The Talk

Niyi Omobowale sat on her bed covered with glistening white sheets, in her pristine white bedroom, tracing her fingers over the book she was reading for possibly the hundredth time, Something Borrowed by Emily Giffins. The book was very possibly her best book in the entire world, and reading at least a part of it every Saturday morning had become a sort of tradition for her while she waited for Mr John, her piano tutor. 

Just as she got to the fifth chapter, her door suddenly sprang open with such force it hit the wall behind it. Before she even heard her footsteps she knew who it was. Omolara, her seven-year-old sister, was not one to open a door politely.

“Lara, what is it now?” she said, annoyed at being interrupted again. Just twenty minutes before Lara had barged into her room to ask if Niyi could help her do her homework. Niyi had refused; their mother had given her orders to stop doing Lara’s work for her. 

“Mummy’s back,” she panted. “She’s with Lade now, giving her the talk.” Lade was Lara’s identical twin sister. According to everyone who had seen them before, they were alike to the bone. They looked like mirror images of each other. But, it was there their similarities ended. While Lade was very quiet, shy and introspective, Lara was more like a whirlwind. Still, they managed to get on with each other remarkably well. 

Niyi’s heart soared at Lara’s words, though. Their mother had been away for a week on a business trip, and Niyi had missed her, especially when the Ibukun issue had gone down and there had been no one to talk to. To Niyi her mother was like her best friend, confidant and elder sister all in one. She seemed to be the only one who understood her completely, all the time. When other teenage girls talked of their unenviable connections with their own mothers (Amanda usually called hers a bitch), Niyi felt all the more grateful for the solid friendship she had with hers. 

“What did you tell her?” Niyi asked Lara presently, referring to what the latter had said about The Talk, the name they’d come up with for their mother’s daily interrogations about what was going on in their lives. She went to each of her three daughters’ room, asking them how their day went and what significant thing happened, and wouldn’t leave if they hadn’t said something reasonable. It usually got completed within minutes. But, whenever she had been away for days at a time, sometimes, talking with her could take a very long time, which Lara hated deeply, because she had to start confessing the many petty crimes she had been engaged in. Niyi and Lade loved it, however. 

The Talk hadn’t always been part of their household. In fact, it was a fairly recent tradition that had been adopted few months after the twins learnt to string words together. The Talk had been one of the many strategies her parents had used to bond closer to their children to assuage the guilt Niyi knew they still felt due to the fact that they weren’t always around for Niyi when she was a child, with the result that they hadn’t noticed that their first daughter was going blind

“Just that me and Ada fought in class on Wednesday, like I told you before. She said we must settle and I must be the one to say sorry, but it was Ada’s fault because she was the one who started it,” Lara replied. She was always getting into fights.

Niyi smiled. That had been more or less what she had said when Lara had come to her. Sometimes it amazed her how eerily similar her and her mother’s thought patterns were. 

Before Lade could reply, Niyi heard the carpet-muffled footsteps of her mother drawing nearer. She started to warn Omolara, but the latter, having also heard the steps, gave a muttered “Oops” and tore away. About two seconds later, the smell of her mother’s perfume preceded her into the room. As she always did when she saw or remembered her mother, she tried to recall the visual memory of her mother. A thin woman, dressed impeccably in a suit and skirt came back to her, which had blurred over the years. Niyi could hardly remember what she looked like, and likewise had no memory of what her father or the twins, who she had seen just a few days before going totally blind, looked like, but she still remembered her mother’s face, or a bit of it, and was determined to hold on to it for as long as she could, even though her mother maintained that she was now fatter and less pretty than she had been. 

“How’s my favourite daughter doing?” Priscilla Omobowale asked as she threw her hands round Niyi, who was still on the bed.

“Who’s going to believe that I’m your favourite?” Niyi rolled her eyes as she hugged her back and breathed in her perfume more deeply. Her mother gave a grunt as she collapsed on the bed.  “How was your trip?” she asked.

