The place is huge, like a colloseum or a battle field enclosed in a wall of brick. It is bursting with trees and plants. Two guavas stand guard at its entrance like gnarled sentinels of bark and green, pink hibiscuses and purple heart plants line the hedges at the wall of each block in a carefully tended array. There is an unending field of trimmed grass and two building stand adjacent to each other; both are stories high, almost blocking out the rays of the sun. It is a world of its own, completely divergent from the one beyond its walls.
The school co-ordinator is a short plump woman,with conspicuous strands of grey in her bun and a face with more edges than a decagon. She looks like the kind of person that will switch into her language the moment a phone call comes, the type that will make exaggerated expressions and funny sounds egging the speaker on the other side of the line to go on with the story. I like her, instinctively, because she does not give Dad one of those bullshit smiles everyone else seems to have plastered on their faces when we show up.
"These are the files you will be required to fill in," she says in a practiced tone, handing me a white file "please endeavour to fill them in correctly,we will be making reference to them during your stay here."
She's all formal till she asks Dad what my "academic performance" has been like by his estimation, i notice that she does not say–grades, better still, i notice the dimples in her cheek when dad tells her i am a straight A student; when her controlled expression melted into a pleasant smile. I do not know if she smiled at me for being a nerd, or my dad for being the parent of a nerd, or at my brain cells for actually functionin. What i do know is that she should smile more often. The cocoa brown edges of her face transformed into soft curves and her eyes crinkled a little bit at the sides.
For the first time in what feels like forever, looking at that smile, i nearly feel welcome there.....almost, like I am, for once, not an intruder in someone else's world.
The absence of stickers all over the walls in the hallway hits me in the gut like a well aimed jab, it reminds me of Queen's. There will be rows of wallpapers and notices on the walls and the lights will hit the tiled floor through the glass doors like a glow of rainbows from a prism.
The room that is supposed to be my class is a wide square, with a white board up front,there are a dozen desks and each has a miniature locker right under the tabletop- a space just enough for books and a few personal effects.
Then there are my would-be classmates. The whole word rumbles to a silent hush when i step in.
Nothing. Nothing prepared me for the unabashed stares they handed me like a trophy.
Nicki Minaj's All eyes on me couldn't have been more apt. I want to shrivel until i disappear, but i settle for biting my lower lip and looking straight ahead.
I don't know what gave me away,what made it so obvious that i'm not from around, but they knew alright. I know because of the lowered voices from behind me–too audible to really be whispers, from the desk i sat (the one closest to the door,so that i could bolt if it came to that.)
I can just feel the weight of their stares on my back, like a sumo-wrestler's behind dropped plom! on my chest.
I feel it just the same way you feel someone watching you when you can't see them-with the hairs on your nape standing on their ends, a prickling heat crawling underneath the layers of your skin.
I am forced to sit through the Agric period barely through the literature class and i am astounded when the bell rings—an actually bell, not an alarm—it sounds like a giant gong and my ear-drums reverberate from its melody lacking tune.
It is early evening by the time Dad picks me up,and he knows not to ask me "how school was."
I couldn't have answered him either way, i am too busy savouring my first breath in what feels like years.
