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Episode 31

My father rose up suddenly and began to laugh. He was
saying something as he dipped his right hand into the
pocket of his boxers and produced a note. He pointed at
my horrified face and kept laughing at me. The only
thing I thought I successfully lipread was the
expression USELESS CHILD.
I let my father leave the room before peeking at the
note he gave me. My heart had begun to come down
now. That man really gave me a big scare because I
had thought he wanted To Molest me. I had heaved
sighs of relief on and on. That man had only come to
scare me.

I began to read:
Re: My Father, why have you forsaken me?
My useless daughter Rose, as a reply to your questions
that day, I have come up with this. It is the proper
write-up that would suit your question. Imagine, it took
me more than a week to compose this wonderful
write-up.
The last time when I said you have never been of help
to me, you said you have on Democracy day, just
because you translated sign language to text for me.
Well, if that is what you call a help, then you are a great
fool. How dare you open your ā€˜dumb mouthā€™ to say that
in the first place? Do you realise how much I have
spent on you? If that is what a father should expect
from a daughter after spending fortune on her, then it
had been better he didnā€™t spend on her at all.

Iā€™m glad you arenā€™t schooling anymore because at the
end of the day you will graduate and remain useless in
the society. Nobody will employ you, nobody will
benefit from you, nobody will speak with you because
you will just remain as useless as a rock.
You are not supposed to be living among the living but
among the animals because as much as I know, only
animals donā€™t speak. At the right time I will take you to
the jungle to live the rest of your life there.
Imagine, what is the essence of a daughter who will
never be wooed by a man? What is the essence of a
lady who will never have anyone to get married to her?
Rose, If you ever get married, then let the earth bury
me aliveā€¦

At that juncture, I stopped reading as I wept my
eyeballs out. I had only read the note to one-third but I
tore it without intending to read more. The little I had
read had already torn my heary apart.
I began to feel inferior and depressed once more.
Earlier, I had thought I wouldnā€™t put myself in inferiority
complex. Now it was inevitable. I had begun to
consider some of the things my father said. It had just
dawned on me that I canā€™t have a normal person as a
husband. Maybe I would start making love with blind
Biodun as from now on so that we could end up
marrying each other, I thought. It was the first time in
my life I would think about love and that feeling was
now towards the birthday celebrant of yesterday, 31
December, year 2000.
I began my love search at once the next day as I
started moving close to the children of Mrs Omotayo
so that I could show them I cared, especially Biodun
the blind boy. I wished we ended marrying each other,
at least to prove my father wrong. John would be
shocked when Biodun and I bring our wedding invitation
card to him, I thought childishly. A strong fear stared at
my face when I envisaged the reply John could give:
A disabled marrying a disabled, ha! ha! ha! Perfect
combination of disabled I imagined John saying that,
then I sulked.

Mrs Omotayo said she had never felt so happy in life.
Seeing me playing with her kids, she was glad. She
wanted me to always come around them.
Mrs Omotayo had been finding it very difficult sending
them to school. They were in a boarding school the
year before, but she had to pull them out and bring them
back home when they took ill all the time and almost
died. She prefered them illiterate and alive instead of
being literate and dead.
At the moment, Mrs Omotayo was on sabbatical so that
she could have enough time at hand to care for her
children.
Things hadnā€™t been smooth for her, being the only one
to run around to do this and that. Unfortunately, there
wasnā€™t any tangible help her two children could render.
Mrs Omotayo wanted to employ the service of a
housemaid because she would soon be resuming work.

When she told me about it, I assured her that I would
do my best.
All the while, she thought I was a housemaid according
to what Toyosi told her. I would have opened up to her
the person I really was, but for the warning Toyosi
gave me.
However, Mrs Omotayo wondered in silence how
come I was a housemaid. To clear her doubt about my
identity, she took a step to know a little about me. I
read the note she gave me and remained ā€˜muteā€™:

Rose, Iā€™m sorry to ask you these few questions; please
it would do me a great good if you could answer me
accordingly: first, I would like to know when actually
you began to be a housemaid, because with the look of
things you are even too young for that, considering
your condition too. You look like thirteen or fourteen
years to me, so how come you are in this? Did you start
being a house girl at ten or eleven or when? I also
want to know why and who released you to be one. Is
your mother still alive? If she is, where does she
live?ā€¦

I couldnā€™t finish the whole writeup as tears welled up in
my eyes. They began to drop. Mrs Omotayo must have
thought that she had hurt my feelings, going by the way
she tightened herself on me and rubbed my head with
her hands.

I wasnā€™t weeping because she asked those questions
but because I couldnā€™t supply an answer since Toyosi
had warned me against doing such. Now I knew I
wasnā€™t free yet, opposed to my thought earlier. I had no
freedom of speech yet.
Mrs Omotayo told me she needed to enroll her children
back in school, but she didnā€™t want to enrol them in a
boarding school because she didnā€™t want them to fall
sick. She wished they could be attending a day school,
but it would be difficult for them returning from school
everyday, because herself would be in her workplace
by the time they would be returning from school.
An idea struck my mind. I wrote it down and gave it to
her. She took a glance at me when she read it.
ā€œWill you be able?ā€ she asked me.
ā€œYes I will be,ā€ I replied her.
Then I have to seek the permission of your mistress,
she wrote.

Please go ahead, I replied.
I have missed school so much and I had wished to
return. A whole term had passed without me being
enrolled in a school. I needed to be out there again and
that was the idea I gave Mrs Omotayo my neighbour. I
told her that I would be able to take care of her
children; take them to school and bring them back as
long as I would also be schooling together with them.

Mrs Omotayo approached my stepmother and told her
about it. She did not agree to it at first, but after too
much badger from my neighbour, she consented to it.


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