“Well, I was okay; my presentation went really well, even though I swear Tomi was trying to make it go as bad as possible. She kept on forgetting things. I was so angry. I think I’ll soon fire her.” Her mother also made sure they knew as much as possible of her life as she knew of theirs.

Niyi laughed. “You’ve been talking about firing her for years. Do it already.”

“So you’re trying to tell me my bark is worse than my bite abi? No wonder Lade felt comfortable telling me she still went out at night to steal the ice cream even though I told her not to.” Niyi laughed again. Lade was too innocent for her own good, and she could not keep a secret for long.

“By the way,” Niyi said as she struck a mock angry pose, her arms akimbo. “I hope you didn’t forget to bring what I asked for?” 

“Relax Madam 17,” her mother rolled her eyes. “It’s in the kitchen.” She was fond of calling Niyi “Madam” followed by her age, and claimed it was to remind herself how much Niyi had grown. She shifted on the bed, and asked, “So how was your first week in school?” she asked.

Niyi rolled her eyes. “Well, the usual. Some new junior students asking me how I read or see the board in class...” her mother laughed at that “....more whisperings and all....” She waited, trying to decide whether the fact that Bolaji was so adamant on becoming friends with her was something worth telling. It could be nothing, and telling Mum would make her think I like Bolaji.  But then she decided to. If they became closer friends, and it looked like it could happen, it would be weird if her mother got the news suddenly. “....and Bolaji and I became friends.”

She felt her mother start. “Bolaji, Amanda’s ex?”

Her mother kept up with so much AHS news she could practically be a student. “Well, yes. The Head Boy put us together for prefect duties this week, and we got talking. He has been really nice sha,” she shrugged, hoping to convey the I-don’t-care expression her mother had to see.

“Hmm. And how does Amanda feel about that?”

Niyi shrugged. Though she had been friends with Amanda for years and the girl seemed nice enough to her, Niyi had always had the feeling that she didn’t like her. Generally, the only person she was really comfortable with in the clique was Rebecca, and unfortunately, Rebecca liked the lot of them. Sometimes Amanda made some annoying comments, especially when she was angry. Once, at the cafeteria, Tolu had said, “See what they’re doing to our educational system,” and Amanda had laughed and asked how she expected the blind to see. Niyi knew Amanda was a bully, and comments like that far from hit the mark, but it had still pissed her off. But mostly, the girl was, to an extent, tolerable. But lately, Amanda had been more than a bit rude, and Niyi knew there could only be one reason. 

Thinking about Amanda made her remember another person. Ibukun, Niyi thought, her stomach suddenly unsettled. She had almost forgotten all about the girl....

“Toluwaniyi?” her mother prompted.

“Oh, sorry,” Niyi started, remembering the question and deciding Ibukun was more important. “I really don’t know. But I don’t think she’s happy about it.” She changed the topic before her mother could comment, anxious to get to the matter of Ibukun. “Mummy, Fluffy attacked someone in school this Monday.”

“What? That’s impossible.” Her mother sounded as shocked as Niyi felt when Fluffy had pounced on the poor girl. She felt worse knowing that her mother might insist on her getting a new guide dog. Niyi had had to attend a three months training program abroad before she had convinced all and sundry that she could be visually impaired and still care for a dog, and she didn’t want to go through all that again. Besides, in the seven years she had been with Fluffy, she had gotten so fond of her and would hate to lose her.  

“Well, I thought it was too. I mean, Fluffy is a guide dog. She wasn’t trained to attack. And besides, Ibukun has been in my class for three years. How could he just see her as a threat then?” Niyi had been almost sure Amanda had something to do with it. At least she had been insulting Ibukun before Fluffy came out of the class; Niyi had heard her. But she knew Fluffy didn’t seem to like Amanda too. If only the dog had attacked her.

“Ibukun? That’s who she attacked? The girl who got the first position in your class last year?”

“Well, yes. And according to Rebecca, she really tore her uniform. And everyone came out to laugh and all; no one tried to help. She doesn’t really have friends in our class. And then the next day, I told Aunty Anita to get some uniforms for her and when I tried to hand her the clothes on Wednesday...” Niyi swallowed. She was still embarrassed and hurt about the episode, even if Rebecca had dismissed it. 

