Na so I do my transaction finish begin they waka comot bank hall. Chai! Chai! Chai! Na so person dey deny person? I begim think. Well sha, Peter sef deny hin Lord nah, so no be new thing under the earth nah.

I think so tey I begin they tok for my mind say Titi no really worth person wey person go wan die put for her head nah! Ijeoma for my village fine pass am sef, why I go kon begin give myself headache ontop woman matter?

Me wan marry am ni, no be say I wan play am like ball. Na wetin people like am no go understand be that. Na opportunity sef, big opportunity say Ibo guy wan marry Yoruba lady, I begin dey think am for my mind. Instead make she jump put for ogbonge opportunity like that, she dey do yanga. Na that song wey oga Lagabaja sing that year dey dey at work now. I happy say I don sabi Yoruba now. When hin firsyt sing am me no understand one thing inside:

Instead wey she suppose marry person like me wey go treat am with care like breakable egg, hin wan go marry person wey dey win award for lawn Tennis like Roger Federer

I don tok am, I no dey interested again. No be everything wey dey shine go be my own. I remember last two years, 2012, na so I wan begin die ontop another girl matter until I found out say hin done marry already sef.

Me dey always fear say girls dey run from me. Abi na because I nor take up that 'dibia' wey my grandparents predict say na my destiny? Well sha, no qualm. One day my own go jam me, at least for now I still be 27 years. I still get time.

This university wey I no go dey really give me big concern o. And if to say I be graduate now, na this same Titi go begin dey find me about titititi o o o o o! Kai, money na power o. The thing too dey command respect abeg.

Who for know say Solo get sense if hin no rich join am? Nobody go know you say you get sense if dem no see you inside big Morano , I begin dey reason. Abi how many talents wey don die rotten because dem no get sponsor mey den take explode wetin dey their head? Mtchew!

I balance for inside my shop dey sell my beans and rice go, awaiting who go be my first customer for the day. Me don determine say, whoever he be, me go give am 'jala' abi na jara den dey call am. Make I kuku tok say 'eni' abi 'fisi' before my front teeth comot leave my rear teeth lonely inside my mouth.

I never settle well well wen I begin see one vague figure dey approach my shop. The face begin make sense for my eyes. I clear my eyes dey begin look on.

"Wetin I dey see? No be Titi be dis wey dey come so?" I tok put one hand over my face make sun no enter my eyes so I go fit see who e be clearly. "Na her joor!" I begin argue with myself.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rachael my aunty is a widow. Her children are in boarding school. She is a civil servant. She is a very hardworking and religious type. She seems very godly and I appreciate her lifestyle. I feel at home in her house more than in my father's house.

Racheal is about five feet seven inches tall. Her natural hair is what she has on her head but it looks very long such that it makes me doubt that it is natural. My mother's natural hair hasn't been as long as half of hers. They cut often.

Rachael is only two years younger than my mother, yet she is already a widow. Her husband died in a plane crash some years back. They are wealthy. She is lucky however that her husband is distant from family members while he was alive, else they would have sent her packing.

Rachael doesn't play with church issue. She will never skip church activities for anything. Her faith seems to be very strong. She believes in moving mountain with prayers. She loves to fill my head up with challenging testimonies from the Bible. I wonder why I haven't witnessed any such testimony in our real life today.

"It's faith," she says. "People in our contemporary world don't have faith anymore. They are more hasty than God."

In one way or the other, I used to believe in God anytime I am with her. The love and care she shows, the warm accommodation--even the devil himself will tend to repent of his sins after spending a week or two with her, I think.

My aunty suddenly comes up with an idea. She says that she has a very strong faith that my deafness and dumbness will end before the end of that month June. I doubt it.

"Rose, my faith is lifted," she says. "Only believe, you will speak and hear this month," she assures me. As usual, she will always have testimonies to back up her claims. She is better off being a motivational speaker. I wonder what she is doing in the civil service.

Rachael tells us that there is a Crusade coming up and their general pastor will be coming all the way from Abuja their headquarters.

"Rachael, the lame have walked, the blind have seen, the sick have been healed. I am strongly sure this is your time, Rose. The pastor doesn't need to lay hands on you before you receive your healing."

"Are you sure aunty?" I ask in doubt.

"Yes! Will I ever lie to you?" she reassures me. I take her by her word.

It is a holiday period for me already because I have finished my common entrance examination without my daddy's support. She(Rachael) is even the one who takes up all the responsibilities then.

The crusade will be a five-day crusade. An open air crusade it is called. No canopy at all--we have to chase rain away with our prayers. The first night it rained heavily. We become wet from head to toes.

My aunty calls it showers of blessing.

"When Elijah was about to do exploit, it began with showers of rain. Rose, this is the assurance that you will get your divine touch," she says. I believe her.

The second, third and fourth days passed without any thing. I begin to doubt what aunty says. However, people come out each day to share their testimonies. Two blind people also came out to say that they were blind but now they see. Even a deaf boy shares his testimony.

Before the dawn of the fifth day, my aunty prays for me personally. She cast out the spirit of deafness and dumbness but nothing happens. That spirit inside my mouth and ears must be too stubborn for remaining there, going by how my aunty was shouting vigorously(I know she was shouting going by the look of her face as she opened her mouth).

On the fifth day, the embarrassment becomes so pronounced, not only on me but on my aunty too when nothing happens to me. She weeps bitterly.

"Why? God why?" she weeps.

"God hates me," I say.

"Don't say so!"

"Or there is no God!"

"Hey! Rose, don't go there!" my mother reprimands me at once.

That night, I slept and had a nightmare...

My Nightmare

In my dream, I saw a woman sitting beside a native doctor. They were speaking, but I didn't hear what they were saying since I was deaf and dumb. They were looking inside a small calabash filled with water. I saw my image in that calabash. They bent over the calabash and going by the look of their mouths, they were shouting something. They kept shouting and shouting inside the water, but nothing happened.

I wake from sleep. I tremble. I tell my mummy and my aunty what I see.

"Praise the Lord, Rose!" my aunty shouts. "That woman you see in your dream is your enemy. She has taken your name to the herbalist and they are calling your name to death. But since you can't hear them, you didn't respond. If you have responded, Rose, that is the end."

"Ah!" my mummy shouts.

Now I thank my star that I haven't received the miracle of speaking and hearing. If I have, then I would have heard and replied the wicked people calling my name and then I would have died.

"Thank you Jesus," I say.

CHAPTER SIX

Daddy didn't pay attention to us for one week. Mrs. Oyin accommodates us throughout those times. Every evening we will go to our house to beg him, but he is adamant.

However, he allowed me to enter the house and pick all my clothes, including my school uniform. Bode sticks out his tongue at me, mocking me.

We left the house again on the seventh day, but only Mrs Oyin returned to speak to him. He agrees to take us in.

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Bode didn't stop to offend me. But I did all I can do to avoid having trouble with him. At an instance, Bode slaps me. It is a big shock for me. Nobody has ever slapped me and go scot free before. Even Bose, the big girl everybody fears in school, is not up to my standard. I can remember the day I beat her and poured sand in her mouth.

Bode is four years younger than me, yet he will not respect his senior. He is becoming very pompous, maybe because Daddy is overprotecting him.

Bode is too dull for my liking. His exercise books are painted all over with zeros. Maybe he is having that dullness in common with his mother, because as for me, I am not dull in school, meaning that my parents are not dull too. But if it works that way, why then am I deaf and dumb when both of my parents are normal? That is a question for my science teacher.

