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Episode 3

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.


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