Life as She knows it

°•°2•°•

Some nine years ago it was revealed that I had hearing loss- in my left ear.
I think it- the beginning of the finding out before the revelation- all started on a Sunday evening. Everyone was resting and keeping the Sabbath day holy.
          I was seated outside on my small pink chair which I so much loved.
I always fought for it with my twin brother, Perez, even though he had his- blue. Perez fought for it for fighting sake I guess, for pink was far from his favorite color, but Perez being Perez always fought for it with me. Color was the cause of most of our fight then.
Our Mom would come home one day with plastic plates- she didn't find out early enough that colored things made us squabble- half of the plates would be pink or orange or purple or red, the other half would be blue or green or brown, and we would fight when our food was dished out, mine on a orange or pink or purple or any girly color that I had themed as my favorite, Perez's on a blue or green or any other boyish color that he had declared as his colors. The fight would start when we both got to the kitchen, looked at the colored plates, looked at each other, and then reach out to take the plates we knew was meant to be for the other, and start telling each other angrily to put down the colored plates and claiming ownership. Not because the food in one was more than the other for they were always equal, but because we derived pleasure from yelling our heads off and annoying each other. We would fight till we were separated. But I never fought over our different color plastic chairs, Perez would not stop hiding it and fighting for it even though I pleaded at times.
          My plastic chair was my favorite thing in the world then. I would come home from school, sit on it and do my assignments, carry it from my room to our playroom, sit on it and play with my toys and teddies, carry it to the dining room even though we sat on the normal chairs with others, carry it to the living room to watch cartoons, take it outside when I and my brothers rode our bicycles around the house, I loved seeing it while riding past it. I derived pleasure from carrying it around. I would even carry it to the park in our estate that we used to go to for picnics when we were still young and my elder brothers did not find it embarrassing to be found with their parents and younger ones every Saturday afternoons- evenings, I would refuse to sit on the mat or whatever had been put on the ground for us to sit on.
Perez and I fought over it one day and we bought attempted to sit on it at the same time, I, to claim ownership, Perez, to prove strength. The chair broke. And that was the end of it, the end of small plastic chairs. We were old enough to stop sitting on small plastic chairs anyway, we were soon to be going to junior secondary school at that time.
          Before then, before it's break, before the great fight over it that led to its loss and usefulness, I was sitting on it in front of our home's balcony, alone and eating mango one cool Sunday evening. 
The hairs on the mango and it's sweet juice after peeling the skin off had me oblivious to my surroundings.
What brought me out of my mango daze was my Mom's sharp tap on my back. She was angry. I saw it on her face.
"Naomi, You want me to lose my voice before- you answer me right?"
"Ma?" "What did I do?"
"I've been shouting your name for a while now, I decided to come out when you didn't answer." "Sé o fé pàmí ní?" (Do you want to kill me?)
"But I didn't hear you."
"How can you say that? My voice even woke Jude up from his sleep."
"I'm serious Mommy, I didn't hear you"
I wasn't lying. I hadn't heard her calling. It was strange, even to my young mind. I always heard my Mom calling even from the next house when I went over to play with my neighbor's baby with Perez and sometimes Jude.
"I don't believe you, don't tell me you've started lying like your brothers?"
She hadn't believed until it kept reccuring over and over. One of my brothers would be made to call me from my room or wherever I must have been at the time of the calling. It started getting suspicious. I started getting tired of being reprimanded and sometimes beaten for not hearing my Mom, Dad, Aunts- they are my father's younger sisters and they are twins, they stayed with us once in a while especially when their university gave them breaks/ holidays- and my elder brothers.
          I was interrogated seriously one day by my parents and they found out I wasn't faking it. Hospital tests became something that happened for a long time, meeting ear doctors started then.
'Sensorineural hearing loss' was what it was called, it is still called that.
I hated hospitals- still do- and I spent most of my school hours in it. Excuses would be given by my parents to my grade 4 teacher for missing the first 3 or 4 periods- I was in grade 4 when it started- I would be made to stay in class by my teacher during breaks to make up for the periods I missed. It sucked. It was tiring. It was annoying to my young self.
Perez would stay with me sometimes and write some of my incomplete notes, but not all the time, for boys being boys cannot miss much football matches taking place on the school field. My ear loss was caused by a medication. I was sick some weeks before the Sunday of the complaint of my Mom. The medication I was made to take then affected my left ear. We were glad it wasn't the two ears.
I wasn't, I am not deaf in the left ear. No. If I am to explain that, I would first liken my ear to a 'device', and say the 'volume' of the device decreased greatly but not completely.
