Foreword
I want to apologize first of all for the delay in the posting of this episode. All throughout last week, I had to put my literary focus on the re-drafting of my novel. I had a deadline to meet. I’ve met it. And now I’m back to writing.
Secondly, I would like to inform y’all that Sifa’s ‘Playing by Her Rules’ is now available in e-book format. Simply click on the link below to get your copy. Thank you and God bless!
Http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00H2CWP16/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1386507724&sr=8-2&pi=SL75
And now for the story . . .
*
“You can’t just like come into my house, into my room and take whatever you want,” the bodacious brunette scolded, one hand lifted in front of her, her manicured fingers jabbing theatrically into the air. “You have to ask me first. You can’t just, like, take my things without asking me first.”
“Kimmie, you need to calm down, seriously,” the other woman, slender and dark-haired too bridled. “You need to like chill out and not make an issue of everything.”
Her words must have stung because the first woman, apparently provoked, launched into another diatribe.
“What is this show you are always watching sef?” I asked from the couch where I was seated, distracted from my GameBoy. My eyes flickered from Ada to the TV and back to her. “Who are these women?”
She made an impatient gesture, and kept her gaze on the TV, determinedly ignoring me.
“Tell me nah…”
“Ah-ah, what is it now?” she snapped. “You’re disturbing me.”
“Just tell me who they are.”
“They are the Kardashians, silly. This one is Kim Kardashian” – she pointed – “and this other one is Kourtney Kardashian.”
“Ehen?”
“Which one is ‘Ehen’? They are famous, from Hollywood.”
“Famous for what? Are they actresses?”
“No.”
“Models?”
“No.”
“Singers?”
“No.”
“Then what are they famous for?”
Ada shrugged, betraying her irritation at my inquisition. “They’re just famous…I don’t know, for being famous, I guess.”
This conversation with my sister happened during my JSS3 first term holiday, in December, at home. Every time I thought about it, it made me think about Juliet Eronini, the girl who was famous in my set – and school – for being famous.
Juliet Eronini was in JSS3E, and the only girl in the school with mixed race origins. Her father was apparently black and Nigerian; that much we knew when we saw him visit her once in our JSS2. We’d never met her mother, but we’d assumed she was white, because Juliet was clearly half-caste, with her mulatto complexion and the downy, dark curls of her hair, which she almost never braided, like all the other girls.
And with the doggedness of one who hadn’t missed the fact that she wasn’t entirely like the rest of us, Juliet never failed to fan the flames of her popularity at any chance she got. She talked about herself. A lot. She talked about vacations in London and Paris with her mother, and shopping sprees in fancy departmental stores that offered goods for purchase with fancy names she frequently dropped in conversations. She mentioned going for a Beyoncé concert at the O2 Arena in London, and posing for a picture with Rihanna that last time she visited New York with her father.
She was pretty, she had an accent, and she had an allure that made her stories believable. Most of the girls in our set loved to hate her, and the boys were charmed by her. When Tochukwu in her class fondly called her an ajebo one time in our JSS2, the nickname stuck.
That Wednesday morning, at the end of our Integrated Science class, the students of JSS3A and 3B – who usually had the class together – were strolling towards the JSS3 classroom block from the Science Lab. We caught a glimpse of JSS3E students moving in the general direction of the Borehole; we could see them handling hoes and cutlasses, so they must have an Agric class in the school farm. Someone broke out from the group and started toward us.
“Joseph! Joseph!” Juliet called, waving a slim, pale hand. Her creamy complexion was bright and attractive in the daylight, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail of wild curls that hung past her neck. “Joseph, please wait up, let me ask you something…”
Joseph stopped walking. Ibuka and I stopped beside him. Our classmates were still moving on. Through the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Cynthia Ibeto, Joseph’s girlfriend, stopping too, with two of her friends. They were close enough to us, yet seemed engrossed in whatever piece of gossip they were disseminating.
Juliet came to a stop before us with a wide smile. Her teeth were small and pearly white under the naturally-red rosebud that was her mouth. We were instantly enchanted.
“Hey, guys, hello. Joseph, how was your night?”
“Very good. And yours?”
“Fantastic. Absolutely fabulouso. I woke up this morning feeling fresh and new like a newborn babeling.” She did this often, use flowery language whenever she talked. Coupled with her accented voice, it usually felt to the hearer as though she was reciting poetry. The beautiful and lyrical kind.