Mumsi is back from work.The house smells of soup, stockfish, and something i can't place–thyme, curry....or whatever.FYI, I am not big on cooking. I do much better wolfing down what has been cooked.Still, there's nothing like the aroma of food welcoming a man home after a long day at the battlefield. Yes, i am a warlock, come from the northern pass, great war axe in hand, gore dripping from my steel gauntlet.Sorry, i'm with you again, but you get the idea.I have a pro-active imagination. It gets the better of me sometimes. Did i ever tell you i have been a huntsman, a dragon rider, a Casanova on miami beach, Aragon from lord of the rings before?...i guess i didn't.I shrug off my school bag from my shoulders and fling it by its strap into my room and onto my bed on my way past. Correction there–my and Tobi's room.Yes, you heard me right. I share a room with my maniac of a brother
When Ernest hemingway said: There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. He was right. He was absolutely right.My music box is up to its highest volume, blasting J.cole, the soft tune of his for your eyes only caresses my eardrums. It shuts out the real noise—silence that is so silent it's loud and eerie.I write better like this, with songs in my ear and bass pulsing through my room. But today not even J.cole can save me.My jotter lies in front of me, its pages are a stark alabaster under the fluorescent practically begging me to tattoo poetic genius on its skin.Trust me, I would love to. There is only one tiny-pinky sized problem.I can't think of anything. Not a single word.I pull myself back into my body and start the hunt for inspiration. My room smells like tea and perfume. A heady aromatic fragrance that fits perfectly to the cool beige paint, i'm still tr
Her name is Chimamanda Yara Ezeocha.Yes, i got the full name.No, i am not a stalker.The first time she talks to me is in an Economics class, after Mr Uzoukwu had succeeded in ruining the class' mood for the umpteenth time with his ingenuity—Dictation.She said "Please, can you lend me your note, i didn't get the last paragraph."My ears were too busy doing cartwheels while the men in my stomach opened bottles of champagne and made toasts to my heart.It's funny how your wits leave you when you need them the most. How it can feel like your insides are squishy and your heart is playing a guitar."Um yeah" i said, stalling so my brain can reboot. It doesn't.It doesn't, even when she asks if she can take the note home. It doesn't, even when Deziri cheerly starts singing Mj's Billie Jean in my ears.All i can think of is the sound of her voice, a husky song that should belong to someone else.It's nothi
It's the boy from church, i can swear my life on it. I don't know how i didn't notice on the first day.It's his red skin and girly eyes– i'll recognise them anywhere. He fidgets, taking it out on his pen, caressing its glassy surface and scrutinizing it with more intensity than an Avanti pen should be made to endure.I had to leave my safe seat at the door when it became too unsafe for my liking a.k.a boys are hoes. This huge-boy (i think his name is Dike) with thick lips too red for his dark skin made it his sacred duty to pester my life.I don't know why boys don't seem to get the memo, but there's a fine line between flirting and harassment.Boy-girl's put every ounce of effort in his body into not looking at me, his eyes are everywhere, the windowsill, the marker board, the desk's plane, the glossy daylight swimming about in rays–anything but me.I didn't see that one coming.But i guess it's
There are pieces of white paper all over the class, it is like someone made confetti from another's note book. I sure am glad it isn't mine though, because i would really hate to show up in school with a sharp machete.It is break-time, not recess, because recess is what you say in America. Recess, is what you say in Americanized–Nigerian montessori schools where big men send their children to learn history and French and Poetry.For us, it is break-time. That obnoxiously short, time-racing period between late morning and early afternoon when teachers decide it is time for you to breathe something that does not include a totally irrelevant part of the human anatomy, a set of increasingly confusing mix of numerals, or a language you speak everyday but never seem to grasp completely.Was that tasking?...sorry.Today, it is also the period when the class is agog. Apparently, Dike Uzochukwu got into a fight with Ahmed Tombe. If
My phone buzzes in my blazer jacket by 4:30 sharp after closing assembly. I know it isn't Daddy even before i pick the phone.When you've lived with someone your whole life you tend to adapt to their habits. Dad's chronic ailment is tardiness. He can't be here so early.I am right, it isn't him. It's Aunty Seedy's silk-thin voice that's at the other end of the line. She told me that she's waiting at the parking lot.I see her truck minutes before i get there. Aunty Seedy's hillocks is like its owner– titanic, imposing and more than a little intimidating...up until it starts making sounds.That car practically purrs." How are you"I smile " Aunty, good evening"Does that mean that Aunty seedy makes me all teeth and cheeks: Y. E. SOther than the fact that she was my babysitter when i was little–she's practically my mother–the one kismet tried to rob me of.She makes the best meals and the ho
His sketches look like anime characters.Fun fact: they are supposed to be Nigerians.The last pages of boy-girl's books are covered in them– layers upon layers of drawings. It's some kind of figure-drawing collage.He should be in an art school, he's really good.He made them into a comic strip. DEITY– he called it, and the protagonist's name is Echinabia, and he acts like a bum. All muscles and no sense.His notes are complete though, written in perfect, elegant calligraphy. It probably took him ages to pen these notes down.They smell of musk and a little like baby powder. I spend half my study time trying to imitate his looped handwriting.
Grass. Freshly cut grass. That is what she smells like. Freshly cut grass after a drizzle. I could feel it deep inside my nostrils.My notes are covered in its crisp, nose-prickling, earthy scent. It's like newness— blessed freshness from an olive branch.It is better than any scent, better than any fragrance, better than any perfume Daddy ever bought. And trust me, that is something. His perfumes come in giant metallic boxes of varying colours, and they always— always have the aroma of heaven.Before i go to bed i spray the insides of my bag with Daddy's cologne.