Now everybody let's gather here to read wonderful stories from your one and only, Sammy. I'm back with both the old and new stories. Enjoy yourself with this first.

Title: WE ARE ABLE
Copyright©SammyLuv2020

CHAPTER ONE

I feel a cold touch at my back. It is harmattan period. I just want to be left on my bed. I turn around like a fat cake, but mother turns me around again. I can see her mouth moving. I wonder what she is saying. But certainly she can’t be saying anything more than the fact—I am lazy.

My school is in Ejigbo, Lagos. They say we are special people, yet I haven’t perceived anything special about us. Some of us can’t talk. Some of us can’t walk; some of us can’t see, yet they say we are special. Well, I am not moved a bit by those flatteries.

I look at mother’s hand movements. It is funny to me. I smile. I wonder when she will be able to master the sign language.

“Rose, get out of bed,” she has managed to communicate with her hands. She has to repeat each word just to put them at their best. I could remember challenging my teacher some times back that…

I rise up lazily and go straight for my bath. When I get to the bathroom, I see a basin filled with water there. Wow! It is warm. I splash the water on my body. I observe that the door is shaking but I didn’t really think about it. I continue pouring water on my body. Today in particular, I spend around thirty minutes in the bathroom. The water is just exactly as I want it to be—warm.

When I step out of the bathroom, daddy gives me a scornful look. The grotesque on mother’s face also suggests to me that I have done something wrong again. Why me all the time?
My father gets into the bathroom and begins to open his mouth. Since I am deaf, I didn’t hear what he is saying, but my mother is opening her mouth too in return. They understand each other—it’s only we, the special one so called, that can’t understand them.

Mother helps father to carry a bucket of water into the bathroom. That man—always angry. I don’t know his problem. He is far away from me more than a stranger. I wonder why he is my father. Mother quickly taps me and I face her when that man has entered the bathroom.
“Rose, you used your father’s water,” mother says to me in her amateur sign language, yet she claims that she has learnt the language while I was five years of age. I wonder what is still keeping her in the amateur level till now, after six years.

“I used his water? How?” I ask. Sometimes my hands just get tired of speaking. I wonder how I will be able to speak if I become paralyzed in my hands or a bad accident claims them.

“I put his water in the bathroom first because he must be in Ikeja as early as possible.”

“Why don’t you tell me that before I entered the bathroom?” I ask.

“Em…Rose…erm…” my mother’s face is clugged up with tears. I know she is a very tender person—not wanting to raise anything that will remind me of my status—deaf and dumb.

“Em what? What has letter ‘M’ got to do with this?” I am confused.

“When you were leaving, I was calling you, but you were too fast. You have already entered the bathroom. I only woke you up so that you could go and brush your teeth and not to take your bath. Your daddy will be angry with us. He has been kicking at the bathroom door for a long time to break it if he could.”

I know what mother is talking about: she wakes me up; I rush to the bathroom without looking at her to hear from her (you have to look at someone to see his/her communication). But if that is the only thing that has happened, does it warrant my dad frowning at me in that manner as if I am nothing but a fart?

“Is he my daddy? I doubt it,” I say. Mother doesn’t want my eyes to get those tears in them again. She comes on time to wipe them off for me. I don’t believe I have a daddy yet. The only pictures I took with that man mother calls my dad are the ones during my one year and two years birthdays. No recent pictures, yet I am already eleven. Maybe if he knew that I would never speak in life, he would not have snapped those pictures with me then.

Who creates me? I am sure it is not the same God who creates the other people on earth. I have approached my mother once and said, “Don’t you think it is satan who creates me?”

“Don’t say that again Rose!” mother replies me. The vigour with which she moves her hands shows to me that she is shouting.

“But why can’t I hear and speak?” I challenge her. “I thought that they say that all the things he creates were good.”

“You are good either,” she says to me.

“Good?” I laugh mockingly. Those lips of mine, what can they do other than eating, laughing and crying? I have been advised by my teachers to laugh always, since it will prevent my mouth from smelling. But I don’t seem to see the reason for laughing at all. I only laugh to make jest of people sometimes. Nothing again can make me laugh, even if you tickle me I won’t.
I didn’t feel like going to school that day again. That man in the bathroom has killed my joy. How I wish I am not born into this family. If I am born into another family, it’s only my mother I will miss. Who cares about John, that wicked man? I think.

Reluctantly, I sit at the table. If only mummy can allow me have my own meal inside my room and not at the dinning table. Or what is the essence of eating at the dinning table when my daddy is having his own food in a separate dish? It’s only my mother and I who eat together in the same plate.

I see the way John is leering at me as if he should just lock me up somewhere. He is guzzling the food as if he hasn’t eaten since the day before yesterday. He can’t even communicate with me since he has refused to learn the sign language like my mother. He will only tell my mother to tell me anything he wanted to tell me, yet if he has written them down I would have understood him. I have perceived that mother doesn’t use to tell me what my father was asking her to tell me. Perhaps my father’s words will be too harsh on me. She has to come out clear one day when the preacher in our church condemns the act of lying in all its ramifications. That day, mother said to me that she has been telling me the opposites of what father has been asking her to tell me. I didn’t need to ask her what exactly he has been saying since commonsense is there in me to know that they were unpleasant things.

I am looking away while eating. Mother taps me. A mould of amala is still in her grip, but she has something to tell me. With the food in her hand, mother gestures to me, “Rose, your daddy says you should stop looking away from your food.”

I frown.

I know that what he said is more than that. His face can tell it all—many wrinkles on his forehead. If only he can speak in a mild manner to me, it had been better.

I quickly readjust and eat my food, silently as usual, since there isn’t any noise I want to make. I see daddy speaking to her again. This time, mummy speaks back with an angry face. It seems as if they are on my matter again. At last, mummy speaks to me:

“Rose, don’t get angry, but your dad says that I should tell you that if his boss gets angry at him for coming late to office today, then you are in trouble. But don’t mind him, Rose, he can’t do anything for you.” That is how my mummy will always say, yet that man will beat both of us together whenever it is time for him to do so.

My father looks at us as if he is suspecting that my mother is saying more than he said to her. I look at his mouth and I am able to figure out the first word he says:

“Hannah…” That is the name of my mother.
I fold my hands and didn’t eat again. Father didn’t even care. He has finished eating the amala. He has begun to rush out of the house. That Volkswagen he has, he hasn’t used it to take me to school once. Sometimes my mummy will use it to take me there if he is on afternoon duty, since he will be sleeping in the morning by then.

Father points to me as if he is threatening me when he gets to the door. Mother is just looking at him. When he leaves, she rushes to me and hugs me tight. She was shedding tears as she presses her lips firmly against my cheek.
I am off to school. Mother takes me there herself before going to her own work too. Throughout the school period, I didn’t speak a word. Mrs Oyin, our class teacher is surprised. How come Rose’s name didn’t enter the name of noise maker today? she must have thought (we write names of noise makers in our school too; making unnecessary sign language is a noise).
Mrs. Oyin is a second mother to us. She likes everyone of us in Primary Six B. When she comes into the class to punish the noise makers, she calls me out and takes me out of the class. If only I can hear, then she would not have taken me out of the class. She would just have whispered into my ears.

In the office, she says, “Why are you not speaking today?” I tell her there is nothing.
When I get back home, daddy was already inside. I am surprised. He is supposed to be in the office by then.

I go on my knees to greet him, but then, he slaps me on the face. I scream with all the power inside me. He will be the only one to suffer the sound from my throat. He didn’t leave me alone. He has come on me, punching me like a punching bag. Mother rushes in at once and begin to prevent him. But it is too late. My eyes are swollen already, yet I didn’t know my offence.
It is the next day I know what has happened. My father has been suspended from office for two weeks for getting late to work that day. But does that call for dealing with me brutally that way?

God should kill me once and for all, I think.

CHAPTER TWO
I watched as mother and father argued over the matter. My father moved close to her and pointed a finger at her eyes. I felt blood rushing to my head.  Mother told me that two weeks payment would be deducted from father's salary. I laughed heartily. "Good for him," I told mother. Father saw the smile on my face and he was suspicious. Why should I not be glad that my dad was going to lose part of his money? If I was not glad about it, who then should be? That man wasn't the one paying my school fees. He had stopped doing that since the year before. From the onset he had objected to my schooling, believing it would amount to an effort in futility. John wouldn't see anything good in educating a handicapped child.  "What is the usefulness of a disabled child?" he would tell my mother. He began to militate against my remaining in school. He wanted me out by all means, complaining that it was a sheer waste of money.  I felt useless when John gave me the reasons why I shouldn't remain in school. It was the first time he would communicate with me through letter: What do you intend doing after school? Doctor?Nurse?Lawyer?Engineer?Pilot? You can't do any of those or anything in life without your ears and mouth, I hope you know. Rose, I hereby want to advise you to pull out of school and master house works because that is the only thing you can do without your ears and mouth. I had wanted these ever since; only that mother insisted I should remain in school. I was not an academic enthusiast, but I was not bad in school at all. Now, father said he wouldn't pay my fee, so what was the essence of arguing with him now? I knew John was only trying to hurt my feelings, but he was shocked when I laughed for the first time and wrote back to him, "Thank you so much. I have been looking forward to that." I had only stayed two weeks away from school when my mother came with a big shock. "Rose, you are returning to school?" "What!" I responded in my sign language. My oval-shaped mouth also synched the word. I have learnt a lot from lipreading my teachers in school, such that I could figure out some things people are saying with their mouths. "You have won a scholarship!" Mother said.  "How?" I asked, puzzled. I hadn't applied for any scholarship. "Last year when your father began threatening to pull you out of school, I decided to apply for a scholarship for you and..." I held my mother's hands. I didn't want to see more of her speech. I didn't buy the idea of returning to school. "Please tell the scholarship sponsors to stop wasting their monies on disabled like me," I said. "No matter what they spend, I will remain disabled in life." I rushed to my room and held tight to my pillow. Tears were soaking the soft pillow in my grip. I took a little time gazing at the wall. My thought began to speak out: They teach us that God is kind, but here am I...I can't speak. If he is kind, why can't he make me like the other people? I came to the world, useless. How am I different from the animals in the jungle? I learnt that animals can't speak too. Little wonder Bayo keeps putting leaf inside his mouth every time, just to show me that I am an herbivorous animal... My nape felt a touch. The sensation slid down and rested on my left shoulder. I had shut my eyes long ago, only feeling the seepage of my tears on my cheeks. It was mother's touch. If I knew she would be coming in, I would have bolted the door. I didn't want to go to school. "You are able, Rose," mother said. "A proof or I don't believe it," I responded. "A proof?" Mother said. She was confused. "Tell me what a deaf person can do that a normal person cannot do. Tell me the job I can be offered without my ears and mouth functioning. After then, I might reconsider schooling." Mother racked her brain. She scratched her braided hair for answer such that the bobby pins on them began to fall off. Still, no answer to give.  "Tell the sponsor of that scholarship to transfer it to a normal person. I am done with schooling," I said. Mother sat on the bedside. I could see her throat moving up and down like a jangrover. Her red lips came out to lick her tears intermittently. "For how long, Rose, for how long would I keep begging you to stop being inferior? Rose, just...just..." I had buried my face in the pillow. I didn't want to go to school. Period! In the end I decided to comply. Ever since, I'd been on scholarship. So, John's salary could keep on decreasing, how should I care? But I still wanted to know what brought the disabled at par with the normal people. If my mum and my class teacher couldn’t give me the proof that ‘I am able’ in three weeks time, I shall go on personal strike.

