Chapter 1
"According t
Loud, panicked voices filled the whole Osiele street and mine came out louder despite being muted in my throat.
On looking around, our situation was easily perceptible. Students were either crouched on their knees, the weight of their problems heavy on their back or they were trying to rub their stinging eyes which had been invaded by tear gas ten minutes ago.
The noise of bullet rounds kept reverberating in my ear drums, those metal triggers appearing to have been tickled only a second ago.
Fellow students like us who had managed to escape were still joining to us. They could easily be plucked out from the crowd like red roses among the ever bright sunflower. I wondered why the delay and I don't mean it in a derogatory way. Even the dullest of animals, a fowl, wouldn't waste a second to flee from flying bullets.
I managed to escape death, I know, despite how useless it was turning out to be- of course, with the school fee increment, our lives were also indirectly at risk. For people like me, there was nothing else to live for. School was our last hope at legally bettering our lives.
My eyes swept over the sea of bodies once again— each soul from different home and of various fates, to be tied by such little misfortune as the lack of school fee. They were shooting at us. We were supposed to run. The question was why did these ones delay, and when they didn't, what made them run? What was their point of realization? Most importantly, would this new situation we had found ourselves be a tipping point that would lead to a good future or it's negatory? Was there hope for us? ...cause I had alot of reasons to say that I didn't have any hope.
"Them dey shoot us and you dey catwalk!(They're shooting at us and you are walking slowly!)" The angry roar came from from a male youth with dreads, to a much slender male who had crouched to adjust his footwear.
The guy with dreads got no reply from the slender one and he wasn't bothered. Instead he kept to his pace, leaving me to trail my eyes after him only to see him bang an hostel gate at half a mile.
I kept walking with raised ears and slow legs. The day was slowly taking a toll on me- whence from my surrounding, it seemed I was not alone. Together, we mulled over our sordid and overstressed words; over our panting and mutterings of profanities; over blames and over our bleak and dwindling future.
I did not blame the school authorities though. It was the unaffected students waning their time at home with concoction rice that had my temper rolling. Their numbers could have helped, for if we were utterly one, a rock of students despite how small, those security agents wouldn't have dared raised a finger at us, or worse even pull out a gun at the order of their bosses in power.
I wonder why they did it! I wonder why!
And in that manner, I passed through the gate of Primrose hostel, walked straight to our flat, opened the door and waltzed in. Praise was on the bed, her bed, cause she was letting me stay with her without a significant contribution to the rent or our living condition.
She welcomed me with a soft voice, knowing, or perchance sensing that the cause of my preparations earlier that morning did not unfurl as planned.
"How was it?" She asked.
Out of necessity, I rushed to the bathroom, and using my palm, scooped water from the bucket and splashed on my face. The water trickled down to the bathroom floor, forming a slow, running pattern of pitter-patter. She could see me as I washed the tear gas from my eyes; I was sure she could. The bedroom was not that far off from the bathroom, to be sincere. We were in a room self-contain, and it was only a wooden door from the bedroom that unknowingly led to my location.
"It was passed into law, Praise, there's nothing we can do," I said in a low voice. A tired sigh escaping my lips in a puff of air, heart so pained my hands clutched the bathroom's ever glorious sink as if it should sink with my mood. Trust me, I would not want to start replacing a sink when the due date for my tuition was slowly approaching!
"What exactly happened?" Praise asked. She barely spoke pidgin, and despite the fact that I'm pretty fluent in English and pidgin, I wished she could master the odd language for times like this when the innocent English language could not effectively represent my feelings in their raw state. Instead, our mode of discuss always forced me to be diplomatic, or should I say, sparing with the curses currently on guard in my medulla oblongata.
"We stood before the senate building, peacefully protesting until police vans suddenly intercepted our movement, told us to leave and teargassed us when we refused. I think they shot someone. It was loud, the gunshot, and it felt it close to my ear," I said. Describing how the protest had gone forced me into a recollection and like a steady tide of feeling, the chaotic incident flashed through the forefront of my mind.
Almost instinctively, my gaze switched to the small trapezoid mirror before me, where my reflection stared at me like a bag of dirt or possibly ammunition. My eyes were red, undoubtedly so. What was however paramount was the glaring view of my face- on my right cheek, the stray line of soot which got increasingly itchy as I turned my face sideways to get a proper image.
At that, realization dawned on me- why the gunshot sounded too close to me; the reason for the shouts; the yell behind me, the cry of pain, a rather much reminisced thump of a body behind me. They'd killed someone. It could have been me.
