We Are Able

Episode 28

Mrs Omotayo took me to her flat in the other apartment. It was
well arranged. There was a Christmas tree at one corner of the
room. The little bulbs on it twinkled like stars. It seemed they
were performing a rhythm.
Mrs Omotayo was not looking too healthy, going by the look of
her face. I wondered why she was this skinny if the chicken
she gave me was actually bought with her own money. Even
her apartment had a very nice look.

Her son Biodun and her daughter, la!de sat beside each other.
They had already put off their Christmas cloth. I wondered if
they went out to celebrate the Yuletide or not.
Biodun had a dark glass on his face. He was a bit taller than me.

Biodun looked handsome in his early teens, yet he had one
but–eyesight.
Biodun wasn’t born blind. He came by it. A little scar stood on
his left eyelashes, separating it right and left. Biodun had a solid
face and looked older than his age. He was fair in complexion
like his mother.

la!de wasn’t born lame too. She had a devastating twist to her
fate when her legs and her arms became numb. They were the
only two children of their mother who was a widow. She had
chocolate skin.
la!de was just a year younger than me but we had exactly the
same stature.

Mrs Tayo must be a very strong woman, being able to raise
the two children, despite their situations.

When I took a close
look at the family setting here, I knew that my own fate was
nothing.
Mrs Tayo began to write an autobiography when she saw that
there was no other way to share her life story with me other
than putting it in black and white:
I made the greatest mistake of my life by plunging into
polygamy at an early age of twenty-two. It was my mother
who propelled me into it, though it wasn’t her fault anyway.

Actually, the family of Adeyemi Omotayo my husband was not
a polygamous one at the inception, but it was I who made it
so. I wasn’t prepared for marriage at all. I was waiting to be
admitted into the tertiary institution. I have waited and waited
for years but it was just very difficult because my mother and
father were church rats–meaning they had no money.

My father died of ulcer eventually.
We had no money to buy a digger let alone dig a grave, let
alone cement it after digging, let alone burying a coffin in it, let
alone burying my father in the coffin. A man offered to have
sex with me and give my mother a coffin in return because he
was a coffin carver. My mother rejected the offer and my
father’s corpse refused to lie in state.
Around that time, I got admission into the higher institution to
read banking and finance. My father’s body was neglected in
the mortuary. We needed to do something fast, else we would
continue to incur more debt for his long stay in the mortuary.

A man fell in love with me and pressurized me to marry him.
He was honest though, letting me know that he had a wife at
home already. I refused to listen to his woos since he was
already a married man. When I got home that day, I met my
mother in tears.
“Ayoola, your father’s corpse would be brought to us
tomorrow from the mortuary, yet we don’t have a dime to
bury him. Even a digger we don’t have. What should we do?”
I was speechless.

I couldn’t stand the tears on my mother’s face. She was
growing leaner and leaner day by day. She was sick. I was
afraid that I would lose her, so I decided to tell her about
Omotayo who proposed to me.
“Mum, I don’t know if I should tell you this, but…”
“What’s that? Tell me my daughter,” she said and coughed.
“Em…em…I–I met a man. He proposed to me but I refused.”
“You refused? Is he rich?” my mother asked without
premeditating.

“Yes, very rich,” I replied.
“Marry him then, Ayoola. What are you waiting for?”
“Mummy, that man has a wife already. He wants to make me
his second wife.”
My mother melted. She didn’t know what to say. I saw her lips
shaking. Eventually, she asked me to go ahead and marry him.
“Did you not say that he is also ready to sponsor your tertiary
education?” my mother asked thoughtfully.
“Yes mummy,” I replied.
“Did you not also say that his wife knew about it already?”
“Yes, mother. Omotayo said that his wife was even the one
who brought the idea when she couldn’t have a child for him.”
“Good!” my mother said and clapped as she thumped up and
began to dance to a native song she was singing:
*Emi la o ni yo si? Emi la o ni yo si. Bi a ti fe o ri, be naa lo ri,
emi la o ni yosi…

*Why won’t we rejoice? Why won’t we rejoice? As we crave,
so is it, why won’t we rejoice?…
Hastily, we did the introduction, and my father had a very good
interment. Adunni my senior counterpart took it upon herself to
see to it that the burial ceremony was an elaborate one. The
heaven danced and the earth sang. The birds of the air flew
around to show their satisfaction at us for giving our father a
happy ending.
I was in my third year in school when I gave birth to Biodun,
my first child. My senior wife took him with her to take care of
her while I continued with my school. I left him whole but met
him blind. How come?

I wasn’t suspicious of her, because she had never revealed any
questionable trait since the day I knew her, so I didn’t do
anything concerning that. I gave birth to my second child the
same year I was leaving the University.
When la!de was three, he went lame. He could no more move
his legs and one of his hands. It was shocking to me when I
came from my workplace that day and discovered that la!de
could not move. I rushed her down to the hospital and her
condition improved, at least she didn’t die, but ny mother died
instead, at the thought that her second grandchild was disabled
like the first too.

My husband died two years later, that was six years back. After
his death, the senior wife took care of us continually until last
year when she had a heart attack and died.
Before her death she confessed that she was the one
responsible for all the mishaps in the family: she buried my first
baby’s face in a bucket salt water mingled with pepper until the
little baby went blind. She was also the one who put a bag of
rice on my 3-year old baby, such that the baby couldn’t move
her body any longer.

As though it was not enough, she said she was the one who
poisoned our husband. She then said she was coming to
suffocate me to death with a pillow when she slipped and had
her chest striking hard against the hard edge of our central
table.
She was asking for my forgiveness, but it was too late for her.
She said she did all these as a result of jealousy. I was mad at
her. She died before my heart could soften to think about
forgiving her.

The memory of those plights were so heavy on me that I
couldn’t bear it any longer. Her people came to worsen it all by
casting aspersions on me. They said I was the one who killed
the whole family and also responsible for my children’s
physical disabilties. I told them the true life story but they
denied it.
They got me remanded but I took up the case in court. My
lawyer was competent so I wasn’t jailed. In fury, I left my
husband’s home and came here to have my abode. That is the
story of my life, Rose.
I couldn’t help my eyes. It had soaked the paper in my hands.

Now I knew I wasn’t the only one in life faced with challenges,
thousands others are.
If she could withstand it all, then I am able too, I thought. I
hugged her and wept.