It has been better if Bode's pomposity is all the pain my mother has to cope with. Toyosi his mother always come to check on him every weekend. Bode will tell lies to her about me and the woman will begin to blab and threaten me. She says that if anything bad happens to her son, then I should count myself dead.

It's like daddy still likes Toyosi a lot. Anytime she comes around, daddy will take her to his room and lock the door. Then they will send my mummy out of the room. They must have been having extramarital affair.

One day I ask my mummy to divorce daddy, but she refused.

"Rose, I can't do that," she says. "God doesn't like divorce."

"If God doesn't like divorce then why can't he also prevent things that can lead to divorce?" I grumble over my nose.

"Don't say so, Rose!" mummy shuns me. My eyes are wet already. I am going to shed tears. She comes around me and put her arms around my neck. Her long hair falls on my nape. She doesn't like seeing me in tears. "Rose, in the end we shall overcome," she says eventually.

I advise my mummy to trace Toyosi to her husband's house and reveal the secret once and for all, but she waves away the idea. Instead, she picks up that boring song again 'We Shall Overcome'.

My Common Entrance Examination will soon be here, but daddy refuses to get past questions and answers series for me. Mummy tries her best and gets them for me.

My school is Ejigbo Standard School. It is both for the normal people and the special ones. Since the day I make that resolution that I will be calm, I haven't fought anybody. I didn't even talk to anyone let alone quarrelling with them and this again becomes my classteacher's headache. She will call me into her office and ask me why my name doesn't make the name of noisemaker list anymore.

"But you have told me to cease from making noise many times, and now I'm doing that, what again?" I say.

Mrs Oyin keeps quiet. She doesn't know what to say any more.
... ... ... ... ... ... ...

One day, I iron my white cloth as I get prepared for school. That particular morning, I wake up happy. I don't know why. Mother notices it before she leaves for work. Now I go to school myself because I am twelve. I am the one to take Bode to school as usual. His own school is just a stone throw from our house, but I have been mandated to take him there before going to my own school.

Bode has been yawning since the time mummy wakes him up to take his bath. The last time I check on him, he just got into the bathroom. I didn't want to be late because I am the Time Keeper of my school. Sometimes whenever I ring the bell it looks funny to me because I can't hear the sound of what I am ringing. But I have come to learn something: the blind cannot become a time keeper because they don't have eyes to check the time. Yet, they are always the first set of people to come out of their classes at the sound of the bell, touching the walls for guidance and support. It's like the walls themselves are useful. Nothing in the world is a waste Mrs Oyin will tell us many times, just to make us know that WE ARE ABLE.

As a Time Keeper, I am supposed to be in school early, but this morning I haven't seen the possiblity; not when Bode hasn't taken his bath not to talk of eating his food, yet it is 7:24am already. It is obvious I will be late to school this time around. I can't really remember the last time I go late to school.

I leave my cloth to check on Bode if he has finished taken his bath, to my surprise he is not in the bathroom. I check the toilet to see if he is there. No, he is not there. I resign and return to the table where I am ironing my cloth, to my surprise, the cloth has been soaked up with red oil.

I raise the cloth up. Tears flow down my cheek when I see that my cloth has been burnt up with iron. I did put off the pressing iron when I went to look for Bode, so how come my cloth is now burnt up?

Bode crawls out from under the table, laughing. He gives me a note and runs away. I read it:

I don't want to go to school today

I become mad. Is it because he didn't want me to take him to school that he has to burn and stain my cloth? I am enraged within me. I sit quietly and fold my hands.

Bode comes and sticks his tongue at me as usual. He is taking my silence for cowardice. He should have gone to my school a year ago to ask them my name: Rose The Tiger. Even Bose the Big Boss cannot face me let alone this small Bode.

Bode spreads his ten fingers at me. I hardly joke with my mother. How can he be cursing my mother? Okay, what has my mummy got to do in this matter? The tiger in me begins to form when I see those dirty fingers. His cup is full. It is time to teach him a lesson.
No, I think. I have resolved in my mind that I will be gentle a year back and I have endured for that long, so let me not fight back.

Bode seems to be in the mood today. He wants to get me angry by all means. He comes behind me and taps my nape. Kpash! It sounds like thunderbolt. I become mad at him.

I raise Bode high up by the neck. The rest is a story. He falls down. Dead? Still alive? I can't tell.

"Ah!" my brain speaks. "I have killed somebody."

write2obi:
Oga Sammy you are the bomb * not that kind boko boys use oo* Feed us more!

Thanks for ur comment.

Kate had smashed bottles on Henry’s head twice as punitive measures for the pain he had inflicted on her then. Henry had bludgeoned her too, oftentimes, with one particular truncheon their father had always kept inside the storehouse. Mr. White had told them long time ago, the mystery behind the aforesaid truncheon. He had said that he seized the heavy stick from a police officer who had harassed them (himself and two others) unjustly many years ago, but his children would not believe such a lose talk, on the ground that their father wouldn’t have had the mind to do that. Mr. White had to jettison the truncheon secretly one day, fearing that his kids were going to kill each other with it someday, as long as it remained in there.
On getting to the University as a freshman, Henry at first had the problem of relating with the opposite sex, probably because of his vendetta for his blood sister who had been with him since childhood, but he never regarded such aberration as a problem at all. He took all females as his sister, thus the hatred for them.
Henry’s orientation experienced a revolutionary trend the first time he did set his eyes on Cynthia, during her first year (Henry was in his second year then). There and then, Henry had felt he was going to choose her in place of a million dollar if there was to be any cause to make a choice between the two. He had valued her invaluable and priceless.
Henry had felt, oftentimes, that he was going to strangle any male who might want to be with her. Though mindful of the fact that such a one could be Ted, yet Henry was not going to soft-pedal his vow made earlier in time. But Ted wasn’t thinking about her, not even any girl, but sport only. He was the skipper of the volleyball team, playing the striking role.
Ted was not good at all in basketball—a novice in soccer too. He had tried at different sports unsuccessfully until finally discovering his talent. It seemed Ted discovered it too late, because his leg had once been broken in the football game while trying a rough tackle at a veteran master dribbler. His teeth, two incisors, one each from the upper and lower jaw, were broken too while dabbling in the hockey game. The metamorphism in his teeth then had resulted accidentally from a blow of the hooked stick owned by an opponent. However, Ted had had those broken teeth artificially shaped up again.
Henry was good in divers sports, but had never participated in any since entering the university, so no one knew he could do them. He had always been engaging himself in the reading of books, especially storybooks. He had read most of Chase’s novels and had begun to write his own too, about himself and his sister Kate.
In lieu of sporting activities, Henry was academically inclined—always interested in winning competitions; like quizzes, debates, spelling bees—having won all these at one time or the other early in his lifetime.
Kate was the exact opposite of Henry in virtually everything—gender, skills, abilities, attributes—lots more. She had always managed to score C’s in her results, frolicking frantically whenever she had such ‘Ceeish’ results. She was not athletic too—unlike Henry. In the high school, Henry represented his house in the relay race competition. Kate was envious, so she asked if she could do the same. Her housemaster doubted her, but eventually agreed to put her to test. She was to contend with some others in the same house.
Everyone made fun of her, having known that she was a lazy bone when it comes to athletics, but she summoned courage. That fateful day, the gun was fired and everyone ran with full speed. It was a 200m race. Kate was far behind. All of a sudden, she ran so fast—like a cheetah, overtaking everyone in the race. She won eventually, with a wide gap between the runner-up and herself.
It was amazing to everyone watching how she had managed to win the race, but Henry understood everything. Kate had seen a bulldog behind her, which had maneuvered its way unto the track. Since she was allergic to bulldog, she had to run as fast as her legs could afford to avoid it, so she did and won the race.
Henry felt bad about this. He told her housemaster his observation, but the man paid no attention to him, having known Henry as Kate’s antagonist. The man, following the suggestion and resolution of Kate, never let her have any further practice, so that she would not sustain injury before the main competition.
Kate was in the White house, while Henry was in Black. Initially, the two had incidentally been put in the same house (White), but Henry begged for a change of house—hence the Black House.
At the preliminary stage of the competition, Kate contended with many other athletes from different houses. It was a relay race. Having been regarded by all as the best of the racers in her house, she was made the anchor. During the last lap of the race, Kate got the baton a long time before any of her opponents did, but kept a slow pace and was soon overhauled in a short moment by all her contenders. That hectic day, she made a fool of herself before everyone. To make things worst, Kate fell flat on her face to the floor, while already maintaining her last position behind the ‘runner-up’ from the back.
Henry’s house swept the board in that competition, winning most of the gold medals. The Black House, also represented the school in the inter-school competition and won the trophy, with Henry regarded as the most colorful participant, having single-handedly won four gold medals in the various sports he had participated in.

