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The room smells like cow shit and piss. You cover your nose with your sleeves as you make your way past the toilet. But the stench still filters into your brain as if by osmosis. There's the door at the end of the hall. You'd prefer your face to be dipped into the faeces filled water closet than to have to walk through that door at the end of the hall, or live through another day for that matter.
You are a 13 year old boy with a nice face, white teeth, and neat fingernails who’s on his way to his teacher’s office to collect his report card. You know you did poorly in the exams and tests so you dread the horror that you’ll see written on your report sheet. You begin to think up ways you could avoid your father’s scrutiny the moment you head home from school.
Oh! the horror of his evil eye.
You know your father will not tolerate a failure in his house. And with a result like the one you expect to find in your teacher’s office, you definitely won’t fall in your father’s good graces; it always hovered between evil, abusive, or violent.
You wonder if you’ll be subjected to one or all three categories once your father takes a look at your result. You know you won’t be the one to be blamed. What, with your nice face, white teeth, and neat fingernails, there’s always someone there to get the rough end of the battering stick in your stead.
You open the door to your teacher’s office. The witch stares at you with that familiar devilish look on her face. The result is as you feared. There are more red marks than blue marks on your report sheet. You barely even catch the look of repulsion thrown your way by your teacher as she reaches into a bulky green manila folder and withdraws a piece of paper. Her hands, rolls of fat scarred in several places by stretch marks, hands you your result. The wind coming from the ceiling fan above her, blows against her outstretched hands causing the fat to jiggle like a blob of jelly.
Your fears spike. Your heart develops a strange rhythm of its own that makes you want to dance your way out of the school, shaking your hips like a mad man run amok would, and diving straight into the path of an approaching trailer in a sensational finish. You swallow hard and try to steady your breathing, albeit unsuccessfully.
You stuff the dreadful report sheet in your pocket and begin slowly to drag your feet towards the park. You get to the park where a little moldy oaken seat waits for your wearied bum. It rests underneath the shade of a towering mango tree, filled with a lot of ripe mangoes. Some were even on the ground rotting away. But you did not care for food. Do zombies care for food? You seat and begin to wait.
Thumpa Thumpa Thumpa, goes the beat of your heart.
After at least an hour of waiting, you see your mother’s Nissan pull up next to you. She rolls down her window all smiles, and beckons you to get in.
This is the beginning of your dismay.
Your mother was a beautiful woman once. In fact, if you try to see above the scars, black eye, and whip marks on her face, you’ll see the beauty she truly is. All that’s left of that beauty now is the wide comical smile she has on her face. Her hair is disheveled and tied in a crude bun at the top of her head. It is tied so tightly and her hair, so few from being yanked off severely and severally that you can just make out the dried blood on several places on her scalp. She looked like one of those mad women going about in the city, poking through dumpsters in the middle of the night.
“So how is it?” she ask.
“It is bad,” you tell her dryly.
“Oh…let me see. It can’t be that bad.”
You hand her the report sheet that is littered with red markings. You see your mother’s face contort in a frown, a smile, and then finally settling on a weak grin, as if unsure of the emotion to express in response to this. Damn me to hell, you think. I just want to die, my bones grounded to powder and fed to the wind. That way no one will know I was born.
Once she’s done reading the principal comments which read, a very poor result. Please take your studies seriously or you’ll be forced to repeat the next term, she hands you your result, smiling weakly and tousling your prickly hair. Your face is neat and unblemished except for the scattering of pimples. You lucky bastard.
“It’s okay. Don’t cry eh. I’ll try to talk to your father,” she says and kisses your forehead.
You sniff and try to blow the catarrh out of your nose, but it’s a failed effort at best and you just get them on your hands and on your shirt.
“But daddy won’t like it. He’ll…he’ll…” your lips begin to tremble from the prospect of what your father will do, not to you but to your mother for perhaps the umpteenth time. Umpteenth because you fail invariably and your mother always gets in the way of your father giving you a whipping.
Your mother use her thumb to wipe the tears off your cheeks. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a lesson teacher next term. Why didn’t you do well?” she asks curiously. You see the urgency in her eyes. You begin to fear that perhaps she’s reached her beat up point. That perhaps she’ll truly become mad the next time she has to bear the brunt of your father’s wrath.
You begin to blurt out all manner of explanations that come to your head, “I can’t see from my seat at the back of the class, and the teacher doesn’t like me. Also there’s this…” you stop when you realize that your mother’s mind is far away. It’s apparent that she’s trying to figure out a way to face your father.
Your heart hammer in your chest, Thumpa Thumpa Thum like a kettle drum.
A school day ends and your horrors begin.

First the waiting. Your father usually shows up at 9:45 pm. Never earlier, never later. It’s 5 o’clock. You get to the dining seat and your mother serves you a plate of Eba and Egusi soup garnished with all sort of condiments: meat of varying variety; smoked fish, frozen fish, stocked fish, even crayfish (which is not really a fish), all in a sizable amount in your bowl of soup. Your Eba is the right amount of hot and firmness. You smile sadly at your mother. You know you should be punished. If only she’ll punish me, you think. If only she’ll give me a sizable amount of punishment as I so definitely deserve.
But your stomach disagrees. It grumbles and grinds on your abdomen. So you wash your hands in the wash basin and say your prayers. Your prayers are usually a second long. And always goes along the line of, “Oh lord, bless my food baluda luda luda. Amen.”
Once that is over and done with, you barely manage to wipe the saliva coming out of your lips from getting into the bowl of condiments. You reach out and grab a roll of Eba, dip it into the soup, and bring it to your mouth. It goes smoothly down your oesophagus and into your food craved belly. Once that one big bite goes into your stomach, the grumbling stops, and of course your horror continues.
You look at the clock. 5:35.
Your mother is seated on the sofa watching Telenovella programs. She’s just seating there, oblivious to the tick tocking of the clock hands. But you are. You notice its slow clockwise motion. You feel its strange rhythm. And you hear its sound, tick tock tick tock.
Any moment now…

You lose appetite. You drink a cup of water. You feel you should abandon your food. But your father normally goes through the trash the moment he gets home from work. And you don’t want your mother to suffer for two of your mistakes rather than the one.
You roll a lump of Eba and slowly swallow.
There’s no fireworks in your belly this time, and it only gets worse as the rest of the dish is consumed. There’s always a slight spark anytime a big piece of meat, or a stocky fish is consumed. But that’s the only spark you get that day.
You are done with eating so you once again wash your hands and dry them on your white cotton uniform leaving oil stains on them. Of course, your mother is ever there. Ever ready to come to the rescue.
You alight from the dining, stride to the living room, and throw yourself on the big sofa next to your mother. Your mother places her arm around you and you both watch the Telenovella until you fall asleep on your mother’s lap.
Tick tock tick tock.
You wake up.
Your eyes immediately shoots to the clock so fast that they almost roll to the back of your head.
9:40.
Horror of horrors!
You are lying on the wooly sofa. Your mother is nowhere to be found in the living room. You jump off the sofa and switch off the TV, ready to run to the safety of your room and bolt the door shut. But you hear the rasping sound, knock knock knock, coming from the front door. It is slow and dragging. A sound only common to one man, your father.
What do you do? You can’t run away now. You have no choice. You don’t want to add not opening the door on time to the list of things your poor mother will be punished for.
You rush to the door and unlatch the bolt. You swing the door open and there he is. The moon is on full reflection this night and everything shines brightly alongside it. Including the face and demeanor of your father.

Interesting