by Solomon, Barbara H. (EDT); Rampone, W. Reginald, Jr. (EDT)
At last I knocked at the mottled green door.
“Come in.”
Mr. Aziza’s authoritative voice hit me like a blow, startling me. I opened the door and walked in, my anger still smouldering . . .
Mr. Aziza, the principal of the secondary school where I was teaching, was seated behind a medium-sized desk made of cheap white wood and thickly coated with varnish. Books, files, letter trays and loose sheets of paper jostled for a place on the desk. He raised his coconut-shaped head, closed the file he was reading, removed his plastic-framed spectacles and peered at me.
“Yes, Mrs. Cheta Adu. What do you want?” His voice was on the defensive and the look on his ridged face was intimidating.
I took a deep breath. “The bursar has just told me, Sir, that you told him to withhold my salary.”
We were paid irregularly. Although it was the end of January, the salary in question was for October of the previous year. Four months without any salary and yet we went to work regularly.
“Yes, I did, Mrs. Cheta Adu.” Mr. Aziza’s small, narrow eyes pierced me like a lethal weapon. As one teacher had put it, he paralysed his prey with his eyes before dealing a death blow to them.
“What have I done, Sir?” I asked, trying to load the word Sir with as much sarcasm as I could to indicate how I felt inside.
Mr. Aziza fingered his bulbous nose, a part of his body which had been the butt of many a teacher’s joke. He was known to love food more than anything else, and one female teacher had once said that most of what he ate went into his nose.
“You were away from school without permission for four days last week,” Mr. Aziza finally declared.
My anger, which a few minutes ago had reduced to a simmer, suddenly began to bubble like a pot of ogbono soup when the fire under it is poked.
I said as calmly as I could, “In those four days, Sir, I almost lost my baby. I had already explained the circumstances to you. My baby became very ill suddenly. I had to rush him to hospital. For those four days, Sir, he battled for his life.”
“And so?” Mr. Aziza intoned.
Someone knocked at the door and I turned to see the Second Vice-Principal’s bearded face appear as he opened it. “I’ll be back,” a thin-lipped, hair-fringed mouth said and disappeared. The appearance of the bearded face was like a comic scene in a Shakespearean tragedy.
I turned to Mr. Aziza and, in answer to his question, I reminded him that I had sent someone to tell him that my baby was in hospital.
“After you’ve been away from school for days,” Mr. Aziza complained.
“Yes, Sir, but my baby was in real danger and I was too upset to write. I had thought you would understand.”
“And did you bother to find out whether your friend gave your message to me or not?”
“She told me she delivered it a day after I sent her to you. You were not in the office when she first called, and then she forgot all about it till the next day. I’ve already apologized for all the delay, Sir.”
Mr. Aziza opened another file and began to flip through it. “You will receive your salary at the end of February,” he said.
I gasped, “Do you mean I’ll have to wait till the end of February before I receive my salary?”
“Exactly.”
“That would make it five whole months without a salary!”
“I’m not interested in your calculations.”
Mr. Aziza was known for punishing his teachers by withholding their salaries. But I had not known him to withhold any teacher’s salary for more than two weeks at the most. He had always felt, and had said so in words and in action, that he was doing his teachers a favour by paying them even though the school belonged to, and was funded by, the state government.
“How am I going to feed my two sons, Sir?” I asked.
“That’s your problem, not mine,” Mr. Aziza replied.
I refused to think about this problem. January, as every low- and medium-salaried worker in my country knows from experience, was the longest month of the year. After the enormous compulsive and often senseless spending during Christmas and the New Year, a salaried worker was left with little money for the rest of January. And for those who had children in school, paying school fees and buying books and school uniforms for the new school year often became a nightmare. This year was worse for me because I and all the other teachers in the school were last paid in September of the year before.
“I am a widow, Sir,” I pleaded with Mr. Aziza. “I am the sole breadwinner for my family. Times are hard. My children cannot survive till the end of February without my next salary.”
Mr. Aziza said, “I don’t want to know, Mrs. Cheta Adu. My decision is final.”
He stood up, hitched his trousers up with his elbows, and walked to a window on his right and peered out of it. He was a small, wiry man, the type my mother often told me to beware of.
Helpless, I stood watching him, a man known for his inflexibility. I knew from my colleagues’ experiences that taking my case to the State Schools Management Board would be futile as Mr. Aziza had ingratiated himself with the powerful and high-ranking officers of the Board. As the principal of one of the elite schools in the state, he had helped them to get their children admitted into his school even when the spoilt ones amongst them did not pass the entrance examination. I also knew that taking Mr. Aziza to court was out of the question. Where would I get the money for a lawyer? Besides, civil cases had been known to last for months or even years because of unnecessary and often deliberate court adjournments.
Mr. Aziza walked back to his chair and sat down.
