We Are Able

Episode 4

Mother was discharged after two weeks. Her right hand
is bandaged and attached to her neck so that her bones
can heal up fast. She has her right leg in POP. Now I feel
the real meaning of being deaf and dumb. I have to be
at home to take care of her, but home was hell to me.

No one to communicate with me.

Mother watches me as I do my sign language before her face. She can only shake her head vertically or horizontally to either concur with me or disagree to any matter I raise.

Now I have to endure the true meaning
of suspense: if you ask me, I can’t understand what
really transpires between daddy, mummy and the other woman in question, but it seems mummy now knows all because I see daddy talking to her at length. She
weeps endlessly and her face swells when father speaks then.

My teachers have come to pay my mother a visit when they discover my absence in school.

Mrs Oyin, my classteacher comes around and rapports with my mother.

She then tells her the whole story:
John, my father, begins to deal in extra marital affair when I was three–then it has just been confirmed that
I am completely deaf and dumb.

John needs an able
child desperately then, such that he has to spread his tentacles to a woman whom I will refer to as a prostitute; her name is Toyosi.

Daddy so much keeps his affair away from my poor mother such that she didn’t suspect that he is doing such a thing. It seems that Toyosi in question is a
young teenager who is not through with her secondary school education then. She gets pregnant and daddy
asks her to abort her pregnancy because my mum was also having her second pregnancy by then also (mummy’s pregnancy was not successful).

That’s the end of their affair–Toyosi disappears without
the knowledge of my father. He can’t tell if she has aborted the pregnancy or not. Things goes on normally for my daddy until Toyosi shows up in his life again two
weeks back–the day we find them kissing each other.

Toyosi, whom I have only seen once, is a light-skinned, wide browed pretty lady in her twenties. Going by my
teacher’s narration of the story, she should be about twenty-five years now, because she tells me that Toyosi gets pregnant when she was in J.S.S 3.

Toyosi has a lionesslike waist and the hair on her head that only day I see her makes her take the form of a lady in a beauty contest. Her teeth are spaced at the
centre to add to her pulchritude. Her purplish-brown tinted eyelashes must have been artificially brushened up to exude such lustrous appearance. To call a spade a
spade, Toyosi looks angelic (or maybe I should say demonic) in her make-ups.

The cleavages she reveals alone could have made my father go lusting for her again. Her miniskirt is what I would refer to as a minipant if there is anything like
that. But why is my father so bold as to rough-handling his real wife because of a mere outlandish appendage as her?

She is supposed to be punished under the law
for her act, but she is spared. That is even too much for her, let alone treading the path of my mother, coming
into her matrimonial home and kissing my dad with
those red lips of hers.

My teacher doesn’t want to hide anything from me regarding the matter despite the fact that it can be very bitter.

“You see, Rose, you have to be a strong lady and take heart. How old are you now?” Mrs Oyin signals to me.

“Eleven,” I signal back and protrudes my lips in dissatisfaction.

“Good! You are already mature–puberty, everything,” she says and sighs at my bust as if she is just discovering the development on me. “Rose, your
mother doesn’t want me to hide anything from you as regards that matter.”
“Which matter?” I ask.
“That matter now; that woman you see with your daddy, ehn, that woman.”

“Okay, go on ma, I’m all eyes,” I say. She smiles.

She must have been wondering how I come about some idioms let alone using it to suit my taste.

‘I am all ears’ is what I turn around to ‘I am all eyes’.

“So, Rose this is what actually happened: your daddy went into extramarital affair eight years back for reasons best known to him…”

That reason is best known to me than John himself, I think.

Then I am just three, that year it is confirmed that my eardrums weren’t in place at all. So dad must have gone into the extramarital relationship because of me.

“Your daddy impregnates T-o-y-o-s-i, a Yoruba girl from…” she pauses as she sees me trying to spell out the name with my hands since such name hasn’t been in
my vocabulary of words earlier.

“Toy? Is she a toy?” I ask strangely. Mrs Oyin signals
the name to me again; there is no break between the
letters when she is spelling the name, so she is not Mrs Toy Osi as I have thought earlier, but Toyosi is just a
single name.

Something about me is that I am too outspoken. Maybe
God knows that I will turn out to be a parrot if he has
created me with a mouth that can talk that is why he didn’t do that. Well…I am still waiting to hear either my
mother or my teacher tell me the gain of being disabled since they have both said that there are gains in it.

“Rose, listen, Rose,” my teacher says after pulling me to see her speak. I was looking away earlier. “When
your father impregnates Toyosi, he gave her money to terminate her pregnancy because your mother was also
pregnant at that time. Toyosi collected the money and since then your father didn’t know her whereabout until last two weeks when she showed up in your home as
you can see.”

“Did I hear you say my mother was pregnant?” I ask her
at once.

“Yes, she was pregnant at that time,” she nods in affirmation.

“Where is my sibling then?” I ask.
“A stillborn, Rose. It was dead at birth.”
I am ‘mute’. So I should have had a brother, a younger
brother, I thought and shook my head in self-pity.

“Ahh!” I yell as if a big bedbug has just punctured my skin. “So I should have had a brother or sister!” I intensified my response to show my utmost displeasure.

“Yes Rose, you should have had a brother,” she says.

“Well… goodnews Rose, now you have a brother,” she
smiles. “And your brother will be here any moment
from now,” she adds.
“A ghost brother? Stillbirth?” I am horrified.
“No, no, no, Rose. Your brother will be here any
moment from now–your brother from another mother,
Bode by name.”

“What! Who is Bode?” I ask and shout with my useless mouth.

“Bode is Toyosi’s son she had for your daddy. He would be here soon to live with you. He’s only seven years,
Rose, so take care of him very well when he comes.

Don’t fight him at all. You are from the same father, so please take good care of him.”

My head begins to knock like a car engine as sweat covered me up. I begin to envisage the beginning of torture for myself and my mother. That Toyosi in
question, a second wife? Yes, this is the beginning of torment for myself and my mother, I think.

I leave my teacher in the parlour and go straight into my mother’s room. She is sitting on a wheelchair, being
confined to such since the day she was pushed by my daddy.

“Mummy is it true?” I ask with utmost seriousness written on my face.

She shook her head in affirmation, weeping.
“Aargh!” I scream in sign language.