CHAPTER THREE

It is such a great hell for my dad while he was at home those two weeks. The man loves to go to work. If possible, he will make his workplace a permanent abode, just to avoid what he calls a sick home.

John tells my mother to allow me remain at home with him, but the woman rejects blatantly.

What is my father's motive for demanding such thing? I am just eleven, so what do I know?

At school, I begin the question again:

"Is there any reason for God creating us like this?" I ask my clasateacher. She was rash at saying yes, yet she couldn't state a reason.

"Rose, you ask too much. Stop thinking of what you can't do; think of what you can do."

"What can I do?"

"You can see, walk and..."

"That's normal," I say. "Everybody else can do those things too."

"But Joshua and Gbade can't do any of those things," she says.

My hands drop. To raise them, no vigour. Each time I remember the case of Joshua and Gbade, I always feel like climbing a ladder to heaven to pull God down and fight him.

Joshua is paralysed and at the same time blind. Gbade's case is the worse; he is deaf and dumb as well as blind and lame. If John is Gbade's father he would have thrown him inside the Oke Afa canal.

Some sweat pour down my neck and soaked my school uniform. Now I begin to imagine how Gbade has been able to survive the hardship he is into.

It is just two days left for my father's suspension to be over when something strange happens. That day, mother carries me home in father's blue volkswagen car. We open the door of the house and to our surprise, daddy and another lady were kissing each other in the parlour.

They see us but did as if they didn't.
I began to see many mouths moving. I began to imagine the conversation they were making:

"What is happening?" my mother cries out.

"Is she your wife?" the woman says. It seems she has just come out of her senses.

"Em...you are my real wife, not her," daddy says without any humane feeling.

"John!" my mother cries. The man just looks away lackadaisically and hissed.

"Em...Toyosi, leave that scallywag alone and let's continue our love."

Right before my eyes my mother is being denied of her marital right. This is not right. I made a shrilled sound. At least I can shout even though I am dumb.

Daddy gets irritated and comes for me at once. Mother stands in his way. The wicked man pushes his wife out of the way. She loses balance and falls. I guess mother must have broken some bones in the process.

Now I remain still, harden myself so I can be prepared for daddy's beating. He looks on at me and I don't know why he didn't pounce on me as his manner is. He stands gazing at me for a while, then he carries my mother up. She can't stand on her own anymore.

I have to check on my mother in the hospital the next day. I have missed school that day. She is on wheelchair, her hands and legs on bandage. We look on at each other. She can't communicate with me right now because she can't move her hands.

"Get well soon mummy," I say, kneels before her and went down on her laps, weeping.

"Mummy, what is the matter with daddy?" I ask in tears. My mother can't move her hands so there is no way she will signal her response to me.

CHAPTER FOUR~~~~~~~~~

Mother was discharged after two weeks. Her right hand is bandaged and attached to her neck so that her bones can heal up fast. She has her right leg in POP. Now I feel the real meaning of being deaf and dumb. I have to be at home to take care of her, but home was hell to me. No one to communicate with me.

Mother watches me as I do my sign language before her face. She can only shake her head vertically or horizontally to either concur with me or disagree to any matter I raise. Now I have to endure the true meaning of suspense: if you ask me, I can't understand what really transpires between daddy, mummy and the other woman in question, but it seems mummy now knows all because I see daddy talking to her at length. She weeps endlessly and her face swells when father speaks then.

My teachers have come to pay my mother a visit when they discover my absence in school. Mrs Oyin, my classteacher comes around and rapports with my mother. She then tells her the whole story:

John, my father, begins to deal in extra marital affair when I was three--then it has just been confirmed that I am completely deaf and dumb. John needs an able child desperately then, such that he has to spread his tentacles to a woman whom I will refer to as a prostitute; her name is Toyosi.

Daddy so much keeps his affair away from my poor mother such that she didn't suspect that he is doing such a thing. It seems that Toyosi in question is a young teenager who is not through with her secondary school education then. She gets pregnant and daddy asks her to abort her pregnancy because my mum was also having her second pregnancy by then also (mummy's pregnancy was not successful).

That's the end of their affair--Toyosi disappears without the knowledge of my father. He can't tell if she has aborted the pregnancy or not. Things goes on normally for my daddy until Toyosi shows up in his life again two weeks back--the day we find them kissing each other.

Toyosi, whom I have only seen once, is a light-skinned, wide browed pretty lady in her twenties. Going by my teacher's narration of the story, she should be about twenty-five years now, because she tells me that Toyosi gets pregnant when she was in J.S.S 3.

Toyosi has a lionesslike waist and the hair on her head that only day I see her makes her take the form of a lady in a beauty contest. Her teeth are spaced at the centre to add to her pulchritude. Her purplish-brown tinted eyelashes must have been artificially brushened up to exude such lustrous appearance. To call a spade a spade, Toyosi looks angelic (or maybe I should say demonic) in her make-ups.

The cleavages she reveals alone could have made my father go lusting for her again. Her miniskirt is what I would refer to as a minipant if there is anything like that. But why is my father so bold as to rough-handling his real wife because of a mere outlandish appendage as her? She is supposed to be punished under the law for her act, but she is spared. That is even too much for her, let alone treading the path of my mother, coming into her matrimonial home and kissing my dad with those red lips of hers.

My teacher doesn't want to hide anything from me regarding the matter despite the fact that it can be very bitter.

"You see, Rose, you have to be a strong lady and take heart. How old are you now?" Mrs Oyin signals to me.

"Eleven," I signal back and protrudes my lips in dissatisfaction.

"Good! You are already mature--puberty, everything," she says and sighs at my bust as if she is just discovering the development on me. "Rose, your mother doesn't want me to hide anything from you as regards that matter."

"Which matter?" I ask.

"That matter now; that woman you see with your daddy, ehn, that woman."

"Okay, go on ma, I'm all eyes," I say. She smiles. She must have been wondering how I come about some idioms let alone using it to suit my taste.
'I am all ears' is what I turn around to 'I am all eyes'.

"So, Rose this is what actually happened: your daddy went into extramarital affair eight years back for reasons best known to him..."

That reason is best known to me than John himself, I think. Then I am just three, that year it is confirmed that my eardrums weren't in place at all. So dad must have gone into the extramarital relationship because of me.

"Your daddy impregnates T-o-y-o-s-i, a Yoruba girl from..." she pauses as she sees me trying to spell out the name with my hands since such name hasn't been in my vocabulary of words earlier.

"Toy? Is she a toy?" I ask strangely. Mrs Oyin signals the name to me again; there is no break between the letters when she is spelling the name, so she is not Mrs Toy Osi as I have thought earlier, but Toyosi is just a single name.

Something about me is that I am too outspoken. Maybe God knows that I will turn out to be a parrot if he has created me with a mouth that can talk that is why he didn't do that. Well...I am still waiting to hear either my mother or my teacher tell me the gain of being disabled since they have both said that there are gains in it.

"Rose, listen, Rose," my teacher says after pulling me to see her speak. I was looking away earlier. "When your father impregnates Toyosi, he gave her money to terminate her pregnancy because your mother was also pregnant at that time. Toyosi collected the money and since then your father didn't know her whereabout until last two weeks when she showed up in your home as you can see."

"Did I hear you say my mother was pregnant?" I ask her at once.

"Yes, she was pregnant at that time," she nods in affirmation.

"Where is my sibling then?" I ask.

"A stillborn, Rose. It was dead at birth."

I am 'mute'. So I should have had a brother, a younger brother, I thought and shook my head in self-pity.

"Ahh!" I yell as if a big bedbug has just punctured my skin. "So I should have had a brother or sister!" I intensified my response to show my utmost displeasure.

"Yes Rose, you should have had a brother," she says. "Well... goodnews Rose, now you have a brother," she smiles. "And your brother will be here any moment from now," she adds.

"A ghost brother? Stillbirth?" I am horrified.

"No, no, no, Rose. Your brother will be here any moment from now--your brother from another mother, Bode by name."

"What! Who is Bode?" I ask and shout with my useless mouth.

"Bode is Toyosi's son she had for your daddy. He would be here soon to live with you. He's only seven years, Rose, so take care of him very well when he comes. Don't fight him at all. You are from the same father, so please take good care of him."

My head begins to knock like a car engine as sweat covered me up. I begin to envisage the beginning of torture for myself and my mother. That Toyosi in question, a second wife? Yes, this is the beginning of torment for myself and my mother, I think.

I leave my teacher in the parlour and go straight into my mother's room. She is sitting on a wheelchair, being confined to such since the day she was pushed by my daddy.

"Mummy is it true?" I ask with utmost seriousness written on my face.

She shook her head in affirmation, weeping.

"Aargh!" I scream in sign language.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Mother was discharged after two weeks. Her right hand was bandaged and attached to her neck so that her bones could heal up fast. She had her right leg in POP. Now I felt the real meaning of being deaf and dumb. I had to be at home to take care of her, but home was hell to me. No one to communicate with me.