"Eh, you want to slap me ni ke e!" Yemi said in shock.

"Tele wa n ko," the woman spoke.
how about that?

"Forgive him," a rough male voice sounded just at the entrance of the canteen. Yemi turned and discovered it was that same man he had been running away from.

"Ha! Siifu!" the woman said, showing some reverence to the rough-haired man who had just got inside her canteen. "How do you know here?"

"I just decided to branch when I heard your arguing voices, both of you. What is the bone of contention, can you tell me?"

"He bought food--refused to eat, refused to pay," she said, leaving Yemi's belt alone.

"Gentleman, why?" the dirty man faced Yemi, but not in a harsh cruel voice had Yemi had thought of him.

"I wanted to pay...but I lost my money," said Yemi.

"Sorry about that," said the man with a croaky voice. He turned to the woman again and said, "Let him go, I'll pay."

Yemi was very grateful. He believed the man was his guardian angel--one least expected to render any help at all.

"All things work together for good," said Yemi in whispers as he came out of the canteen. The dirty man even asked for his home and gave him some money to transport himself there since he said he had lost all his money through his torn pocket earlier.

As Yemi trekked towards the bus stop, frowns gathered intermittently on his forehead again at the sights of the Hausa beggars sitting beside the gutters in large number. He wondered who came to dump them there. They were irritating to his sight.
Yemi had thought them a big menace to the society. The gutters behind them were some sites to behold already let alone having those dirty beggars adding to the paint of irritation.

Banbiala, kola kola... such was all he could hear of their sweet begging voice and people would just bow low to put some money in their overturned cowboy hats or in their almsplates. Lagosians are very nice people, Yemi thought. Left to him, he believed they could have used their singing talents to generate money instead of begging under the hot sun their.

"Perhaps they have this begging mentality," Yemi whispered his thought concerning the beggars in question.

Who should not be nice to those beggars if not the Southwestern people of the nation themselves, some whose children had been killed in some riots in the north?

Yemi just wished those beggars would someday be packed like sardine into a big trailer going northward.

Yemi cherished morality and self-discipline more than anything else in the world. He believed that smoking is unethical, so he wouldn't smoke. Yemi would not even touch an empty can of beer, hold a stick of cigarette or indulge fidelity. If everyone was like Yemi, the street would not have to be littered with dirts, instead the roadside baskets and drums would be the ones to suffer for it--they would be full to the brim.
Yemi screamed disgustingly at a can of tasty time drink he found on the sidewalk. He bent over it after, walking to a roadside iron drum to dump it in there.

"Are people so blind?"

Actually, Yemi's moral behaviour wasn't an inborn gene. It was only a lesson he had learnt seven years back in one of Aluko Peter's numerous book. It was titled: Keep Lagos Clean. Then, the books went free for the public, courtesy of Peter Aluko himself.

It was a military regime then and the man's contribution to social development was awarded by the then military governor.

As Yemi remembered his mentor, he hissed and said, "Can someone be moral forever in this cursed land? Hmm, evil communication corrupts good manner," he drove home his point with a passage in his Bible. Yemi thought such was the case for the philanthropist cum moralist cum governorship aspirant cum murderer, Aluko Peter.

Yemi had much story to tell--especially that of his ordeal in the hand of that local woman in the shabby old canteen. His wife didn't let him tell the story to its peak point when she got some fire on her brain and agitated, "Describe the place and let me go and tear that wicked woman apart!"

"Be still Omoyemi," he calmed his wife. "J-just let it go!"

"How could she be so arrogant?" Yemi's wife frowned her face as if the woman in question was just right there beside her.

Story continues...


mi couldn't answer the question because he wasn't ready to pay a dime. What he had left with him was his transport fare home.

"I'm sorry but I can't eat in this stuffy confinement," Yemi said as he took a step towards the exit.

"You want trouble abi?" said the woman. "And I will give it to you." She retied her wrapper and grabbed the collar of Yemi's shirt.

"Leave me alone," said Yemi. "Has it gotten to this?"

"Yes o," the woman gritted her teeth. Yemi perceived an odour--a killing one. He felt that the smell could make him go on blackout. Instantly, Yemi had had a change of mind. He'd rather give it to her to avoid being rough-handled by the cantankerous woman.

Yemi put his hand into his pocket and his fingers propped out. The money was no longer in place. It was derided of the money he kept in it earlier.

"What?!" Yemi screamed. "My money is lost!"

The woman laughed indifferently and tightened her grip on Yemi's collar.

"Your money has disappeared abi? That's your own cup of tea o," she said in her dialect. He held him tighter.

Yemi's eyes bulged as the grip got to his throat. He felt like coughing. The temptation arrived that he should beat the woman up but it wasn't in his blood-violence. He'd rather remove the hands on his neck by pulling her fist apart instead of beating her up.

"Do you want to..."Yemi breath heavily, "kill me?"

"If I can, I would," the woman said without having a sense of pity for Yemi. "Pay me up or you pay with your life."

Yemi was sure the woman meant what he was saying. How can someone be so mean? he thought. Then he held her hands and got them off her neck.

"Jedijedi cannot collect money when it is not available," Yemi gave a Yoruba proverb which got the woman more annoyed.

"Are you calling me a pile?" she shouted at him and made her hand as if to slap him, but Yemi was lucky he evaded the hand.

If the local woman was older than Yemi at all, it shouldn't be more than a year.

Her spittle settled like a dew on Yemi's face when she yelled. The woman had now held Yemi tight at his belt region, pulling him forcefully as if to get a cane and use it on him like a stubborn child.

"What kind of humiliation is this?" Yemi was angry. He raised his hand to punch the woman in the face, but had to let it go down when he pondered on something.

How would he raise his hands to smite a lady? Wouldn't it amount to the negation of the moral law he had upheld for so long? Impossible! Yemi thought.

