Eartha

3| Eartha

'What are you waiting for?' Mother asked, looking confused. 'Why are you looking like that? Are you okay?'

She had to have not seen what happened at the canopy to ask that. But Eartha nodded, anyway. Even if Mother had seen it, there was nothing she could have done about it.

'Abi you're hungry ni?' We can quickly go back to a restaurant o,' Mr Kosoko put in.

This spurred Eartha into action and she quickly headed towards the canopy. She was already here and she wasn't going to go back for anything!

As she made her way through the throng, she noticed the air around her was rather jolly. Some girls walked around, aimlessly, some in groups. Parents who were done with their wards said their goodbyes and got in their cars to leave, those who weren't helped their children get their luggages out of the car, some gave pep talks and some chided. All dressed in different attires, ranging from corporate to casual. A few even donned traditional attires.

She reached a silver-grey Auto and saw just as a muslim woman handed her daughter a cellphone.

'Ṣà má jẹ́ kí wọ́n sieze ẹ̀,'  the woman said.

'They can't sieze it, if they don't find it,' the tall, curvy girl said, snatching the phone from her mother and slipping it into a hidden compartment at the base of her travel bag.

Eartha smiled. Mother would probably kill her if she dared to ask for an ordinary chinko phone to take to school.

It didn't slip her notice that the phone was an iPhone. The straight line that ran across the top of it's back cover was like a beacon, signifying it's importance. They must be swimming in money to afford that brand for their daughter. iPhones were just 'breaking the ground' and were extremely rare around here.

She pretended not to see any of this as she slipped by the side of the car, but she could have sworn that the girl turned to stare at her.

Eartha walked on faster, hoping the girl didn't remember her face. She couldn't be in trouble for witnessing that, could she?

It also didn't help her case that the girl was most probably a senior. She had on the clothes which most girls around were also wearing.

It was a checkered cornflower-blue and white straight gown with round necks and pockets at both hips. It had to be the hostel wear.

It makes it quite obvious that we in mufti are newbies.

And Eartha liked the uniform already. Unusual blues were part of her desired colours. In fact, unusual shades of usual colours were her favourites — which was why she knew the names of many shades of every colour.

She reached the canopy, bending slightly to enter the interior and slipped into the shortest queue. Too late, she realized it was the queue where a girl had been slapped. No wonder the queue was so short. There was a girl in mufti before her and another one directly in front of the woman. Apart from these two girls, there was no one else on the line.

How could you not have noticed that? She chided herself.

The first girl stepped out of the line and exited through the side of the canopy.

Eartha started to retreat to join any of the other two lines.

'Get out of my face!' the woman shouted at the next girl — the one in mufti, and . . . 'Next!'

Eartha froze, knowing she had been seen. She gulped and turned back. She was now face to face with the furious woman.

She was a big-boned, slightly fair skinned woman with a descript face. Her mouth was set in a permanent, reprimanding thin line above which her wide set, roundish nose sat, resembling a slug on an uneven brown wall. The small eyes caged behind the round frame glasses that darted the length of Eartha, like a lynx, had a hard-set suspicious shine to them, as if she had spent her whole life dealing with delinquent students.

Eartha quickly lowered her gaze, not wanting to be caught staring. Her eyes fell on the woman's meaty arm where her fingers impatiently tapped away at the paperwork in front of her. She had a row of faded, greenish-black horizontal stripes inked on the skin of her fore-arm, a few inches away from her wrist.

'Yes? I don't have all day o!' she barked, jolting Eartha's mind back to her body.

She hurried forward towards the woman, her face getting hot as she felt the eyes of the other queues tickling her skin.

'Is your mouth paining you? Or what's all this nonsense? Kí lorúkọ ẹ?!'

'Eartha, ma,' Eartha said, her heart resetting it's pace. Was she in trouble already? Oh Lord, who sent her to be staring?

'En?' the woman queried loudly, not quite sure she had heard right.

Eartha paused a bit. Had she not answered her loud enough? Or was the woman deaf? Was she that old? She hadn't quite been able to figure out her age. She looked to be in her fifties, but she could easily be sixty-something, too.

'Eartha Warshame, ma,' she said as loud as she could, in case the woman was really hard of hearing.

She got a long, hard glare in reply and the young girl started to wonder if she had done something wrong.

'Which kind of name is that?' The woman continued to glare at her with suspicion, as if she suspected that the girl might be playing a prank on her. 'Spell it.' She picked up the bulky paperwork and started to flip through.

'The one that comes first,' she added, looking up from her paper to glare at her from behind her spectacles again. It was as if she had spent all day correcting pupils about which name came first.

'W-a-r-s-h-a-m-e E-a . . .'

The woman held her hand up to silence the girl as she had found the name. She looked up from the list again to glare at the girl and then looked back at the list, comparing the information given to the girl herself. It almost looked as if she blamed Eartha for having a name she had never heard of before.

'Eartha,' she said, not looking up from the paper. 'Hostelite 321. You're in Block A, Floor 2, Room 16, Bedspace 2, Upper Bunk. Take your hundred naira hostel dues with you to check in your luggages at the hostel entrance there.' She pointed to the block at her right. 'Next!'

'Um, could you please repeat that, ma? I didn't quite catch everything.' Eartha wished she'd something to jot in.

The woman looked taken aback, as if she couldn't believe someone had the audacity to order her to repeat herself.

'Did you keep your ears in your pocket when I was talking?'

'I—I'm sorry, ma.' Moisture was starting to gather at her forehead now and she wished she hadn't come here. If she hadn't stared at that phone-smuggling girl and then got lost in her thoughts, she wouldn't have made the mistake of joining this line.

The woman hissed, a long drawn out sound that very much reminded her of the doors of Mr Kosoko's car. 'Lay down your ears, I'm not going to repeat myself.' She looked down at the paperwork again. 'Hostelite 321, Block A, Floor 2, Room 16, Bedspace 2, Upper Bunk. Take hundred naira with you. Ódàbọ̀. Next!'

As embarrassed Eartha thanked the woman and turned back out of the canopy for the direction of her transport, she heard her murmur something about her being rude.

Hello! How are you guys?

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