Chapter 1
“Emily, stand up and answer the question,” Mr. Tchakounte said, walking towards her desk. It was a trigonometry question. Emily hated trigonometry so she ignored Mr. Tchakounte and pretended to be writing down something in her book. Her classmates all focused on her. Mr. Tchakounte’s perfume smelled like Chlorine as he came towards her.
“Emily, what is the name of the ratio obtained when you compare the Opposite and the Adjacent sides of a right-angled triangle?” Tchakounte asked again.
Emily stood up slowly. Her left hand traced a path through the cornrows on her head. Her skin was coffee-coloured and a few acnes were scattered here and there on her face. She smiled faintly hoping that the teacher will not see that she had no idea what the correct answer was. Like all her other classmates she was clad in a green gown that served as the daywear except that her exceptionally big bust pushed the gown to its elastic limit.
Emily was she was sixteen and was now in Form four. He never knew her father and she had grown up with her grandmother in the village until she was thirteen. When her mother, had decided to bring her to Yaoundé to live with her. She was first enrolled in Morris International college, but her mother had decided to change her school when she was in Form two.
She hated boarding school because it caused her to be away from her mother, but she had found some solace in two other girls Roxanne and Jessica.
She shot a glance at Roxanne. Roxanne was her saviour when it came to Mathematics. Emily was good in other subjects except Math – Mental Abuse To Humans -and she herself could not understand why she could not grasp the mathematical concepts. It seemed as if as she grew older Math became harder.
Roxanne was looking at her from behind the teacher and mouthing something.
Anget, Target, Anklet?
Emily decided to go with ‘Target’ because it made most sense.
“The name of the ratio formed when you compare the opposite and adjacent sides of a right-angled triangle is Target”
Several of her classmates giggled and several others laughed out loud. Roxanne’s face fell in disappointment.
“I gave this homework since Tuesday, right? Today is Friday and you cannot give me a correct answer?”
Emily smiled sheepishly. She had not had time to check out the homework. She had been occupied with other things. Things she could not explain to Mr. Tchakounte or to most people. He would not even understand if she explained.
Her Red Queen (her code word for her period) started a few days ago and each time she tried to change the pad she found black soldier ants in it. She could not explain what was happening and Jessica and Roxanne couldn’t either. They had told a few or their dorm mates and none of them could explain it either. This worried her so much that she had no time for a stupid Mathematics homework.
“Are you smiling? You are smiling at your ignorance, right?” Tchakounte asked, he turned around and went back to the front of the class and picked up a cane from the table that had his books and chalk and dashed back towards Emily.
“I gave you homework and you did not do it, instead of being remorseful you are smiling? You are smiling?” Tchakounte said adrenaline rising in him like flood waters.
Tchakounte was huge, he had to be more than six feet tall, at least and his hands were like gorilla hands. His fleshy face had a week’s growth of hair, and his charcoal skin was littered with sweat beads some of which soaked into his pale blue shirt causing it to stick to his skin in several places. He was forty-one but you could not tell because he looked like he was thirty.
He used his right hand and grabbed Emily and spun her around so he could get a view of her buttocks which he lashed with the cane. Four strokes.
Emily squirmed as each stroke landed on her soft tissue. When it was over tears welled up in her eyes that were already filled with anger and hatred towards Mr. Tchakounte.
The teacher turned to the rest of the class. “Who can answer the question?”
Stephanie, an overly fair skinned girl, put up her hand. She enjoyed this kind of scenario, where Emily, Roxanne or Jessica could not answer a question, and she had to come to the rescue. She was younger than everyone else in the class but was the smartest. Even Roxanne had a hard time keeping up with her.
“Yes, Stephanie,” Tchakounte said, turning towards her
“Tangent”
“That’s correct, clap for her”
Emily did not clap but sat down scowling.
“I said you should clap, what are you doing?” Tchakounte asked turning back to Emily. “You can’t answer a question, and you cannot also clap?”
Before Emily could say anything, the cane came down, full force, on her cornrows but the cornrows were not thick enough and most of the pain seeped through to her scalp.
“Sir, leave me alone,” Emily said bursting into tears
“What? I should leave you alone? You arrogant brat, go to the front and kneel down.”
The classroom was a rectangle that had three columns of six benches each separated from the other by a half meter aisle. A pair of students occupied each bench and each of them had turned their attention to Emily as she walked up one of the aisles to the front, still nursing her head and with tears gushing down her cheeks.
“Kneel down and face the wall” Tchakounte shouted and dealt her one more stroke on her buttocks with the cane.