Yemi resorted to begging. It was like a son in the hand of a mother who was bent on beating him up.

"Please, please, I'll get you your money madam," he pleaded. The woman let them fall on deaf ears.

"Sebi you want to punch your mummy before ni?" the woman spoke like a termagant who was raised under the care of a termagant--sure she would be henpecking on her husband at home.

"Please just forgive..." Yemi paused to catch a fast-moving widespread palm coming towards his cheek. If he hadn't held the wrist in time, then he'd be sure of having some unexpected 'tribal marks' lining his cheek like the mucus lining in a nose.

Comment before I continue...till then goodbye.

Chapter Five

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?

CHAPTER FOUR~~~~~~~~~

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.

Comment if you dey follow the tory...till then goodbye

"Titi titi," I tok fondly.

"Where do you know me?" she put up a frowny face. "Have we met before?"

"Yes now," me wan try begin tok correct English now. "For that beke junction side that one mango tree dey," I no know when I end up dey yarn broken again. E no easy true true, English wey I no dey tok well when I even dey school, how I go fit tok am well now when be say I don komot school tay tay?

"Beke?" she tok as if she never here 'beke' before. Beke na where some ibo boys like me dem dey sell their special cooked rice and beans. Dem no dey bother pick the beans and the rice dey swell up come out of pot so tey na cover of pot person go dey take guide the sides make wetin person wan gain for the rice no don pour down finish when person dey use stick turn am for fire.

Those pots wey dem dey use cook fit contain one whole human being if hin fold well well enter. As in en, dem too big.

"Yes, Beke shop that den dey eat inside for Egba street nah," I don fall enter pidgin again. Wetin man go do nah?

"I can't get you, please bring your teller and let me attend to you," she begin show irritation for face.

"Titilayo nah," I tok like say I dey sing am for mouth. "Oya, you sef think am. How I take know your name if we never meet before?" I tok as I dey give am teller. Na only my own teller I give am first make the whole process fit tey well well.

"Look here," she show me her ID card take use fall my hand. I shame no be small.

"Okay nah, you don catch me Titi, but you no remember my face true true? Na me sell plastic of rice and beans give you that day nah!"

She smile her dimples come out suddenly kon clap her hands three times kon hiss.

"Mo rogo o," she tok for yoruba. "E e e e," she do like say she dey yawn.

She do my transaction finish give me two duplicate copies of the teller tok say next!

"I have never finish," I blow big blunder. Some people laugh. Me no kuku know that time say na blunder I blow wey make dem dey laugh. I think say na the second teller wey I just comot for my pocket cause their laughter.

"Take this one," I give am. She frown face when I give him. "So Titi, you don remember my face now?" I ask am. "That guy wey sell raw rice and beans give you that day wey ..."

She no let me tok finish before she vex shout say, "I buy my foodstuffs from anybody so how do I know who is who? By the way young man, maintain your level and don't get yourself embarassed here okay? I don't know you, period!"

"Yes ma, my Oga at the top!" I salute kon keep quiet till she finish the second transaction.

Tory continues...


Oya make line kon begin move joor. Me wan give Titi one 'upper-cut' surprise. E go shock am if she just see me land kule for her front as if say I disappear come. E beta make I dey hide my face for ram till I go reach her front o, or else she go discover say I don come there kon waka comot as she do that time.

Her sight dey sweet me for bele. If I fit just marry am everything wey dey do me don finish. I go carry am go anambara go wed am there. Bride price no kuku dey plenty for here as e dey for our side.

Line begin reduce, my joy begin boku. She do say she wan comot for inside that four corner wood wey she siddon!

Nor try am o! na so my mind begin tok. She stand up waka comot when be say she no kukuma hear wetin ny mind dey tok. She no tay at all when she come out carry plenty money enter her little confinement back dey continue wetin she dey do.

One guy kon stay my side dey throw hand. I throway face! Who know am? Dem go say who born monkey? Na person born am nah!

Na so I dey hear the guy dey whisper, "Guy, guy."

I bone do like say no be me hin dey call. Wetin concern me there? Na so I begin hear tap ontop my shoulder o.

Who be this guy gan wey no dey fear fa-ace? I dey ponder. Na so I turn face am sharply.

"Wetin!" I do strong face for ram.

"Guy make I join queue nah," hin tok jejely.

"For where? Go enter for my back nah," I tell am.

"Guy abeg, make I run enter do the thing sharp sharp nah!"

As e tok say sharp sharp, I remember one film wey I watch 'Mr Sharp Sharp'.

"Oga, no be here o," I tell am.

"Why you dey do like this nah?" the guy begin dey talk. "You no be woman nah."

"When then?" I tok. "Den no let me enter when me sef wan do this kine thing wey you dey do now. Go join queue joor. I no get your time again o bro," I tok kon bone face put for one side.

The guy no comot for my matter o. I no know wetin hin wan die do for my side. Now I look my back, the line don long kon dey kolokolo like snake, na so I begin pity the guy, but person wey dey my back don know wetin we dey tok since, so e sure me die say the girl no go gree even if I say make the guy kon enter. She go say make hin enter for her back. Person wey dey her back go say same thing and so on and so forth until the guy go go meet himself for back gan gan gan.

I begin put ibo brain inside the matter. If e go pay me in the end I go fit do am nah. I no mean say make hin lay me money o. Wetin I dey think be say if hin give me hin bank document, me go fit help am out, at least e go fit make me tay well for Titi front since she go dey treat two documents instead of only my own so our tok tok go fit boku well well.

Oya nah make I see weda e go work.

I tap the guy small hin respond well well.

"Na deposit you wan do abi?"

"Yes," hin tok softly.

"Bring am!" I say kon look left right look left second time make I take see say dem no see me. Dem see me just troway face. Dem no just wan cause wahala ni o.

If to say na withdrawal the guy wan kon do, the clinch for no click, but mean say na deposit, then nothing do us.

Trust me, I look the money well see say e complete make e no kon become the case wey be say we go dey accuse each other of stealing o. If people for bank follow us hear that, dem go blame us join ni say we even get got take dey discuss our illegal transactions.

E don reach my turn. Den tok say next, I bone that other woman kon ask the girl wey dey my back say make see go first. She too happy.

Mouth don tear me to pieces put for parker put for dustbin for that small thing wey I do. I just run put my ear piece enter my ear before dem begin chop me.

"Next!" Titi tok but I no hear because my earpiece dey inside my ear. But I get luck say person push me from back so tey I throway earpiece rush go stay for her front.

CHAPTER THREE

As Yemi trudged along a tarmacked road, the look on his face turned around dramatically. He had just seen someone he saw around the high court premises two days back--the harsh-looking face of a stout, dirty man.

Yemi didn't make a mistake as regards the young man's appearance. It was the man Yemi almost directed his question to outside the court that day.

"It's that man!" Yemi spoke to himself. At first he thought it was a coincidence seeing him again

Yemi intentionally changed his course of motion and entered another lane, a tattered dusty street which seemed more like a slum regarding the loads of dustbin dumped around even after some attempts had been made by some lover of sanitation to write: DUMP YOUR REFUSE HERE AND LOSE YOUR LIFE.

What was the choice left for those poor Lagosians to make when there was no way they could dump their refuse since the government refuse bus had refused to ply their steeets for months to convey their dirts away.

Obviously Yemi wasn't happy about the pitiable condition of the Agege area of Lagos state. He detested seeing clay huts all around in an urban settlement.