Mother watched me as I did my sign language before her face. She could only shake her head vertically or horizontally to either concur with me or disagree to any matter I raised. Now I had to endure the true meaning of suspense: if you ask me, I couldn't understand what really transpired between daddy, mummy and the other woman in question, but it seemed mummy now knew all because I saw daddy talking to her at length. She wept endlessly and her face got swollen when father spoke then.

My teachers had come to pay my mother a visit when they discovered my absence in school. Mrs Oyin my class teacher came around and had a rapport with my mother. She then told her the whole story:

[i]John my father began to deal in extra marital affair when I was three years old—then, it was just confirmed that I was completely deaf and dumb. John needed an able child desperately then, such that he had to spread his tentacles to a woman whom I would call a prostitute; her name is Toyosi, the same woman father beat up mother for.

Daddy so much kept his affair away from my poor mother such that she didn't suspect that he was doing such a thing. It seemed that Toyosi in question was a teenager who was not through with her secondary school education then. She got pregnant and daddy asked her to abort her pregnancy because my mum was also having her second pregnancy by then also, but eventually, mummy's pregnancy was not successful. 

That was the end of their affair--Toyosi disappeared without the knowledge of my father. Daddy didn’t know if she had aborted the pregnancy or not. Things went on normally for my daddy until Toyosi showed up in his life again two weeks back--the day we foundd them playing love with each other.

Toyosi, whom I had only seen once, is a light-skinned, wide-browed pretty lady in her twenties. Going by my teacher's narration of the story, she should be about twenty-five years now, because she told me that Toyosi got pregnant when she was in J.S.S 3.

Toyosi had a lionesslike waist and the hair on her head that only day I saw her gave her the form of a lady in a beauty contest. Her teeth were spaced at the centre to add to her pulchritude. Her purplish-brown tinted eyelashes must have been artificially brushed up to exude such lustrous appearance. To call a spade a spade, Toyosi looked angelic (or maybe I should say demonic) in her make-ups. 

The cleavages her outfit revealed alone could have made my father go lusting for her again. Her miniskirt was what I would call a ‘minipant’ if there was anything like that. But why was my father so bold as to rough-handling his real wife because of a mere outlandish appendage as Toyosi? She was supposed to be punished under the law for her act, but was spared. That was even too much for her, let alone treading the path of my mother, coming into her matrimonial home and kissing my dad with those red lips of hers.

My teacher didn't want to hide anything from me regarding the matter despite the fact that it could be very bitter.

"You see, Rose, you have to be a strong lady and take heart. How old are you now?" Mrs Oyin signalled to me.

"Eleven," I signalled back and protruded my lips in dissatisfaction.

"Good! You are already mature--puberty, everything," she said and sighed at my bust as if she was just discovering the development on me. "Rose, your mother doesn't want me to hide anything from you as regards that matter."

"Which matter?" I ask.

"That matter now; that woman you see with your daddy, ehn, that woman."

"Okay, go on ma, I'm all eyes," I said. She smiled. She must have been wondering how I come about some idioms let alone using it to suit my taste. 
'I am all ears' was what I turned around to 'I am all eyes'. 

"So, Rose this is what actually happened: your daddy went into extramarital affair eight years back for reasons best known to him..."

That reason is best known to me than John himself, I thought. Then I was just three, that year it was confirmed that my eardrums weren't in place at all. So dad must have gone into the extramarital relationship because of me.

"Your daddy impregnated T-o-y-o-s-i, a Yoruba girl from..." she paused as she saw me trying to spell out the name with my hands since such name hadn't been in my vocabulary of words earlier.

"Toy? Is she a toy?" I ask strangely. Mrs Oyin signed the name to me again; there was no break between the letters when she was spelling the name, so she was not Mrs Toy Osi as I had thought earlier, but Toyosi was just a single name.

Something about me was that I was too outspoken. Maybe God knew that I would turn out to become a parrot if he had created me with a mouth that could talk, that was why he didn't do that. Well...I was still waiting to hear either my mother or my teacher tell me the gain of being disabled since they had both said that there were gains in it.

"Rose, listen, Rose," my teacher said after pulling me to see her speak. I was looking away earlier. "When your father impregnated Toyosi, he gave her money to terminate her pregnancy because your mother was also pregnant at that time. Toyosi collected the money and since then your father didn't know her whereabouts until last two weeks when she showed up in your home as you can see."

"Did I hear you say my mother was pregnant?" I asked her at once.

"Yes, she was pregnant at that time," she nodded in affirmation.

"Where is my sibling then?" I asked.

"A stillborn, Rose. It was dead at birth."

I am 'mute'. So I should have had a brother, a younger brother, I thought and shook my head in self-pity.

"Ahh!" I yell as if a big bedbug had just punctured my skin. "So I should have had a brother or sister!" I intensified my response to show my utmost displeasure.

"Yes Rose, you should have had a brother," she said. "Well... goodnews Rose, now you have a brother," she smiled. "And your brother will be here any moment from now," she added.

"A ghost brother? Stillbirth?" I was horrified.

"No, no, no, Rose. Your brother will be here any moment from now--your brother from another mother, Bode by name."

"What! Who is Bode?" I asked and shouted with my useless mouth.

"Bode is Toyosi's son she had for your daddy. He would be here soon to live with you. He's only seven years, Rose, so take care of him very well when he comes. Don't fight him at all. You are from the same father, so please take good care of him."

My head began to knock like a car engine as sweat covered me up. I began to envisage the beginning of torture for myself and my mother. That Toyosi in question, a second wife? Yes, this is the beginning of torment for myself and my mother, I thought.

I left my teacher in the parlour and went straight into my mother's room. She was sitting on a wheelchair, being confined to such since the day she was pushed by my daddy.

"Mummy is it true?" I asked with utmost seriousness written on my face.

She shook her head in affirmation, weeping.

"Aargh!" I screamed in sign language.

Chapter Five

I felt a bit relieved when I learnt that Toyosi herself wasn't going to be staying with us. Only her son would be staying.

Toyosi had just met with a man she would marry but she wasn't going to let that man know that she had a child, that was why she wanted to return Bode to his father.

With the knowledge I had, my father begged her that she should stay with him. Mother said she eavesdropped on them and heard them speak—how I wish I could eavesdrop too.

My father knelt down before her, begging her to be his wife; he said he was even ready to throw my mother and I out for her sake.

"Toyosi, please come home. This place is a hell to me. Please stay with me, Toyosi," John lamented.

"You have a wife already," said Toyosi. "I can't be a second wife; I mean it's too early for me to get into rivalry with another wife. Please let me just leave Bode here. My husband loves me a lot and he won’t like to lose me," Toyosi said.

"Listen Toyosi, I quite understand you, okay. If you don't want to be a second wife, that's right. I can drive Hannah and her useless good-for-nothing child out of the house immediately..."

Good-for-nothing! If only my mum told me all these immediately my dad said so, I would have taken it hard with him. Maybe God didn't want me to go wild, that's why. I only heard that few days back after my mother had recovered. She said she eavesdropped to hear that.

Well, 'Good-for-nothing' is what I am afterall. Dad hasn't told any lie, I thought. When Bode came to the house and discovered I was deaf mute and my mother was on a wheelchair, the boy ran back and held his mother tight, saying, "Is this where you want me to stay, aunty? I can't stay in the house where everybody is disabled." He was calling his mother ‘Aunty’.

"Ssh! Bode, shut up! At least your daddy is not disabled like these other two," Toyosi said and blinked her eyes.

"But aunty, why can't you be staying here with us so that that woman on wheelchair will not ill-treat me?"

"She dares not," said Toyosi to my mother's face. "If she will do that to you my son, then it will be better for her not to be able to get up from that wheelchair forever."

When mother shared the experience with me, I wept sore and began to hate little Bode and his mother. How could they say such a thing? I will teach him a lesson of his life. Bode must become dumb like myself too, I thought.

I put a knife on fire and poured some red oil. I was going to put that knife down his throat. He would lose his voice forever, just like me.

Bode had finished eating. He was fond of making fun of me. He had even plucked a leaf and put it inside his mouth to mock me. Then he wrote something down in a paper and tucked it inside my hand. I read:

You are as deaf as a goat

Am I the one this small boy is calling a herbivore? I thought. The boy laughed and ran about when I wanted to catch him to deal with him. I wondered who thought this boy to be so heartless. Despite how my mother cared for him, he still did this to me. Why?

Bode soon return when his eyes were heavy with sleep. He fell on the bed and off he went. I made sure he was fast asleep and tied him firmly to the bed. Then I put a knife on fire and poured red oil on the hot knife. 

I will teach Bode what it means to be permanently speechless in life. Perhaps he doesn't know that the most painful thing in life is the inability to express yourself as you wish. That is why people always complain that the deaf and dumb people are the most rebellious, because we get angry when we are very much pushed to the wall because of our inability to speak out our mind.

I am going to teach Bode that I am even more terrible than a stammerer. How can anybody encroach on our right and go scot-free? I should have done this thing earlier. Why did I delay up to this time? This is not the first time Bode will be ridiculing me by putting a leaf in his mouth. I have signalled to him several times to stop that but he won't. Now he will have to bid his vocal cord a goodbye.

I sit at the edge of the bed and then stretches my body towards Bode who is fast asleep. I wouldn't know if he is snoring because I can't hear a thing. I hold the hot knife close to his face. Nothing is going to stop me from dipping it inside his throat.

I can't do it. I begin to weep. No! This is not happening. This is not me. How dare me? My hand shakes. I begin to retreat.

Bode's eyes flashed open. He was terrified. I see the movement of his mouth. He must have shouted, "Murderer!"

Bode shakes the bed vigorously. I cut the rope with the hot knife and the boy flees in horror. He didn't return until father arrives. 

My father becomes enraged. He beat me black and blue. I'm done for it.

Father locks me out of the home. Mother herself isn't allowed to come inside. He accuses my mum of bringing a bastard to his home and calling her a child. That is me daddy is calling a bastard.

That day we have to pull over in Mrs. Oyin's house. The woman becomes disappointed in me.