“So what’s up?” asked Joseph.
“Well, it occurred to me that our exams are just around the corner. And I was wondering if you and I could be reading partners.”
I almost laughed out loud at that. She wanted Joseph as a reading partner. Joseph! Was this girl looking to fail?
For a moment, even Joseph looked taken aback by the request. Then he quickly regained his aplomb and grinned. “Of course. I don’t mind. When would you like us to get together?”
“Hey, Juliet, what about me?” Ibuka cut in. “I can be your reading partner too.”
Joseph glowered at him. Juliet arched her very-dark eyebrows at him, an unmistakable look of pleasure on her face. “Wow! Seriously? You want to study with me? Like seriously? The awesome Ibuka who’s always coming up tops in his class” – Ibuka was starting to preen – “wants to study with lil ole me? Such fabulosity! Are you seriousing me?”
“Are you for real, you this girl?” someone snapped. Our heads turned to face Cynthia. The girl had her hands on her hips, and her eyes were narrowed with annoyance. “Fabulosity . . . seriousing . . . are those words even in the dictionary?”
Juliet’s voice was frosty and condescending when she replied, “It’s called Queen’s English. If you’ve ever been to London or the US, you won’t need to ask that silly question.”
Cynthia looked like she’d been slapped. She turned her glare to Joseph and hissed, “I don’t want you anywhere near this girl, have you heard me?”
“Cynthia –”
“I have said my own. If you like, don’t serious me, then you’ll see.” She shot Juliet a pointedly unfriendly look, before stalking off with her equally indignant friends.
“Oh dear,” Juliet said in their wake. “I hope this arrangement won’t be a problem between you and Cynthia?”
Joseph waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t mind her. She’ll come around. Meanwhile, back to us. So you and me –”
“And me,” Ibuka interjected.
“Yes, and Ibuka,” Joseph conceded grudgingly, “now have plans to study for our exams together, right?”
“Right. It has to be during prep. But you see, you’re in 3B, and you’re in 3A” – she pointed at Ibuka – “And I’m in 3E. So the million dollar question is, whose class shall we use?”
“Your class!” Ibuka and Joseph chorused.
I shook my head pityingly. It was a good thing I was in love with Anulika, or else I’d have joined these boys to mumu-fy myself over Juliet Eronini.
Soon, a study schedule was settled on, and we went our separate ways.
It was true what Juliet said about our exams being around the corner; the school’s second term examinations was three weeks away, and the tension that came with the advent of every school assessment period was slowly fountaining amongst the students. Fewer students were starting to play hooky with the prep periods, and more of us were signing up for the extramural classes that some of the corper teachers organized. Attendance in class didn’t need to be enforced anymore; the classrooms were always full with students eager to soak up whatever tidbits the teachers sometimes passed on concerning their assessments.
“This part and this part is the area of concentration,” Mrs. Ashieru said, during her Business Studies class. “And don’t forget to read this section very, very well…”
Those who depended on the assistance offered by expo had started the painstaking task of transcribing entire notes written during the months of the second term into tiny scribbles on minuscule sheets of paper.
“Oh boy, this your omo-krikri small ghan,” Dan, one of Toby’s sidekicks said laughingly to the class bully during a night prep. “I no fit see the thing sef.”
“Eh, na me dey write am, na my hand writing. And na my eyes I go use see am write on exam day, abi?” Toby sallied back.
Both boys chuckled as Ebenezer piped up from where he sat, “Hmmm, let me just say this now oh. Anyone I see with expo during exam, I will report oh.”
“Report me nah,” Toby snarled at him. “If you report finish, I will beat you sotay na from your nyash you go use talk the next time that you want to report.” His friends laughed uproariously at that.
Meanwhile, it didn’t take very long for Ibuka to declare his disinterest in studying with Joseph and Juliet. “All they do is just laugh and talk nonsense to each other,” he complained to me one afternoon as we went to fetch water after lunch. “I’m telling them that it is time for us to read the parts of the body, and Joe is telling Juliet to show him one part of her body he can’t see. He was looking at her breast as he said so.” He made a face that betrayed his disgust. “Imagine! And that Juliet girl is rotten sef. She lowered the top of her pinafore and showed Joseph the top of her breast.”