"Ghetto in Lagos," Yemi said. "And this people will be thinking in their minds that they're living in Lagos."

Yemi wanted to spit when the stench from the stinking refuse began to ooze into his nostrils. He wondered how people around were coping with the pollutions that would result.

Yemi had forgotten about the thought of being trailed behind by somebody when he suddenly saw the man emerge at the other end of the street.

"Is this man monitoring me?" Yemi whispered to himself. He had begun to get scared.

Yemi entered a wooden canteen just beside a slum and settled on a bench whose length was as large as the length of the shop itself. The floor of the canteen was bare and not cemented at all. His feet had raised dust when he tramped his foot against the floor earlier. He had to shield his nostrils with a handkerchief.

Yemi was peeping out of the door of the canteen to see if the man would pass by, then he would know if he was actually being followed.

"What do you want?" a female voice came up close to Yemi's ear. She was the owner of the canteen, which was standing lopsidedly between two slums. It would have been better used for a cement store rather than a food canteen.

Government should financially join hands with sanitation workers to see that such eyesores are demolished in a city that was assumed by all to be embellished with beauty, Yemi thought.

"Oga, I say what do you want?" the woman spoke in Yoruba the second time. It was conspicuous that she was an illiterate. She had some vertical-upon horizontal tribal marks on her cheeks which one would have passed for the claw impressions of a lion probably during a fierce battle with it.

"Er, okay give me pounded yam, two wraps and fish," Yemi spoke without thinking much on it. He desired to be there for sometimes to avoid the man who seemed to be following him everyehere.

"Alrice sah," the woman spoke with a parlance laden with the burden of village illiteracy. She hadn't ever passed the way of school, Yemi must have thought.

The woman came with the food. At the sight of the ewedu soup instead of the melon soup he had assumed the woman would bring, Yemi recoiled and voiced out his heart:

"I don't like ewedu soup," Yemi complained.

"O o o," the woman grumbled. "Bring it."

Yemi saw her put her unwashed hand into the ewedu soup and held the fish in it, which he threw back into the pot of fish. It was a disgusting sight to behold for Yemi.

Yemi had already lost interest, having begun to perceive an indignant pungent smell. The air was stale, so it was certain the smell would last long in there.

Yemi got up as the woman was bringing the food.

"I am not eating anymore," Yemi said. A housefly sounding across his brain had put him off totally. Housefly was hovering round him when he hadn't begun eating, how much more when he began to eat the food. Surely, they would come in their multitude to dance 'galala' inside his watery melon soup, Yemi thought.

"What did you say?" the woman put the food on the table and said, bringing her ears close to Yemi as if she meant what she just said.

"I say I don't want to eat anymore," Yemi said confidently.

"Ta lo ma wa sanwo eleyi?"
who will now pay for this?

Story Continuation...

Yemi had a long story to tell now. His face was carrying those smiles and bliss of one who had something going his way.

One thing about Yemi was that he always wanted to face and tackle the reality instead of just talking about them. Yemi didn't have any sense of pity for criminals. Why should he when he was one of those who prayed for criminal arrest botg day and night on his bed.

"You pray that God should expose them, he did, yet you are weeping for them when you see their villainous faces on the screen of the TV when they pretend to be gentle people, isn't that an irony of life?" Yemi would always tell people who had some pity for the criminals arrested.

Yemi wouldn't buy cheap stories from criminals or suspected criminals who had been arrested. He wouldn't believe in setups. If any accused soul was protesting concerning being set up, Yemi would make a nose mock on thr person in absentia and say,"If that was the truth, why haven't I been set up too, even after a long year in the prison service.

Yemi had been into the prison service right from his early days, while he was only twenty-five. He graduated from the University of Ibadan with an upper credit in a Social Science course.

Yemi had heard the news of Deinde's sentence in a proper and elaborate manner now. He was to die by hanging in two weeks.

"Why such hasty judgment?" Yemi questioned the policeman who told him. "Isn't that a jungle justice?"

"I don't know for you o," the policeman replied him. It had always been that way. Yemi getting much interested more than the policemen themselves. They didn't like talking things to scrutiny yet they were policemen. If Yemi challenged them they would hide under the rug of not getting pay to parallel such task.

Yemi himself had been owed some month salary now, but he wasn't moved. At least he would be paid someday, he thought.

Yemi took his work with all the zeal needed for it. His mates had made mockery, calling him a 'workaholic' in the midst of 'alcoholics' since he wouldn't join them to take strong drinks.

It was Yemi's passion to always see to the affairs of arrested prisoners which made him have many prison cells to his charge, yet he wasn't a high-ranked civil servant. To call a spade a spade, Yemi had been underrated and undermined yet himself wouldn't mind since he believed he was doing it for the sake of the love he had for his country.

"God will reward me for it," he would tell those who have approached him to talk the matter through with him.

This story would sound unbelievable to his wife, Yemi thought. How would she believe the involvement of Mr Aluko in the murder case? The eagerness to get the news into 'the other Yemi's' ears became a propellant to hurry Yemi up. He wished he was home already.

As expected, Yemi's wife exclaimed when she heard it.

"I doubt it!" she yelled. "How could that clean man with such huge integrity do such a thing?"

"You don't know what politics could engender my dear Yemi," he said to his wife. "It's a dirty game!"

"But it can't be dirty to the extent of turning a philanthropist to a murderer so soon--I mean what's the correlation? I mean Aluko didn't declare himself as a contestant in the first place, his community forced him to do so for the betterment of this nation. So why will he do such wicked thing?"

Yemi's wife was already derailing from the principle she once upheld--that all accused persons were guilty indeed, but her wife still maintained his standpoint.

"Mr Aluko is my mentor my Yemi," Yemi told his wife. "But he's human hope you know. Humans change overnight, only God remains the same. My role model has been blindfolded by the dark garment of politics, I think."

It took Yemi's wife an extra time of ruminatings to accept it, though she was having a little doubt over the issue still.

Mr Aluko Peter was a renounced moralist who had propounded many theories in the Western part of the nation. He believed in the law of sowing and reaping so much, such that he was awarded for being the most generous citizen of Lagos at one time, yet the man used the money he got to promote a movement for youth empowerment and built a building where youths of the state could get in to learn some skills at a price unimaginably little.

Yemi drove home his point when he said, "Darling, you'll have to agree with me that politics is like a black ink that makes a thinker lack a good sense of judgement in a fleeting moment."

The statement Yemi just made was a statement written in one of Mr Aluko Peter's published books itself, making a satire of politics back then. Now himself ( Aluko) had put on the garment which he warned people against back then. The book was titled-POLITICS, A POISON TO BLACK NATIONS.

"Now our darling campaigner against politics is now vying for a position in it," Yemi spoke further. "In fact, my respect for him began to wade off that day he declared that he would be vying for a gubernatorial post in the forthcoming election."

"Uhm," Yemi's wife just kept breathing deep. She was speechless. "You're right dear, I'm bothered how people's inherent orientation could change over a short period of time."

Bimbo coughed to draw attention. She was bored of the talks now, yet she was the one who asked for it earlier, having her head on her father's head.

Bimbo had many strategies of cutting into a boring discussion without uttering a word. The cough she just released was one out of her many antics. At some other times, she would rise up swiftly and begin to sneeze 'crocodile sneezes' into the tender atmosphere. She could also run out of the room sometimes such that her mother would need to run after her to see what was wrong with her.

