BIRD OF PARADISE

Ever since Sue was adopted, it had been one problem or another for her surrogate parents. Her adoptive parents neglected her like the plague because she was an albino with flecks of vitiligo sitting comfortably on the contours of her oblong face. In the rife parlance of people, Sue was to them a yellow pawpaw. Her real mother dumped her in a carton in front of Adunni Orphanage Home - it was from there she became an inmate, an orphaned child. Owing to stereotype and racism did Mr and Mrs Ofili maltreat Sue, even as a baby. To the public, she was a pearl on a pedestal; a romping child they held in adulation. The big question close friends, neighbours and relatives asked them was why they adopted her in the first place to become less enamoured of her, as a last resort. The thing is, they were desperately in need of a child and on this account they took in a pinkish-looking baby in the hope that in no time she would darken; they were anxious that their meddlesome neighours would scoff at them unapologetically. It happened that as a baby Sue was severely autistic yet albino-ish. And had chronic osteoporosis with spinal dislocation. As illiterate parents that they were, they groomed her as a sane child. She was a quiet, smiling baby; she stopped crying, laughing and could likened to be a dull child. Her intake of food drastically reduced after her first birthday. Emeka Ofili, particularly thought she was on the brink of death but he was overly mistaken. Mrs Mbechi Emeka soon dreaded carrying Sue on her back to hawk her plantain throughout the day. Sue grew at the passage of each day into a hairy, fair little thing. She was all skin and bone. Despite their ordeals, Emeka took Sue to the village clinic, so that she could be immunized - and that would be all about it. The nurse that administered to them was a dark, angular lady, averagely statured but not short, short but not stocky, with a revealing scrawny set of teeth. After examining Sue in what seems to be like forever she said 'I don't know what exactly is wrong with your daughter, but you may take her to the central municipal hospital at Badagry'. The only thing Emeka payed attention to, was her sense of articulateness. Mbechi rejoined rather concerned for Sue 'She no dey chop, nurse'. As if in a pavlovian, she said 'There is absolutely nothing we can do for her here, ma'am'.

Sue's real mother was an American; one of those who married Nigerian elites in the forties. In her trimester, a doctor made her attuned that her unborn child had complications. Being an educated lady, she came in better circle to understand all that the doctor diagnosed. She wanted to go back to the US, and perhaps use her influence in the capitalist dichotomies to remedy her child, but she was jinxed. Seventeen months after settling in Nigeria with Segun, they had an affray which led to their parting, yet not without him seizing and burning her international passport and other documents that made her citizen of a country. He threw her out of his house like a squashed vigu milk container. Virginia, Sue's mother hated what was inside her with each day that passed by. She literally wanted to get rid of her as quickly as she could. Virginia was now on the street bedazzled with mosquito bites, and her Americanized hair concealed her discomfiture yet making her appear as though she was dressed to the nines. She was delivered of little Sue on the 7th May, 1942. She picked her up from the hospital-provided cot and deigned to remove her gaze from the replica of her very own self. She, however, dropped Sue in front of Adunni Orpahange Home while she took sanctuary in an uncompleted building which was a denizen for streetchildren, drunkards, and a few ladies. Mbechi used to be a co-occupant, but when Emeka, a driver of a British Commissioner, Boudillion Phillion, in Vctoria Island, married her she knew her life would never be the same again. So, you see, Emeka was considerably rich; he came back home on a daily except from Saturdays and Holidays did he stay back because he would be on duty to Boudillon. Mbechi and Virginia were so close to the extent that they shared chitchats together in the thereafter.