“Are you serious?” I was amazed.
“Yes!” He was still disgusted.
“Did you see it?”
“Tufia! I removed my face. It’s an abomination nah, Haba!” I was laughing as he continued to fume. “And the mumu girl doesn’t even know Igbo. She was telling me the other day that she wishes we are in the same class so she can sit beside me during Igbo exam. As if I will open my book for that kind of girl!” He hissed and I laughed some more.
It seemed Joseph and Juliet were doing exactly what I knew they really intended to do as ‘reading partners’, which was to flirt heavily with each other. Ibuka had been naïve in thinking they actually wanted to read.
“I mean, why is Joe behaving like this?” he seethed some more. “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend already? Cynthia is really not happy about this.”
He would know; he and Cynthia were in the same class. “Look at it this way, Ibu,” I reasoned. “Cynthia is fine, but Juliet is fine and rich and popular. She’s half-caste nah, Haba! If she and Joe start dating now, and they grow up and marry, they will have fine, fine, half-caste children.”
Ibuka’s response was a snort of derision.
The days sped by fast, and by the time the time tables were posted on the notice boards of every classroom block a week before the examinations, the entire student body had stiffened under the pressure of the upcoming assessments. Even prefects couldn’t be bothered with actively looking out for rule breakers, and the teachers had become distant and less friendly with students as they prepared for their roles as invigilators.
When the first day finally came upon us, the JSS3 classes started with Christian Religious Knowledge. Our invigilator was a corper, Bill, and Mrs. Anyasodo, the Head of CRK Department, kept sweeping in from class to class, repeatedly shrieking her warning that anyone nabbed for any offense would get no mercy from her. The entire two weeks of the examinations had its share of drama. Corper Anderson had a go at his pound of flesh when he sat Joseph and I at the front of the class and separate from each other during the English exam. He invigilated our class, and never once lifted his focus from the two of us until we were done. Ebenezer burst into tears when an infuriated Mrs. Obodozie scrawled a huge ‘–5’ on his Intro. Tech answer sheet with her red pen because he had continued writing several seconds after she yelled ‘Pens up!’ Mr. Okafor caught Toby spying from his scribbles during the Social Studies exam. The teacher very calmly ripped his written work into two, confiscated his expo and gave him a blank page to start afresh. The distraught expression on Toby’s face as he was shepherded to the front seat to continue his writing was a picture I treasured and held close to my heart.
“Finally, I’m freeeeee!” Joseph enthused as he untucked his shirt and loosened a few buttons. It was the last day of exams and we had just finished writing the French exam; a steady roar of jubilant students was resonating all over the block. The tension had broken, and JSS3 boys and girls were scattered all over the place, laughing and chattering, snapping their pens in two and making plans for the one week we had left before the close of school and the start of the holidays.
“Comment vous-avez can go to hell! I’m a free man!” Joseph said with a grin.
“Je suis un home libre,” Ibuka said with flourish.
“What is this one saying?” Joseph asked.
“That’s French for ‘I’m a free man.’ Yeye boy, be there, comment vous-avez will soon come back from hell to bite you in your nyash when the results come out, if you don’t take time.”
“Who cares?”
“It seems someone is coming to see you from hell, Joe,” I said, “and it’s not French.”
The two of them turned. Joseph grimaced when he saw Cynthia, flanked by a friend on each side, matching down the corridor towards us. Their expressions were identically stony, and Cynthia’s arms were crossed.
“Joseph Amuluche, I’m breaking up with you,” she announced without preamble when they stopped before us.
“What?” Joseph gaped at her.
“You heard me. I’m breaking up with you. We are over.” She seemed very satisfied with herself for delivering the blow.
“You can’t break up with me. I’m supposed to break up with you. In fact, Cynthia, I’m breaking up with you.”
“I told you first,” Cynthia said indignantly.
“It doesn’t count because I wanted to break up with you tay-tay.”
“Look at this one,” she sneered. “Me that wanted to break up with you during exams sef.”
“Well, I wanted to break up with you even before exams,” Joseph flung back.
What is this now? I thought as I stared exasperatedly from my friend to his ex-girlfriend. There’s no shame in being the one whose heart is broken. Haba!
