I could believe that; he looked unwell and might still be convalescing. ‘Are you still not well?’ I asked a little gentler hoping for a response.
‘I am just tired,’ he replied weakly. ‘And hungry and I don’t want all your noise and I don’t want to be here. I don’t even understand any of what is happening in class.’
This was progress and I seized the opportunity immediately. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll help you with class work. I will give you my notes and you can copy from them. And you can come with Eze to my house when we have homework and we’ll all do it together.’
That seemed to relieve him a little. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I have missed many tests. I think I am going to fail this term. That is the work of evil spirits but they shall be destroyed in Jesus name.’
If that last bit had come from him at a different time, I would have found it amusing - it was clearly a line he’d heard, and perhaps repeated, often enough. But I was so tuned in to his predicament. These spirits were robbing him of what life he had or was supposed to have.
Eze beat me to what was on the tip of my tongue. ‘Ireneh, we want to bring you some holy water and a medal. You can drink the holy water at school during break. It will drive away evil spirits.’
‘No, my mama will complain. Our pastor is praying for me now and she won’t want anyone to spoil his work. We also have our own holy water.’
‘But you can still try our own to join your own,’ I insisted. ‘Our holy water is very strong. We use it in our church and everyday at home. You can drink it here and not tell your mama about it. You can also keep the medal in your pocket.’
‘Are you sure?’ Ireneh asked a little worried, ‘because I don’t want anything to spoil my pastor’s work.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Eze jumped in. ‘Our holy water is very good and won’t spoil your pastor’s work. Just drink it and you will see.’
‘Okay. Bring it tomorrow and I will drink some.’
‘Yes!’ I felt triumphant. ‘Those evil spirits have not seen anything yet. Wait, let them feel some holy water on them, burning them. You can’t joke with our fadas. They are men of God and they have strong power.’
As we talked about anything throughout break-time, I was so pleased that I was able to help my friend in some small way that I did not notice that in a very rare turnaround, I was doing more of the talking while he simply smiled politely and a lot.
****
My car sold for ten thousand less than Tolu’s but that was enough for my few needs. After I had paid out the percentages demanded by all who had a stake in my business and repaid my debt to Tolu, I had more money to call mine than I had been able to boast about since my first day at university when I’d arrived on campus armed with money, much of which was required to pay for tuition fees and every handout every lecturer would definitely sell.
We were a little gold mine – first year students – for the staff of the university; enterprising lecturers could make as much money selling lecture notes and materials to students as they could from their salary. If they were really bright – and you do get a healthy sprinkling of such genius at universities – they’d squeeze out some more supplementary income selling other favours, the most coveted and most popular of which is the guarantee of a pass mark in exams.
Anyway, I came away from that sale with a little less than fifteen thousand naira and after sparing a fraction of it for necessary expenses like transport to and from Ibrahim’s garage, and food, I kept the rest aside for general expenses.
Tolu had been generous with me as he’d promised and given me five thousand naira to tide me through before I sold my car. In gratitude, I gave him back six thousand. I was in that mood where I felt I could afford anything.
We were lying idle in our room when I made the offer. We had taken the rest of that week off following the Monday I sold my car and were getting into a very lazy rhythm. I had already done all the required budgeting for the next four weeks and felt confident that I wouldn’t run out for even longer with the money I had left. I’d even sent a token two thousand naira home to Mama not because she needed the money but because it would buy me some of their recognition and put her mind at rest – I was not only safe but getting on. Anyway, this was a Saturday and we had even less reason to leave the room. We had stayed up late the evening before watching some movies Tolu had rented from the video store in town, the old TV Alhaji Sanni had left in our room giving us plenty of trouble during the film. More worn out than relaxed, we had turned in at about two in the morning and slept in till eleven.
****
Eze and I kept our promise and helped Ireneh with the work he had to catch up on. We lent him our notes to copy from, helped him with his homework, tried to regurgitate what we could remember from past lessons and corrected him where he went wrong. We also brought him the holy water and medal we had promised; he drank the water but refused the medal. ‘My mama will find it one day and she will be mad with me,’ he had said.
He was more regular at school now and had gone a full two weeks without missing a day; that was a huge achievement and I was beginning to fear that we could encounter another lapse from him soon. We must have been the only ones pleased at the budding change in his pattern; no one seemed to notice except, of course, his seat mates and the class teacher.
Mrs Deji looked in our general direction more often these days with an eye set to notice and fish out trouble. She could not relax with Ireneh in class and permanently looked like she was perched on a spring ready to leap at us.
‘Ireneh Osadolor,’ she called as she held out his exercise book that she had just marked.
‘Two out of seven! What is this? You have not been listening in class. I want to see your correction in five minutes.’
‘Bamidele Taiwo,’ she moved on to the next pupil pointing out his errors as well. I did not think she was being fair on Ireneh to say he had not been listening when she knew that he had been absent for so long. But then again, she was not responsible for his absences.
