Where angels once trod

Wishful Thinking

The branches of the palm trees danced about, like the Atilogwu traditional dancers who made gymnastics look like child’s play. The school played host to hundreds of palm trees. The palm nuts were harvested and sold, in order to make money for the missionary school –the girls paid close to nothing as school fees.

Kaodi stood in-between these trees, to gather her senses. She knew something was wrong with her, right the minute she stepped out of Uncle Martin’s, the Mathematics teacher’s room. She felt a little bit light-headed and her middle ached. It was already past lunch time, and she wondered if her friends had been looking allover for her. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she remembered when she woke up from a deep one.

Uncle Martins wore a funny smile on his face, the kind he wore whenever it was time for a surprise test; it hung on two sides of his cheeks, and drew his long jaw to the floor. He had looked long at her while she was busy wondering what had happened. It felt like the day she fell from a mango tree: it was terrible, because she couldn’t explain it: she was about reaching for a ripe fruit, when she lost her balance and fell; her skirt was terribly ripped that everyone saw her dirty pant.

“Kaodi,” he said. She looked up to face him, still feeling a little bit far and deafened from her surroundings.

“You may go back to your dorm, now.  You fell asleep when we started the lesson. I believe you must be very tired, and you must have been too hard on yourself.”

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He talked while having a steaming cup of hot chocolate in one hand. Hot chocolate was his favourite; he said the sensation puts his mind and body to work. She slowly slid off the bed and put on her school shoes; head bent, she went straight to the study table, packed up her books, and left. His eyes followed every inch of her step, but she didn’t know why. And there she was, standing in front of his room, with nothing but the palm trees that danced about. She felt dazed.

They would be through with their final exams in no time, and she would be right back with her mother, frying Garri and carrying it all the way to Oji River to sell to travellers. The thought of telling her mother that she wished to go to the university scared her. She knew that her mother could not wait for her to start teaching at Amansi Secondary school; her mother already talked to the principal on her behalf.

But each holiday, whenever they went down to Oji River to sell Garri, her eyes never failed to search for students from some Campuses who stopped their bus driver to buy Okpa-Enugu. Most times, she wished to be like them, but hers was only a wishful thinking.

Kaodi slowly made her way to the senior side of the dormitory. When she got to her dorm, nobody took note of her arrival; after all, house captains were at liberty to do as they wished, especially when it was few months to their graduation. The Sisters of the Chaste Secondary school was one of the missionary schools that made sure not to entertain any form of worldly indulgence in their school premises. That was why they made sure that the girls wore their hair low, their uniform didn’t expose any indecent part of their body, and they kept teachers too far away from students, especially the male teachers.

But Uncle Martins was one teacher who they never had an eye on. Ever since he arrived to the school, he had taken a liking to Kaodi. Most of her classmates who would do anything to get the teacher’s attention made it a point of duty to tease Kaodi, and made all manner of foolish request from her. Some politely accused her of dating the new mathematics teacher, while others saw her as their rival or an obstacle to getting to Uncle Martins.

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The Discovery

Uncle Martins took his time to get to the principal’s office. He was woken up from sleep by the security officer who he knew never liked him, because the girls preferred Uncle Martins over him. He wondered why the woman sent the school security officer instead of a student. When he got to the door, he knocked, and an unpleasant voice asked him in.

He took the first step, but didn’t like what he met; all the Sisters were cramped on one side of the room, the school security officers, Kaodi’s mother, who seemed to have cried her eyes out over something he was not sure of and little Kaodi, whose head was bent. Mother superior barked:

“Uncle Martins, is she your student?”

He didn’t know how to answer her question, because the fear in his eyes gave him away.

Confrontation

Uncle Martins looked at Kaodi, but he couldn’t get her to look him in the eye. He remembered how he was humiliated in the principal’s office, and forced to the hospital like a common thief. He turned his attention to Kaodi’s mother and the Sisters; they were all ready to roast him alive.

“I tried, but I couldn’t. My fondness for her is beyond your imagination.”

The mother superior gave him daggers with her eyes; she turned to Kaodi’s mother and said;

“Don’t worry; the doctor’s result would be ready any moment from now. We would take it up from there.”

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The Vindication

The smile on the doctor’s face was deliberate, but Kaodi’s mother thought he ought to be ashamed of himself for feeling happy when a child’s life was at stake. She felt like slapping the dirty smile off his puffy cheeks. He looked at the number of people who had accompanied the little girl to the hospital, thought twice, and said:

“Well, I have news for you. Your little girl is now a woman.”

Kaodi’s mother jumped up and hit herself on the bare floor. She didn’t know how to feed an extra mouth. The doctor was surprised at her reaction. Some of the sisters tried as much as possible to console her. Uncle Martins just stood, unmoved.

“At this stage, their breasts grow larger and they look more womanly than ever.”

The hall became noisier than ever.

“Congratulations madam, your daughter is in her stage of puberty. She is mature enough for her monthly menstrual cycle.”

At his last announcement, the hallway fell dead quiet, and one could hear a pin drop. The only noise that was heard came from the angry heels of Uncle Martin’s shoes which announced his exit.

Written by Oluoma Udemezue