WE ARE ABLE – Episode 13 **Touching Story** ************************* I dragged myself to my mother in the dark and leaned my weighty head on her laps. My hot tears ran down my eyes into her laps—the cleavage in between them I guess. She lowered her head to my neck. She was weeping too. I knew this when a hot liquid ran through my nape. The night was lengthier than ever. The last time I checked the time, it was 2pm. Now it should be 4pm, I thought. But then I had to wait and wait and wait. Sleep couldn’t graze my eyes. Mother was not also sleeping. We couldn’t communicate since everything needed for communication was under bondage; eyes dim, hands tied; no way! A poem began to form on my befuddled brain. I would rock the world with it in the nearest future. I hated lie more than anything in the world. Why should we deaf, dumb, lame and blind people keep deceiving ourselves by giving ourselves hope that we are able when actually we are not? We say that what normal people can do, special people can do better. They tell us stories of Nick Vujicic who was born limbless in Australia. They tell us the story of a headless chicken who survived for eighteen months after its head had been chopped off its neck; the story of one Spencer West who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro without legs and many others. I don’t believe any of those craps. They even showed us pictures of those people to back up their claims that we are able. That chicken, I could remember, was named Mike the Headless Chicken. My class teacher would not let us rest while telling us those stories to motivate us and keep us away from thinking of our predicaments. She would say, without a head, Mike the headless chicken could run about for eighteen months, how much more you who have heads? I could remember challenging her that day by asking, “What is the essence of a piece of bread without butter? What is the use of a house without furniture? What is the use of a head without functions? “What do you mean by all these?” she demonstrated in annoyance. “A head with useless lips, mouth, tongue and ears, what’s the use?” I replied her that day. She was speechless. So where is that specialty right now? We deaf and dumb can’t communicate in the dark, yet we have something called mouth. Why at all am I even born with a mouth when it isn’t speaking, or should I shift the blame on the tongue? We can’t enjoy movies because they were not designed for we the deaf people. How could we hear their speech? No way! If only I have an ear that could listen, my mother was ready, even now, to tell me to detail everything that had transpired between herself and her husband. Why should I even need her to tell me what happened when I would actually have heard them myself during the heat of the brawl? We spent two months in the dark. Actually, it wasn’t two months but it seemed so because of the torment we were passing through. Maybe we had a shorter day and a longer night, who knows. The day began to dawn gradually and the blanket of darkness left the face of the wall clock. I checked the time; it was 5:25 am. The door flung open and three souls trooped in, Toyosi, John and Bode. They were leering wickedly at us. We are dead! Toyosi began to unleash the content of her mouth. She pounced on my mother and then came to me to do the same. She taught me a lesson I never learnt. She smashed my head on the bed wood. She was pointing at the smashed calabash, the scattered bed, the opened wardrobe and every other thing my mother and I have scattered during the course of our search for Bode. My common sense told me that she would use them all a evidence against us in the court of law. By 7am we were still in bounds, only that we could now see each other. They had shut the door once more but our hands were still tied. My father tied them purposely to render us incommunicado. I leaned my back against the bedside and raised my legs up in the air to communicate with my mother. I managed to ask a question with my legs. She understood me vividly and she was shocked. Now how would she give me a reply? She couldn’t demonstrate anything with her own legs. It was a surprise to me when she nodded to signal to me that she wasn’t able to do that. She couldn’t control her toes to make any sign, but I was finding it so easy to do. I used my knees as my elbow whenever it was needed. I could easily fold all four toes and let the fattest one lie straight, but my mother couldn’t dare it.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 20:37:55 +0000
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