The
E-blocks buildings were the face-me-I-face-you kind of houses like the type
found in the slummy Ama-nmong areas of Aba. It was a community of eight rows of
houses facing each other in twos with a row of four toilets and four bathrooms
in-between each pair as if they were separating the houses from ramming against
each other. A block had six rooms accommodating two students in each. The
original plan for the building was for accommodation for married students and
nursing mothers. Now the rooms were randomly allocated to single students
crammed four in a room like every other undergraduate hostels as a result of
accommodation scarcity in UNN. Mrs. Nwodo’s was Block E4 room 404, the fourth
room in the fourth row that now looked quiet and deserted except for the cry of
a baby coming from first room. Melvin walked gingerly down the lawn looking at
the top of the doors for room 404. Sounds of dropping waters in the bath room
followed him and he felt it must be from a water tap left uncorked. He thought
something about going into the bath room to stop the running water but the
sound was not steady. Water from the bath room splashed on the opposite
pavement as Melvin got close and he jumped backwards. He heard what sounded
like laughter from the bathroom and paused.
Maybe someone is
washing the bathroom; he thought and
moved on. As he made to cross the bathroom, he caught sight of a grown girl’s
naked buttocks shining glassy with soapy water. He flinched and looked away
immediately like a solder on eyes-right command. They were two girls taking
their bath with the doors widely open.
Melvin looked again furtively to be sure of what he saw and increased
his pace without looking back and the girls laughed.
“Jambito!”
one of them called out laud.
He
could hear their croaking laughter re-echoing in the emptiness of the bathrooms
as if the houses also mocked his timidity. He had always heard about lesbianism
and never believed it. Now he wondered if Chioma and Uju were also one. He felt
shy. Room 404 was locked. He still didn’t want to look back. He stood facing
the door.
Hands
akimbo.
Disappointed.
Legs
fixed to the ground.
He
could not turn back to face the lucid pornography behind him though his eyes
wanted to see more of the nakedness. He stood there growing confusion and the
weight between his thighs growing together with it. There was nobody around
with whom he could drop a massage but the naked girls behind him. Now he could
still hear them laughing louder and the empty rooms mocking him from behind.
Some ravens flew across the top of the building making their croaky kwa kwa
kwa sounds like they were part of the
laughter. He thought something about walking up to the naked girls to ask them
the whereabouts of Mrs Nwodo but his legs refused to move. He wouldn’t want the
girls to see the mound that had formed between his thighs in the front of his
trousers. He pushed his too hands into his pocket to keep his crotch region
even. He tapped his fingers inside the pocket as he thought of what to do next.
He was trapped like a bird in a bird catcher’s net. Suddenly a sonorous
feminine voice barked angrily behind him and he turned his neck. It was Mrs.
Nwodo.
“What sort of non-sense is this supposed
to mean? Who and who are there in those bathrooms?” she did not hear any
response as the door closed slowly and quietly.
"How many times do I have to warn
you shameless pigs to always close the doors when you are taking your bath?
Don’t you know people pass through here? I can’t imagine what kind of families
you came from. If you want to show off your korokoro infested buttocks
why not go up to freedom square and walk naked. Stupid girls” she smacked.
She
didn’t seem to have seen Melvin.
Melvin
breathed out loudly.
Hissed
a long sigh of relief.
And
turned around slowly.
Mrs.
Nwodo raised her face and cowed a weak smile. The dimples on her cheek showed
like a ball of fufu pressed with the
index finger.
“Good
day Aunty” Melvin greeted shyly still with his two hands bulging up his
pockets.
“Oh K.C you are here? Nna don’t mind these
shameless girls without home training that want to spoil my day. How are you
today?”
“I’m fine” Melvin replied.
“Cry cry baby” she teased Melvin as she
placed her left hand on Melvin’s shoulder. She moved round him inspecting him
like a cloth hung on a dummy mannequin. She placed her left hand on Melvin’s
head and ran it down his back.
“You are looking better today; no swollen
eyes, no red eye balls, and no need for my handkerchief.” she laughed.
Melvin
looked up shyly with a smile and said nothing but savoured the aroma of cologne
that followed Mrs. Nwodo as she crossed over to unlock the door. She slumped
into the bed opposite the door and motioned Melvin in. Immediately, the bathroom
doors crackled. The two girls emerged, grinned at each other like the
mischievous Tom and Jerry in cartoon movies and ran into the opposite room.
Mrs. Nwodo pushed out her head to know who came out of the bathrooms. She only
saw the figures in white bathing towels zoom past.
“Idiots”
she muttered.