Roxanne and Jessica looked at each other in dismay. Emily had never been disrespectful before. They both wondered the same thing: What had gotten into her?
Tchakounte went on with his lesson of Trigonometric ratios. He was explaining how one could calculate a missing angle of a right-angled triangle when given only one side of the triangle and one angle using the appropriate trigonometric ratio.
As the class went on Emily’s sobs reduced to sniffs and she rested her head on the wall and dozed off.
*
She must have slept just for a few minutes before she was woken up by commotion in the class. Mr. Tchakounte was jumping up and down in the front of the class trying to fish out something from his trousers. Some of the students were laughing hysterically others had looks of confusion and others looks of pity on their faces but none of them went towards him to help. They were too afraid of him.
“Ants, ants” he screamed and brought out a handful of black soldier ants from his trousers.
He dashed out of the classroom and headed for the nearest bathroom with the students staring after him. A few teachers in the other classrooms poked their heads out of the doorways of their classes to find out what the cause of the commotion was.
“What is happening?” the teacher who was in Form 3, Madam Akoachare asked sticking her head through the doorway. She was tall and brown skinned, and she always had perfect makeup applied to her face. A sweet smell emanated from her as she stood at the door. She was wearing a white dress that had multicoloured flower patterns.
“Madam, we don’t know…” the students chorused
“Where is the class prefect?”
Stephanie put up her hand.
“What is happening here, your noise is disturbing my class.” Akoachare said
Stephanie forced herself to stop laughing and said:
“We don’t know. The Math teacher was teaching and then suddenly he just started grabbing his private and shouting ‘Ants, ants’ and then he ran out”
“Really?”
By then other teachers and students had started gathering outside the classroom trying to peek in and see what was going on.
Emily stood up from the place she was kneeling and started going back to her seat.
“You, why were you kneeling down?” Akoachare asked her
“Euh...Emm...the teacher asked me to kneel down because I could not answer a question” Emily replied sheepishly
“Really?” Akoachare’s eyes widened “What happened before he...did he whip you before he asked you to kneel down?”
Emily nodded.
Akoachare’s eyes widened all the more.
*
“What really happened in your class today?” Akoachare asked
She sat across the staff room table opposite Tchakounte after school. Since it was Friday, most of the other staff had gone home for the weekend and the school premises were deserted. The students had gone down to the dorms for siesta so they were practically alone in the staff room.
“I don’t know how to explain it. I was teaching in class normally when suddenly I felt a sharp pain on my scrotum. I tried to pinch it so that it would stop without any of the students noticing but the more I tried to ignore the pain the more I felt sharp pains in different places inside my trousers.”
“Jesus Christ!” Akoachare exclaimed
“I finally lost my senses and inserted my hand into my trousers only for me to discover that there are ants in my trousers. That was when I ran to the bathroom.
“Hmmm” Akoachare breathed out heavily looking at Tchakounte as if trying to decide if she should believe his story or not.
“I know it’s rather implausible but…” Tchakounte started saying
“No, no...I believe you...it just that my mind is trying to form a conspiracy which my reasoning is not agreeing with.” Akoachare said.
“What is that?”
“Let me first of all tell you what happened to me when I was in that same class. It was about two months ago; I was in that same class teaching in the afternoon. That same girl you asked to kneel down today was making noise. I was teaching and she was also talking. I warned her several times to stop noise, but she was adamant. So, I finally went over to her seat and gave her two serious conks to her head. She covered her face on her desk; crying and I continued my lesson. Few moments later I feel a sharp pain in my crotch. The pain was so intense that I barely managed not to cry out and not to undress to see what was biting me. I quickly rushed to the bathroom and took off my underwear. I could not believe what I saw. Black soldier ants.”
“You don’t mean it!” Tchakounte shouted
“I swear. I could not understand how they got there. But today when I saw what happened to you, I am beginning to think that girl is a witch or a mammy water.”
“All my years as a teacher I never heard of anything like this” Tchakounte said
“Where I am from, we used to hear stories of children who transform into snakes and gorillas, but it was always just stories. I never ever witnessed anything.”
“What do we do? Do you think we should tell the principal?” Tchakounte asked, his hands trembling lightly.
“No, not yet. We need more proof. It is hard to explain this without proof. The principal is overly logical; he would not believe such stories without evidence. I need time to think of a way to proof that Emily is the one behind the ants in your pants and in mine. Meanwhile, remain normal and act as if nothing happened.”
Tchakounte nodded.
