บททั้งหมดของ She Belongs To The Sky: บทที่ 91 - บทที่ 100

I finally summon up the bravado to ask Mumsi about the divorce on Saturday, late at night when she's still walking about the house with her faithful kerosene lantern, checking if all the windows, louvres and doors are closed. According to her, she's had that smoky lantern since her university days and though there are four electricity-powered lamps in this vicinity alone, she puts that thing in her room every night, at the farthest corner, filled to its brim with kero, flickering yellow on the walls and making every shadow creepier and more twisted. She sets down the lantern in the middle of the parlour. While she talks, I watch the yellow flame behind the glass globe, bouncing up and down on the wick, floating like a fairy. Just floating there. And she gets to a point somewhere, where the story of Amanda's Dad tumbles out. She doesn't finish it because her voice splinters at a bridge, and it can't go on. I don't say a word. Don't offer comforting words or a tissue; I don't have any

Believe it or nah, fate hasn't made any attempt to fuck me for a while now. It's been a long time since Daddy showed up, and I wonder some days when he pop up and crash my parade. Mumsi still slips out on cool Saturday afternoons. I look away—not even imagining what is going on is the goal. School is dope, too, all my tests were As besides Maths which was a close call away from a grade D—I guess somethings never change, eh. The squad and I spend break-time outside, sitting on the madly uncomfortable stone-bench that makes your bum feel like stones too, under the tree behind admin-block, that has besetting branches hanging so low they sweep the floor. I'm chewing on a pack of wafer sticks, pretending not to notice Amanda steal two from me. Abe and Pascal and Ahmed are battling with those anti-teeth doughnuts they make at school. Those things are so tough, the first day I tried to bite into one I almost lost my canines in the process. Chantelle's sipping her u

Amanda returns from outside school utterly short of breath. Her honey skin has gone bright ruddy. An explosion of raw redness that makes her face like a ready to plop tomato. I laugh, initially. Then she catches her breath enough to tell us what Abe and Pascal got cut up in. And it isn't even anywhere near good tidings. Dike is up and running before I can even blink. Half of SS3 is behind him, chicks and Gs. He storms into SS2 class where they are still waiting for their own after-school lessons. "As e be so kasala don burst—" he's saying, when I breeze past the hallway, Ojeh and Cyril hot on my heels. Soon it's like the entire Senior secondary has emptied out into the field. Sprinting to the gates. Rushing past the gates. Storming the streets. Curving the corner, like a river breaking a dam—rushing. —Have you ever seen PH-city boys run into a fight? People say a lot of stuff about how and why PH-city

I stay in the hallway, leaning against the wall, wondering if I did wrong being so pushy with the poetry club thing. Wondering if Amanda will absolutely hate it. When the door swings inwards, Amanda is the first person out of the room. She adjusts and readjusts her small pink bag on one shoulder, and doesn't see me. "Hey." I say. I wave; which is completely unnecessary as she's right in front of me. She glances up and notices me standing there for the first time. The prelude to a frown is stamped on her lips, the lower pressed stiffly into the upper lip that is a darker, more lustrous shade of pink. It is the same look that ghosts her features when she's having a hard time figuring stuff out, like the next line in a poem or which word fits where, or in an Economics class—before she asks such a complex question that the rest of us zone out.   The furrows between her thin brows smooths out swiftly and her face transforms. 

"Amanda get dressed. We are going out." Dad says. He's standing in my door way fully dressed. That string of English words that scatters my plans for the entire evening—which include lying in bed, a dogeared novel in my lap, smiling at pictures on my phone and letting YouTube suck up my data with a straw.   Having a parent like mine is always difficult, because except when he's extremely happy—which occurs every five blue-moons—he always sounds the same: at the very brink of grumpy. It's hard to gauge his mode. I dress up quickly, struggle into my pocketless jeans that has become firmer around my thighs in the last month, slip my feet into slippers and leave hurriedly.  Dad is waiting for me in the dining room, on one the onyx-black dining chairs that is too small for his body. Yellow and cider glint on his neck. It seems he couldn't keep Mom tucked away for that long, eh. "You are ready?" He asks. I am sure he's really a