          Hearing aid became my companion. I like to think it replaced my little pink plastic chair that I had loved carrying around. I had- still have- to go around with the hearing aid with my ear. The only times I didn't take my plastic chair somewhere was when I was about to take my bath and sleep. Same goes for the hearing aid. Water is not to touch it, and it easy to break.
          The hearing aid is indeed breakable. It's fragile and could break, more like shatter, from a fall. 
I was in grade 5 when I started using a hearing aid. I was a tad bit matured in being able to use it. Indeed I was. I knew the amount my parents paid for that particular hearing aid, it was more than my school fees, even more than the school of my brothers and I when added up. I was grateful. I showed that I was grateful by keeping and wearing the hearing aid the way I had been taught to by my kind ear doctor.
Due to this I played less.
Break time would come and everyone would rush out of the classroom, I would sit and wait for all of my classmates to rush out before getting up and going to join them. This I did because I knew with the struggle to get out of the class first, I could be pushed or worse still, the hearing aid could be touched and pushed out of my ear unto the floor, if it didn't break when it fell it could be stepped on by another rushing person. All this could happen within the space of 5 seconds because of the rush of course. I knew better, I became patient enough to let everyone rush out first.
This happened every school day for the first three weeks I started using a hearing aid. I was in the playground one sunny Tuesday afternoon, minding my business, not doing Erepá (rough play), quite a distance away from everyone else- a corner- watching my friends run around excitedly trying to find a place to hide- the game they were playing at that time was hide-and-seek- when the screams and all forms of noise coming from the students playing became lower than normal suddenly- I was suddenly hearing with my right ear only- my ear and the skin next to my ear started aching, I put my hand up to my left ear to check or rather feel my ear for anything that could explain the situation. I didn't feel my hearing aid on my ear!. I had felt only the transparent tube that was inserted into my ear, the engine or as my ear doctor had said 'the major part of the hearing aid', the doctor had also said that without the tube I would be able to insert anything into my ear but without the engine the device could no longer be called a hearing aid. I had laughed when he said it because I felt the hearing aid would never break.
But the moment I didn't feel the engine but only the tube that day on the playground, I didn't laugh.
I turned around about to look for the engine and came face to face with Chisom, my classmate with two of her purses folded. I knew immediately that she had hit me with her purses. She was laughing, the kind of laughter one laughs after doing something they've been wanting to do for a long time. Chisom was one of the people who had scorned me when I started using a hearing aid. She would always find a way to bring my ear problem into a conversation, before long she was know to be the creator of a sarcastic question "Can't you hear? Or you need a hearing aid like Naomi?"
Chisom was one of the first people that made me understand that stigmatization is real. But the reason why she broke it, I did not, do not and will not know, she never spoke to me after that incident and the incidents that followed.
I was to shocked to do anything to Chisom at the time I found that I no longer had a hearing aid on my ear. I searched the ground but found some broken pieces of the hearing aid.
My parents came to my mind at the moment.
What would they say?
I started crying, I walked blindly to my classroom. I was about to enter when it struck me that I left the classroom with my hearing aid and happily too but I was returning without it and with tears.
I sat on the ground in front of my classroom. I started rolling on the ground and shouting, crying at the same time. I was devastated.
Perez was beside me in no time, I tearfully told him what happened.
I was taken to my seat by my best friends and my teacher.
          When my mother came to pick up my brother and I that afternoon I refused to leave my classroom out of fear.
In the end, she wasn't angry with me, but with Chisom and Perez. Perez had gone to Chisom's seat angrily after I told him about the hearing aid, pushed her to the ground and had slapped her repeatedly all the while keeping her down with his knees on her stomach until he was dragged away, he was bigger than her so she wasn't able to do anything to him. He was flogged for what he did in school and at home.
I loved him more that day. He was flogged for me. Like Jesus died for me.
Chisom wasn't let off the hook. Her parents paid for a new hearing aid.
          I wanted- still want- to steer clear away discriminators, away from people who tried to put me down as soon as they discovered I used a hearing aid. Like Chisom. Now that I think about it, I could've described what Chisom did as a child's play but the determination in her to put me down when she started talking badly about my hearing aid and I, the happy look on her face when I turned around on the playground and found out that she was the culprit was not a child's play to me. It was more like possession of a determined wicked child spirit.

                             🌻

          The vibration of my phone on the table jolted me out of my memory lane.
I had a message. I opened it.

Jadesola:  I'm here. Come to the door so we can find seats for two of us. That's if there's no empty seat beside you.

I'm back to reality.

••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°
How was this chapter?
Comment 💬 and Vote⭐ please. And share.
See you in the next chapter. ❤
°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°••°°