‘Arinze Onyebuchi. Five out of seven. Let me have your correction now.’
‘Yes ma.’
That became the ritual. Ireneh’s performance in class stayed in the lower percentile for a while and it became standard to expect him to be at the bottom of the class in nearly every exercise. He actually became a yardstick for many to judge how poorly they had performed in an exercise.
‘How can you compare with me?’ a pupil would taunt another. ‘You empty skull. What’s your score? You didn’t even get a higher mark than Ireneh and you want to talk.’
I was surprised at how swiftly that tradition took hold of the class. There had always been the dull heads in the class but none had ever been singled out like the lad. Well, none could have been because the method that Mrs Deji employed to correct us in class by broadcasting our marks for everyone to hear was also quite recent. In fact, it was as recent as Ireneh’s reappearance. I didn’t know if she began this tradition to force the boy to settle down and work hard; whatever reason she had, the only way out was for Ireneh to improve in class work and very quickly too.
As the weeks passed, Ireneh and I became more frequent at Eze’s doing homework and going through class work, my home being out of bounds to the lad. It was unlike Ireneh to be so focused but I got the feeling that he wanted to get back into the swing of things, to get back into school again and definitely to stop the teacher from making disparaging remarks about his work.
Our little group of three also became a regular feature at his house; in the weeks that went by, I got to see a lot more of the family members. There was the wild TJ who never managed a smile at us same as all the other brothers except he always seemed positively annoyed at our presence.
Uyi was older than TJ and easier to deal with but he was quite absent-minded and didn’t pay us very much attention. Nosa was a workout freak who practically lived in the shed that housed the equipment while Ireneh’s mother was a very strict disciplinar
ian who cursed every so often and gave out thunder when she was angry which wasn’t rare. I was quite terrified of her and always put on my best behaviour the instant she showed up in our gathering.
I never got to meet Ireneh’s father although there were a few men who appeared now and again. According to Ireneh, they were his uncles Tobe, Seun and John. I knew of course that the term ‘uncle’ wasn’t literal. Besides the fact that ‘uncle’ was used more as a term of respect towards an older male than anything else, Tobe and Seun, by their names, belonged to very different ethnic groups and both separate from Ireneh’s as well. Considering that Ireneh had talked to me previously about speaking with his father, I concluded the man must visit only rarely.
For the present though, the mother ran the house very efficiently and forcefully. We weren’t allowed in the sitting room except to do our homework; for anything else, we had to make do with the open yard. That wasn’t a problem at all; we needed all the space anyway for the games we played. We also steered clear of the workout shed these days.
Surprisingly though, Ireneh still talked a lot about the shed and what went on in there but never attempted to give Eze the grand tour which wasn’t like him. Either TJ had indeed got to him or he meant to keep us out of trouble. As far as I was concerned, this was a good thing because, although, there was no telling if Ireneh still toyed around in there on his own, I felt our visits to his house would be more fun without any of the experience of my first visit. So those weeks passed pretty peacefully; we spent a lot of time together beginning from when the school bell went for end of lessons.
‘Hey, look! Look at ten kobo,’ Eze called out, stopping suddenly as we walked the muddy street that led away from the school on a typically very hot afternoon. He made to pick it up.
‘What do you want to do?’ I said. ‘Do you know who dropped it there? Do you know if they haven’t rubbed it with medicine? Maybe you want to turn into a cat.’ I was referring to another one of those rumoured voodoo waves that had hit the city and lingered ever since. This time, the victim would be transformed into an animal or object for ritual purposes.
‘Or a dog or a goat,’ Ireneh helped.
‘Rubbish,’ Eze said. ‘I have heard all that rubbish before. Soon someone smart will come and pick it up and they won’t turn into anything.’
‘And how will you know when you won’t be there?’ I replied. ‘Oya if you want to, you pick it up and see.’ I made it sound like a threat and I could see uncertainty creep into Eze’s eyes.
‘Pick it up now,’ Ireneh challenged again. ‘I thought that you said we were talking rubbish? What are you waiting for then?’
‘If there is medicine on the money, then the person who dropped the money is supposed to be around,’ Eze replied clearly trying to dispel his own doubts.
‘Maybe the person is indeed around but you can’t see them. But even if they are not here, I am sure the medicine will send you as a cat or dog to their house. You will automatically know where to go, so you don’t need to worry.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Ha, ha,’ Ireneh and I burst into laughter. ‘Won’t you pick it up?’ I kept pushing. ‘Be quick, we have to move on.’
‘It’s only ten kobo,’ Eze said dismissively stepping over the coin and walking on. ‘And it is even dirty anyway.’
‘You think?’ It was Ireneh. He swiftly jumped back to the coin, picked it up and put it in his pocket. ‘That is one buttermint sweet,’ he crowed triumphantly.
‘Thief!’ Eze roared. ‘How you go…?’
‘You didn’t have the liver to claim it,’ Ireneh answered back, ‘so it is mine.’
