The rants of an antsy girl

04/02/2020

Tuesday

The wind blows cool on my face as I step outside the house. Embarrassment still makes my eyes feel bigger than their actual size.
After I threw up the third time, Anjola called me aside to ask me if I was pregnant. It's funny. It's funny because I go from the house to my mother's shop and back again. Perhaps, by sheer luck, if my mother is feeling grateful and we would go to church. Except if Anjola is thinking I had something going in Sisi Onitsha's shop.
That would be just ridiculous.
I told her off politely, but I did not tell her why I was throwing up.
I did not tell her that the wicked arc of Mr Akhere's bushy brows made my insides churn.
Also, the smile that kept playing on his  lips. It was the slightest of smiles, so subtle that it could go unnoticed, but it was not insignificant to me. I tried to ask my Dad if I could change my tutor, he called me a buffoon.
I understand him. He has all the right to call me a buffoon, even much worse names. A man who almost lost over seventy lives that he was accountable for, a man who almost lost his family, a man who almost lost his life. Now that's enough reason to call me a buffoon.
I could not persuade him so I dropped the issue. That doesn't mean that I don't think it, that I don't throw up because I keep seeing his ugly face in my reflection– on the mirror.
I doesn't change the fact that I want to tear open his stomach and oust his guts with my mother's scissors, the particular scissors she used to cut my hair low when I failed my first JAMB. No failure deserves to wear long hair that would need maintenance. She said that.
Now I understand her. It is strange because I did not until now, I thought it cruel, inhumane. Laju has to flaunt her long maroon coloured braids, with her crimson contacts while I sit and prepare for another JAMB, with my hair cut low.
I appreciate it now. It was and still is for the best, I won't have to fuss over hairdos while I studied. Brilliant plan.
But the scissors, those big green scissors that sniped off chunks of my healthy hair, they have always been a symbol of vengeful justice.
I would use that scissors on him if I could, but I cannot.
My phone vibrates in my mini bag as I am standing outside of the lounge, a short verandah with trims of red flowers on the front.
I see suby, tapping his foot so much that shows his restless. I'm restless too, I'm not cool about anything and I'm not looking around the text.
I look at it anyway, it's only just human nature, the powerful force of curiosity.

Though your sins be as red as scarlet, I will wash it white as snow, will I?

On the bus, the driver has small quarrels with many passengers and as the bus changes lane– the lanes, high and low, I feel dizzy and invisible to the world.
From a distance, as I approach the shop, I see a small crowd, enough people to draw attention.
My heart beats doubled. What could be worse than the fire that happened? What could be worse than Zita; the innocent, annoying cook, fighting for life?
Somebody is wailing, it seems very familiar– the wail. I see Efosa, he comes out of the crowd and dives in again. I stop in my tracks. Whatever tragedy, whatever has happened, I want to settle myself before I see it and it engulfs me.
The people are talking in a chaotic togetherness. I want to turn back and run home, bury myself under five blankets, because this feeling, deep in my guts, I don't like. I don't want to face whatever.
I dial the number of the mystery texter. Whoever this person is.
It rings for a long while and I give up. The crowd does not dissolve, rather it became bigger, people even pop out every now and then to shake their heads.
I have to confront these fears now. I have to do what I ought even if I'm not going to like it.
My mother is in hysterics, in the midst of the crowd. She is not crying, but she keeps shouting and breaking into prayer every now and then.
'What happened,' I say to Efosa who is beside my mother trying to calm her. I go to my mother and grab her two shoulders and make her look into my eyes.
'What is wrong.' I don't know it, but it feels like I'm screaming. I begin to shake her and she is asking for me to leave her alone. Efosa comes and tears me away from her. He takes me to his shop, which I now see is a tad more stocked than ours. There are two white plastic chairs in front, under the shade. He sits me on one and takes the other.
'You'll have to calm down Joan.'
'Why? What is going on?'
'Your mother saw a knife wrapped in red cloth in front of the store. I do not bother to ask any other thing and dash out before he can restrain me again. I run to my mother and hug her tight.
Slowly, the people begin to disperse.