 “... She just totally lost it. She sounded like she thought I set Fluffy on her. I mean, why would I even do that? She told me I didn’t have to behave as if I cared about who my dog was molesting... that being rich didn’t mean everyone had to do what I wanted and it was high time I learnt that.” Niyi paused, and then asked the question that had been bothering her all along. “Is that really how I come across to people because I rarely talk? As a stuck-up rich girl? Why did she hate me so much?” Niyi had never spoken with Ibukun before, just as she had never spoken with half of her classmates, but she had never imagined the girl disliked her so much. 

She felt her mother’s hand on her chin, pulling it up. “Listen to me, Niyi. If one person believes you’re proud and she hates you because of it, it changes nothing. I told you already; people will always think what they want about you. It’s up to you if you want to believe them, or if their opinions are worth anything. I don’t think you are a stuck-up rich girl, and personally, I don’t know why anyone would hate you. You are not an easy person to hate. You are good and you are kind. And you know that. Whatever Ibukun thinks shouldn’t matter. At least, she has never talked to you either, so she could be the proud one.” 

Niyi was hardly listening. All this came back to her being blind, she thought. If I wasn’t blind maybe I would have better friends than Amanda, I would be less quiet and Ibukun wouldn’t think of me as a bitch and people won’t just think of me as the freak with the dog. Unbidden, the tears came to her eyes, so fast it surprised her. It had been years since she’d last cried about being blind. But her mother seemed to have been expecting them, because she silently gathered Niyi up into a hug.

Being hugged like this, by her mother, because she was crying about her disability, cast Niyi’s mind back to the last time this had happened. It had been years ago, after they had all found out she was going to be blind. Eight-year-old Niyi had then asked her mother when they were going to drop her off at an orphanage because her premature mind had just believed then that no one kept blind children at home. They belonged in the Motherless babies’ home. Her mother had been so shocked that Niyi would even think that. Niyi on the other hand, had been so happy, so grateful, that they were still going to keep her, that she burst into tears. 

As always, visiting that memory always made her revisit the memory that had begun the downward spiral and the beginning of the end of her sighted days, a memory with an event that had taken place in the kitchen of their former home. 

Niyi practically grew up under the care of Henrietta, their then house maid cum nanny whom she so dearly hated due to the fact that the woman was always treating her like something the cat dragged in. Back then, her parents had never been around. They had always been on one trip or another, rarely having time to come home and see their only child. On one of the few days her mother stayed home long enough to even cook, and as Henrietta hovered around, helping her, Niyi ran into the kitchen to take some cold water. While making her way to the fridge, she somehow managed to run smack into the gas cooker and the pot of warm water on one of the cookers drenched her. 

While Henrietta smirked and wiped the mess, Niyi’s mother, looking very worried, had grabbed her daughter, sat her down in the living room, and asked repeatedly, “Niyi, didn’t you see the cooker?”

Niyi shook her head no, wondering what the fuss was about. She was more worried about the fact that the dress she was wearing was her favourite and that it was drenched, and she was missing Jimmy Neutron, The Boy Genius, her absolute favourite cartoon, because of her mother’s quizzing. Colliding with things was sort of a norm for her. In school, she rarely saw the board, and banged head with things so often in the playground her mates often teased her by calling her half blind, and at home, though her parents wouldn’t know, that after frequent collisions with basically everything in the house and mixing colours up all the time, Henrietta was of the opinion that she was mentally retarded. 

Priscilla Omobowale was even more worried when Niyi answered her for the 100th time that she had actually not seen the cooker, and she performed a rudimentary eye test there and then. Niyi barely passed it, and she got all the more worried. She took Niyi to an ophthalmologist the very next day. Niyi assumed the “Eye Doctor,” as her mother explained to her, was going to get her some new glasses and she had been slightly excited. She barely paid attention when they carried out tests on her or explained that her mother had to come back in a few weeks’ time. The most important part of the trip was when her mother got her a chocolate ice cream.