"Rose, how many times have I warned you to always behave gentle? You are mature for christ sake! Take a look at your bre*ast, Rose. You are a big girl."

I couldn't say anything. I just keep weeping. I know my mother doesn't deserve to be locked outside her matrimonial home. I feel very guilty.

"Rose, why did you want to kill your brother? He is your brother, no matter what? And you raised a knife to his neck to cut off his neck? Rose, Haba!" Mrs Oyin speaks on. I have no strength to raise a finger, let alone my two hands to speak. I am not in the mood to say a word.

"Do you remember what happened to Cain when he killed Abel his brother in the bible? Rose, don't you ever be pushed by anger to do evil in life, because the result of such doing will remain a stigma forever in your life..."

That is all my eyes could grab and send to my brain for interpretation: don't you ever be pushed by anger to do evil in life, because the result of such doing will remain a stigma forever in your life.

I resolve to be calm, no matter the situation. I didn't gesture it out for them to see, but in my mind I have made the decision not to bother myself over offenders. I will never raise my little fingers, let alone my hands, to fight back anymore. I will be calm like a peaceful river.

"Mrs John, we shall return to beg her father to take you back very early tomorrow morning," says my classteacher.

"Thanks so much Mrs Oyin. We are grateful," my mother says. I wonder why she doesn't blame me for whatever happens. Is she a caring mother or she is just in the process of spoiling me?
CHAPTER SIX

Daddy didn't pay attention to us for one week. Mrs. Oyin accommodates us throughout those times. Every evening we will go to our house to beg him, but he is adamant.

However, he allowed me to enter the house and pick all my clothes, including my school uniform. Bode sticks out his tongue at me, mocking me. 

We left the house again on the seventh day, but only Mrs Oyin returned to speak to him. He agrees to take us in.

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Bode didn't stop to offend me. But I did all I can do to avoid having trouble with him. At an instance, Bode slaps me. It is a big shock for me. Nobody has ever slapped me and go scot free before. Even Bose, the big girl everybody fears in school, is not up to my standard. I can remember the day I beat her and poured sand in her mouth.

Bode is four years younger than me, yet he will not respect his senior. He is becoming very pompous, maybe because Daddy is overprotecting him.

Bode is too dull for my liking. His exercise books are painted all over with zeros. Maybe he is having that dullness in common with his mother, because as for me, I am not dull in school, meaning that my parents are not dull too. But if it works that way, why then am I deaf and dumb when both of my parents are normal? That is a question for my science teacher.

It has been better if Bode's pomposity is all the pain my mother has to cope with. Toyosi his mother always come to check on him every weekend. Bode will tell lies to her about me and the woman will begin to blab and threaten me. She says that if anything bad happens to her son, then I should count myself dead.

It's like daddy still likes Toyosi a lot. Anytime she comes around, daddy will take her to his room and lock the door. Then they will send my mummy out of the room. They must have been having extramarital affair.

One day I ask my mummy to divorce daddy, but she refused.

"Rose, I can't do that," she says. "God doesn't like divorce."

"If God doesn't like divorce then why can't he also prevent things that can lead to divorce?" I grumble over my nose.

"Don't say so, Rose!" mummy shuns me. My eyes are wet already. I am going to shed tears. She comes around me and put her arms around my neck. Her long hair falls on my nape. She doesn't like seeing me in tears. "Rose, in the end we shall overcome," she says eventually.

I advise my mummy to trace Toyosi to her husband's house and reveal the secret once and for all, but she waves away the idea. Instead, she picks up that boring song again 'We Shall Overcome'.

My Common Entrance Examination will soon be here, but daddy refuses to get past questions and answers series for me. Mummy tries her best and gets them for me. 

My school is Ejigbo Standard School. It is both for the normal people and the special ones. Since the day I make that resolution that I will be calm, I haven't fought anybody. I didn't even talk to anyone let alone quarrelling with them and this again becomes my classteacher's headache. She will call me into her office and ask me why my name doesn't make the name of noisemaker list anymore.

"But you have told me to cease from making noise many times, and now I'm doing that, what again?" I say.

Mrs Oyin keeps quiet. She doesn't know what to say any more.
... ... ... ... ... ... ...

One day, I iron my white cloth as I get prepared for school. That particular morning, I wake up happy. I don't know why. Mother notices it before she leaves for work. Now I go to school myself because I am twelve. I am the one to take Bode to school as usual. His own school is just a stone throw from our house, but I have been mandated to take him there before going to my own school.

Bode has been yawning since the time mummy wakes him up to take his bath. The last time I check on him, he just got into the bathroom. I didn't want to be late because I am the Time Keeper of my school. Sometimes whenever I ring the bell it looks funny to me because I can't hear the sound of what I am ringing. But I have come to learn something: the blind cannot become a time keeper because they don't have eyes to check the time. Yet, they are always the first set of people to come out of their classes at the sound of the bell, touching the walls for guidance and support. It's like the walls themselves are useful. Nothing in the world is a waste Mrs Oyin will tell us many times, just to make us know that WE ARE ABLE. 

As a Time Keeper, I am supposed to be in school early, but this morning I haven't seen the possiblity; not when Bode hasn't taken his bath not to talk of eating his food, yet it is 7:24am already. It is obvious I will be late to school this time around. I can't really remember the last time I go late to school.

I leave my cloth to check on Bode if he has finished taken his bath, to my surprise he is not in the bathroom. I check the toilet to see if he is there. No, he is not there. I resign and return to the table where I am ironing my cloth, to my surprise, the cloth has been soaked up with red oil.

I raise the cloth up. Tears flow down my cheek when I see that my cloth has been burnt up with iron. I did put off the pressing iron when I went to look for Bode, so how come my cloth is now burnt up?

Bode crawls out from under the table, laughing. He gives me a note and runs away. I read it:

I don't want to go to school today

I become mad. Is it because he didn't want me to take him to school that he has to burn and stain my cloth? I am enraged within me. I sit quietly and fold my hands. 

Bode comes and sticks his tongue at me as usual. He is taking my silence for cowardice. He should have gone to my school a year ago to ask them my name: Rose The Tiger. Even Bose the Big Boss cannot face me let alone this small Bode.

Bode spreads his ten fingers at me. I hardly joke with my mother. How can he be cursing my mother? Okay, what has my mummy got to do in this matter? The tiger in me begins to form when I see those dirty fingers. His cup is full. It is time to teach him a lesson. 
No, I think. I have resolved in my mind that I will be gentle a year back and I have endured for that long, so let me not fight back.

Bode seems to be in the mood today. He wants to get me angry by all means. He comes behind me and taps my nape. Kpash! It sounds like thunderbolt. I become mad at him.

I raise Bode high up by the neck. The rest is a story. He falls down. Dead? Still alive? I can't tell.

"Ah!" my brain speaks. "I have killed somebody."

CHAPTER SEVEN

My class teacher rushes in. It is 9am already. She was very shocked when she saw Bode lying on the floor.

"What happened, Rose?" she asks me.

"I--I have k--killed him," I tell her.

"How? What did you do to him?"

"I held his neck tight," I say.

I explain the whole thing to my teacher. She carried him to the hospital immediately. I followed her there, shaking like a leaf.

This Bode must be an 'ogbanje', I think. How can he die because of that little squeezing of his neck? Have I not done something similar to Bose a female counterpart for that matter and she didn't die?

I sit at the waiting room expecting to hear the doctor's verdict. If Bode is dead, then I'd rather die too, else my daddy will kill me by himself. I have seen it in films how people kill themselves. They call it suicide. Maybe that is what I will also do, I ponder. God will understand.

My teacher tells me that Bode has regained consciousness. He has been diagnosed for asthma.

"Asthma?" I say. I become scared. "Did I cause it?"

"No you didn't Rose," she says. "You only triggered it when you choked him; it is good this happened, else the boy would keep living with it without knowing."

I look at my teacher's face on and on. How did she know that something was happening in my home for her to have rushed down there at the nick of time? Maybe it's because I didn't ring the bell in school when I should. I ask her, "Ma, why did you rush down to my home like that?"

She smile and says, "God told me to do so. Actually, I couldn't rest in my spirit when I didn't see you in school on time, so I decided to check on you."

"I thought as much," I reply.

Daddy comes around after work. My teacher must have explained what happened to him. The look on his face is as if he should tear me apart for almost killing his son. I fear what Toyosi will do if she learns about it.

My mother also calls at the hospital. This time, she speaks harshly to me.

"Rose, do you want to kill somebody?"

"I am sorry mother," I plead.

"Shut up!" she signalled harshly to me. I weep. This time around she didn't console me and I understand why; I am a threat to her matrimonial home, I think.

When mummy and I returned home after Bode was discharged, we met our loads outside the house. Daddy is kicking us out again. 

We have to put up in my aunty's place for weeks. Toyosi even came to the place to insult us. She hit my mother on the face with the pointed part of her stiletto.

"You want to kill my child for me? I swear, what I will do for you, you shall both regret it. I will blow whistle with your nostrils, you wicked nuisance. Ah! In my life shall I live to enjoy the fruit of my womb but I swear that deaf mute idol you are calling your daughter will die soon, as glory be to God! Call me bastard if it doesn't happen!"

My aunty was angry. She rushes to confront her, but my weeping mother didn't allow her do that. The sight is unbearable to me. I run down the staircase and roll over accidentally.

The woman stands over me and claps her hands over my head:

"Good! This is just the beginning for you. Call me bastard if I, Toyosi the daughter of Balogun, don't ruin your family!"

I didn't have much injury when I fell. I get up and my aunt comes around me to pick me up. She so much loves me such that she has mastered the sign language too. She is even the one who tells me everything Bode's mother was yelling about.

"Rose, just be who you are. Don't fear, she can't do anything to hurt you," my aunty assures me afterwards.

Mummy says it is time to divorce my daddy as I have advised her earlier. It seems okay by me, at least it will help me to steer clear of trouble every now and then.

CHAPTER EIGHT

My aunt and my mother are still in the euphoria of the great thing God did for us, even three days after the dream I had. Now I have begun to see that some advantages can be in being disabled. Well, I still don't fully agree to it anyway. But that woman I see in the dream calling my name, I have never seen her in real life before. Who can she be? I wonder.

