We Are Able

Episode 11

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 we, 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’.