I have wistful memories of my days as a student of University of Calabar International Secondary School, and I’ll let you take a sip from the urn of my experience. You see, secondary school is the only phase of our lives where we truly had fun and forged the warmest friendships; where we founded stubborn cliques, and took delight in tempting capricious teachers; where we stretched out our palms to receive twelve strokes of the cane with an air of insouciance simply because the girls who were crushing on us were watching in worshipful adulation, but hurried to the toilet afterwards, rubbed our palms and cried our hearts out.



At UCISS, cliques were commonplace; selfie lovers, boys who loved to sag their trousers, upcoming artistes who tried to prove their mettle by drumming on wooden desks with rulers and singing into empty Fanta bottles a poor man’s Davido. Even bullies had a clique. During break time, they would clutter the tuck shop and terrify the junior students. They would drag one student and say, “Oya, say the magic code.”

The terrified student would say, in a tremulous voice, “Please bully me.”

“God is our witness oh! We didn’t force you. We are just complying with your wishes.” Then they would sink their hands into his pockets and steal all his money.



Mr. Esu, the chapel master a small, bald man whose rubber-framed glasses were always stuck to his face, who walked as though hot coal was under his feet, as though he was going to burst into a run for his life any moment hated the bullies. He did everything in his power to ensure that they were punished during morning assembly, before the whole school. He would call out a bully’s name and urge the multitude of students to boo him as he trudged to the front of the hall to receive his lashes. As soon as the compound master, Mr. Offum, dealt the first blow on the boy’s trembling buttocks, Mr. Esu would wave his right hand at the school choir and they would rise in unison and begin to sing:



I didn’t know you would honour me this way

I didn’t know you would honour me this way

I didn’t know you would honour me this way

You would honour me this way

Thank you my lord.



The bullies hated him in equal measure, that small censorious man, so they developed theories to explain why he was bald. Some said he had gone to challenge a group of ex senior students who were playing basketball, so one of them bounced the ball on his head, right in the middle, and tufts of hair began to fall and have refused to grow back to this day. Others said that since he had gotten used to carrying people’s issues on his head, he didn’t know when he took a steaming pot of noodles from his stove and placed it on his head, and the blessed pot singed every strand of hair from the middle of his head, and warned incipient strands not to growon that spot again.



***



I was a member of the Going Home Squad, a group of friends who always went home together. We visited any member who was absent from school. We paid membership dues and organized picnics at the end of every month. Under no circumstances did we go home without any member. We would even wait for our members from the science classes to finish their boring practical; squinting to look inside microscopes, searching for vestiges of nothing. Whenever a new fine boy or girl enrolled, those who were interested in chyking him or her would indicate interest, then the Squad would vote. Whoever won got the chyking mandate of the Squad. I was not really interested in chyking girls until a girl named Funmilayo enrolled in SS2.



Since I was the social prefect, the compound master instructed me to acquaint her with all the clubs in the school so she could choose which one to join.

There was this presence about her. She wasn’t just beautiful, she was a magnificent work of art; her eyeballs were so white you could almost see her soul, she was light skinned and had an hourglass figure, her legs were slender and elegant like the bark of a sycamore tree. Her cornrows were always perfectly arranged, and the spaces between them always looked equal, like they were measured with a ruler, always neat; like the paths between the ridges of a well tilled yam farm. Everything about her the flare of her nose, the gap between her teeth, her face when she threw back her head and laughed, the smooth cadence of her voice.



I won the Squad’s mandate to chyke her. I started visiting her class regularly to ask her for the time, even though I always carried a wrist watch in my bag. I always offered to buy her lunch during break time, but she turned me down every single time.



Then I started loving everything she loved. She never missed the Students Christian Movement fellowship every Wednesday at the assembly hall, so on one of those Wednesdays, I breezed in. The preacher was done and the leader of service said Funmi had a special song to render. Applause rent the air as she stretched her lips into a delightful smile and walked to the podium. I shifted uneasily in my seat. She picked up the microphone and began to sing Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah. The excitement in the hall reached fever heat. It wasn’t just about the lilt in her voice; it was her ability to lift you, crash you on the ground and bring you back to your feet; her ability to make you dust your faith and believe again. When she was done singing, I felt moisture on my face. I touched my face, it felt clammy with tears. When the fellowship was over, I met her just as she was carrying her bag to leave. I just stood in front of her, staring into her immaculate eyes.

“What is it?” She asked in benign surprise.

“See ehn, I love you,” I replied.

Just then, I felt goose bumps on my skin, something I only feel when someone is watching me. I turned sharply to discover that Mr. Esu was within earshot, staring pointedly at me. So I quickly added, “With the love of Christ.” She smiled, shook her head and walked away.

