It pained me so much that I missed Uncle James’ visit. He should have at least left his home address, but he didn’t. Ibegan to long for him. He was such a indhearted man. He would be very angry at John his brother f he knew everything he did to me.
My halcyon days had returned, but a
recurring thought kept on
creeping into my mind to destroy my joy.
It was the thought
of my mother. The only way I could see
her was to locate the
prison first, which she was taken to, or at
least the court of law
from which she was sentenced. Those
days I didn’t have the
chance to put into memory the actual
place where the court
was located. All I knew was that my aunty
and my class-
teacher took me on a long ride to a place
out of town.
I began to pray for God’s intervention. If
only he could answer
my request on time and wouldn’t let my
mother spend too
long in the cell, I would tell thousands of
people my testimony,
I vowed to God, expecting him to answer
me just the next
moment. After waiting for a week without
any response, I
almost began to doubt if God was really
there, but then I
remembered how he answered my prayer
during the New
Year Day of the past year and my faith
was stronger.
I approached Bose concerning the advice
of Moses’ father, who
told me to put Bose’s true life story in
my work to be published
but under another name. I thought Bose
would jump at the
idea, but I was making a big mistake.
“So, Bose, do you agree with that?”
“Don’t even mention it Rose,” she said.
“If you can’t put my
name there, then forget about putting my
story there,” she
said.
“But I—em—it is not proper to paint you
black in— ”
“Don’t let us keep arguing about this,
Rose,” she said. “I have
told you what I want—period!”
Moses had come close to us unawares. If
we could hear
sound, perhaps we would have heard the
sound of his feet as
he walked into the empty classroom. We
sat up when we saw
him.
Moses dropped the books in his hands
and sat down on a chair
after shifting it close to us. He smiled.
Moses had been teaching us for the past
one month now. He
could teach so well. He was the one who
motivated us to make
a move towards having the sign language
added to the school
curriculum of the normal people, though I
was the person who
gave him the idea. Moses enlightened us
more on the
advantages of this great move:
“If the normal people can learn the sign
language as a normal
language in their school curriculums at
tender ages, it would
become a part of them and the gap
between the deaf people
and the normal people would be bridged.
Everyone would be
able to speak in sign language with each
other,” Moses said.
We agreed to pay a visit to the governor’s
office to make this
idea known so that it could be considered
for implementation in
the school curriculum of the normal
people. We had decided
on a date for such.
Moses tapped me, because I had been
absentminded. He
wanted me to watch him speak:
“Rose, Bose, why are you both fussing
about with a little
issue?” Moses said. We didn’t respond.
“My father told me that you said you
don’t want to publish
your story anymore because Bose wanted
her bad past life in
it. Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. “How sensible is it to write
her past bad
behaviours when she is no more an
enemy but the closest
friend to me?”
“That’s the reason why you should do
what I want,” Bose said.
“If I am your closest friend, then do
anything to please me.”
Moses laughed and asked me why I didn’t
go ahead with what
Bose wanted. I told him it was not good
enough.
“Bose is changed, so let me only put her
new life in my stories
because bygone is bygone; her old
lifestyle can no more reflect
in my memory. I can only put it there in
another person’s
name as the principal your daddy advised
me.”
“No!” Bose disagreed.
Moses faced me and said, “Rose, are you
sure you really want
to publish your story?”
“Y-yes of course!” I said.
“So, what if Mrs Toyosi and Mr. John
your father show up a
day to the launching of your book and
beg for your
forgiveness? Will you delete their own
evil part of the story
from the book and write only their new
good part?”
I was stunned by Moses’ assumption.
Even if two million
angels come with Toyosi and John to beg
me, I would still go
ahead and publish the story without
erasing their villainous
characters, I thought. I didn’t know how
to answer Moses.
Bose was already smiling.
To be continued
