No happy time was happier than the closing
day of school even if came from a scary village secondary school like the pride
of my village, Mapurulundi Secondary School
where I was now a form two.
Enough of the fantasies now, enough of the
love theories and talks, because Claire too was coming to the village as their
school too was closing and I couldn’t wait for the meeting in my grandmothers
nappier grass where we normally made sweet memories by chewing sugar cane and
chasing butterflies. As we would villagely put it, it was time for biology
paper three because paper one and two were already done theoritically by
telling my classmates of my girlfriend who studied in Alliance National School.
Having won this year’s National Drama
Festivals award of the best Narrator, this was going to be the starting point
because I am usually a very shy guy.
Hooray ! Onward and fast forward, three days
later, Claire arrived home but she didn’t come to see me immediatley.
Aii ! The second and third day too. Still she
didn’t come. Seventh eighth, ninth, tenth, no Claire still. Aii ! Was it
another lonely heart ache and pain that I was to face ?
I stole my grandmothers phone to call Claire
on the number she wrote on my white cow boy underwear that I have never washed
ever since she hugged me for the first time.
“Hallo”, I started with that romantic voice
of mine that is always at peak when I wake up. The response on the other side
of the phone was, “HALLOOO”, an elephantic bass of course of Claire’s father
and my faked response was, “Nilidhani ni customer care wa KPLC” (Sorry I
thought it’s the customer care of Kenya Power and Lighting Company, and I
switched off the poor phone.
The next day was a Saturday and hell broke
lose. I was still sleeping on the floor on my papyrus mat. My mouth shining
with nile perch oil on my mouth, hair rolled and with my sleeping shorts that
were torn on the buttocks.
Somebody knocked and entered with the door
because it was a very weak door made of water hyacinth stems woven together. It
was Claire’s father. He had brought Claire with him to our home.
He massively stood in front of me. Claire
looked pale, rusty, confused and defeated next to her father.
‘You made Claire pregnant so that you marry
her and spoil her scholarship of Australia, donge ?” Claire’s father shouted
infront of my face.
I couldn’t run away because he would see the
back of my torn pair of shorts so I just stood still.
My grandmother joined the scene, they talked
in a lot of vernacular sentences until the had an agreement that Claire was to
be taken for a pregnancy test first.
That night, as I went to swim in the pond
next to our home, I was so confused. As I removed my clothes, I started looking
at my penis and abusing it, ‘you are
stupid, you can’t even think, you are so stupid’. I was so annoyed by this
appendage. What I feared most was the result of the pregnancy test.
And when the results came the next day, I was
a relieved flesh within my clothes as Claire’s father said that Claire was not
pregnant at all. Her stomach was growing due to the porridge she loved drinking
so much at Alliance High School.
In the next three weeks, I was more
frustrated as I didn’t see Claire because she was busy preparing for her long
journey to study in Australia.
The door of being single was wide open and
inevitable since those days there was no facebook.
And Claire went, without even a hug, and upto
now, I still hold on to the sweet and sad memories.
[ B.O.B A Whoof Deh © 2014, It Wasn't Me ]
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