Ola was the sugar in my tea. Sitting across from her in the faculty library more than four years ago, it occurred to me that I was in my third year at university and not in any serious relationship. In between attending lectures and burying my head in my books, I had somehow put the issue aside.
That day, I had rushed into the library to snatch some minutes of study before attending my next class. It was not difficult to notice the group of girls in a corner; they were giggling in fifty different sharps and flats. Other library users cast exasperated glances in their direction, yet their banter continued without pause. All evidence pointed to the fact that they were ‘Jambites’. Prim appearance, surplus excitement - it was never hard to distinguish a freshman.
Ola caught my attention. Her black hair was swept back in a ponytail and her large brown eyes stood out defiantly in a narrow face. Unlike most girls who had developed a penchant for bleached skin, hers glowed flawless ebony. She also looked innocent. I did not need to be an expert on women matters to know which girls had dabbled in more than their fair share of promiscuity and which were vampires - female Draculas on a mission to drain your bank balance dry. It was as if these girls gave off some peculiar pheromones. Perhaps Nature, knowing that man would someday need it for self-preservation, had implanted this sixth sense so that common folks like me could identify them.
Their noise eventually smoked the library attendant out of his cubicle. He strode to their table with a frown as thick as hail.
‘
Oya
, all of you should get up and leave the library,’ he ordered, his voice loud enough for everyone to know that someone who had power was in the process of exercising it.
‘Must you shout like that?’ one of the girls asked.
‘Just pack your things and leave!’
‘You should even be happy we came,’ another girl hissed. ‘After all, if we didn’t come, you wouldn’t have anything to do all day.’
They laughed while gathering their books and dainty handbags. I continued staring at Ola as they sniggered their way out of the library. Her back view was as satisfying as her front.
Ola returned the next day, this time on her own. My heart somersaulted twice when she walked in. She sat about five tables away and spread out her books. My supersonic brain ceased functioning. The words on the pages in front of me started wriggling about like enchanted snakes. I suddenly remembered that I needed a haircut. And that my white shirt was not starched. Ola studied for a full one hour before she got up and left.
She was back again the next day, and the next, and the next. I marvelled at how such a pretty girl could actually make out time to study. Other visitors to the library also seemed to have taken note of this shooting star.
‘Hello,’ the man whose lenses were as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle would say.
‘Hello,’ the man who was about four feet tall would add.
‘Hello,’ the man who wore the same purple pair of trousers every day would concur.
Ola always smiled and waved at them. Having her in the library was such a delicious change from the usual dreary girls.
Even my roommates noticed that something was happening to me. On my way home from school one day, I stopped at the hostel shop and spent considerable time selecting what appeared to be an affordable, musky, macho fragrance. While getting ready for school the next morning, I sprayed the bottle lavishly from head to toe.
‘Graveyard, what’s wrong with you?’ Enyi, one of my roommates, asked.
This nickname had been bestowed on me by another roommate who complained that I hardly ever spoke whenever I was reading, which was almost always. I never responded to it when I was in a bad mood. Today, I was feeling particularly high.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Ah, ah. I have never, ever, ever seen you spray perfume before. Never.’ He called the attention of the rest, who were also preparing for school. ‘Make una come see o, Graveyard don begin dey use perfume.’
The one who had initiated the nickname poked his nose into the air and took in an unnecessarily deep breath.
‘You call this one perfume?’ he asked. ‘This one be like say na insecticide.’
I left them laughing and set off for the faculty with a spring in my steps. All their mockery was not enough to still the drumbeats of ecstasy in my heart.
That day, Ola did not show up at the library.
I did not set eyes on her until about a week later. While walking along the faculty main corridor, I saw her standing and chatting with a group of girls. My feet stopped beside her. The girls quit talking and looked at me. My larynx turned to stone.
‘Is everything OK?’ Ola asked, her face crumpling with concern.
Silence was my answer.
‘Would you like me to help you in any way?’
Her voice sounded like a beautiful flower. I could have composed several cantatas and penned unending epics merely by listening to her speak.
‘No, everything is OK,’ I replied at last. ‘I was just wondering . . . I haven’t seen you in the library for a while.’
She smiled. To think that she had created that smile especially for me.
‘Oh, everything is fine. Just that I was down with a bout of malaria and decided to take things easy. I hope you people haven’t taken my space in the library o.’
I chortled and assured her that ‘her space’ was still available. Not knowing what else to say, I remained clutching my folder to my chest and smiling like a portrait. It must be true what somebody once remarked, that shy men and ugly women have the hardest time of all in this world.
Eventually, she spoke.
‘Thanks for your concern, eh. See you some other time.’
That was my cue to vamoose. Deflated, I walked away with the sound of hushed giggling bruising my ears. For the first time in my life, I suspected that I was well and truly an idiot.
The next day, I had my face glued to my books when I heard the grating voice of the man with the Coke bottle lenses.
‘Hello,’ he said.
I looked up. Four Feet and Purple Trousers chanted along. Ola returned their greetings. She smiled as soon as our eyes met.
‘How are you?’ she asked, when she was close by.
Then she placed her pile of books on my very same table and sat down beside me. The exact same thing happened again the next day. And the next, and the next, and the next. Soon we arrived at affectionate looks and spontaneous giggles, and all the other little actions that precede the grand knotting of two hearts.
Ola was a Laboratory Technology student whose family also lived in Umuahia. She was two years younger than I, enthusiastic about academia and knew exactly where she was headed in life. Her fingernails and toenails were always clean. Her hair never stank, even when she wore braids for over two weeks. She always wore her make-up light and natural and she still had some hair remaining from her eyebrows.