I was a little shocked that Ireneh hadn’t cared about all the medicine stuff we said about the coin. I would have been a little reluctant to pick up the money myself but I could not disagree with his logic. ‘Yes now. That’s true. You weren’t ready to die Eze, so it is Ireneh money.’
‘I am sure both of you planned this. You were simply trying to make me leave the money. Thieves, both of you. So you will share the ten kobo ehn?’
‘We didn’t plan anything,’ I replied on behalf of Ireneh who’d stopped listening and was strutting proudly in front of us. ‘Ireneh, let’s buy sweets or something here,’ I said pointing to a roadside kiosk behind which sat a very dark and slender man in a white full length kaftan.
The boy stopped, considered the suggestion for a fraction of a second and turned to the kiosk owner. ‘Mallam, how much for buttermint?’ we heard him question. ‘No, give us three. See, there are three of us and we will become your customers,’ he haggled. He managed to come away with only two sweets giving one to Eze and me to share between us.
It was a messy business using teeth to crack the sweet inside the wrapper into parts and transferring piece after piece to the other person’s hand counting at the same time to ensure equal distribution.
VI
‘Casting out Devils’
‘We have started inter-house sports,’ I announced excitedly to my family late in June. The older members looked at me like it was my tummy that had just made a noise. I wondered what I’d said wrong.
‘So which house are you in?’ Njideka asked.
‘We have not been given houses yet,’ I replied annoyed they weren’t taking me seriously.
‘How can you start inter-house sports without houses?’ Njideka asked again.
‘I don’t know but we marked the playground today. We drew the lines where the races will take place just like it is at the stadium. Some of our class even ran today – hundred and two hundred metres and also relay,’ I answered back challenging their scepticism.
All that morning, Mr Aworetan, the P.E teacher had broken up our class and a few other classes into little groups. We had run a few races as he whittled our numbers down to retain the winners of every stage. The Friday of the week before, we had taken a whole morning out of class to draw the track lines on the school grounds and that had got us all really excited. We’d seen lines like those on TV as sprinters competed against each other, lined up unevenly in a diagonal which we thought was unfair and tearing down curving bends where they strangely evened out. I’d watched a few of those races and happily cheered the very few athletes who appeared wearing our colours. So now that we were making the same lines on our playground, it seemed like we were bringing that TV experience to real life. Besides, kids always wanted to race; even after we’d lost several races, we still pushed for more. We had no idea – and wouldn’t have cared anyway – that the teacher needed only the best for the finals.
‘Sir! I can run very fast. Let me run with them,’ we would cry at the man as he looked at the crowd and at the list in his hand trying to pick out the final member of a line-up.
‘I sir, I sir.’ More hand-raising.
And from a just run and lost, panting child; ‘Sir, is there another one? I want to run again.’
Somewhere during the chaos, he’d tried to make us understand that all of that was in preparation for the inter-house sports event which we’d never had but should have in future. That was what I’d misconstrued to mean we’d already begun the event.
‘Well you can’t have inter-house sport if you don’t have a house,’ Njideka said not backing down. ‘Can’t you see what it is called – inter house sport,’ she added stressing every one of the three words. ‘Sports between different houses.’
‘But that was what our P.E teacher said.’
‘That doesn’t mean that you have begun the inter-house sports,’ Mama said. And then to console me added, ‘but it could mean that you are preparing for inter-house sports.’
‘Anyway, we ran today and our teacher talked about inter-house sports so maybe soon, he will give us houses,’ I said not caring anymore, a little encouraged by Mama’s input.
By the end of that week, Mr Aworetan had compiled his final list; we never knew what he was about. We just seemed to be constantly running races not that we had a problem with that. It was muc
h better and much more appreciated than being in class; this was play, whatever anyone called it. During that week, everyone recorded a regular attendance in school. I’d never at any other time seen so many children in my class in one day. It felt like two classes in one; even Ireneh showed up every day of that week and punctually.
Well, to be fair, he had now been present at school for every day of three weeks in a row and he was beginning to look a permanent feature in class once more. He had filled out as well – well, lost his emaciated look – and had regained a good portion of his appetite for trouble. There had been one or two little brawls with the girls but these had happened while Mrs Deji was in class and had fizzled out almost immediately when she turned her attention onto the trio. By and large, however, Ireneh hadn’t really shown any inclination towards a fight and although his seat mates now seemed to perpetually wear the same kind of expression one might find on a gazelle cornered by a lion, especially when the teacher was absent, the lad never carried through the threat his very person was.
Gradually, his past troubles became a thing of the past and he reintegrated into class like he was always there. His grades improved and he became more and more his old self; his stories were now more bizarre and more varied. Thankfully, most of them were culled from films and all he did was introduce some new twist and plenty of seasoning to the already complicated plot. He took his empty place in class football, dismissed the debating society and developed a huge interest in the boy scouts movement. As to be expected, we heard stories about this new development too.