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Episode 5

I feel a bit relieved when I learn that Toyosi herself isn’t going to be staying with us. Only her son will be
staying.

Toyosi has just met with a man she will marry but she isn’t going to let that man know that she has a child, that is why she wants to return Bode to his father.

With the knowledge I have, my father begs her that she should stay with him. Mother says she eavesdrops
on them and hear them speak.

My father kneels down before her, begging her to be his wife; he is even ready to throw my mother and I out
for her sake.

“Toyosi, please come home. This place is a hell to me.

Please stay with me, Toyosi,” John laments.
“You have a wife already,” says Toyosi. “I can’t be a second wife; I mean it’s too early for me to get into
rivalry with another wife. Please let me just leave Bode here. Joseph is my husband. He loves me a lot,” Toyosi
says.

“Listen Toyosi, I quite understand you, okay. If you don’t want to be a second wife, that’s right. I can drive
Hannah and her useless good-for-nothing child out of the house immediately
”
Good-for-nothing! If only my mum tells me that
immediately my dad says it, I would have taken it hard with him. Maybe God doesn’t want me to go wild, that’s
why. I only hear that few days back after my mother has recovered. She says she eavedrops to hear that.
Well, ‘Good-for-nothing’ is what I am afterall. Dad hasn’t
told any lie. When Bode comes to the house and discovers I am deaf mute and my mother is on a wheel chair, the boy runs back and holds his mother tight,
saying, “Is this where you want me to stay, aunty? I can’t stay in the house where everybody is disabled.”

“Ssh! Bode, shut up! At least your daddy is not disabled,”

Toyosi says and blinks her eyes.
“But aunty, why can’t you be staying here with us? So that that woman on wheelchair will not ill-treat me.”

“She dare not,” says Toyosi to my mother’s face. “If
she will do that to you my son, then it had been better for her not to be able to get up from that wheelchair
forever.”

When mother shares the experience with me, I wept sore and began to hate little Bode and his mother.

How could they say such a thing? I will teach him a lesson of his life. Bode must be mute like myself too, I think.

I put a knife on fire and pour some red oil. I will put that knife down his throat. He will lose his voice.

Bode has finished eating. He is fond of making fun of me.

He has even plucked a leaf and put it inside his
mouth to mock me. Then he writes something down in a paper and tucks it inside my hand. I read:
You are as deaf as a goat
Am I the one this small boy is calling a herbivore? I
think.

The boy laughs and runs about when I wanted to catch him to deal with him. I wonder who teaches this
boy to be so heartless. Despite how my mother cares for him, he still does this to me. Why?

Bode soon return when his eyes are heavy with sleep.
He falls on the bed and off he goes. I make sure he is fast asleep and ties him firmly to the bed.

Then I put a knife on fire and pour red oil on the hot knife.

I will teach Bode what it means to be permanently speechless in life. Perhaps he doesn’t know that the
most painful thing in life is the inability to express yourself as you wish. That is why people always complain that the deaf and dumb people are the most
rebellious, because we get angry when we are very much pushed to the wall because of our inability to
speak out our mind.

I am going to teach Bode that I am even more terrible than a stammerer. How can anybody encroach on our
right and go scot-free? I should have done this thing earlier.

Why did I delay up to this time? This is not the
first time Bode will be ridiculing me by putting a leaf in his mouth. I have signalled to him several times to
stop that but he won’t. Now he will have to bid his vocal cord a goodbye.

I sit at the edge of the bed and then stretches my body towards Bode who is fast asleep. I wouldn’t know if he
is snoring because I can’t hear a thing. I hold the hot knife close to his face. Nothing is going to stop me from dipping it inside his throat.

I can’t do it. I begin to weep. No! This is not happening.

This is not me. How dare me? My hand shakes. I begin to retreat.

Bode’s eyes flashed open. He was terrified. I see the movement of his mouth. He must have shouted,

“Murderer!”

Bode shakes the bed vigorously. I cut the rope with the hot knife and the boy flees in horror. He didn’t return until father arrives.

My father becomes enraged. He beat me black and blue.

I’m done for it.

Father locks me out of the home. Mother herself isn’t allowed to come inside. He accuses my mum of
bringing a bastard to his home and calling her a child.

That is me daddy is calling a bastard.
That day we have to pull over in Mrs. Oyin’s house.

The woman becomes disappointed in me.
“Rose, how many times have I warned you to always behave gentle? You are mature for christ sake! Take a look at your bre*ast, Rose. You are a big girl.”

I couldn’t say anything. I just keep weeping. I know my mother doesn’t deserve to be locked outside her
matrimonial home. I feel very guilty.

“Rose, why did you want to kill your brother? He is your brother, no matter what? And you raised a knife to his neck to cut off his neck? Rose, Haba!” Mrs Oyin speaks
on. I have no strength to raise a finger, let alone my
two hands to speak. I am not in the mood to say a
word.

“Do you remember what happened to Cain when he
killed Abel his brother in the bible? Rose, don’t you ever
be pushed by anger to do evil in life, because the result
of such doing will remain a stigma forever in your
life
”

That is all my eyes could grab and send to my brain for
interpretation: don’t you ever be pushed by anger to do
evil in life, because the result of such doing will remain
a stigma forever in your life.

I resolve to be calm, no matter the situation. I didn’t
gesture it out for them to see, but in my mind I have made the decision not to bother myself over offenders.

I will never raise my little fingers, let alone my hands, to fight back anymore. I will be calm like a peaceful
river.

“Mrs John, we shall return to beg her father to take you
back very early tomorrow morning,” says my
classteacher.
“Thanks so much Mrs Oyin. We are grateful,” my
mother says. I wonder why she doesn’t blame me for
whatever happens. Is she a caring mother or she is just
in the process of spoiling me?


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