Bimbo had some childish attitudes to such end as well. She could poke her fingers into her dad's mouth like babies do sometimes while in a lying posture-all aiming at causing distraction.

Bimbo's cough was not taken into account this time around as the couple were already too deep into the yammer that it appeared nothing would stop them. They were always at their elements when political arguments were concerned, yet they would be supportive to the idea of getting actively involved in it.

Yemi's half-brother, Yomi, who aimed to be a Councillor of a town back then, was not given the nod by Yemi, his younger brother, who rather advised him to take up some other things, supporting him financially to set up a little commercial firm at last.

When Bimbo's coughing strategy wouldn't pull a pin, she was forced to voice out her desire:

"Daddy, enough of this a-thing you brought from work and let me share my own a-thing with you which I brought from school!"

Yemi could not resist the 'package'. He was not the type who loved to ignore any family member. He must let Bimbo say something now. But the look on the face of the 'other Yemi' was the one of displeasure. She wished the Deinde-Aluko issue would continue nonstop.

"Okay Bimbo, say on-we're all ears," Yemi said lovingly. "So--?"

"Daddy, guess what it is?"

"I should guess abi? Em, uh, ahn..." Yemi put a finger across his forehead in thought.

Bimbo was cackling like a firecracker. Her mum had warned her several time not to laugh in such manner anymore. To scare her out, she had playfully told her that such throaty laughter could cause sore throat.

"Bimbo!" she tapped her daughter again. Bimbo gave her an eye. She knew what her mother was talking about. She faced her father again and said, " Daddy, waiting..."

"You beat up a boy in school today?" Yemi said.

"No, no, no," Bimbo's head went in the negative manner. "Guess again daddy!"

"You spat into your teacher's face," Yemi put out another funny one.

"No, guess again."

"You damaged your seat intentionally?"

"No, guess again daddy."

The other Yemi cut in as she faced her husband and said, "Daddy Yemi, you too should try to guess something reasonable jare!"

"Are they not reasonable enough?" Yemi japed.

"En, o risinebu looto o," Yemi's wife spoke in irony.
It's reasonable indeed


"Daddy, can't you guess right for once?" her daughter challenged her. Yemi got up playfully and pulled up his trouser, turning it to the 'floorphobic' type one would see typical of olden days village headmasters. Then he sat down again in such funny look and said, "Oya, mo ti ready."
Alright, I am ready now.


"So, what's your guess?" Bimbo said amidst laughter. Shw couldn't help but laugh at her father's funny look now.

"You farted a fat fatty fart in class today," Yemi released yet another funny one. This time around, it was everyone who burst into laughter.

"Ha, ha, ha!" Bimbo laughed. "Daddy, guess something good joor."

"You won a quiz competition, right?"

"No, guess again."

"You cracked a rib-cracking joke in class."

"No, guess again."

"You, you, you you you..." Yemi had run out of idea. He had lost 'signal'. Her wife was the more bored. She wanted the political talks brought back with immediate effect. To get it on again, she felt it would be best to terminate the childish 'guess again' of her daughter by revealing the secret in Bimbo's conspicuous auspicious face. She knew what Bimbo had wrapped up in the 'moin-moin leaves' of guess again.

"Bimbo took first position in school--first overall."

"Oh my God!" Yemi screamed. "How did I forget to ask for her result in the first place? Ka, ka, ka, ka, ka," Yemi made a 'tongue-on-teeth' clicking sound to show his disappointment in himself.

Bimbo was gutted. She hated the way her mother terminated her fun. She had squinted her face now, getting ready to unleash her childish anger on anyone who 'found her trouble'.

"Why did you have to tell daddy?" she confronted her mother.

"You would have done the same, wouldn't you?" her mother said in a smiling face, not a bit sorry for her deed.

"But you should have let him hear it from the horse's mouth," Bimbo complained. Sadly, she began to walk out of the parlour into her bedroom, ignoring her parent's call

"Bimbo is like me," Yemi said. "I am proud of her. What is her overall percentage?"

"95%," his wife said.

"Splendid! I'm impressed!" Yemi was glad. "What about that boy?" he added.

"That boy? He is nowhere to be found this time around--has 75%," his wife said. The boy in question had always been the only person posing academic threat at Bimbo. He was equally good, but this time around, he went behind Bimbo by 20%.

"So who is the second best overall?"

"Who knows?" she replied lackadaisically and quickly chipped in, "En-hen, do you really think Deinde is right about saying that the philanthropist sent him the murder?"

"He wouldn't have said so," Yemi replied. "Tell me, what does he stand to gain by telling a lie concerning his sender?"

"So--you go for a belief in Deinde's talk, isn't it?"

"Of course yes," he was tensed. "What cannot happen in politics?"

"What do you think darling? Do you think Deinde will be hanged so soon?"

"I don't think so," Yemi doubted. "Not when the accused Governorship candidate hasn't owned up to the allegation against him."

"I'm thinking that way too," said Yemi's wife.

"As a matter of fact, I'm envisaging a court case to be prolonged for years," Yemi said. "Meaning that Deinde will live long behind closed bars, perhaps under my charge," Yemi smiled.

"Uhm," she sighed. "How I wish Deinde was telling a lie," she concluded softly, having some feeling of pity for the indicted gubernatorial candidate of the Harmony Party.

"Well...all I want is justice," Yemi cupped his hand and put it over his mouth to do some yawns into it. "What shall we use to celebrate our daughter's success jare?"

"Toast bread and orange juice."

"That's good," said Yemi. "Have you gotten them?"

"I'll go get them," she said. "But we need to ask mama first," she added, fondly calling her daughter 'mama'.

"It's true. She might want to celebrate it with garri and kulikuli instead," Yemi joked and they laughed.

Really, the family was such which was made strong by series of persiflages.

Understanding is the pillar standing under the earth to make things on earth stand firm on the ground. The virginity of Virtue you have defiled too; she was Molested to death, yet everyone, including the cops, gaped at her corpse, not taking notice to seek Justice."

"O how I've waited long in longing to see a soul belonging to the Dilapidation dwellingplace get to the Island of Greatness! If Alacrity had sought my counsel he'd be remaining alive till today. I blame it all on Limitation his mother whose traits he had taken, someone who has never sought after my counsel before. Her refusal to bring her first and second sons to my temple at their births had paved way for Mr. Nonsense to christen them Alacrity and Vulnerability respectively. If I did not call at their home when Hopefulness was born I'm sure they would have named him otherwise. And then she gave birth to a baby girl of late and named her Standaloof! I shall quarrel with Limitation greatly for this."

"The few souls who had had the thought of getting to the Island of Greatness did not seek my counsel. Many years back Mr. Experience tried but failed, but I'm glad he has now realised his past mistakes and he's now making up for it. Others resorted to Doubt who made them doubt the existence of such great island. I shall not allow him to complete the school, the Doubt School of Thought he's constructing here. He has founded the foundation already on the large piece of land called the Land of Despair he inherited from Despair his father. Its foundation must founder, yes, in the presence of its founder Doubt. I shall send one of the Faiths to ensure such fate tonight." Father Sage paused abruptly, then he said frustratingly,

"I rest my wrest here since no ear is here to hear. I've been whiling away my time in soliloquizing all the while."

He began to make for his little cottage called 'Dotage' immediately.