When I was with Ola, my personality changed. Thoughts and feelings that I had never previously paid attention to suddenly found their way from my cerebrum to my lips. She was the only person who told me that I was hilarious. She did not talk much but she always listened attentively when I spoke. Apart from my family and my books, finally something else occupied my mind. At some point, I even started worrying that I might be tipping on the verge of insanity. The flames of our love continued to burn for the remaining years of my stay in school. She was now in her final year at university, while I had been out of school for two years.
Ola was 100 percent wife material. We had already started making plans for our future. She wanted all her four sisters and an additional six cousins on the bridal train; I wanted three sons and two daughters, preferably the boys first.
As much as I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as opara and help my family, I also wanted to get a job because of Ola. Marrying an Igbo girl entailed much more than fairy-tale romance and good intentions. The list of items presented to the groom as a prerequisite for the traditional marriage ceremony was enough to make a grown man shudder. And that was even before you considered the gift items for family members, the clothing for the girl and her mother, and the actual feast itself. Several couples had been known to garner all their financial forces together in the process of organising their marriage ceremony. Afterwards, they could sit back in their new home and gradually transmute to skeletons. At least then they would be married and could die penniless - but happy - in each other’s arms.
Still drenched in these thoughts, on the way back home, I did not notice when one of the tambourine-jangling zealots stepped into pace beside me and extended one of his flyers.
‘Good morning, my brother,’ he said in greeting.
The man sounded as if he had slept on a bed of roses, woken from a scrumptious slumber that morning, and placed his foot right onto the ninth cloud.
‘I would like to invite you to fellowship with us on Sunday,’ he continued. ‘It promises to be a marvellous time. Come and be blessed, for there’s nothing impossible with God.’
On any other day, I would have called the man a bumbling buffoon and walked on. But like a well-oiled robot, I automatically stretched out my hand and collected the flyer.
Chikaodinaka and Odinkemmelu stopped chattering and resumed servile postures as soon as I entered the kitchen.
‘Bro. Kingsley, welcome.’
I grunted and walked past.
I paused at the dining table and exchanged ‘good mornings’ with my mother and siblings. Breakfast was over but they were sitting and chatting.
‘Should I bring your food for you?’ my mother asked.
‘Not now,’ I replied.
Across the room, my father was snoozing in his favourite armchair with his head tilted to one side. A rattling sound rose in his throat like water gurgling in a disused tap that had just been turned on. My mother flipped her head in her husband’s direction.
‘Reduce your voices,’ she said. Despite the fact that we all knew from experience that even the blast of Angel Michael’s trumpet was not loud enough to awaken my father from these post-breakfast slumbers.
‘Did the letter arrive?’ Eugene asked.
I mumbled something. As intended, everybody mistook it for a no. There was no point in ruining everyone’s morning.
Pretending that life was still normal proved a bit too difficult, so I went on to the children’s bedroom and sat on the bed. Someone knocked on the door. I ignored it. The person knocked again.
‘Yes?’
‘Kings.’
It was my mother. I did not look up. She sat beside me, put her arm around my shoulders and pushed my head against her neck. We sat in silence for a while. Without asking any embarrassing questions, my mother knew that her first son was still a component of Nigeria’s rising unemployment statistics.
‘It’s OK,’ she said.
She stroked my cheeks.
‘Kings, it’s OK . . . ehn? It’s OK.’
I removed my head from her body and sighed.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Your own will eventually come. Let’s believe that there’s something better waiting for you. Just don’t let all these disappointments get to you.’
‘Honestly, Mummy, I’m just tired. What is it I’m doing wrong? I always pass the tests and then they don’t want me. I’m really perplexed.’
Perplexed and stupefied and woebegone. As if I was stuck in a maze and each time I found an exit, lightning would strike right across my path. This particular rejection letter was exceedingly painful because I had defied all the odds by getting as far as the last interview. But the way things worked in our society these days, besides paper qualifications and a high intelligence quotient, you usually needed to have ‘long-leg’. You needed to know someone, or someone who knew someone, before you could access the most basic things. Still, as I progressed from one stage of the interview to the other, we had all assumed that this time would be different. Someone had identified that I had graduated as best student in my Chemical Engineering class. Surely, they could see that I was an outstanding brain.
‘Kings, it’s OK. I’m sure things will work out eventually.’
I bent my head.
My parents had been excited when I received my admission letter into university, but the whole experience put an additional strain on the family finances. Tuition fees, books, accommodation away from home - it all needed funding. When my father’s illness poured fuel on the flames, my parents were forced to sell our old, grey Peugeot 505 for some extra cash.
At last, Graduation Day arrived. As first son, as soon as I started earning an income, I would automatically inherit the responsibility of training my younger ones and ensuring that my parents spent the rest of their retirement years in financial peace. My family were looking up to me. I was their light, their messiah, their only hope.
My mother held me tighter and rubbed my back.
‘Kingsley, I’ve told you . . . everybody has their own dry season but the rain will always come. You’ll see. And you’ll remember that I said so.’
She spoke with so much conviction that I almost believed her. In the past, these words would have been tonic enough to brighten my face, push out my chest, and lift my gaze to a more auspicious future. But I had heard this same speech, on this same spot, in this same snug proximity, at least three times in the past year. It was like some sort of déjà vu.
We remained silent for a while.
‘Why don’t you go and have something to eat?’ my mother said. ‘There’s some powdered milk left in the tin but if it’s not enough, I can send Chikaodinaka out to buy some more.’
I stood up.
‘I don’t want to eat anything. I want to go and see Ola.’
‘Why don’t you—?’
‘No, I’m not eating,’ I replied, pulling off my T-shirt.
She left. I started polishing my dedicated pair of black shoes. They were my only pair. Moments later, my mother knocked and came back in.