We Are Able

Episode 15

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.