Rachael soon began to pester my mother to return to my father. She says that divorce is not a good Christian practice. It seems as if she wants me to 'hear' what they are saying so she talks to my mother in sign language:

"Hannah, Hannah, Hannah, how many times did I call you?"

"Twice Rachael," my mummy answers.

"Not twice, three times," she signals.

"Yes, three times," my mummy answers.

"You have to return to your husband right now, please."

"I can't!" she replies. "John is selfish! All he wants is other people's inconveniences to please himself. He keeps beating me and my daughter up. Before he kills us we have to stay away from him. Sister, tell us if you are tired of accomodating us and we will just leave here for another place."

"Ahn! Ahn! Why are you talking like this, Hannah? Did I complain that I am tired? Infact my sister, you have disappointed me for saying such a thing," she frowns.

"I am very sorry my sister, it is just that I am confused about the whole thing," my mother sobs. A tear rolled down my left cheek. The worry was too much conspicuous on her face. 

I wish never to return to my father. I don't know why Rachael is raising that forgone issue now. Why can't she just let us be? At least it is not every woman that must stay in her husband's wife. She is an example, since she has been living alone since her husband's death.

I come into the issue:

"Aunty Rachael, daddy doesn't want us anymore, don't you understand? He used his own hands to throw our loads out of the house. Even if we beg him, he won't agree for us to return," I say. I wait for her to say something. Her throat is dancing to the gulp of the water passing through it. She is drinking water in a glass cup. Aunty bangs the tumbler against the table and says, "Rose, it's not true, your daddy will accept you, at least you know that it is not possible to chase a bad child away for a tiger to tear apart. Just humbly go to him and kneel down before him, then he will take you back."

"Okay, okay, we will do that if you will go with us Rachael," my mother says.

"That's not a big deal, Hannah, I will come with you anytime you are ready. Can we go now?" she says.

I squeeze up my face. The thought of returning to my father is like returning to earth after making it to heaven. My world has changed so much within the few days I am with my aunt. She is the kindest person in the world.

"Okay, we shall go tomorrow," my mother promised.

"Accepted by me," Rachael says.

"Not accepted by me," I barge in stubbornly. Rachael smiles and says, "Majority carries the vote. We are going right there tomorrow." She comes around me and kisses my forehead. Then she lowers her right ear to my chest to feel the thumps of my heart.

"Never worry Rose, all is well. Your father will treat you well henceforth," she says, then she folds me up in her hands.

My mother's left hand clutched into a fist which she had rested her chin upon. Her face looked more depressed than mine. When I look into her face she seems ageing. I rush to her.

"Mother, don't think too much, you are ageing rapidly," I say.

"Ageing?" she manages to ask in smiles. "I am not ageing my daughter."

"Well...if you say so...anyway, I am here to tell you that all is well, a message from Aunty Rachael."

"Okay o, jolly little daughter, I have heard you," says mother. A knock rocked the door.

"Yes, come in, who is there?" my aunty must have shouted, going by the movement of her mouth. The door got opened gently and someone ambled in.

Toyosi!!! It is my stepmother stepping in as if to murder us. My heart jumped off my body!

I want to know those who are following this story. Pls say yeah yeah if you're following it.

I can spot Ann2012. Pls don't leave without dropping a post o.

This post is dedicated to Ann2012. Pls keep reading and do invite others. Thanks.


CHAPTER NINE

My body shakes as I set my eyes on her. What can she be here for? Even my mother isn't asking her anything. Suddenly, her stern face drops and she seems sober.

"G--good day," she greets us. I have read her lips to get what she says.

"What do you want?" my aunt challenges her. She didn't invite her in.

"I--I come to apologize," she must have said, going by the gesture she makes.

My aunty didn't take her serious at first, but eventually, she did.

Toyosi tells us that she has regretted her actions. She says that she wants us back in the house. When my mummy tells her that it won't be possible, she began to beg her. 

My mummy tells me the whole story in detail; according to her, John is getting worried over not having anybody to take care of Bode and himself. He visits Toyosi in her matrimonial home often until she advised him to take back his wife and children.

"Don't worry, John will take a very good care of you and your daughter," mummy says, mimicking in sign language how Toyosi has said it.

"So, after throwing our loads out that man still have the gut to beg us to return, huh!" I say angrily.

"Hey, Rose, he's your daddy, so you have no right to call him that man!" Rachael says. "By the way, this is just a kind of an answer to our prayers. Didn't I tell you yesterday that if you go there tomorrow to beg him, he will listen to you?"

"Heard," I gesticulate. "What about that wicked wh'ore, did she apologize to you before she leaves? Remember she was bragging few days back that she will do something terrible to us."

"She did apologize," my mother says. 

"Remember I say she will come and do that in one of our prayers," Rachael says. She always love bringing God, church, bible and prayers into every little matter. I love her for that anyway. 

"Younger sister, you are a prophetess," my mummy makes fun of her and pushes her head slightly. 

"That's a gift from above sister," Rachael says. "Even before my husband died, I foretold his death; it came as a vision, but my husband didn't pay attention." Rachael's face develops into a grotesque. Remembering her husband has remained her ugliest moments; a cross to bear.

My mother turns to me and says, "Rose, infact Toyosi promised to come and spend this weekend with us so that she can have time to have fun with you."

"With me? Why?" I say in an unforgiven manner.

"Rose, let her come, there is no big deal about that. Afterall we have prayed to have peace with everyone and our prayer is being answered right now," mother says. "Rose, she even said that you will teach her the sign language when she comes."

My aunt makes her mouth into something for a while. She must have coughed, going by the way the lips are set. Seems she doesn't approve of the idea that I teach her sign language.

My mother looks at her face for a while. A sparkle of shock is on her face. It is as if the cough is a significance of something I don't know. 

"First thing tomorrow morning, Rachael, I'm off to my husband's house," mummy says eventually, shutting her eyes, sobbing.

I can't sleep at night. I just keep rolling around on my fat bed. My eyes are clear. My mind flashes back to past events; those harassments from my father. I weep. I hope it won't continue.

My dream is the sweetest ever; I ride on a horse with my father. I speak with him verbally, Bode sitting with my mummy on the other white horse. A long horsetail is in my grip. I feel like a queen. 

I come off the horse's back and fall to the ground.

"What the hell!" I have just rolled off my fat bed to the ground. Dream is silly indeed.

sammyLuvin:
I can spot Ann2012. Pls don't leave without dropping a post o.

Well done OP
Seat claimed

Ann2012:


Well done OP
Seat claimed

Thank you. Pls fasten your seat belt, because very soon many people will flood this hall.

Chapter Ten

Contrary to my thought, father welcomes us heartily. He embraces and kisses my mummy in the presence of Toyosi who is smiling.

"Husband and wife, open the door and kiss," Toyosi says and laughs.

"Go and meet your husband too, Toyosi," my father says.

When my mummy tells me all these, I doubt it.

"Are you sure Toyosi is happy with us now?" I ask her.

"Didn't you see it with your eyes yesterday?" mummy replies me.

"But this is strange and so sudden, how come?"

"That's the miracle of God," says mummy. "Don't you know that when the way of a person pleases God he will make his enemies to be at peace with him?"

But Toyosi didn't tell us the reason why she had to change her mind towards us suddenly like that. Bode hasn't changed a bit, yet his mother did warn him not to continue misbehaving towards us.

It is holiday period, so I spend all my time at home enjoying myself. Daddy isn't bothering me anymore. Infact he is a changed man too. I think he is behaving according to Toyosi's dictate. She has told him to be kind to us because we are his legitimate family and not herself.

Mummy shares the testimony in her church of what God has done to her; how God has changed her husband's heart. My church is a large one. I didn't even know my mum is up there on the podium sharing her testimony until I begin to see the interpretation of her testimony in sign language; how would I have known she is up there when the church has relegated us, the special ones so called, to the back of the Church? I have asked our 'deaf and dumb' interpreter a question once, during question and answer session after our Sunday school.

"The topic today is Show Love Without Discrimination, ma, but why don't I see the love in our church here?" I ask.

"What do you mean?" she asks me.

"According to the Bible Reading, it is stated that it is wrong to tell one person sit here while you tell another person come over to this high seat. But why is it that we deaf and dumb in this church have to sit far away from the stage like this?"

The interpreter smiles. She must have been thinking of what to reply. 

"Hmm..." she smiles. "Rose, it is to avoid distraction, that's why? If we do our service close to them, they will be distracted with the movements of our hands."

"I disagree!" I barge in. "Why are we not also distracted with the movement of their mouths? We don't hear the sound of their mouths, our hand movements don't produce any sound too, we only get to see each other, that's all. It's fifty-fifty!"

She becomes mute. But that was not all. I still have more to say in rage:

"Why can't the preacher even be preaching in sign language and someone should be interpreting to them in voice language? This is also discrimination!"

Everyone laughed that day in the deaf and dumb class and I was rechristened 'Miss Discrimination'.