“Tomi I already knew it would be nobody but
you and Kemi. Let this be the last time I’ll see such non-sense repeated, else
I will ensure you people are suspended from this school.” She warned the open
air and went back into her room. Melvin was still standing at the foot mat
looking round the room. His eyes were on the book shelves. He wondered more
about how he could afford such quantity of voluminous books before graduation
than how he could read them. He liked books. Not that he read much. He just
wanted to own them; have a big shelf that would hold as many books as possible
even if he didn’t read them.
Six
spring beds lay opposite each sides of the door. At the foot of the beds were
reading tables with a chair close to each. On the wall above the tables were
reading lights attached to the wall and faced downwards like street lights.
Mrs. Nwodo’s corner was the right flank with her pictures on the wall beside
the bed. In the first picture she sat on a sofa, smiling and holding hands with
a white bearded man and a baby on her laps. In the second one she carried the
baby with a sucker in its mouth. High above the pictures was a bookshelf, in
which were German language text books and some phonetics and grammar books and
dictionaries. Directly opposite the door to the wall were two gigantic
wardrobes, on top of which were boxes of different sizes.
“Women
and loads” Melvin marvelled.
Though
there was a ceiling fan at the centre of the room, Mrs. Nwodo had a small table
fan placed on a stool by the window beside the door. Beside the door to the
right, was a very big mirror not less than six feet high attached to the wall.
Up above the mirror was something like a wine bar, packed full with all kinds
of women’s make-ups. On the floor was red chequered linoleum spread from wall
to wall.
Melvin
made to remove his foot wears as he entered the room but Mrs. Nwodo bade him
“never mind” and showed him to the seat by the reading table. Melvin felt
something about saying; “what a nice place!” but his lips couldn’t form the
words. Mrs. Nwodo dropped her bag limply on the table and went back to the bed.
She sat on the bed and crossed her legs carefully as if she was preparing to
offer Muslim prayers. She picked a pillow, placed it on top of her crossed laps
and leaned back on the wall. She was tired. The skin of her legs looked like
ripe pawpaw; so smooth that Melvin thought he saw the blood running through the
greenish veins inside them. Melvin didn’t want to look at those legs again. He
buried his face on the ground peeling some invincible things from his finger
nail to avoid Mrs. Nwodo’s roving eyes. There was a little silence as he waited
to hear something about his admission from Mrs. Nwodo. To break the ice, she
suddenly teased Melvin:
“I
know you won’t cry again” Melvin chuckled and buried his face on the table before
him, moving his right foot on the floor. He was shy.
“Are you the last born in your family?”
Mrs. Nwodo asked trying to relax the tension in the air.
“No”
“The only child?”
“No”.
“The only son?”
“No, I’m the first son” Melvin answered
hesitantly, he had wanted to claim the only son.
“Ah! Why is it you look so feeble like Ajebor” she continued with curves of
mischievous smiles on her face.
“Your mother; what does she do?”
“She is a trader”
“And what about your father?”
“He died some years ago”. Melvin lied. He
didn’t want to think about his father as alive now.
“Ah! I’m sorry for reminding you. It’s a
pity. Ndo nnu”. Mrs. Nwodo said and placed her hands on her chest. Her Igbo
sounded so soft and anglicized, devoid of tones. The thought of Melvin’s father
brought back the tension which was almost dissipating. The thought of Melvin’s
father, always reminded him the need not to be like him; the need to struggle
out of the depth of poverty that his drunken habit had dragged the family into.
“He is as inactive as a
dead man”, Melvin had said to himself one of the days he got home and saw his
father drunk. His father could not give him the comfort he wanted in life; his
father would hardly provide for his family and he had promised himself that he
would get everything that he wanted in life by himself without a father.
Melvin
was still bent drawing shapeless images with his left foot. His face now looked
stiff with hatred mingled with pity for his father. He didn’t hate his father
rather he couldn’t decipher what the feeling was - a mixture of love, hate,
pity and anxiety. Confusion.
He
was not sure what the feelings were. He winked and tears trickled down his
cheeks from his eyes.
“Ok, guess what; I have good news for
you, would you like English Department?” Mrs. Nwodo dropped as if to console
him and send the tears back into his skull. Melvin jerked his face immediately
and wiped off the tears that wet his lashes. The only thing he had wanted to
hear was finally up. He couldn’t fathom why the tears were coming out of his
eyes.
“I don’t mind what Department any longer,
what I need is just admission Aunty,” he answered, looking straight into Mrs.