Next...Chapter Three

"I always wanted to be first in class and I always get it. The only time I took second position I felt so bad, rejecting my meal until mum had screamed at me."

"Hmm!" Father Sage heaved. "Hopefulness is wonderful!"
Vulnerability was jealous. He couldn't understand the reason why the man should regard Hopefulness despite having such woeful performance in school in lieu of himself with wonderful one. Out of jealousy Vulnerability asked, "Father what about me? Though I was best you didn't appreciate me."

"Not so Vulne," said the man, holding the boy tightly. "You're awesome." In no time Vulnerability had regained his composure.

"So...Vulne, will you now live to believe that you can leave the Average life lived in this Average Street to live in relief with the living souls living in the Island high up there?"

"Of course yes!" the boy replied impulsively. "I'll surely come back with Mr. Goodluck." Father Sage bent his neck backward and raised his face toward the sky, thinking. He soon terminated the emerging silence when he said, "I'm glad my boy for this task you shall now accomplish. In my dream I saw you crossing the River of Achievement, bringing with you the long-awaited Mr. Goodluck. Thereafter a bridge was made to link here with there, making it easy for all here to get there." The man fondled the boy's hair as the boy cuddled up in his embrace.

"Go home now my son, it's getting late." Vulnerability began to trek home happily at the man's command, but had not gone far when he heard the man call his name. "Father, anything more?"

"There's a warning you must heed, else you may not get to the Island of Greatness."

"What warning sir?"

"Listen to me Vulne. Make sure you don't allow this news get into the ears of Doubt your uncle."

"I won't," promised Vulnerability. "But I'm afraid my parents could tell him. Maybe I--I should not tell my parents about it also." For a while silence oozed out of the Sage's lips as he applied a long-lasting tough rough scratch to his itchy scruff. "You may tell your parents," spoke the Sage thoughtfully. "But Vulne don't you dare blow your Trumpet of Imagination publicly." The man's speech caught the boy unawares.

"Why?" he asked, putting up a sad countenance. "Blowing my trumpet is exactly what I'm thinking to do as soon as I leave here."

"Don't try it!" the Sage warned again. A more critical look was now glommed to his face. "If you blow your trumpet you shall surely be incuring the jealousy of those zealous callous souls who are not wishing you good--the Bad's triplets and the entire residents of the Hurt shall be tempted to make attempt at denting your dream by causing accidents for you in the River of Achievement. Therefore it's better to keep your Trumpet of Imagination to yourself instead of blowing it into the ears of Mother Witch and her tenants."

"I'll try not to blow it sir."

"Trying isn't enough but crying against it will go a long way to help, perhaps your parents might want theirs blown."

"I'll--I'll try s-sir," the boy stuttered in uncertainty. He knew quite well that he would not be capable of restraining Limitation his mother in case she wanted the trumpets blown.

"Goodbye," Father Sage waved to him at last. Father Sage stared at Vulnerability's back until he was out of sight. Then he heaved a soliloquy:

"My dear Mr. Knowledge! Full of integrity: we imparted each other's life with knowledge before you departed. For being honest, honey shall be your meal, and you shall not suffer before you meet your daily meat. Because you pray daily you shall not become a prey. The students you've bred shall not lack bread, and because of you the poor shall pour their poverty away and reach for riches. Your posterity shall have prosperity and no man shall indeed need to weed your seeds away forever. Your students shall be studious in their studies, for this is the joy of all teachers, and peace shall come to you with ease."

"For being humble you shall neither stumble nor tumble, and as you hop to the top nothing shall stop you till you get atop. You shall not lack bread because you are not slack in business: your legacies being read and uttered shall bring bread and butter to the table of those bred in gutters and your life shall be long because you belong to a good school of thought."

"Oh Knowledge, you know the ledges in the River of Achievement, therefore I plead, lead the willing ones through the path that's leading to the Island of Greatness and don't depart from them until they have stepped their heels on the hills and on the golden knoll edge of the island, Mr. Knowledge."

"O Happy-Go-Luckers, you exiled my sister Wisdom without knowing that without wisdom you can't get to the kingdom, the Island of Greatness. Mr. Saint her husband you murdered, not realising that without a saint you shall faint. Understanding her sister you have also exiled, without the understanding that without Understanding you cannot stand in unity.

.Uneasily the old man raised his head and raised his voice to praise Mr. Knowledge and condemn doubt by saying, "Vulne, doubt your uncle is a big liar for spoiling and soiling the character of my friends. I've acknowledged Knowledge as a good personality for a long time, such that I had to stoop low to acquire skills from him those days before he was exiled from this town because the council wouldn't approve his school, Knowledge School of Thought, which teaches that it is possible for one to cross the River of Achievement to the Island of Greatness. They found his teachings odd and out-of-syllabus." Father Sage sniffed and then a thought crossed his mind.

"Hey, where did your parents even find them? I've not heard from them since the exile."

"Well, mum told me she found Mr. Experience in the Valley of Inexperience."

"Teaching?" the Sage guessed, putting on a bright face.

"Exactly!" Vulnerability replied, looking excitedly at the old man for the correct conjecture. "It was he who took mum to the Valley of Ignorance where Mr. Knowledge now dwells."

"Good!" Father Sage ululated his elation. It was short-lived. "Happy-Go-Lucky is just too lucky to still have me his head around in this town, else he'd begun walking about on his head without a head."

he moaned as if he was envisaging irreparable damage for his town. "I've remained in this town because I've been destined to relay to the Go-Luckers without delay that the way to the Island of Greatness is neither the Highway of Iniquity where many feet had trodden and are still treading even now, nor the River of Haste in which Alacrity lost his life, nor the Megalowealth Way constructed by Mr. Cheat, nor the Pathway of Indifference made by Fear, but only one way--the River of Achievement. Though I've remained here for a century teaching them the only way, the story still remains 'none has been there'. If I be dead, Hope be dead for them also, and they shall remain in pain and insane in this domain forever." The man turned up his cloudy face to face the cloudy sky, then he continued, "The only school teaching the right thing was destroyed and his proprietor exiled. Oh! What a pity! Father Sage sighed and shook his head to pity the Go-Luckers. Then he turned to Vulnerability and said, "Vulne, have you left his school for so long before it was destroyed here?" The man's question caught the boy unprepared. However, he managed to ask, "Do you mean the Knowledge School of Thought?"

"Which one was destroyed other than that?" the old man replied. "Or weren't you attending the Knowledge School of Thought with Hope before you both hopped out?"

"No sir," came the boy's reply to the old man's astonishment. Childishly , Vulnerability lowered his void head to avoid Father Sage's glowers as he added slowly with a low tone, "I've never in my life attended the Knowledge School of Thought."
Impatiently, Father Sage queried, "So which school were you before you dropped out?"

"The Simpleminded School of Thought," replied the lad softly to the wonderment of the greybeard.

"You're lying, aren't you?" Father Sage said rashly, but the boy gestured that it was the truth. "Come closer," commanded the priest. he acquiesced immediately. Father Sage gazed into the timid limpid eyes of the boy and it seemed to him as though he had seen the truth of the matter boldly etched on them. At last the man uttered, "Vulne, you are not lying." Vulnerability was shocked at the man's unexpected revelation because his eyeballs had always been giving him out in the past--his teachers in the Simpleminded School of Thought had often read them in the same manner, only to come up with the conclusions that he was lying whenever he was saying the truth.

"Your perception is different."

"What d'you mean Vulne?"

