We Are Able

Episode 34

Toyosi was extremely annoyed with me. She beat me
with everything she could lay her hands upon.
I screamed, perhaps Mrs Omotayo would hear my
voice and come to my rescue. John returned from work
too and began to beat me. He locked me up in a room
after kicking me severely.

When John released me, somebody bumped into our
parlour. It was around 9pm. I was shocked to see that
she was Mrs Omotayo.
She came close to Toyosi and they pointed fingers at
each other. I could see her mouth moving as if she was
pronouncing ‘Bode’. Applying my commonsense, I
interpreted what was going on. Mrs Omotayo was
angry with Bode for treating her children badly.

If John hadn’t come in between the two of them, they
would have fought physically. Toyosi even threw a
blow and it caught my father on the face. She then
relaxed to tend the swelling on his forehead.
I shook where I stood. I knew that they would
eventually come back to me to deal with me. They
would pay back everything she did to them on me.
As envisaged, John treated me badly. He made me to
sit down in space, without a chair. It was a form of
punishment. My legs and my waist pained me so much.
Each time my hip was going down, he would whip me
with a wire.
I wept bitterly as I served the punishment. If only I
could have my way, I would run away from home, I
thought.
Nobody needed to tell me that I had lost the privilege
of schooling once more. Over and above all, I had lost
the love of my heart. However, I wouldn’t regret that I
fought Bode back since I was doing it for my future
husband, I thought.

My room was relocated once again, this time it was the
store room. The kitchen was filled up with foodstuff
and other things, therefore I would be in the store
room. The room was stuffy. It had a little opening high
up. Our farm equipments were in there; rakes, watering
cans, cutlasses, brooms, hoes and more.
I picked up a broom and swept the dusty room. I had
catarrh as the dust rose and got into my head through
the orifices of my nostrils.
I had resigned to fate long ago. Whatever came my
way I would just accept it that way. I knew I would
overcome someday. I took my note and began to write
my poems once more:
I remembered the letter Biodun wrote in Braille. I
smiled as I produced it and set it before my face.

Seeing it was making my heart glad. I closed my eyes
and began to feel around it with my fingers. Reading in
Braille was fun to me.

Rose, I have never imagined that the blind could hear
the deaf speak. I have never thought that the deaf
could communicate with the blind, but it was such a
huge shock to me that you crossed the bridge, or let
me say you bridged the gap. Even when I couldn’t learn
your own language, you learned mine. You were not
self-centred. You have travelled miles in my heart
already and my heart is already for you. Rose, I LOVE
YOU even if you can’t defend me and nothing shall
separate us henceforth. Biodun.

I halted around the L-O-V-E and felt them over and over
again with my fingers. With that letter close to my
heart, I slept off.

Biodun was riding a bicycle. I sat behind him on the
bicycle. We rode on and on, yet he was blind, having a
dark goggle set over his face. I wondered how he was
able to manoeuvre his way through the bumpy road.

la!de was running on foot beside our bicycle, lame, yet
we couldn’t leave her behind. Although deaf I was, I
began to scream on the top of my voice:
WE ARE ABLE! WE ARE ABLE!!

I woke up from sleep. It was all a dream! I wanted to
empty my bladder, so I rushed to the door, but it was
shut from the outside. I was confused. I needed to
pass out the urine. I wondered who locked me in.

I turned my head around and noticed a watering can. I
would use it. In a flash I had eased myself.

Early the next morning, it was Saturday, environmental
sanitation time. Around 7am, Toyosi had ordered me
out of the store room.

“Go to the garden now!” she signed to me. Bode was
still asleep. I began to hurry down there. She followed
me.

“Rose, I haven’t called you out here to be playing with
those handicapped children, okay.”
“Yes ma,” I replied. “If I see you together, then you are
doomed, okay?”
“Yes ma,” I replied. Toyosi began to take her leave.

I stooped to begin work. I knew what I should do, so I
didn’t hesitate. I was to uproot the weed with my bare
hands. That had always been my undeserved
punishment every last Saturday of the month.
We had hoes and cutlasses but I was not allowed to
use any. John soon joined me in the garden, carrying
two watering cans. He was going to wet the
vegetables.

John dropped the watering cans and went further into
the garden. He plucked some garden eggs and came
back to where I was weeding. He ordered me to take
the watering cans to the tap to fetch water there. I
picked them up but he ordered me to wait a little while.

He wanted to wash one of the garden eggs to eat.

John picked up one of the watering cans and shook it.
Seemed there was a little water in that. He would use
the water to wash his hands and the garden eggs. John
hastily poured the liquid on his right hand and rinsed the
garden eggs. I perceived the odour of urine and
remembered what I did last night.

I watched John as he sq££zed the garden eggs into
his mouth. I turned my head around and smiled. John
was stingy, he wouldn’t share them with me. Even if he
wanted to do that this time around, I wouldn’t receive
them.

I picked the watering can and went to the tap to fetch
water. When I returned, John was holding his stomach
in pain. I never knew what evil my urine could cause
until now.

John spent the rest of the week in a hospital, explaining
to the doctors that he ate a salty garden egg. Nobody
on earth was able to understand the mystery of the
salty garden eggs except myself. I AM ABLE, I thought.