“Besides,” Joseph continued, “it’s not as if you even have a new boyfriend. You’ll just be lonely. But me, I already have a new girlfriend.”
“You do?” Ibuka and I chorused. This was news to me.
“It’s a lie,” Cynthia countered hotly. “I don’t believe you…”
“Don’t believe me nah. See oh, am I begging you?”
“Who is the girl?”
“Juliet Eronini,” Joseph crowed triumphantly.
Cynthia didn’t take the news well. Her anger evaporated and she looked like she was about to cry. Her face clouded over, and tears welled. “Joseph Amuluche, you are a very wicked boy! You are a very, very wicked boy!” And she turned around and fled. Her friends spared a moment to glare at us before following after her.
“Joe, you and Juliet…?”
“When did this one happen…?”
“Why didn’t you tell us…?”
Ibuka and I descended on him with a flurry of questions the moment the girls were out of earshot.
“Guys, relax, relax. Me and Juliet are not going out oh.”
“What? Then why did you –”
“Tell Cynthia that? What kind of stupid question are you about to ask me? The girl just de-repped me by breaking up with me. I had to show her that she’s not the only fish in the river.”
“Fish in the ocean,” Ibuka corrected.
“What?”
“You’re supposed to say fish in the ocean, not river.”
“Look, my friend, exam has finished. Stop showing yourself.”
“So, what will you do now?” I cut in. “Cynthia is bound to find out that you lied to her sooner or later. What will you –”
“I’ll ask Juliet out. After all, she likes me, and she’s a fine girl. So, no problem there. In fact, I will do it now sef. Come, guys, let’s go and send for her.”
The three of us started out of the block. The time was past 11am; we’d finished our last paper early, and the rest of the afternoon until School Over and lunchtime by 2pm was a stretch of free time. Students were strolling and loitering about, still caught in the euphoria of the moment.
We were approaching the Female Hostel when we spotted Ogechi Uzoh. She was in the same class and House with Juliet. She was standing several yards away from her hostel’s gate, arms crossed, a bucket clenched in one fist, apparently waiting for someone.
“Oge!” Joseph hollered. She turned her head to face us. We were approaching her. “Please, please, please, Oge, can you do me a favour? Can you help me call –”
“Ooohhmm,” she groaned. “I don’t have the energy to go back inside there abeg. I’m just waiting for Oby so we can go to borehole together.”
“Please now. Just quickly go back inside and help me call Juliet. It’s important.”
“Juliet?” The three of us nodded. “Juliet Eronini?” We nodded again. “She’s not in the hostel. Immediately after we finished writing French, she went off to the Staff Quarters. She told me she was going to her guardian’s house.”
“Who is her guardian?”
“Mrs. Ewelike.”
Mrs. Ewelike taught Chemistry to the senior classes. We knew her place. We still had time. So naturally, we turned around and started for the Staff Quarters. We chattered as we trekked, bouncing from one topic to another. How we would spend the remaining week, unfettered by classes, at the end of which our results would be ready and given to us, and the school term would end. How we would spend our holiday. Ibuka talked about an aunt who would be visiting Port Harcourt from the UK with goodies. Joseph couldn’t wait to get back to his Xbox. And I wondered if this was the time my parents would take me to Lagos to spend the vacation in my favourite uncle’s house.
Finally, we got to Mrs. Ewelike’s house, a structure similar to all the other houses in the Staff Quarters, except of course the principal’s. Simple bungalow. Graveled driveway. Well-pruned low hedges that served as a demarcation from the houses on either sides. A car was parked before the porch, the lid of its boot lifted open. And a child was wailing inside.
“Bia, nwatakiri a, mechionu!” barked a female voice we recognized as Mrs. Ewelike’s. “Why are you crying now, eh? Will you shut up before I get my cane?!” She was still speaking in Igbo.
The wailing turned to whimpers. We stood beside the car, uncertain about going any further to the front door.
“Juliet!”
“Ma!”
“Iweputachago ihe nile di na boot?” (Have you brought out everything in the boot?)
“Mba! Oforo akpa rice ahu.” (No. it’s remaining that bag of rice)
“Ehen? Kedu ihe i na-eche?” (What are you waiting for?)