CHAPTER TWELVE
The following day, Sunday, Toyosi was back in our house. She was still as keen on knowing my name as the day before yesterday. My aunt’s instruction didn’t strike my opaque head. I was going to demonstrate it to her once and for all.
An inner voice came. At first I was shocked when I heard it and thought I could now hear with my ears, but when Toyosi turned around to answer her son, I knew I was still deaf because I didn’t still hear her voice. The inner voice had just asked me not to do it.
“Please demonstrate your name,” she asked again. As though she had enchanted me, I rose up and made some gestures with my hands. She was glad. She signaled that I did it over and over again and I concurred. She also began to do it until I told her she had done a perfect job.
Toyosi left the home after presenting some goodies to me. It was soon dark. The day had gone to bed but my eyes were just clear. I wasn’t feeling sleepy at all. Mother came to my room and saw me turning around under the quilt after switching on the light of my room.
“Rose, aren’t you sleeping?” she asked.
“I don’t feel like…sleeping,” I yawned. She came to sit beside me on the bed.
“What’s the matter Rose?”
“I don’t just know,” I said.
“Maybe you want me to rock you to sleep, Rose,” she said. “And I wouldn’t mind doing that.”
“I’m no more a small girl mum,” I replied. “By September I would be getting to JSS 1.”
“And then?” she said. She looked into my gray eyes and frowned. I didn’t know what she spotted in them. “Rose, are you nervous?”
“A bit,” I said. I was feeling nervous indeed. My heart was tapping faster than normal. My blood was burning within me. It was as though something bad would happen.
“Don’t be nervous Rose,” she said. “Or would you come and sleep in my room?”
“I wouldn’t mind doing that,” I said. Mother bundled me up the way I saw father bundle Toyosi up those few times she was playing love with my father in our presence. She dumped me playfully on her bed. I ricocheted like that round thing my brother called ‘high land’. Mother’s bed was as fat as a thousand sliced bread packed together. Sure no one would have a bad dream on such.
As soon as my back made intimate contact with the mattress, my eyes began to close. My breath poured easily. I fell into unconsciousness. A dream began to form on my face.
Vividly in my dream I saw a woman sitting on a mat beside an old man whose teeth was like a rotten banana. The ambiance of the room was familiar to me. The woman was the one I saw calling some statements into a basin of water having my image some weeks back. This time around, she wasn’t speaking, instead, she was gesticulating.
“Bode, the son of John, I am calling your name right now. Answer me to death right now, Bode!” she said in sign language. “Answer me to death right now!”
It was like a film show to me. An image had formed inside the water. She was shocked when she saw the image in it. It wasn’t mine, but that of Bode. I could read disappointment and shock on her face when she saw the image.
I thumped up.
So it was a dream, I thought. I tapped my mother to life.
“Mother, I have a dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yes mother, a bad dream,” I said, breathing like a cow.
“About what?” my mother yawned and beamed at the wall clock. It was just 2 am.
“Something like that one I had in Aunty Rachael’s house three weeks back,” I said.
“Do you mean the dream about someone gawking at your image in a basin of water?” my mother asked in a fearful manner.
“Yes mother,” I said. In fact, this time around the woman was speaking in sign language.
“Ah! Calling your name in sign language?” Mother said and held my two cheeks in between her palms.
“Not my name this time around,” she said. “She was calling Bode’s name.”
“In sign language?”
“Exactly, yes,” I said, sweating.
Mother was glad I didn’t respond to the call since it wasn’t my name that was called by the strange woman in the dream. However, she felt concerned for Bode.
“Who’s this strange woman of darkness calling us at night? Why can’t she present herself in the day? She must be a coward.” Her heart thumped. She was scared. “Now that you said that the woman is communicating in sign language, are you safe at all? What is the probability that she won’t pounce on you in the next dream?” My mother faced the ceiling and began to weep.
“Mum,” I said and tapped her. She looked at me. “I think I know who she is.”
“Who?” she asked in an intriguing manner and I answered pointblank, “Toyosi!”
“How do you know?”
“She asked for my name yesterday, but I demonstrated her son’s name, Bode to her.”
“Ah!” my mother held me tight. “A witch cried yesterday, a child died today, who don’t know that it is the witch who killed the child?” she spoke in proverbs.
“Mother, let’s go and check Bode in his room first,” I said out of concern. Mother and I began to head for his room. He wasn’t in.
“What?” we both screamed in sign language.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We got well inside Bode’s room but he wasn’t there. Mother adjourned to the toilet to look for him. It was futile.
“Bode! Bode! Bode!” my mother must have shouted, going by the look of her mouth. She was shaking visibly. Maybe Bode had answered the call of her mother, I thought.
“She must have gone bodily to meet her mother in the herbalist’s place?” my mother said.
“In this dead night?” I replied. “I don’t think so.”
“Hmm…hey, I’m afraid Rose. What are we going to tell John now?”
“Like how? Did we do anything to him?” I said and frowned.
“Daddy won’t take that from us, I hope you know him,” she said.
“Enh, but how is this our concern?” I replied, bending to peep under the bed to find him. He wasn’t there.
“Even Toyosi would do anything to put us in trouble,” she said. “She would take us to court and ask us to provide her son by all means.”
I threw down the pillow, perhaps he was hiding underneath it. I opened the wardrobe and even pulled out the drawer. We were both acting nervously as though we were running mental. How possibly would someone fold himself into a wardrobe? That thought didn’t strike my head.
My mother even raised the mattress up and left it out of order after discovering that Bode wasn’t under it. The last place we would go search for him was my father’s room. We feared the man so much.
“Bode!” my mother was calling as she left for the parlour. She returned to say Bode wasn’t there. We have virtually checked the whole flat except my father’s room.
“Maybe we should go and check him in your room,” I said.
“No,” my mother disagreed at once. “Your father will suspect us if we do that.”
“So what’s your suggestion?” I asked.
“Let’s just retreat and return to your room to continue our sleep and do as if nothing has happened. Tomorrow morning we shall be sorting it out.”
“Alright then,” I said, stepping ahead of her. I can’t wait to be on my bed again because I am tired. But this time around I would make sure I don’t sleep with my two eyes closed to avoid being called in the dream. I would rather sleep like a duck, I thought.
“Rose, don’t go yet,” my mother signaled to me. “Let’s tidy up the room we’ve scattered.
I rushed to the wardrobe to arrange Bode’s cloth as they were earlier, then I found a calabash.
I was shocked. I tapped my mother to call her attention. She was shocked too when she saw it.
She shook like a leaf blown by a gentle breeze. Her mouth convulsed.
“Who put that there?” she was asking. If she hadn’t spoken with sign language I would have thought that she wasn’t directing the question to me but to someone else. How would I know who put the calabash there? The thing was merely half-filled with sand
My mother feared that it would implicate us if father should discover it there later, so she picked it up after doing sign of the cross over her face and shoulder so that she could go and throw it far away. As she got to the entrance of Bode’s room, someone appeared at the door. It was John!
For minutes I felt the quietness of disability. Mother was shedding hot tears, father was pointing to her face; Bode was staring under father’s armpit in horror. My heart whispered, ‘I am disabled’.
A slap was done to my mother’s cheek. It must have reverberated going by the impetus in my father’s arm. His biceps was on the high at that point. The calabash fell off her grip and got smashed. Father pinned her to the wall and Bode came after me too. He sent a strong bite to my right side. I couldn’t raise my arm. I dare not do that.
When they were done with us after dealing with us like thieves, father locked us up in the room. I was left in the dark as regard their conversation. Mother could have begun the explanation, but our hands were both tied with ropes. They had even removed the bulb in that room so as to leave us in total darkness. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth in the belly of the dark. It was hell!
I dragged myself to my mother in the dark and leaned my weighty head on her laps. My hot tears ran down my eyes into her laps—the cleavage in between them I guess. She lowered her head to my neck. She was weeping too. I knew this when a hot liquid ran through my nape.
The night was lengthier than ever. The last time I checked the time, it was 2pm. Now it should be 4pm, I thought. But then I had to wait and wait and wait. Sleep couldn’t graze my eyes. Mother was not also sleeping. We couldn’t communicate since everything needed for communication was under bondage; eyes dim, hands tied; no way!
A poem began to form on my befuddled brain. I would rock the world with it in the nearest future. I hated lie more than anything in the world. Why should we deaf, dumb, lame and blind people keep deceiving ourselves by giving ourselves hope that we are able when actually we are not? We say that what normal people can do, special people can do better. They tell us stories of Nick Vujicic who was born limbless in Australia. They tell us the story of a headless chicken who survived for eighteen months after its head had been chopped off its neck; the story of one Spencer West who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro without legs and many others. I don’t believe any of those craps. They even showed us pictures of those people to back up their claims that we are able. That chicken, I could remember, was named Mike the Headless Chicken.
My class teacher would not let us rest while telling us those stories to motivate us and keep us away from thinking of our predicaments. She would say, without a head, Mike the headless chicken could run about for eighteen months, how much more you who have heads?
I could remember challenging her that day by asking, “What is the essence of a piece of bread without butter? What is the use of a house without furniture? What is the use of a head without functions?
“What do you mean by all these?” she demonstrated in annoyance.
“A head with useless lips, mouth, tongue and ears, what’s the use?” I replied her that day. She was speechless.
So where is that specialty right now? We deaf and dumb can’t communicate in the dark, yet we have something called mouth. Why at all am I even born with a mouth when it isn’t speaking, or should I shift the blame on the tongue? We can’t enjoy movies because they were not designed for we the deaf people. How could we hear their speech? No way!
If only I have an ear that could listen, my mother was ready, even now, to tell me to detail everything that had transpired between herself and her husband. Why should I even need her to tell me what happened when I would actually have heard them myself during the heat of the brawl?
We spent two months in the dark. Actually, it wasn’t two months but it seemed so because of the torment we were passing through. Maybe we had a shorter day and a longer night, who knows.
The day began to dawn gradually and the blanket of darkness left the face of the wall clock. I checked the time; it was 5:25 am. The door flung open and three souls trooped in, Toyosi, John and Bode. They were leering wickedly at us. We are dead!
Toyosi began to unleash the content of her mouth. She pounced on my mother and then came to me to do the same. She taught me a lesson I never learnt. She smashed my head on the bed wood. She was pointing at the smashed calabash, the scattered bed, the opened wardrobe and every other thing my mother and I have scattered during the course of our search for Bode. My common sense told me that she would use them all a evidence against us in the court of law.
By 7am we were still in bounds, only that we could now see each other. They had shut the door once more but our hands were still tied. My father tied them purposely to render us incommunicado. I leaned my back against the bedside and raised my legs up in the air to communicate with my mother. I managed to ask a question with my legs. She understood me vividly and she was shocked. Now how would she give me a reply? She couldn’t demonstrate anything with her own legs. It was a surprise to me when she nodded to signal to me that she wasn’t able to do that. She couldn’t control her toes to make any sign, but I was finding it so easy to do. I used my knees as my elbow whenever it was needed. I could easily fold all four toes and let the fattest one lie straight, but my mother couldn’t dare it.

Do you have the continuation��

ajela:


Do you have the continuation��

Why not? I'm the writer of the story, so how will I not have it?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We remained in the house until 9am when my father returned with some police with Toyosi. They loosed my mother and replaced the rope on her hands with handcuffs.

I screamed. No one paid attention to me. John pushed me out of the way. My mother was led away despite all the gesticulation she was making.