Niyi would always remember the next doctor’s appointment, where she had come with her parents. She hardly remembered what the doctor looked like, the state of his office, or how long they had sat in the waiting room. She didn’t really remember also, all what he said. What she did remember, in full detail, was his almost-bored voice as he said the words that would change her life. “Months from now her world will go completely black,” he had said in a tone that showed he was no stranger to delivering bad news. Years later when Niyi remembered this, she thought that anyone brave enough to choose to be an ophthalmologist and take care of what was possibly the most sensitive body organ was going to have something like ruining someone’s life filed under mundane tasks of their everyday lives.

At first, Niyi couldn’t believe it. Of course, it couldn’t be true. Blind people existed, but never, never had she even thought she would ever meet one, not to talk of being one. She had immensely pitied Ralia, a character in one of the children storybooks she had read, because Ralia had had a mother who was blind and that had been a great drawback for her. And so, the shocked expressions on her parents’ face startled her even more. Why didn’t they stand and scream in outrage at the doctor for lying to them? Besides, how on earth could two people who didn’t even use glasses have a daughter who was blind? Snippets of what the doctor said started to worm themselves into her brains. “ Retinitis pigmentosa… no cure exists... might be hard to accept it ... recommend a therapist ... many provisions for blind people in this new generation ... not to worry...”

Niyi’s parents were silent the entire drive through, though Niyi saw her mother wiping her eyes once or twice. Slowly, it sank into Niyi. She was really going to be blind. She was so shocked she couldn’t even cry at first. Various thoughts ran through her mind. How was she going to go to school? Would her parents even want her as a child after this? Surely, they would not. They would probably give her up to an orphanage. And then she would make no friends in the orphanage because no one wanted a blind person as a friend.

Tears started to sting her eyes. Her parents, who were both in front and were silently debating the best way to tell their daughter all what the doctor had said did not notice anything. Immediately she got home, she had flung herself on her bed and wept. Her parents who hardly ever spoke to her because they were never around, were not even speaking to her at all anymore. They probably wanted her out of the house as soon as possible.

Niyi had packed all her prized possessions in her school backpack – her teddy, her favourite nightgown, her piggy bank, since she would definitely need money – when she suddenly realised that it would be stupid for her to go silently to an orphanage. She would be better off killing herself. What could she use? A knife? No, that would hurt. Perhaps eating sand would do it. She crept to the backyard quickly. if only she had known that right then her parents were in their room discussing the best way to break the terrible news to her. 

Niyi found out the hard way that day that it took an extremely brave person to decide to kill themselves, even if their life was forever doomed. She went back upstairs after about thirty minutes of not being able to convince herself to eat what she was certain would kill her. Back in her room, her parents were waiting. 

She hardly listened to their explanations of what blindness meant and how it would barely affect her life. At that moment she hated them for giving birth to her knowing she would turn out blind, and more importantly hated herself for not having killed herself. Her Dark Days began on that day. 

Niyi found herself hating things and people more and more. She sorely hated her new therapist and thought the woman smelt disgustingly of crayfish. She hated the fact that her mother and father started to spend more and more time with her, because she knew they wanted to spend as much time as possible before she got totally blind and they would abandon her. She also dearly hated the fact that her eyesight seemed to actually get worse, and that sometimes she woke up in the morning and felt certain it was still midnight. 

Her mother urged her to tell her anything she might be feeling, but poor Niyi was scared to confide in her. What if she just hated the fact that Niyi hated the world and just decided to cast her off as soon as possible? Instead, Niyi found other ways to express her hatred for herself, like scrubbing herself too hard in the bathroom and pinching herself at intervals. 