"They shot someone," I said, my brain not yet processing the effects of my words, or what they meant for me, my dreams, for humanity. "I heard the sound of the body falling behind me."
Praise's legs remained crossed, her eyes lowered with a sigh and hands momentarily pausing on the doll's hair mid-braid. I looked at the doll, one of the few properties I had gained through the rough pads of my fingers; how fortunate it was for having a purpose just by possessing a bunch of long dark strings that lacked chromosomes.
I could feel Praise's gaze on me. She hadn't raised her head but she was about to. I knew it, or perchance, the silence in the room was just too damning.
"Harida," she called me in that way she does, always dragging the low toned "i" in an uplifted tone that'd want to make my name sound like havoc. "Are you sure of what you're saying?"
"I'm serious Praise, I heard it. The bullet swinged past my ear and there was a cry from behind."
I exited the bathroom so that there was just a sliver of space between my back and the wall. The tiles were never that dark, or maybe it had just became a safe heaven for my thoughts.
"I couldn't process the bullet grazing my face. Instead, I'd only focused on the continuous ringing sound in my ear. So deafening," I said.
"You haven't eaten Harida."
My hands dropped in defeat. I knew where she was heading.
"I think you should eat first then we'd continue this discussion later. I agree with you, you're still in shock with the tuition deadline and the possibilities of other things," she said with a nod as if trying to convince me that I was crazy. Then she continued braiding the doll's hair, as if she'd just been speaking to a child. "There's rice in the pot, I had to hurriedly prepare it when they brought the light so it may not be that up to par." She sighed. "We'd discuss the situation of your fees when you've got food in your stomach."
I shook my head and trekked the distance to drop my bag on the bed, not bordering to shut the bathroom door behind me so that I could just do as she had adviced. Perchance, the gliding aroma of the food may help me in processing my thoughts more vividly. It was conditional though, not certain.
On approaching the pots in the kitchen, I picked the medium sized one that appeared to have just been brought down from the cooker. It was heavy and next to it was a big pot and a small pot. Out of instinct due to days of eating rice and stew, I opened it in expectancy and was gladdened when I saw the fish stew with about three eggs in it.
Was this what this girl called subpar? She had met me but it seemed she wasn't familiar with my reality in any sense. Back home, we barely ate a three course meal not to talk of including crayfish in it to improve its taste. A meal was by chance; we never complained cause we couldn't.
I stacked a plate with rice and stew and added an egg as a topping. It was almost seven weeks with her and she had succeeded in easing me to her presence and her lifestyle. I would say we would have worked quite well together if it wasn't for my most recent situation which was bound to swing me back to real life very fast, and unlike Praise who obviously had all expenses covered, both miscellenous and radical, I wouldn't be able to stand after the fall.
I stabbed at the egg and put its merged parts along with a scoop of rice in my mouth. I had not taken the food to the bedroom because Praise had a knack for orderliness. Our kitchen was student sized, just enough for a plump sized mammal to pass through and somehow, my considerate roommate had just managed to fit a table and a chair before my arrival; it was at my arrival that she felt the need to purchase another chair, plastic and of a different colour . The simple action to placate me making me feel like a burden, a fact I've never denied.
The thought though, made me slow down from wolfing the food. It enhanced the importance of my situation— of my predicament.
The high window used to be a pleasant morning sight but now they weren't. Right that instant, the glaring sun outside made it like a sandclock whence the repititive gliding of grains over each other highlighted the essence of time. Time was of essence- even if I tried gathering the money, I had just thirty days to pay; neither was my handwork a reliable source of income nor was the petty snacks I sold during school hours, nor the carwash I'd sighed up for where I received a wage that could castrate a duck if sounded out in the open.
I looked up when I heard her approaching footsteps from behind me. She sat before me and a part of me started feeling bad like I always do anytime I take her customized seat and she's left to use the plastic one. However, as I trail the path of her gaze, it became obvious to me that the chair switch was the least of her concern.
"You haven't eaten a thing," she said, hands crossed on the smooth surface of the table as her eyes peeked into my soul. I always felt her to be older and filled with wisdom, if not for her words, then her action.
"I poked into an egg," I said in a sad attempt to include humor in our discourse. Her face was anything but amused. Rather, they were laced with concern and hidden sadness, one I was sure mirrored quite placidly in mine.
"I was watching you," she said. "You only took a spoon full before going taut."
"My bad," I said, smiling.