***

After a lot of effort, I got to discover that she wasn’t so good at math. So I offered to teach her after school on the condition that after every lesson, she would sing for me. She laughed and agreed. She sang about many things. She sang about God’s love, about how it lifts us from this painful world, over undulating hills and sits us in heavenly places. She sang about how burdens are lifted at Calvary, about how we should simply take our burdens to the Lord and leave it there. She sang Simi’s Jamb Question. We gave each other mathematical names. She called me cuboid head.

And I said every part of her being worked so perfectly and in unison to manifest her beauty, like simultaneous equations. During one of those lessons, I paused midway and gasped, “Funmi, I love you so much. Please… ”

She interrupted me with a delicious chuckle. “The problem with you boys is that you are all the same. In the first three months, you’re the perfect gentlemen; buying ice cream every other day, movies every weekend, night calls to offer soothing words.

But after three months, you all revert to type. You start making your usual requests, from ‘just the tip’ to ‘please let me just enter and I promise I won’t move.’ ” She laughed, carried her school bag and walked away.

Then one day, after I broached the topic again, she didn’t laugh. She smiled faintly instead and said, “See, there’s no need for a relationship. I won’t be around for much longer.”

What did she mean by I won’t be around for much longer? Was she going to study abroad? My callow mind was puzzled.

***

After graduation, she gained admission into a private university: Covenant University, Ota. I gained admission into the University of Calabar, a federal university. Distance made communication fugitive and sparse, but I tried my best to call her every weekend. She loved her school and joked that she would finish her programme two years before me, because ASUU strike, which is a rampant occurrence in federal universities, would not let me flourish.

Then on September 1, she texted and told me to visit her at her house in Calabar, that it was urgent. I was a bit surprised because the last time I called her, she didn’t tell me she was visiting home. I came back from school, had lunch and set out for her house by 4pm. I pressed the bell at the gate and her elder sister, Lola, let me in.

Lola was an all action, no-dull-moment girl. But on that day, there was this stony coldness about her. She ushered me into the living room, offered me a sit and sat on the adjacent sofa. She didn’t say anything. She just sat back and stared at the chandelier that hung from the ceiling. The chandelier, as if afraid that her piercing stare would send it crashing down, began to swing to appease her. My stomach began to churn in discomfort.

“Emmm…. Funmi invited me over,” I began.

“Funmi is dead.” There was a cold precision in her tone, there was a vacuous look in her eyes.

“You say? Lola please stop…” I was sweating profusely.

“She had battled with leukemia all her life. She lost the battle this morning. My parents are at the mortuary trying to sort out her corpse. I was the one who sent you that text message.” She collapsed in a desolate heap and began to wail and splay her legs. I sat there, staring into space. I felt numbness in my legs, and a terrible migraine suddenly overwhelmed me. I somehow managed to calm Lola down and made her take me to Funmi’s room. It was a very spacious room that smelled like fresh lilies. I slowly ran my fingers over her jewellery, her clothes, her portraits on the wall. Then I walked over to her book shelf. One book caught my attention, a book enclosed in a bookcase. I unzipped the case and the book was New General Mathematics. I was mildly surprised in spite of my pain. Funmi didn’t like math, so why would she want to preserve a math textbook? I began to flip through the pages and in the middle, where the book explained cuboids, she wrote:

Safe in the knowledge that he’ll never see this

I love that Pius boy

With every fleeting breath.

She was buried on September 27, on her birthday. At her requiem, in her house, I saw her again when the coffin was opened so that people could see her for the last time. Her cornrows were still intact, perfectly arranged, and I was almost sure she would burst into a smile and give one last rendition of Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah.

But she lay still, a sullied stillness that weakened my knees. A man wearing a priestly garb muttered a prayer and the coffin began to descend, with Funmi, with the world’s last chance of possessing sublime art, with Funmilayo.

These days, birthdays terrify me. Birthdays are just the courier that the remaining days of the past year connive to send us; to remind us that we are running out of time. They remind us that we could yet nurture inchoate ideas and dreams to concrete reality; that we could yet be special and forge the warmest and strongest friendships, but we are running out of time. They remind us that we could yet unleash our potential, but we are running out of time.

Because we all won’t be around for much longer.


For more from Award winning fiction writer, Ekemini Pius, you can visit: www.9jabuzzer.com

Just saw this.

Unical student SetOf2020.

I'm glad to say bulling has reduced drastically.
Junior Students have the right to report to teachers sef. But we still send students to buy stuffs for us sha.

Seizing of footballs has stopped.
Fighting has reduced.

Chiking still dey.

Mr. Esu and is still there.

S. C. M is on Tuesdays now.


#ChapelPrefect
#SetOf2020
#SS3