BOARDING SCHOOL changed Kosi: It tanned his yellow complexion, and sprinkled his skin with scars which he claimed were from insect bites; it broke and deepened his voice; it quietened him―drained him of excitement and numbed him to all the cool stuff that made us alive. He no longer giggled in anticipation of the troubles we were going to hatch when I showed him my new toys. He only flashed me a weak smile, a smile that indicated a faint interest in whatever mischief I was lubing him up for.
He lied when I asked him to race me to Saint Peter’s Hill as we used to do. The lie told starkly and heedlessly, without the carefulness of someone intending to hide the truth. Kosi rarely told lies, because he almost never had the need to, but whenever he did he executed it with a dazzling sleight. Which made the whole thing troubling.
I had obtained a very big wheel, which is a round tendinous material gotten from burnt tyres and made up of a bunch of thin steels rolled and clumped into one. We used to move this wheel with a spoke, a single thin steel hand-bent to form a depression that guides and controls the speed of the wheel. I wanted to show Kosi this large wheel of mine, how new and sturdy it was. And that it required more deftness to navigate. But he turned me away with a lie.
Kosi’s mother, a tall round woman whom I thought was kind because she said yes to almost everything Kosi and I asked her, had answered the kitchen door when I visited Kosi.
“Thank God you are here, Kene,” she said after my greeting, relieved. “Please, drag Kosi outside. He has refused to leave this house since he came back from school.”
Twin gas cookers sat atop a large cupboard, newly constructed platforms hung above the kitchen wall and housed spice boxes, plates, pots, and other cooking utensils. Their kitchen seemed to have undergone a renovation because the last time I was here, before Kosi entered boarding school, the twin gas cooker and hanging platforms didn’t exist. The kitchen sink was empty, wiped clean, but still retained some wetness as if someone just finished doing the dishes. Three tubers of yam lay beside the door leading into the house.
“Ok ma,” I said, bubbling with the delight of being needed.
I met Kosi sitting on his bed, brooding over one of his notebooks. He didn’t acknowledge my presence. I tiptoed behind him and shouted aargh! in his ears to startle him. But he didn’t flinch, he remained unmoved like a statue. He mentioned my name quietly to show that he was aware of my presence. And when I asked him to come race me to Saint Peter’s Hill, he lied, saying he had been tasked to wash plates.
“Go ahead; I’ll join you when I’m done.”
His face betrayed no hint of enthusiasm, just an empty expression that relayed an obvious disinterest in an interest we previously not only shared but enjoyed. Leaving his house, it became clear to me that Kosi had been irrevocably altered by boarding school, but I wished he kept those fractures to himself.
I, too, had undergone my own changes―my youngest uncle, Anayo, who studied English and Literary Studies, had made me read some of his school books; books that were a little interesting and a little boring―but I never allowed who I was in Kosi’s absence to spill into, and spoil, who I was in his presence. In my own school I had impressed my teacher by getting a perfect score during my Spelling Class. He had patted me twice on the back and said with a grin, “Keep it up.” I, too, had a life behind Kosi. But I made the decision to abandon the life I led alone for the one we both shared whenever we were together. It made no sense to me that Kosi wouldn’t do the same.
Kosi had called me a child who refused to grow up during our fight. He had staggered under the force of my blow and knelt on one leg. His palms holding his jaw. I saw the fear on his face morph into rage as though the blow awoke something that was resting in him.
While I queried him by shouting, “Isi adikwa gi mma? Are you mad?” in a confused, uncertain, and a little agitated way.
Kosi saying “Grow up!” shut me up. He rose to his feet and with a bloodied mouth he asked “When are you going to stop playing like a kid? Don’t you get tired of child’s play?”
In his words were condescension, a haughtiness intended to bruise my feelings but my attention was drawn to how badly he bruised the Igbo he spoke. Kosi’s Igbo was now poshified and outlandish; he picked them one by one as one did while sieving beans. It was grating. I resisted the urge to correct him with a slap.
“Child, that is what you are. A child who has refused to grow up.” It amused me a little, and angered me so much that Kosi mentioned growing up when I was two months older than him. If any of us should grow up, it should be him, Kosi, because he was the younger one. Is this what boarding school does to someone? It makes you think you are older and more mature simply because you have acquired some docility.
***
Street legend had it that I was a fragile kid whose greatest fear was someone telling him they didn’t want to be his friend. I bawled when taunted with that statement. To every kid, the threat of friendship seemed real, but kids outgrew that threat after a while. To me, the threat of friendship was real, and never-ending, peculiarly because I was cross-eyed, with a skin the colour of a burnt pot, and everything about me inspired people to ridicule. It surprised me when a boy whose hair coiled into tiny round balls told me he wanted to spin my Korosa.