“Achorom ka Kaycee nyerem aka buo ya.” (I want Kaycee to help me carry it)
Throughout the exchange, our mouths had slowly dropped open in abject shock, our eyes widened with disbelief. The girl responding to Mrs. Ewelike couldn’t be Juliet Eronini. It simply couldn’t. Where was the British accent? The charming, honeyed tones that no other girl possessed. And –
“She can speak Igbo!” Ibuka gasped.
“And fluently sef, as if she grew up in her village,” I added.
“Which village?” Joseph rejoined with heavy sarcasm. “The one in London or the one in Isiala Ngwa?”
Ibuka and I fought to contain a sudden burst of laughter. Joseph didn’t look happy at all. And when his face tightened with further displeasure, we followed his gaze back to the doorway. Juliet had just stepped out and her eyes had bugged with shock at the sight of us. I watched those pretty features turn slack with dismay, as she began shuffling forward, very reluctantly, toward us.
Then she stood, opened her mouth, and the accent was back. “Why, hello, guys, what are you –”
“Shuttup abeg!” Joseph snapped. “Just shuttup, you this fake girl. You think we did not hear you talking to your guardian just now?”
“So you can speak Igbo, eh?” Ibuka hissed. “You can speak Igbo, and in school, you’ll be forming one kind nonsense phuneeh for everybody.”
“How are we sure you’re even half-caste sef?” I added, sweeping a scornful look over her. “Maybe you’re just a mistake that God made when he was putting you in your Nigerian mother’s belly.”
“My mother is British,” she said stiffly.
“Akuko!”
“Story!”
“Tales by moonlight!”
Our collective contempt for her was magnificent.
“It’s true. My mother is a white woman. She stays in London.”
“But the real question is, have you?” Joseph stepped close to her, his chin thrust out, invading her personal space. “Have you ever been to London?”
“Or USA…”
“Or seen Beyoncé…”
“Or snapped with Rihanna…”
“You better tell us the truth now. Because if you don’t, we will go back to school and spread the news that you are a liar and a fake.”
She looked very miserable then. Her mouth opened and closed, like a fish out of water, gasping for oxygen. We stared stonily back at her, unmoved by her misery.
“I lied.” The words came out in a strangled whisper. Her chin had sunk and tears brimmed in her eyes, ready to spill down her cheeks. Her lower lip trembled.
“You lied about what?” Joseph said grimly.
“Everything. I lied about everything – except for my mother being British, that part is true. But the thing is, I don’t even know her. My father impregnated her when he was in London, and then, he did something bad and they deported him back to Nigeria. And then, she visited Nigeria when she was pregnant, delivered me here and gave me to my dad. She said she didn’t want a baby. She didn’t want me.” Her tears had started to fall. She made no sobbing sounds, but the tears kept falling. “And so, that was the last time my dad ever saw or contacted her. Me? I’m just an ordinary girl from Imo State. I live in Asaba, and I have only been to Lagos once.”
When she finished talking, an uncomfortable silence followed, during which it seemed as if a poll was being taken to see who should be speaking up. We didn’t know what to say. We weren’t even angry with her anymore. How could we still be, after hearing that? Her story was a sad one.
Finally, Joseph cleared his throat and said in a low tone, “Sorry about your mother. And sorry about the things I said. I promise you, we will not tell anyone in school. Your secret is safe with us.”
A teary smile wobbled on her lips. “Thank you very much…”
He nodded, his apparent awkwardness reflecting how I felt. “So, um…we’ll be going now…”
“Okay…”
And the three of us turned around and began our trek back to school, a trip during which we talked non-stop about Juliet Eronini’s story.
At the end of the week, our results came out. Ibuka was at the top of his class, no surprise there. I had the 11th position, an improvement from the 16th of first term. And Joseph didn’t show us his result. He stopped showing us his result after JSS2 first term when we teased him mercilessly for his 25th position – the 25th position out of the 30 students in our class.
That day we got our results was also Closing Day. The entire school environment was chaotic. Parents were waiting to take their children home. My father had come to pick me up. So had Ibuka’s parents. Joseph was among the Lagos students who would be leaving early the next day in the luxury bus organized by the PTA to convey them back to Lagos. There were also going to be buses for those living in Abuja, Benin and Warri. I hugged my friends goodbye, slung my traveling bag over my shoulder and hurried to the car park where my father was waiting to take me home.
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