Nwodo’s face. There was a mixture of frustration and desperation in his quaky
voice. He wasn’t able to hide any feelings now. His glossy, watery eyeballs
would show it. His pouted mouth would scream it. His ashen face would dramatize
it.
Desperation!
Mrs.
Nwodo chuckled mutely looking into Melvin’s misty eyes with pity.
“Well, your admission issue is settled
then. All you need do now is: go home, and come back in a fortnight when the
list shall be pasted to start registration in English and Literary Studies Department,”
she managed to say after a little silence. Melvin was stunned. It was like a
dream. He wanted to move over and give Mrs. Nwodo a very warm embrace but his
guts failed him. He wanted to cross over and give her a peck on the cheek as he
used to see people do on TV and say things like:
“Aunty
you rock!”
“Aunty I love you!”
“Aunty you are the best” but it was as if
his legs were glued to the floor and his buttocks to the seat and his lips
sealed. He meant to jump up and rejoice on his own but streams of tears flowing
profusely from his eyes now could not let him do that. He could not control the
tears. They were tears of joy now. He couldn’t make a move.
“Aunty, words cannot be enough to show
appreciation for what you have done for me”, his glued timid lips managed to
murmur amid tears.
“It’s okay”, Mrs. Nwodo responded giving
him a pat on the shoulder. She uncurled her legs and came down from the bed and
hugged Melvin. Melvin felt as if never to let go in her warm soft body with his
head on her breast and her sonorous consoling voice sizzling into his ears.
There was pin-drop silence in the room, except for the sound of Melvin’s
sniffing to draw back his running nose and inhale more of the cologne aroma
emanating from Mrs. Nwodo’s cloths. As Mrs. Nwodo left him, He wiped out the
tears from his face.
“Cry
cry baby!” Mrs Nwodo teased again and laughed. Melvin chuckled and scratched his eye
brows without looking up. She opened the small refrigerator beside the bed and
bright light from there lightened up the room the more. She uncorked a bottle
of malt and placed a red foil wrapped biscuits beside it on the reading table
before Melvin and motioned him to the stool in front of the table.
“I
want you to be happy” she said standing behind Melvin and placed her hand on his
head. now she stood behind Melvin with a long pink towel wrapped round from her chest down.
“I…
I am” he stuttered and his heart palpitation increased.
“Now
you have the admission, what next?” she asked and her hand slid down to
Melvin’s chest and her breast brushed on his head and paused there. Then the
towel unwrapped and fell on the floor. Melvin didn’t look back as he heard the
door crackle to a close and the room grew dimmer. He thought of running out of
the room but his legs felt tied to the stool.
“I
will give you everything you want in this school if you stick with me.” Mrs
Nwodo whispered in his ears and kissed his neck. Yet he didn’t turn. His neck
felt paralysed with the kiss and the weight in between his thighs grew together
with the fears in his heart and shook his legs and his entire body. He felt perplexed
but the whistling sound that started growing in his head didn’t allow him to
think of anything. His mind wandered haphazardly from one thing to another as
the noise in his head grew to a very high pitch enveloping the entire room and choking
out the fragrance of musk perfume that was there before. He only wondered if
the lady behind him heard the deafening sound threatening to blow up his head.
The fountain of joy inside of him now brewed anxiety; a kind of anxiety that
produced tremor all over his body. Yet he couldn’t make a move.
“If
you disappoint me that means you are not aware of what I am capable of. I have
connections that will give you a smooth ride through out your stay in this
school” she whispered again. those words came down like a threat. She the slid her hands into Melvin’s shirt and he obliged
reluctantly. She ruffled the strands of hair on his chest. He couldn’t stop the cold hands that unbuttoned his shirt. He
could not afford to stop those hands nor do anything that would make him lose
this precious admission. Not even a one-off make-out with a married woman could
be a barrier. She propped him up but he couldn’t look her in the face. Silently
she placed her lips on Melvin’s lips and drew him onto the bed.
**********
“Where
are you going to pass the night” Mrs. Nwodo asked.
“At
Nkruma hall” Melvin lied, still not looking straight at Mrs Nwodo.
“Cheer
up please, I don’t like the way you are sitting like a maltreated slave boy”
she said and whispered; “as if you didn’t enjoy it”; she chuckled as she slip
into a multicoloured silk gown. Melvin chuckled too.
“I
want you to be happy all the time”, she said again and stuffed some money into
Melvin’s palm. Melvin clutched the money and smiled childishly. He didn’t count
the money. He didn’t know what to feel; now that the whistling sound had dissipated.
He left Zik’s flats and walked into the school compound towards the Franco
hostels.
*********************