Slowly, though, the hatred began to subside, and though Niyi still felt sure her parents would throw her out, especially now that they had given her the news one morning that Niyi was to expect to have a new brother or new sister – why would they make another baby if they already had one? – she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. Perhaps that would make them want to keep her. Her parents really did seem to like her nowadays, even as far as learning Braille with her and taking her out every day, and best of all, to Niyi’s happiness, her mother had given Henrietta a hair raising slap after she had asked her why she hadn’t said anything about Niyi’s poor vision and she had replied that she had always thought Niyi was a dull child. She had fired her on the spot too. Her mother had also gone to Niyi’s now-former school, demanded to see the headmistress, and created a scene, when Niyi had told her how she was being bullied and teased. “How could you let this happen to my daughter?! In your school?! And you claim to be the best school around this area! You’re crazy!” Without waiting to decipher the headmistress stutters, she had stormed off with Niyi clinging to her arm. 

But still, Niyi still felt sad about the fact that she was going to be dropped off. Her backpack was still packed and ready under her bed, and she waited almost impatiently for it to happen. Perhaps her parents wanted their other child to be born first. Now, Niyi was not nearly as scared of her mother as she had always been so she thought she might ask. 

“Mummy,” she had finally said during one of their now frequent conversations, after her mummy had talked her through why the new baby had to spend nine months in her stomach at first. 

“Yes dear?” her mother was absentmindedly looking through the bedtime stories she now read to Niyi before bed. They were all in Braille. 

Grateful her mother was partly distracted, she plunged in before she lost her courage. “Mummy, when are you going to take me to the motherless baby’s home? Is it when the other baby comes out?”

Her mother paused, like she was trying to figure out what Niyi meant, and then she screamed so loudly that Niyi jumped. “What?!”

For a moment Niyi was scared out of her wits. She had ruined it all, she knew. Why did she have to say anything? Now they were probably going to throw her out that night. As she was about to stumble out an apology, her mother continued talking. “Niyi, why would you ever think we would want to take you there? Do you dream about us dying, by any chance?” Before Niyi could even answer, Priscilla hit on what was wrong. “Oh!” Through her very poor vision, Niyi saw her eyes grow as round as saucers. “Is this about your eyes?”

Niyi had been about to explain everything; and even tell them she would never hate them because they had to give her away, and she would always think of them, but then what came out was a sob. She tried to muffle her cries, but she couldn’t stop the flow. She had always been careful to not cry in front of her parents since they got the news in case it angered them, but that day there wasn’t any stopping it. As she continued to cry her mother gathered her up in her arms and after a while she began to cry too. It was the beginning of an everlasting friendship for them both. 

After they had both cried, Niyi’s mother said, “Niyi, I want to tell you something. Do you know about the five senses?”

Niyi nodded. It was in a poster in their class. “Eye, ear, tongue, nose, and..” she couldn’t remember the last one. She wiped her wet eyes on her sleeve as she struggled to.

“Skin,” her mother said and tickled her, making her laugh. “Remember, we all have five senses. If you lose one you’ll get four out of five. Is that a good score?”

Niyi nodded. Four out of five was a score that out of reach of her in any homework she had done at that point in her life. She was really a dismal pupil. 

“So why are you sad? You have no reason to be.” She paused and looked at Niyi for a while. “You wouldn’t understand now, Niyi, but the love of a mother is even fiercer than that of God’s.” Niyi was confused; she had thought God’s love was the best. “So you should know that if I could have plucked out my own two eyes to give you, I would have done it without thinking. But I cannot. So I’ll do everything in my power that I can do. Why would you even think I would throw you, my own child away? Do you know how beautiful you are?”

Niyi wanted to cry at these words, thinking that if she was beautiful now she would never ever know what she would look like when she grew up. But somehow, the only thing that came out of her was a laugh. Her mother looked pleased, and buoyed by her words and her tears, Niyi brought out her backpack and exposed her would-have-been departure goods to her mother.

Priscilla started crying again, but this time she was laughing too and wiping her tears. “Seriously, you didn’t even take food?” she asked and Niyi suddenly felt foolish and laughed along. She had never seen anyone laugh and cry before. Even that looked funny. 

It was that visual memory she clung on to the most, even now.

About five months later, Niyi had the pleasure of meeting her two new born baby sisters and holding them in her arms, while trying her best to capture the memory of their faces with her totally deteriorating eyesight. A few days later, she became completely blind. 