I looked hard at him and, without saying anything more, left his office. In a taxi taking me home, I thought about nothing else but Mr. Aziza. This was the second time I had found myself at his mercy. The first time was when, five years before, I was transferred to his school from a secondary school in Onitsha where I was teaching before my marriage. On reading the letter posting me to his school—I had delivered it to him personally—he had flung it at me and had declared, “I don’t want any more female teachers in my school, especially married ones.”
“What have we done?” I had wanted to know.
“You’re a lazy lot,” he had said. “You always find excuses to be away from school. Today it’s this child of yours becoming ill who must be taken to hospital, and tomorrow it’s the funeral of one relation or another.”
When he officially refused to give me a place in his school, I resorted to a tactic I had used successfully before. I kept calling at his office every day, often without uttering a word, until I broke his resistance and made him accept me. This time, however, I had the feeling that he would not budge, no matter what I did.
When I arrived home after five in the evening, my mother-in-law was walking up and down in front of my flat with my two-year-old son, Rapulu, tied on her back, and four-year-old Dulue trailing behind her.
“You’re late, Cheta,” my mother-in-law said. “I was beginning to think you were not going to come home.” She looked weary and worried.
“Sorry, Mama, I have some problems at school.” I walked to her after hugging Dulue, who had trotted to me. “And how is Rap?” I asked.
“He’s ill.”
I placed the back of my hand on my younger son’s forehead. It was piping hot.
“You’re not going to be ill again, Rapulu?” I said under my breath. Aloud I asked, “How long has he been running a temperature, Mama?”
“A short while after you left for school in the morning,” my mother-in-law replied.
I helped her untie Rapulu from her back and took him in, Dulue trotting behind me. I stripped Rapulu of his clothes, put him on the settee, fetched a bowl of cold water and a towel and began to sponge him down. He yelled and kicked, but I ignored him. Dulue, with his thumb in his mouth, k
ept on mumbling that he was hungry, while my mother-in-law stood speechless, watching me.
Presently, I remembered that I should have given Rapulu some fever medicine. I ran into the only bedroom in the flat and dashed out with a small bottle. Taking Rapulu in my arms, I gave him a teaspoonful of the bittersweet medicine and began to sponge him again.
My mother-in-law soon dozed off. Poor woman, she must have had a trying day. She was a widow too and I had brought her to help me look after my children. Bless her, for what could I have done if she had refused my offer? Another reason why I brought her to live with me was to save costs. I used to send her money every month to supplement the meagre proceeds from her farms.
We had a late lunch of yam and raw palm oil. It was the last piece of yam in the house. I skipped supper because I wanted to make sure that the garri and egusi soup which I had left would last for two nights.
The night was a long one. First I lay awake for fear that Rapulu might become worse, but fortunately the fever did not persist. Then I reviewed all that I had gone through since I lost Afam, my husband, who was an only child, in a ghastly motor accident a little more than a year before. He was a brilliant banker. We were at the university together, he studying banking and I mathematics. As luck would have it, we were posted to the same state for our National Youth Service. We became engaged at the end of our service and married shortly after. He died a fortnight after our fifth wedding anniversary and, ever since, my life had become an endless journey into the land of hardship and frustration. I had, under great pressure, spent all our savings to give my husband what my people and his had called a befitting burial, and what I saw as a senseless waste of hard-earned money.
For the better part of the night, I worried over how I was going to pay the January rent, how I was going to feed my two sons and my mother-in-law, and what I was going to do if Rapulu became so ill that he had to be hospitalized again. I already owed two of my friends some money and could not see myself summoning up the courage to go to them again.
I borrowed money again and for two long weeks I managed to feed my family, sometimes going without meals myself. I became irritable, and students complained that I was being too hard on them. My good-natured mother-in-law became equally touchy and nagged me incessantly. My two sons threw tantrums, spending a great deal of time crying. Soon I had no money left and no one to lend me more. I had reached a point when I had to do something drastic or allow my sons to die of hunger.
On the 23rd of February, after school hours, I went to Mr. Aziza’s office and once again pleaded with him to pay me.
“You’re wasting your time, Mrs. Cheta Adu,” he said. “I never change my mind. You will receive your salary on the twenty-eighth of February and not even one day earlier.”
I left his office and waited for him in the outer room. At four o’clock he left his office. I followed him to his house, which was situated near the school main gate, and he turned and asked me why I was following him. I remained silent. He opened the door and walked in. Quietly, I followed him into his sitting room and sat down without any invitation to do so. The room was sparsely furnished. A black-and-white television stood on top of the shelf next to a small transistor radio. Near the bookshelf was a small dining table and a steel-back chair.
Mr. Aziza lived alone. His wife and six children lived at Onitsha about one hundred and twenty kilometres away.
Mr. Aziza turned and faced me. “Look, Mrs. Adu, you’ll achieve nothing by following me like a dog. You may stay here forever, but you’ll not make me change my mind.” He disappeared through a door on the right.
