Toyosi returned home sad after one month. John begged her every now and then for forgiveness, butshe wouldn’t listen.
Was there more to it which I didn’t
know? Why did she keep
crying all days? Did she not get what she
wanted? At least my
father had succumbed to her will by
letting her abort the
pregnancy, so what more? I thought.
The day they reconciled was the exact
day John took ill; that
was around September. John was
admitted in a hospital as
Toyosi expended all her profit in treating
him. Then Toyosi
begged me to go to the streets and beg
for alms but I refused
blatantly. She couldn’t touch me now,
perhaps she had already
realized that her nemesis was caused by
her evil deeds to me in
the past. Toyosi said she would release
my mother from if only
I could render that help to her. I had pity
on my father who
was between life and death and then
went begging in the
streets. Now I hung a laminated write-up
on my neck too,
indicating that I was deaf and dumb and
I needed help.
When Albert saw me begging, he called
me a pretender.
“Did you not lie that you didn’t beg for
alms that day,
pretender?” Albert spoke harshly to me. I
was speechless.
This time around, it wasn’t Albert alone
who saw me begging
but many of my former school mates
too, including Bose, who
was my arch-enemy back then in the
former public school I
attended. Each time I saw Bose mocking
me, I would feel as if I
should strangle her once and for all,
because she had done a lot
of evil to me in the past.
I could remember what Bose did to me
while we were in
primary four. Back then, Bose came to
me to say that she no
more wanted any fight with me, but she
would want us to be
close friends since we were the only two
people in the class
with the same surname, John. She is
John Bosede and I was
John Rose. I readily accepted Bose’s
proposal and we became
close pals.
Our friendship was sustained for the
whole term until the
beginning of the next session when we
got promoted to
Primary 5. Back then, when we were
friends, I lost my bag in
which all my books were kept. Everything
I had, including my
textbooks, where in it. I wept because I
knew what my father
would do to me if he discovered that I
had lost my bag and all
the new books I had in them. As
expected, my father dealt
brutally with me for my carelessness and
refused to get me
another bag and books for replacement. I
had to do the rest of
my class without any textbooks and
exercise books.
During the beginning of the next session,
Bose began to come
to school with some familiar books
(exactly the types of books I
had in my back the session before). I
began to sense
something fishy because of her
reluctance to borrow me her
books. I would have pointed accusing
fingers at her if only I
had seen any cancellation at the back of
those books because I
wrote my names on them those days; at
least if they where
mine, she would have cancelled those
names before writing
hers.
Something kept telling me they were
mine because the writings
looked exactly like mine. But when did I
write Bose’s name with
my own handwriting? Was I drunk while I
was doing that? I
wanted to know the fact, so I continued
to observe. I knew the
books were actually mine when I got one
of her storybooks
one day. I saw some marks I did inside
the storybooks and
now I was convinced. It had just occurred
to me how easy it
was for her to alter the ‘R’ starting my
name and change it to
‘B’. She wouldn’t have had any problem
converting them at all
since the right leg of my letter ‘R’ were
always curved
somehow, not straight. Thus, she
changed my name ‘John
Rose’ to her own name ‘ John Bosede’
with ease, having added
a ‘d’ and an ‘e’ to it to make me never
suspect her(Bosede was
the long form of the name Bose).
I was angry with her and took laws into
my hands, fighting
with her after school hour one day, just
because the teacher I
reported the case to ignored me for lack
of clear evidence. We
fought that day and I defeated her,
putting sand into her
mouth, contrary to the thought of
everyone that Bose was the
boss then, because she could bully on
both boys and girls alike
as a result of her rapid development.
The next day, her mother came to school
with her and
reported the case to my class teacher
(not Mrs Oyin) and I was
scolded and suspended for two weeks. I
wondered why Bose’s
mother backed her daughter up in lies as
such. Sometimes
parents could be the cause of their
children’s bad manners, I
thought.
I was shy when Bose made fun of me and
promised to bring
all our schoolmates to make fun of me
the next day. When I
returned home that day, I told Toyosi
that I didn’t want to beg
anymore.
“You must do it for your father, or you
want him dead?” she
said.
“No, I want him to live, but…but I can’t
just do it anymore; my
schoolmates are making fun of me,” I
said.
“You have to do it if you want to see
your mother alive,” she
said. I was weighed down deep down my
heart, but I couldn’t
cry. She was the one doing the weeping.
To Be Continued