After some minutes and some more conversation, Niyi finally felt more like her normal self, and better still, she found she wasn’t bothered about Ibukun anymore. Just as her mother stood up to leave, she remembered something. “Mum,” she called, “Rebecca told me Ibukun has been wearing the same uniform all week. I think that’s all she has. And she won’t collect a new one from me when I tried to give her.”

There was a pause, and her mother said, “I’ll do something about that.”

**********

By the time Niyi finally got downstairs, her piano tutor, Mr John, had already been there for about an hour. Not that he minded, though. Most times he spent a good deal of the time chatting with the twins and Anita, the maid, before they actually got any work done. Compared to Henrietta, Anita was the best person in the world. She had started work with them immediately after the twins were born, when they had moved to their new home and needed a new housekeeper. She had never looked at Niyi with pity or interest, and neither did she run around Niyi like a frightened mouse, certain Niyi would fall down or hit something.

And then before John would actually get on with the tutoring, he would regale her with stories of his new love interest. Niyi didn’t quite mind. He always made her Saturdays interesting, unlike Miss Julie, the lady who had taught her how to play the violin only a few months ago. Niyi had been learning different things throughout the Saturdays of her life; playing instruments, learning languages such as Spanish and French, yoga exercises. Sometimes when Rebecca dropped in she picked up a thing or two, but was never interested in learning the whole thing. 

Mr John had been chatting with Anita when Niyi entered, but then when Niyi entered the spacious living room, he hailed her, “Maidmoselle! Tu es tard ce matin!” 

Niyi smiled. For some reason he was very fond of lapsing into French when speaking; and Niyi wasn’t sure if he studied French in school or studied in a francophone speaking country. She moved towards his voice and sank into the armchair she judged to be closest to him. Here at home everything was so familiar she could almost forget she couldn’t see them.

“John here was just telling me about his Shalewa,” Anita said.

Niyi made a face of mock horror. “What? Shalewa still? It’s been weeks!” John’s love interests rarely exceeded two weeks. In the three months he had been her tutor, he must have had about ten. That might be due to the fact that he never really told them he was interested, Niyi thought.

“She’s old news,” John said before Anita could get in a word.

“Damn, I was beginning to hope she was the one,” Anita said and Niyi giggled.

“The one?” John scoffed. “On Friday, do you know what the huge witch said to poor John at school?” John taught Music at a secondary school close to Lekki. “She said...” he put on an high pitched voice. “’Do you know, John, what I really want in a man? Just a fat bank account and a banging body!’” Now his voice sounded horror-struck. “She just practically told me that people like me were off her list! Or where does she want me to get the banging body from?” 

“She wasn’t talking about you. Maybe if you’d made your intentions known, she would have never said something like that to your face,” Anita said in the bored voice she reserved for John.

“Ha! But she would have thought it! Tel Outrage!  ‘Tis better I know where I stand! Girls who like just the physique of guys and not their intellect are not worth thinking about, that’s what I say!” John was pure theatre; the way he could manipulate his voice to sound hurt, angry, chivalrous, and irritated, always got Niyi laughing.

“And you’re even lucky,” Anita said, her tone lightly mocking. “Niyi, John was just telling me Shalewa has the horns of an ox and the face of a sow.”

“Oh no!,” Niyi cried in what she was sure was a passable imitation of John’s horror-struck voice. “This same girl had the face of an angel and her eyes put the stars to shame only last week. What could have happened?!”

“I don’t know. Let’s just pray it never befalls us.” Anita said and they both burst out laughing. They had played that game so many times Niyi had lost count. 

“It will happen,” John said in mock curt tones. “Winter is coming.”

Niyi could almost see Anita rolling her eyes. “Oh quit with the Game of Thrones crap. Maybe if you stopped watching it and Barbie long enough, you’ll remember you’re not in England.”

“I do NOT watch cartoons!” John practically screamed in outrage.

“Yes you do,” Anita and Niyi said together, and they burst out laughing again.