Sue's autism had no remedy, really. But with fastidousness to her emotional imbalance, they could manage her special needs. While Virginia was pregnant, Segun's hand never ceased to bayonet on her skin with belt and punches. He was the architect of Sue's mishappen. Sue's issue was a brain deformity, well not much of a deformity, but an addling. It was an ill-born condition, and her now illiterate parents who neither knew their right from their left kept her, albeit with fear that she was unbecoming. Sue's paroxyms was to grin agape when she was indulged yet she never cried, not for a moment; this was unusual of a one-year-old. Mrs Ofili, a trader had to carry her on her back to hawk Ewa goin, but in season, she hawked plantain, more often than not. The days there were outpourings of rain or she was down with an ailment, Sue would sulk into her shell launching away from Mbechi. Perhaps she was used to going about on Mbechi's back taking an eyrie view of the streets, the black pots of Iya Ologi, the ghoulish agbero boys treated to handy ogogoros, the moments of stampeding rain before they can duck, and Mummy Amarachukwu's Happy Hour, whom she served her on a daily because she loved her bulbous hair and bushy eyebrows that somewhat accentuated her beauty. Dr. Boudillion Phillion, Emeka's employer, took to asking Emeka if he was a father and in the affirmative, how many he had. Emeka would roll his big eyes and rub his roundish face making sure to push his otiose ear in speechlessness. When his speech, already consigned into oblivion, finally returns, he would muster courage to tell him that he had a child but only one. Dr. Boudillion, in turn, would oblige him to bring her along; he had something for her.' If he had something for Sue, he could give it to him; why does he want to see his irate Sue?', Emeka thought loud and clear, for he was ashamed to tell him his child has a half-life; she has special needs.

Weeks and days on end, Dr. Boudillion was meaning to see Sue, he served Emeka battery of questions in preponderance. Emeka was dishevelled, to say nothing of how difficult he found words to utter. Be that as it may, he could only reply in monosyllabic words like 'Tenkiusa' or 'Yes' or 'No problem sa', which was his best because it gave him an aura of intellect - that he was trying to speak good English. It was undenying access for Emeka that he learnt replies as often as not.