"My reddish eyeballs you just read, my teachers do read them too, but were always coming up with wrong conclusions." The man smiled and said, "They're Simpleminded, so what d'you expect? They can't perceive inner feelings, only the superficial ones." The Sage held Vulnerability's right wrist and silence followed.

"Well, lad I'm glad you've dropped out of there. Dropping out of the Simpleminded School of Thought is better than remaining. It's better to cross the River of Achievement as an illiterate person than to be nurtured under that foreigner Mr. Simpleton without a promising future. Though I'm old yet I'm not holding on to the belief of those in that school of yours who opine that it's crime to pine for the Island of Greatness let alone crossing the River of Achievement. Now tell me, was little Hope performing brilliantly in the Simpleminded School those days?"
Vulnerability laughed as he said, "Hope was always scoring zero and taking the last position in his class. he had to repeat his class twice before his withdrawal."
Father Sage smiled and said, "That's splendid! Hope must be a potential hero for him to have scored zero in that school, because the worst student in your school is better than the best student there. That's why I say Hope is a potential hero."

"I don't understand."

"Just forget it and tell me more about Hope."

With enthusiasm Vulnerability said," Hope would not cooperate with teachers in class, but he would make noise and seek to have his name scribbled times ten in the list of noise makers. At times our teachers would send him out of class for his disturbances and at other times he would doze off during lesson periods."

"What about you?" asked Father Sage to the coy boy's joy.

"Me?" the boy replied timidly and bent his head shyly...

Kate had smashed bottles on Henry’s head twice as punitive measures for the pain he had inflicted on her then. Henry had bludgeoned her too, oftentimes, with one particular truncheon their father had always kept inside the storehouse. Mr. White had told them long time ago, the mystery behind the aforesaid truncheon. He had said that he seized the heavy stick from a police officer who had harassed them (himself and two others) unjustly many years ago, but his children would not believe such a lose talk, on the ground that their father wouldn’t have had the mind to do that. Mr. White had to jettison the truncheon secretly one day, fearing that his kids were going to kill each other with it someday, as long as it remained in there.
On getting to the University as a freshman, Henry at first had the problem of relating with the opposite sex, probably because of his vendetta for his blood sister who had been with him since childhood, but he never regarded such aberration as a problem at all. He took all females as his sister, thus the hatred for them.
Henry’s orientation experienced a revolutionary trend the first time he did set his eyes on Cynthia, during her first year (Henry was in his second year then). There and then, Henry had felt he was going to choose her in place of a million dollar if there was to be any cause to make a choice between the two. He had valued her invaluable and priceless.
Henry had felt, oftentimes, that he was going to strangle any male who might want to be with her. Though mindful of the fact that such a one could be Ted, yet Henry was not going to soft-pedal his vow made earlier in time. But Ted wasn’t thinking about her, not even any girl, but sport only. He was the skipper of the volleyball team, playing the striking role.
Ted was not good at all in basketball—a novice in soccer too. He had tried at different sports unsuccessfully until finally discovering his talent. It seemed Ted discovered it too late, because his leg had once been broken in the football game while trying a rough tackle at a veteran master dribbler. His teeth, two incisors, one each from the upper and lower jaw, were broken too while dabbling in the hockey game. The metamorphism in his teeth then had resulted accidentally from a blow of the hooked stick owned by an opponent. However, Ted had had those broken teeth artificially shaped up again.
Henry was good in divers sports, but had never participated in any since entering the university, so no one knew he could do them. He had always been engaging himself in the reading of books, especially storybooks. He had read most of Chase’s novels and had begun to write his own too, about himself and his sister Kate.
In lieu of sporting activities, Henry was academically inclined—always interested in winning competitions; like quizzes, debates, spelling bees—having won all these at one time or the other early in his lifetime.
Kate was the exact opposite of Henry in virtually everything—gender, skills, abilities, attributes—lots more. She had always managed to score C’s in her results, frolicking frantically whenever she had such ‘Ceeish’ results. She was not athletic too—unlike Henry. In the high school, Henry represented his house in the relay race competition. Kate was envious, so she asked if she could do the same. Her housemaster doubted her, but eventually agreed to put her to test. She was to contend with some others in the same house.
Everyone made fun of her, having known that she was a lazy bone when it comes to athletics, but she summoned courage. That fateful day, the gun was fired and everyone ran with full speed. It was a 200m race. Kate was far behind. All of a sudden, she ran so fast—like a cheetah, overtaking everyone in the race. She won eventually, with a wide gap between the runner-up and herself.
It was amazing to everyone watching how she had managed to win the race, but Henry understood everything. Kate had seen a bulldog behind her, which had maneuvered its way unto the track. Since she was allergic to bulldog, she had to run as fast as her legs could afford to avoid it, so she did and won the race.
Henry felt bad about this. He told her housemaster his observation, but the man paid no attention to him, having known Henry as Kate’s antagonist. The man, following the suggestion and resolution of Kate, never let her have any further practice, so that she would not sustain injury before the main competition.
Kate was in the White house, while Henry was in Black. Initially, the two had incidentally been put in the same house (White), but Henry begged for a change of house—hence the Black House.
At the preliminary stage of the competition, Kate contended with many other athletes from different houses. It was a relay race. Having been regarded by all as the best of the racers in her house, she was made the anchor. During the last lap of the race, Kate got the baton a long time before any of her opponents did, but kept a slow pace and was soon overhauled in a short moment by all her contenders. That hectic day, she made a fool of herself before everyone. To make things worst, Kate fell flat on her face to the floor, while already maintaining her last position behind the ‘runner-up’ from the back.
Henry’s house swept the board in that competition, winning most of the gold medals. The Black House, also represented the school in the inter-school competition and won the trophy, with Henry regarded as the most colorful participant, having single-handedly won four gold medals in the various sports he had participated in.

Continuation...


Henry’s case was in direct contrast with that of Ted. He had living parents and a little sister, who never had a bit of respect for him. The combination of the two was typical of a ‘storm in a bottle’. Since growing to the age of accountability, the two had never for once had the same view of anything—always opposite.

Her name was Kate. Though talented in fomenting troubles, she had never always gone scot-free, yet she had never given it a thought to try co-operate with her elder brother, who had always been making sure she was punished for every slight offence she had committed. When they were much younger, Mr. and Mrs. White their parents, had never at any time been tempted to take the risk of leaving the children at home to fend for themselves when they were away, not even when they had only gone to work place, to return at noon. Instead, their parents would make sure that they were kept separately under the prying eyes of two different nannies, residing in two different parts of the city. They were always being baby-sat until they got to the age of thirteen and ten respectively, when it was deemed unfit by their parents to continue lavishing their cash unnecessarily on nannies. Those times, their parents would call them together to inculcate in them how good siblings were supposed to conduct themselves.

“You both must promise to co-operate now,” Mr. White would say then. Such speech had always been accompanied with exchange of maligning words from the children—each trying to accuse the other of being the one who had brought about all the rancor that had taken place before then. Then the brawl would begin afresh again, right in front of the helpless man who had raised the issue in the first place.

D9ty7:

The website suddenly rejected my password and I tried changing it, but it was unsuccesful.
Will create a new moniker and start afresh.
How have you been?

Fine sir...u won #400 recharge card. It still stands @ d end of d month u will get it sir. Thanks for keeping NL Literature section going despite the negligence of the section by our mods and supermods.