We Are Able

Episode 29

Toyosi and her family returned late in the evening.

Then, I had ensconced myself inside the kitchen,
sleeping. Toyosi tapped me. When I woke up, she
began to scold me.

Toyosi pointed into the stew and complained.
“Rose, tell me, did you take the stew?”
“No!” I said.
“So, why is the stew sour like this?”
I was speechless. I knew I put my bare hands right
inside it to take a chunk of meat earlier, but I dropped
the meat back there.
Toyosi had counted all the pieces of meat in the soup
before asking me the question, else she wouldn’t have
even asked me anything before beating me up if any of
the pieces of meat was missing.
She drove home my point when she uttered, “I knew
you didn’t take the meat because I counted eighteen
pieces there before I left and now it is still complete.
Tell me now, did you touch the stew?” she asked again.
I trembled. I hated lie, but now it seemed I was in a
very tight corner. How would I be able to say that I
was the one who put my bare hand into it? It would
mean that I was digging my own grave by myself.
I needed to look for a way out of this without lying or
saying the truth directly. I was still in deep thought as
regards what to say when she left me hurriedly.

I stood like a human being without skeleton, leaning on
the wall. My heart was thumping faster than it had ever
been. I hadn’t envisaged being beaten on a Christmas
day. I didn’t want my day to be marred with her
madness.
Maybe I should flee the house right now, I thought.
Perhaps I should go and seek solace in the next flat.
She wouldn’t have the inkling that I was there, I
thought.
Staying with the Omotayo family seemed to be the
ideal solution. The moment I spent with them during
the day was like heaven on earth. Everyone of us was
happy back then.
Mrs Omotayo even made me know some things that
were dark to me initially. She had told me that Toyosi
had come to stay with my father until further notice.

“Why?” I asked her and she responded in black and
white:
I got to know this when Toyosi came to ask me about
my husband. I told her that he was dead. Toyosi then
asked me if I was seeing other men and I said no.
Toyosi seemed angry with me. She doubted it initially. I
told her that no man was ready to take me and my
children because of their conditions. Toyosi hissed at
me and said that I was probably insane.
“You are going about with two useless kids instead of
dumping them somewhere and getting a new life by
marrying one of your suitors,” Toyosi said. “Don’t you
know that you are not too old to remarry? Body is not
stone my sister…even myself could not hold my body
again since my husband travelled to South Africa. I had
to pull up with my former boyfriend here, hoping to
return to my husband when he arrives.”
“Do you mean to say that this man, baba Bode, is not
your legitimate husband?”
“Yes and no…”

“How? Is Bode not your son? If not who then is his real
wife?”
“That’s why I said yes and no earlier; yes because Bode
is my child. I gave birth to Bode through John, but it was
done in an extra-marital relationship. My husband didn’t
know that I was having an extra-marital affair. If he
knew then I would be dead. But you know, body is not
firewood now.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “So, where is John’s wife?”
“Dead some months ago.”
“Oh! I feel sorry for her,” I said. “Didn’t she have a child
for John?”

“She didn’t,” Toyosi said. Silence prevailed for a while
until Toyosi broke it:
“Neighbour, let me lend you the coins I have. It’s better
you take this children to their grandmother and then
begin again, or don’t you have a mother?”
“I dont have,” I replied.
“Oh, sorry about that, neighbour. Try the first idea then,”
she said and whispered something into my ears. I
couldn’t believe my ears when I heard it. I frowned and
shouted at her:
“What! How could you be so mean?” she had just
advised me to strangle my children and wrap them in
one black and tall polythene material given to us by the
government of the state to put our dustbin in, just
because they would remain useless for the rest of their
lives.

“Are you out of your mind?” I kept yelling at her. Then
she apologized and said that she didn’t mean it.
“I was just joking, mummy la!de,” she said. “How could
I mean such a mean act?” she added and held me tight.
“Please don’t joke that kind of joke with my children
again!” I said vindictively.

“Okay ma,” she said and asked that I forgive her.
“Have you forgiven me?” she kept asking until I replied
her that I have done so. Since that time, Toyosi had
been showing much care for my children. Sometimes,
she would help me push la!de’s wheelchair and crack
jokes with Biodun.

My aunty tapped me out of my thought. When I looked
at her I was shocked. She had a calabash with her.

It was similar to the one my mother smashed that day we
were locked in the dark.

She dropped the calabash on the kitchen table and said,
“If you don’t confess to me now, then you will die
when I blow the sand inside this calabash on your body.”

I was afraid. I shivered. A sudden feeling of coldness
had taken over my body system. I jittered like the
string of a guitar. My legs were no more firm to the
earth and I thought I would just crash.

“Confess or you die by the sand!” she yelled at me. I
read her mouth to know what she had said.
I had no choice than to confess. She was mad at me.

“How dare you put your disabled hand into my pot?” she
said as she turned the whole stew into the sink and
flushed it with water. Then she threw the pieces of
meat inside the waste basket.

Just then, my father began to smile towards the
kitchen. Bode followed him. Seemed they were very
much hungry.

My father’s mouth moved. Toyosi had just told them
what happened. Bode was furious. He rushed at me and
gave me some kicks in my stomach. I fell. He sat on
my back and twisted my neck as if I was a child under
the mercy of a brutal father–this time around Bode was
the father in question.

My father left the kitchen in fury but his son remained to
watch me being punished to the end.

Toyosi ordered me to eat all the meat in the dustbin. I
was reluctant at first.

“Eat them all!” she screamed! I didn’t hear her but I
lipread her.

I forced myself into it. They were just too much. How
would I be able to eat them all? It was as though I was
consuming a sacrifice for the gods, perhaps the gods of
dirt. The meat had mingled with the dirt inside the
dustbin. I could feel my tongue soiled with dust and
sour substances. Oil ran down my mouth like blood.

At the third meat, I gave up. It was too much for me.

Toyosi said I must finish it up overnight. When she was
leaving me, my daddy was coming to meet me there
with a note he had written. He dropped the note before
me and ordered me to read it. While I was reading, he
left me and walked away.