Sue writhed in pain with every twitching of Mbechi's hand trying to appease her to eat the plate of granola, for it was getting cold. She was rocking and flapping her legs to Mbechi's direction. ' You dis pikin, wetin you want agen, i don give you pap you no chop, i give you granola you no chop, shey you want sweet and biscuit?', Mbechi said poising her ear for a nod, in the least. Sue nodded in approval, this time opening her hands brandishing in the air. Mbechi, for one, had no intention of giving Sue any Sweet or Biscuit, but to her it was a mechanism to calm Sue from her intent iration. 'Oya chop this plate of granola, I go buy Sweet come for you, iye?' Ensnarled in the bag of tricks, Sue would open her buccal cavity and wolf down the whole lot deigning not to stress Mbechi, lest she change her mind from the stress. Like an ideal austistic child, she had quirky but extra-ordinary abilities, both in reasoning and otherwise. She was partly normal and autist, only that she her speech nuclei was disabled. Mbechi had long mellowed that since she had a cyst of the womb and thus could not bear a child, she saw Sue's special condition as her lot.
Emeka's ultimate acquiesence ushered Dr. Boudillion in to his house in the ghetto, where every household shared a pit-latrine toilet with moss-cladded tiles smelling of urine. It all happened that Emeka drove him from the American Consulate to Gbagli in Badagry taking short stops at tee-junctions to buy peppered snails stacked on a stick. Indeed, Doctor liked peppered snails and so did Emeka; he was overly endeared to eating eat quondamly.
Virginia was now married to Steven Trove, a canadian, who on visit to Nigeria, helped her get back her international passport before they went to Washington DC. A sordid part of Virginia cried for Sue. It was as if she had put not just Sue but a great measure of her heart into the carton too. Yet despite the fact that she was safe in the knowledge that Adunni Orpahange Home was statutory engineered by the government (as she learnt while on the streets, shortly before meeting her Prince Charming). She was really hurting but there was exactly nothing she could do, but to ossify her mind that she will return to pick Sue to the US. Sue was her blood, she was not going to spit out her blood into the river of nothingness. From the inception of this thought, something in her had had her precipitated to take action, on the spur of the moment. She got a good job, and was now a mother of two children, a boy and a girl, ages 1 and 2 respectively.
At the sight of Dr. Boudillion, Sue grinned and was amped up to hold his brown briefcase, embrace his cologne-scented body, his coily hair, and if need be, pinch his diminutive nose, all at once. 'Come on, baby girl, Sue', he said rather ruefully. Mbechi and Emeka were spotted peeking through the four-corner of the kitchen. Mbechi spoke first 'Sue, go greet Dadi', 'Leave her alone, make I see weda she go gree for this man, as per se na im get her skin kolo,' Emeka said in reduced cadences 'Dis geh wahala don too much... Ahn ahn... Pikin wey sey im papa no go sleep im too no go sleepin', he whispered to Mbechi this time. Sue squealed cacophonous sounds as if irritant with pain. To them, Mbechi and Emeka, he was in for a spending spree. Because before his sober acquiescence, he thought that that concern was more of empathy, or rather an avucular attitude shown to a child by an uncle. 'Emeka you ought to be in school, and not work as a driver. I must enrol you in school; you are so intelligent', Dr. Phillion would say. Well, he was not surprised when he heard these words sprawling at his ear, he fuelled them by his painstaking demeanour after all. Emeka was priggish about his job from the first day he sat before the stirring... And just couldn't comprehend if he was in for a rude awakening or not by taking up the job in the first place - neighours, friends and acquaintances showered encomiums on him for he was considered a Firstclass Man Driver.
Now he was transpired done playing with her but something happened behind-the-scene. Much as Dr. Phillion was mind-boggled carrying Sue, she re-enacted the memories of his lost sister, Virginia. Hardly had Virginia obdurately left Texas with that pauperized masochist, Segun, than Phillion was brisling with immense sadness. He wanted a good man for his sister and to think that she foolhardily enmeshed herself in a connubial bliss with someone he grimaced to look at - Segun was average statured, obese in a way that made him walk like a pregnant duck, dark-skinned with two, no four, spots of sturborrn pimples on his forehead, was underwhelming. Phillion said nothing to the concerned but lost duo, he dashed for the door, making sure he loftily whispered to Emeka 'Bring the car key, you may stay put withyour family -'.
Virginia stood on the counter stamping her international passport before she picked up her luggage and made to enter a cab to Adunni Orphanage home at Badagry. In regular intervals of time, she smoothened out her Bone-straight weavon dangling like a yo-yo. She slid her I-phone and other surfacing paraphenalias into her bag before they could jut out. 'Take me to Adunni Orphanage Home', she said in reply to his question of where she was heading to. On getting to the rather modernized infrastructure with lushy windows and a roof that looked like an American loft; the geography of bespectacled buildings in the panorama of the plastered terrain was far and further and field, she was relieved.
She was now at the reception speaking to a slim lady with a tiny voice, auburnish hair and sunken sinews that made her walk like a limping impala. 'A good afternoon to you, Madam,', Virginia said softly, 'My name is Virginia Boudillion, and I wish to see Sue'. The nurse lady was tauted for words, but she was glad to speak one-on-one to an American lady despite the fact that there were numerous, and to say tactifully, chivalrous men who could thrill one to thinking if their veneer of extreme politeness ever unsimulated. She, the nurse lady, went under the sun to bring in her clothes at the backyard owing to the stampeding drizzles. Sue's information - her new parents and address were relayed to Virginia, and in haste, she flounced out of the clinic to see her. It was all fun even though Virginia's countenance was demure-bare, anger-weilding.
It was 15th October, 1947. Phillion was about stepping out of the main gate of Emeka's house when he barged into Virginia, his long-lost sister. He could not believe his eyes; he saw her first. 'Lillion!... Lillion!', tying her hands around Phillion who in turn was more than overwhemed to see his cherished sister. 'I came to pick my daughter Sue in this compound,', she said looking at the document in her hand adjusting her spectacles, 'She lives with a family here','May I see waht you've there?', it is Phillion talking. She handed the printed document to him. He looked at the paper somewhat trying to satisfy his curiousity which even more underscored his hindsight of Sue's facial resemblance.
Emeka scampered like a child to give Dr. Phillion his brown briefcase. Mbechi was not left behind as she wanted to see him zoom off, and reverie she revving the accelerator herself. Taking a few steps ahead in the direction, she sussed that things had gone amiss, as she saw her husband conversing with a white, elegant lady well-tailored in white apparel tinged with red rossetes and, a couffer on her hair. 'This is Emeka alongside his wife, Christy Mbechi', Phillion said, 'Oh I see', Virginia replied trying to make her intnetions clear to them,'I-I am in search of my daughter Sue, whom you adopted', she said heaving a sigh of relief as Emeka's demeanour encouraged with his neatly-aligned, glistening teeth shone all the more revealing the scar he had on his chin altogether.