Presently, his houseboy walked into the room and began to lay the table. The smell of jollof rice wafted around my nostrils, reactivating in me the hunger which had been suppressed by anger, depression, and desperation. The houseboy finished laying the table and left.
On impulse I left my chair, walked to the dining table and sat down on the chair beside it. Removing the lid on the plate, I stared at the appetizing mound of jollof rice. Then I grabbed the spoon beside the plate and began to eat. I ate quickly, and not only with relish, but also with vengeance and animosity.
I heard a door squeak and turned to see Mr. Aziza walk into the sitting room. His jaw dropped and his mouth remained open as he stared at me.
“What do you think you’re doing, Mrs. Cheta Adu?” he bellowed, finding his tongue at last. Disbelief was writen all over his face.
I ignored the question and continued to help myself to the rice. I scooped a large piece of meat and some rice into my mouth, my cheeks bulging.
Mr. Aziza strode to the table, snatched the spoon from me with his right hand and with his left snatched the plate of rice away from me. It was almost empty by now. I rose from the chair and moved a little bit back from him, thinking he was going to hit me.
He faced me, his eyes deadly. “Get out of my house, I say, get out!”
“Not until I receive my salary,” I said calmly. Desperation had given me a form of courage I had not experienced before. “I’ll wait for supper.”
Mr. Aziza barked at me, “Get out. Go to the bursar. Tell him I said he can pay you now.”
I said calmly, “He’ll not believe me. Why not give me a note for him?”
He scribbled a note, threw it at me and I grabbed it. Trying hard to suppress a smile, I said, “Thank you, Sir,” and left the room, still chewing the rubbery meat in my mouth.
E. C. OSONDU
E. C. Osondu was born in 1966 in Lagos, Nigeria, and worked in advertising before earning an MFA in Fiction at Syracuse University, where he was a fellow in the creative writing program. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as Agni, Guernica, Vice, Fiction, and The Atlantic. The story “Waiting” was awarded the prestigious Caine Prize for African Literature in 2009. In his collection of eighteen stories, Voice of America, published in 2010, Osondu dramatizes the plight of Nigerians desperate to leave the country as well as the disillusioning experiences they have upon arriving in America. He is currently a professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island, where he teaches creative writing and a variety of other English courses.
Voice of America
(2007)
I
We were sitting in front of Ambo’s provision store drinking the local gin ogogoro and Coke and listening to a program called Music Time in Africa on the Voice of America. We were mostly young men who were spending our long summer holidays in the village. Some of us whose parents were too poor to pay our school fees spent the period of the long vacation doing odd jobs in the village to enable us to save money to pay our school fees. Someone remarked on how clear the broadcast was, compared to our local radio broadcasts, which were filled with static. The presenter announced that there was a special request from an American girl whose name was Laura Williams for an African song and that she was also interested in pen pals from every part of Africa, especially Nigeria. Onwordi, who had been pensive all this while, rushed to Ambo the shopkeeper, collected a pen and began to take down her address. This immediately led to a scramble among us to get the address, too. We all took it down and folded the piece of paper and put it in our pockets and promised we were going to write as soon as we got home that night.
A debate soon ensued among us concerning the girl who wanted pen pals from Africa.
“Before our letter gets to her, she would have received thousands from the big boys who live in the city of Lagos and would throw our letters into the trash can,” Dennis said.
“Yes, you may be right,” remarked Sunday, “and besides even if she writes you, both of you may not have anything in common to share. But the boys who live in the city go to night clubs and know the lyrics of the latest songs by Michael Jackson and Dynasty. They are the ones who see the latest movies, not the dead Chinese kung-fu and Sonny Chiba films that Fantasia Cinema screens for us in the village once every month.
”
“But you can never tell with these Americans, she could be interested in being friends with a real village boy because she lives in the big city herself and is probably tired of city boys.” Lucky, who said this, was the oldest among us and had spent three years repeating form four.
“I once met an American lady in Onitsha where I went to buy goods for my shop,” Ambo the shopkeeper said. He hardly spoke to us, only listening and smiling and looking at the figures in his Daily Reckoner notebook.
We all turned to Ambo in surprise. We knew that he traveled to the famous Onitsha market, which was the biggest market in West Africa, to buy goods every week; we could hardly believe that he had met an American lady. Again, Onitsha market was said to be so big that half of those who came there to buy and sell were not humans but spirits. It was said that a simple way of seeing the spirits when in the market was to bend down and look through your legs at the feet of people walking through. If you looked well and closely enough, you would notice that some of them had feet whose soles did not touch the ground when they walked. These were the spirits. If they got a good bargain from a trader he would discover that the money in his money box miraculously grew every day, but any trader who cheats them would find his money disappearing from his money box without any rational explanation.