Rachael my aunt came to time. She was shocked when she saw my mother on handcuffs. Her head gear toppled over and fell on the table in the sitting room. She put her hands on her head.

What was the count charge against mother? Who would let me know? My father began to point at my face. His face was coarse. He must have been shouting, going by his Adam apple which was bouncing up and down in his jugular.

My aunt held me by my right wrist and began to pull me out of the house. It was as if my father had instructed her to take me with her. I weep when I saw my mother being sandwiched into the police peacock van.

"What happened?" I asked my aunt.

"Let's get home first," she said.

As soon as we arrived Aunty Rachael's home, she changed her clothes and got prepared to go out.

"Where are you going aunty?"

"To the police station," she said.

"Aunty, what's my mummy's offence?" I asked.

"Wait for me to return," she said and began to hurry away.

I folded my arms. My eyes had seen too much already. To die is better than to live. If only I have my life in control I would rather have taken it.

Tears poured out of my eyes; maybe blood I didn't know. I wiped my tears with the back of my left hand. I felt lonely.

It was getting to 11am before my aunt returned.

"Welcome," I said in haste. "What about mum?"

"She's--she's there..." my aunt said and burst in tears. "Rose, tell me...tell me...what really happened?"

I narrated the whole event.

"It's your fault, Rose, yourself and your mother's fault. I--I told you Toyosi is dangerous, you didn't listen to me..."

Rachael patted me on the back. She told me exactly what the charge against my mother was.

"Rose, do you know what really happened? Your father charged your mother for attempted murder."

"What!" I screamed.

Rachael told the story to detail: Bode saw a woman sitting beside a herbalist and moving her hands over a calabash of water. He said that the woman he saw was your mother. His own image was inside the water they were looking at. Bode woke up and rushed to meet his father in fright.

"Hmm," I sighed with my hands when my aunt ended the story. "Aunty, that woman Bode saw is his own mother, not mine."

"But who in this world will believe that?" Rachael replied me. "It was your mother and yourself they heard your voices in the night calling Bode's name; when your mother made use of sign language to call Bode to death in the spiritual, the boy didn't respond because he is ignorant of the sign, so you resorted into calling his name in the physical!"

"Aunty!" I shouted in sign language. "Do you believe that?" I was in great shock. My mouth remained open wide as I expected a response from my aunt.

She burst into tears and arched her back. She grabbed me and folded me in her bossom. My head was right below her bony chin. Her long hair carressed my unclad shoulders. Her tears fell in drops and then in excess on my body. They were cold. She disentangled. I knew she was about to use the sign language--the British sign language:

"I don't believe every bit of their story, Rose, but no one else wouldn't believe it; indeed Bode had the dream because he fled to his daddy's bedside: your mummy wasn't beside your daddy at that dead of the night, where was she?"

"Em--em, she was beside me on my own bed," I said.

"And what were you both doing in Bode's room in the dead night? They said your mother wanted to kill me physically when he didn't die spiritually, that was why you were in his room. They said you didn't find him and then resorted into searching his room, perhaps he was hiding somewhere in the corner of the room--so you scattered his bed, his wardrobe and everything in there in desperation."

I sobbed. I didn't seem to see a way out of this.

"And lastly, your father said he found your mother carrying a calabash. Rose, what's that for?"

"We found it there," I said.

"Did you people do all these things at all? Why did you go scattering Bode's room?"

"It was true we were looking for Bode, just because of the dream I had; it was the same dream Bode claimed he saw, but it is a blatant lie that it was my mother who did the sign language in it; rather it is Bode's mother, Toyosi."

"Toyosi?" How? Why would she be calling her son's name?" she asked.

"Yes she's the one. She was asking me to tell her my name in sign language; I told her Bode's name instead, remembering that you have asked me not to tell her my name if she asked. Then she was calling her son's name in the dream unknowingly."

"Hmm. Now I understand, my aunty said."

We were silent for some minutes.

"So what next?" I asked.

"Your mother would be charged to court for attempted murder next week."

I screamed and fell to the floor.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN~~~~

My mother's case was heard in court. She was pronounced guilty, despite all her pleas. I didn't hear her but my aunt made effort to interprete every bit of her speech to me:

"Mrs John Hannah, can you tell this court what you were doing in Olabode's room at exactly 2:30am on the fifteenth of July of this year, 2000?" the plaintiff said.

"I--I was sleeping in my room with my daughter when she woke me up to say that she had a dream."

"And what was the dream?" she asked.

"She said she saw a woman calling Bode's name. We were shocked so we rushed to his room to check his well-being. It was strange to us when we didn't find him in there."

"Mrs Hannah, we want you to cooperate with this court. Can you tell us why you scattered his room?"

"We were looking for him desperately."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because of the dream my daughter had. More so, I was the one responsible for his welfare; his mother isn't living with us in the house."

"Is that why you want to kill your step daughter?" the plaintiff challenged her. "Stepmothers like you are supposed to be put to death by hanging!"

When I saw my aunt's sign, I did what my mouth could do best--screaming. All heads turned around at me.

I saw their mouths moving. Two security men came close to me. My aunt obstructed them. She pleaded with them on my behalf. They understood her. She must have declared my status to them.

"My lord, this is a wicked woman," the plaintiff said, pointing at my mother. "She doesn't deserve to be living among human beings."

"Enough!" the judge shunned the plaintiff. "Are you the judge? Do you want to dictate judgment to me or what are you trying to say, Barrister Tinu?"

"I am very sorry my lord," she bowed her head in respect.

I gave them all some covetous look. How I wish I was the one having those wigs on my head; that woman, Toyosi, would no more be among human beings. She would be right behind bars for life.

I remembered the proverb my class teacher always told me those days in sign language; if a farmer doesn't catch a thief on time, the thief would catch the farmer. Such was the case here--Toyosi was the real criminal here, not my mother.

John was called out to say what he knew about it all. He spoke and my aunt interpreted. We were sitting at the left hand corner of the hall, at the back. Toyosi was leering at us from time to time. Those wicked eyes, I just wished they fell off their sockets.

John grabbed the big bible with a hand. He began to pour his swears on it. I was saying amen inside me because I knew he would tell some lies with his confession.

"I am John Adegbile by name, husband of Hannah Omorodion. This woman is a wicked soul. Right from the time that she knew I have a second child from another woman, she has been trying to kill her son. I don't know why she is as jealous as this. She also has her own child, so I don't see the reason for her jealousy."

"Did you marry the second woman in a ceremonial way or how?" the plaintiff asked.

"Em--not really. It was a mistake; she got pregnant for me and I have to take the child from her. This woman Hannah accepted the child in good faith then, but now she wanted to get rid of him by all means."

My eyes were filled with tears as my father spoke. If I had pebbles I would hail them at him; cobbles would be better, or even a big rock. What a wicked father!

"This is not their first time of attempting to kill my son," John said in a critical manner. His veins had wrinkled his forehead, giving him the outlook of a caricature. His broken teeth was made the cynosure of my eyes. His toothgums looked exactly like a thick black 'evostic' gum.

"You don't mean it!" the plaintiff put up a serious face. "So tell us something about the past murder attempt."

"She has once sent her daughter, Rose to kill my innocent Bode on his bed while having a nap. Rose held the knife over his neck, about to rip off his neck when my innocent boy thumped up from sleep."

Everyone in the court opened his mouth wide at his confession. I believed many had already begun to pass judgment on us. We were just two, myself and my mum, but we have many judges already.

My aunt could no more interprete for me at the back of the court hall. She broke into tears.

"That was not all, my lords," my father said. "She sent her daughter the second time to hang my son in the air. Her daughter gripped my son at the neck and raised him high up until his legs couldn't make contact with the floor anymore. Bode my son almost died that time, and since then he had lost his health. Now my son had to live with inhalers in his pockets every day of his..." Father had broken into tears.

"Do you have anything more to say, Mr John?" they asked my father.

"Yes sir," he said, bobbing his head like an agama lizard. "Please can this court help me ask my wife the reason why she was not beside me on bed that night, because for the past twelve years of our marriage now, we have always been sleeping together at night on the same bed? Can this court also help me ask her what she was doing with a juju calabash I saw with her?"

"Can you hear that, Mrs Hannah? What were you doing with a calabash at night? Why were you not on bed beside your husband that night? Please answer us because the time is not on our side!"

Mother held the top of the dock with her hands. She knew there was nothing to say to get anyone convinced. She knew she was going to be declared guilty in the end.

"Madam, talk!" they shouted at her. "Or is he lying against you?"

"It is true," she said amidst tears, nodding her head.

"So madam, do you now accept that you are guilty?"

"No," she said. "I am innocent."

"Keep shut, woman!" the jury shunned her. "You may not speak anymore woman. The truth is established already. Who else has something to say?"

When I saw the interpretation, I raised my hand as well as my aunt too. We both had some things to say.

"Only one person among you shall speak," the judge said. My aunt asked me to go. I began to move towards the front. My aunt followed me. The judge spoke some words in anger, but I didn't hear him. He struck a hammer against his desk. I wonder whether he was a carpenter. He must have been enraged that my aunt was following me. He needed just one person and not two.

Every mouth in the court was wide agape at our effrontery and defiance. I wonder what was wrong with them all. Two security men in police uniform accosted us. My aunt spoke something into their ears. They passed the message to the judge. I knew what the message was--they had just notified him that I was deaf mute and my aunt was only there with me to do the interpretation.

A policeman pointed at a bible to me. It was lying fallow on a dusty pulpitlike woodwork. I picked it up and dropped it back to give me enough allowance to express myself in sign language. Then I began to do the sign.

I saw the hilarious expression on everybody's face. They seemed to be screaming. My aunt later told me what they were saying;

We didn't ask you to do choreography for us

Is she conducting a music or what?

Is she insane?

It was their last expression that got me angry when my aunt was relaying them to me after.

After all I said to defend my mother that day, she ended jailed for two years with hard labour. I rolled on the floor and hit my head against the hard wood of the leg of a pew. Blackout!

Ajela, your updates are here. Do enjoy them.

sammyLuvin:
Ajela, your updates are here. Do enjoy them.

Yea thanks
It's done and dusted�

We moving forward or nah??

I began to live in my aunt's place. She took me along with her after the court case. My hobby became crying. I couldn't do without it.