"Harida," she called in a warning as if chastising a child- maybe she's actually my mother. "Your health is the last thing we should be fretting over. I've told you this countless times, girl!"
"Maybe I wouldn't be this glossed over my school fee if I actually had a way to make 180k in a month. Come on Praise! Do these people want to kill me? Even if I do hookup, I can't make that amount within a short time!"
"I can give you the money," she said nonchalantly, randomly as if you just give someone such a huge amount.
She was not stunned at her pronouncement but I was. There she sat, fingers crossed and looking at me expectantly as if my head wasn't in a turmoil. It was like she'd been expecting me to burst, to bare my mind, to state my fears so she'll repackage my heart and stick it between my ribs but I can't accept her money. Lots of experience as one of the wretched children of a poor mother has taught me not to accept things for free. Even, what kind of business was she involved in?
Thoughts kept roiling in my head and as if propelled by an independent mind, my lips pushed open and the words fell out. "180K?" I asked and she nodded, confirming my fears.
"No. I can't accept it," I said, studying her to know the effect of my words.
For a dime or two, silence reigned like the usurping king it was. She was still seated, her lashes never blinked, and her fingers remained folded atop the table. It was as if she had predicted my response, making me feel like I was satisfactorily readable- an open book, but I knew I was otherwise. She couldn't see my cover didn't mean that she wasn't staring at a blank page.
"Why not Harida," she'd said, making me question if I'd imagined the flicker in her eyes. I thought she understood, but it appeared that I had to recap.
"Praise," I'd said with a note of fragility in an armour of resoluteness. "I appreciate everything you've been doing for me, but sometimes nature just has a way of reminding us of our root, does it not?"
"Come on," I'd continued passionately, forcing her to quit the mannerless headshakes so that she had her red eyes on me. Amid the tears in them, I was sure she saw understanding in my countenance, and if somehow, it appeared cloaked to her, she could have read it in my lips and my eyes, the way I was holding in the well of emotions wanting to burst.
I shrugged and said, "One way or another, I'm sure we both knew that I'd quit school. If not this then for another reason. I've got six younger ones- it's bound to happen, I'm bound to be a caregiver. It was never in my destiny to get a degree so early and be successful."
"Harida," she said, standing up and clutching my shoulder in a stretch once realization hit home. "Please, not what you're thinking. Anything but that. There's still another way. The money I'm giving you, I'm not going to use it now, and I may never. Please take it and pay your fees. There's really nothing to worry about."
I smiled at her. It was a sweet smile. How ironic was it that words which I longed to hear only slipped through my roomie's mouth and not that of my father's or my mother's or those whose duty included my security.
Her touch was soft, reassuring.
"Even if I take it now, I'll still do more in the future and what's to say that there would be nothing else to be reformed in the future. I'll rather face reality now than be blindsided by it. You've done a lot for me Praise but it's high time I left. Trust me, the meals you provide for us to eat are rare back home. Thank you...for everything."
I stood up and looked in her eyes just in time to see the tear trickle down her cheek. "I'll pack my things and before tomorrow, I'll be going home. That's my reality Praise, please don't stop me."
At my words, her eyes widened and she swallowed the lump in her throat before looking at me in disbelief.
"Is this an April fool?" She asked in a hoarse voice.
I smiled, even though it was weak.
"I'm afraid we are in July," I said, then deemed it fit to add an apology. "I'm sorry." At my words, her smile was swiped off.
She watched me as I walked to our room and gathered my belongings. There weren't much and could all fit into a brown duffel I'd bought at the thrift. I saw the doll face first on the bed, one of the few things I had bought myself and memories of my teaching her how to braid- her happiness as we bonded weaved through every fibre of recollection in my being. Almost instinctively, I looked behind at her. She stood beside the doorframe, shoulders drooped and eyes glazed, as if she was the one who witnessed the school authority opening fire at students. When our eyes met, I smiled at her and a tear trailed down my cheek. Walking towards her in slow steps, I hugged her body, ignoring how rigid it suddenly turned at my touch.
"Goodbye," I muttered. Turning once again at the door to get a lasting image of her before finally shutting it. She still met my gaze and I knew that I wouldn't regret leaving my doll to her. She was surely worth it, notwithstanding the fact that she'd done more.
As the cool breeze hit my skin, I inhaled deeply, and my shoulder drooped, suddenly feeling weighty. Step by step, I made my way to the nearest bus stop with the mind that there was nothing left to loose since life and I were on an even playing field. That fact was wholly proven wrong when life didn't bother wasting a second to explicitly tell me that it wanted me out of its hair.
