Thursday, so I don’t
seem to see the reason why Biodun was
saying that
we shall do it together because he had to
be in school
by then.
I began to compose a poem:
BLIND AND DEAF BUSINESS
Wonders shall never end in the land of
the living
Where the blind dates the deaf and do all
things they
believe in
The blind on bicycle without anyone to be
leading
The deaf in her earphones tell me what
she has for
hearing
Can the blind lead the blind?
Can the deaf hear the deaf?
Oh, so impossible! But a solution is here
The blind can be the voice of the dumb
And the deaf can be the sight of the
blind
They complement each other
Like a lover and his partner
Or like brothers and sisters
And much like partners in business
I couldn’t sleep in my little confinement.
The garden
forks and the rakes in there had taken
much of the
space in the store room; John just
bought them new the
day before. They were so huge that they
took up
almost all the space on the floor of the
store room
where I hibernated.
I could remember asking Toyosi where
next to sleep
the day before.
“Are you insane?” Toyosi asked me
harshly. “Still in the
store room of course!”
“But father had just stucked it up with
new tools,” I
signed back.
“That’s none of my business,” she said.
“Go right there
and sleep!” she pointed towards the store
room.
That night I had to push the standing
tools aside: the go
to hells, the rakes, cutlasses, hoes,
watering cans and
so on. Some of them were leaning
against the wall.
They fell suddenly on the floor. I was
tired already,
having trekked the whole streets,
hawking. I just had
to lay my back on them that way, feeling
much pain on
my back. That was the only day I had
nightmare despite
the fact that I did my normal little prayer
before
sleeping.
My eyes flashed open. It was morning
already. I
yawned. It was time for me to do my
hasty bath in
preparation for hawking.
My former room was where Toyosi put
the crates of
eggs. She had them so many there, but I
go with two
crates everyday. Toyosi had even
threatened to add
one more crate to my daily sales and I
was scared.
Even the two crates I couldn’t sell up to
half let alone
adding another to it.
I sighed when I remembered Biodun’s
promise to me. I
waited outside the house and Taiba
rushed to me. She
made a sign to me that I should wait a
little bit, then
she returned to their apartment. My legs
shook as I
waited. Toyosi mustn’t step outside the
house to
discover that I was still standing there.
It was five minutes and I was still within
the
compound. Toyosi would be mad at me; I
had to leave
right now. Just then, I saw Biodun being
led out of their
apartment by Taiba their housemaid.
So, Biodun kept to his word, I thought.
Okay, what is his
intention? Is he going to hawk with me?
That would be
somehow ridiculous.
Taiba led him to me. Biodun smelled me
and was happy.
He was ready to go out with me;
hurriedly, we took our
leave.
Now I knew communication between us
would be
impossible while on the streets, so we
stopped at a
walkway on the busy road and punched
all necessary
communication into the papers Biodun
brought with him:
Biodun, how did you do it? You skipped
school for Christ
sake!”
Not for Christ sake, Rose. I skipped it for
the sake of
the love I have for you and I will do this
for you for the
next one week.
Ha! Biodun, why? What about your
mother? Won’t she be
upset that you are hanging out with me
playing truancy?
That is if you tell her yourself, Rose. I
mean how would
she know that I am hanging out with
you? I have told
the taxi driver and Laide that they should
not tell
mummy that I would be skipping school
for a week.
Taiba will be enjoying my pocket monies,
so who will
tell her? You?”
“Biodun, you are a small devil. Ha! Ha!
Ha!”
We burst into laughter together. Biodun
pulled me to
himself and gave me a tight hug. We
were close to
kissing each other when his walking stick
leaning on
the wall suddenly tilted and knocked our
heads, calling
us to caution.
When I looked round, people had made
us a tourist
attraction. All eyes were on us, leaving
us in the middle
of a large crowd.
I wrote something to Biodun:
Biodun, do you see what I see?
Maybe not, but I can smell people around
us. Are we in
the middle of a crowd?
Yes!”
Biodun laughed. Then to my amazement,
he began to
say something I didn’t hear. Going by the
muscular
movement I saw on his neck, I could
easily conjecture
that he was shouting. As he told me
later, he was
shouting, “I am blind, she is deaf and
dumb, but we
have to sell all our eggs! Come and buy
your eggs, one
for #15, three for #40! Buy your fresh
eggs! Buy your
fresh eggs! I am blind! She is deaf and
dumb, we need
to sell our eggs! Buy your fresh eggs!”
In a flash, all our eggs had been bought.
To Be Continue