Rachael asked me to stop thinking about my mother. She told me that my mother would just be fine.

"I can't live without her!" I said. "Let me go and live with her in the prison."

"You can't go there, Rose. You can't!" Rachael told me. "God will see us through."

When my aunt mentioned 'God' I frowned. What was God looking at when my mother was incarcerated? Was he sleeping or what? I need not ask my aunt those questions thumping hard at my heart, else an endless sermon would begin, taking me through Genesis to Revelation.

My aunty loved to take advantage of any little situation to share her gospel message. I don't know if Jesus was paying her salary for that. There wasn't anyone I haven't challenged with questions that seemed bigger than my age. Everyone I directed my questions to, except her, hadn't been able to supply any tangible answers. But I dare not ask her any question, else she would do Job's life story into my eyes again.

I wiped my tears and sat up to 'hear' my aunty speak.

"Rose, I was in your class teacher's home yesterday."

"How's she?"

"She was fine."

"Did you tell her about mother?"

"Yes I did," I said. "She was mad at Toyosi."

"Was she there with you?"

"No, Rose, but Mrs Oyin was asking for her home address. She said she was going to fight her in her home. She asked me to give her Toyosi's home address."

"And you gave her, didn't you?"

"I didn't!" my aunty said. "She was going to go to Toyosi's house to fight her."

"You should have given it to her!" I said in annoyance. "Why didn't you...?"

"Do I know Toyosi's home to start with? And even if I knew, I wouldn't allow somebody to go and foment trouble in another person's matrimonial home."

"But...but Toyosi did that in our own home!" I began to sob. The event of that gloomy night had set over my face--that night mum and I were in that dark room. I had even composed a poem of sorrow concerning that. I 'sang' it whenever my aunt was not with me.

Beside me sat a gaze
Her hands tied with rope
Then tears down my face
There seemed not a hope.
What could she rather say?
How would I hear her speak?

I knew I could write poems but I haven't put my pen to paper at any time to give it a try. Now I just had to do it because it seemed to be the only thing that was cooling off my tension.

I spent time standing in front of the mirror, demonstrating it.

My aunt tapped me suddenly.

"Rose, Mrs Oyin would be here tomorrow morning," said my aunt.

"To see me?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "And to also come and get you ready for your graduation ceremony next month, August."

I fumed. I didn't want to here anything concerning that graduation. How would I be having a graduation ceremony without my mother's presence?

"I don't want to be there?" I replied her.

"Why, Rose?" my aunt said and came close to me. "Rose, you have to be there. Okay why don't you want to attend your own graduation ceremony?"

"Because my mom isn't going to be there," I replied.

She scrubbed my hair as if I was a baby. She began to scratch something out of the centre of my head with her index finger.

"What's that?" I asked her. She stopped scratching and said, "A white substance, Rose. What's that?"

"I don't know," I replied. Immediately my aunt had begun to bind and loose again. She wasn't expressing it with sign language anyway. When she was done with her exercise, I asked, "What was that? Why were you dancing like that?"

"You called that dance?" she said. "Anyway, it is not dance. I was praying for you. You know, that white thing, who knows how it got on your head? Toyosi your stepmother could have done something terrible."

"It's not any Toyosi," I said. I have just remembered something; I was playing with chalk earlier. "I was playing with chalk."

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" she began to laugh. I joined her in it. It was the first time I would laugh since my mother was imprisoned.

Mrs Oyin came to my aunt's place as promised. She assured me that my mother wouldn't suffer long in the prison.

"We are going to appeal it," she said.

"Appeal?" my aunt said. "Will it work?" she was just skeptical about it.

"It should," she said.

"I just believe that there is nothing prayer cannot do," she said. "Let's just commit everything into the hand of God through fasting and prayer. He will do it."

My teacher put out an angry face. The next ten minutes was a silent moment for me but a rowdy one for them. They had thrown the sign language behind them and now it seemed they were shouting at each other. I watched them opening their mouths in rage. I knew what was going on; my aunt wanted everything settled divinely but my class teacher was not supporting such idea.

After they had argued it out between themselves, they turned to me again with a smile. I had shut my eyes so I wouldn't 'hear' them.

Wow... This story is back...

Been long mhen..

I finished it that time sha

Thanks for the update

]CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It had been decided between them. We would visit the court of appeal, but there wasn't enough money to do that.

My class teacher promised to run around to see how much she could raise; my aunt would do the same.

"Hannah cannot go to jail, God forbid!" my classteacher said.

To bring up the case in the court of appeal we had to pay a certain amount. To also hasten up the case we paid another huge sum. Then the case was heard in the court of appeal first week of August. It was adjourned till the month of September after they had rendered my aunt and my teacher penniless.

My class teacher bought the clothing material I would need on my graduation day. I loved it so much. She said she couldn't wait for that day to come.

The elites had been invited to the graduation ceremony. Even the incumbent governor of the state would be there. It would just be great.

To say that I was sad would be an understatement. What should I be happy about? My mother would be absent, yet she was the one always reminding me of the great event before me.

For the first time in my life, I did some attachments. My hair(or perhaps someone else's hair) settled on my shoulders. One would think I was a goddess. I had also dabbed my lips in a pink ink. My eyelashes were made purplish. My class teacher had smeared the inner part of my dimples with red rouge. The earrings on my ears, they were like the size of the bangles worn on my wrists. She said I looked like a river goddess.

I appeared like a bride. I paraded myself before my aunt.

"Aunty, am I not beatiful?" I asked her. She gave a cold response. I knew why- she doesn't support excessive make-up. She'd have preferred I appear natural.

I smacked my smooth lips as the event unfolded. I was going to present my poem. My face was no longer a smiling type.

Someone was at the high table--Honourable Daniel as I later got to know. His eyes weren't looking in the direction of the graduands. His mind had wandered far. He stood up eventually and made for that spot where my aunt was sitting. He pulled at a seat before her and I could see them speak.

My class teacher was the MC of the day. She announced over the microphone that I had a poem to recite. I was welcomed upstage with claps. I wouldn't know if the sound was thunderous or not, since all I knew was lightning and never thunder, except for the fact that I've seen it in books that thunder comes after lightning.

I began my poem in sign language. First, I pulled off my graduation gown, scattered my hair and scrubbed off the paint on my lips. Then tears came in drops. All heads shook. They must have thought that I was going to present an elegy.

The DJ offered me a microphone. Everybody laughed. It took a little while before the ridiculous DJ could realise his folly.

With my hands in the air, I began:

Beside me sat a gaze
Her hands tied with rope
Then tears down my face
There seemed not a hope.
What could she rather say?
How would I hear her speak?

Darkness around us,
Light takes long to come
No offence, no defense,
Darkness prevailed for long.
The only sound to hear
Was gnashing of teeth.

For nothing we did
We suffered indeed
And in the end,
In prison she ended.
Better I had been dead
Than be at dead end.

Who have we offended?
None, yet we're not defended
My mother remanded
Myself left upended
My father's bad deed
Was what his wife demanded.

Nobody cared, nobody cared
Not even my God.
Judges in the court
Saw not beyond their noses
Convicting the just
Vindicating the guilty.

Is God for real?
Where was he when
The innocent suffer
And the guilty laugh?
There is never God
Or maybe God is an idol

He created me deaf
And dumbness with me
In the smoke of the earth
I stood to face terror
If there is God,
He is a partial one

I had broken into tears as I threw the sheet of paper away, dashing out of the stage. I was running out of the place. The whole place was in pandemonium.

My class teachers' lips had gone inches apart. She never knew my poem would end in a note of blasphemy. She must be feeling guilty now that she had used her voice to support blasphemy since she was the one interpreting my poem in voice language.

My aunt's face had folded up in disappointment where she was seated. She didn't come after me, knowing quite well that the security men wouldn't let me leave.

I was at the gate asking for allowance.

"You can't leave this premises, Rose," the boys scout at the gate told me. He was one of our school boys scout. I knew his medicine--give Jackson a hundred naira note and he would pave way.

"Jackson, what do you want from me?" I asked.

"The usual," he replied. He tilted his head to one side of his lopsided neck. He was fond of that posture. Jackson is just about six feet tall, with a nose I would call oblong. He is slender and handsome.

I didn't hesitate. I handed Jackson a hundred naira note. He gave me way.

It was the first time to be on the road all by myself. I couldn't hear any sound. How would I know if a car was coming behind me when I wouldn't hear them horning. Someone pushed me out of the road. I had just escaped being grinded to slurry by a gallivanting 'Molue'. The conductor was enraged, shouting. Who knew what he was saying?

Everyone just minded his or her business on the busy road of Ejigbo market. The only thing I had to cope with was their jostlings. Someone would just push you aside from behind.

Egbeda was my destination, but how would I get there? I couldn't even hear the conductors speak. How would I hear them? How on earth would I get to my destination right now?

Everyone I approached to ask them to show me the way didn't afford themselves a little time of patience. I scribbled what I wanted in a sheet of paper. I would give it to whoever cared.

The sun was hot on my head. It also drizzled alongside it. A tiger must be hiding somewhere in a labour room, I thought superstitiously.

A young boy of around eighteen came close to me. He was putting his mouth to use. I did what my mouth could do--sounding out my gibberish!

The boy was astounded, going by the look on his face. He was having a blue bag strapped to his back. He unzipped it and gave me a paper. He pointed to the paper and handed me the pen.

I wouldn't need it, I gesticulated and gave him the one I had scribbled earlier. He read and nodded.

He took me by the wrist and began to walk me to the Egbeda park. I didn't like the way he held me like a baby. I am twelve for Christ sake!

I turned my face down and saw that the boy was in a big white pair of canvases. To me then, everyone in canvas was rich. It was Kitto people like me wore to school. Not that my father couldn't afford something better, but only that I had no father, or did I have any?

Rain began to come down in torrent. The young teenager held tighter to my wrist and fled with me. He wouldn't even care if I fell and got injured. We couldn't get to our destination--we just had to pull up under a shade to allow the rain stop.

Somebody's image flashed through my eyes. It looked like Toyosi's. She had just passed off like a shadow. It must be my imagination because I didn't see any Toyosi around. All I saw was a bike fleeing past me with a passenger sitting at the back.