Korosa is a toy made up of pen cover, and the plastic lid used in sealing Tiger batteries. The pen covers used are always BICs. The pen cover’s extended arm is broken off and evened out by scratching that broken area on cemented ground. Afterwards, the battery lids are worn on the neck of the pen cover. This new kid left the other kids who played Game-Start, a group and more fun game, and came to the loner spinning Korosa. He looked funny with his two missing upper and two missing lower teeth. But I didn’t laugh. Being a subject of ridicule had made me cautious about laughing at other kids. I only laughed at things, never at people. I stared at his mouth, fascinated by how the absence of his front teeth had slurred his speech.
“I was removing the eraser on my pencil when they came off,” he explained as he noticed how I gawked at his mouth.
“All four of them?”
“Ehe na, two sef stuck on the pencil.”
“Did it bleed?” I asked.
“Hm, enough to fill a cup. My mother had to feed me malt and milk to replenish the blood I lost.”
“Ndo,” I said, and told him my name. “I am Kenechukwu.”
“Kene, I am Kosisochukwu.” He smiled. Never ashamed to display his insecurity. Never ashamed to be himself. “Now, will you teach me how to spin that thing?”
“This thing,” I raised the Korosa, “is called Korosa.”
“Ok, teach me how to spin Korosa.”
We laughed.
I taught him how to spin Korosa; how to hold it with the tips of your thumb and middle finger and to spin and release as if you were snapping your fingers. He bungled a few times before he got it. The next day, he was at the door of our house, telling my mum he wanted to see me. Why? He wanted me to build Korosa for him.
Kosi talked like his mouth was filled with his tongue. At first, I thought it was because he lost his teeth. But he grew new ones and still talked as if his tongue was in the way of his speech. Other kids made fun of him because of that. But I didn’t, I couldn’t. This might have been why he gravitated towards me. Maybe he saw in me a kindred spirit, a person of similar affliction. I wasn’t sure.
Weeks after our first meeting, I asked why he didn’t play Game-Start with other kids.
“Korosa is cooler,” he said.
In my mind, I interpreted it as him finding me cooler than other kids. He became an easy ally, my best friend, especially in the face of other kids who ridiculed us, who ridiculed me. Kosi never told people to stop making fun of me but he never, for once, not even when he was angry with me, roasted me the way they did. He neither stood up for me, nor did he stand against me—and to me, that was enough.
During rainy season we wandered the bush behind our compound—the blades of grass making our skin itch, Kosi’s skin turning red; we gulped the rancid smell of the open drainage pathway running behind the building without any care—chasing butterflies and hunting grasshoppers. Butterflies are faster, more erratic, and more fragile. Kosi caught one once and before we could play with our brightly-coloured friend, it stopped moving, and died.
Kosi loved butterflies more than grasshoppers. One time he caught a grasshopper, the black and yellow-coloured type, that smelled awful. He caged our tiny friend in his hand. The minute he brought it close to his face, the smell wafted into his nose. He bunched his nose, and said,
“Hmm, this one smells bad.”
Curious, I asked him to let me perceive it. He brought his hand to my face, and as I tried to take in the smell, he rubbed his stinking hand on my face, and ran away, laughing. I went after him, chasing him around the compound. But it was of no use. Kosi was taller and faster than I was. He had long strides and left me far behind whenever we raced. To further disadvantage me the air I breathed was being soiled. I remember the smell; thick and lethal to the olfactory senses, like a dead fish on the brink of decay. After we squashed the smelly grasshopper, the awful smell lingered in his palm, and on my face, until we washed it off with soap and water. Since then Kosi detested hoppers, and called them smelly hoppers.
Grasshoppers are slower, less erratic, and sturdier. I liked them. We plucked their hind legs off to stop them from hopping away. Kosi didn’t know how to pluck them off. It was the only thing I couldn’t teach him. When I plucked them off, I did so gently, almost painlessly I imagine because the grasshoppers always survived. Kosi’s hands had no gentility. He tore the poor creatures apart, killing them without intending to in the name of plucking off their hind legs. We played with them: Let them go, they leaped into the air and dropped on the ground almost immediately.
Sometimes, Kosi’s mother spotted us roaming that bush from their balcony. She would chide us, telling us that the sweat running all over our skin did not repel snakes. We moved to a different playground whenever Kosi’s mother told us to leave the bush.
The entrance of our compound was our favourite spot during the rainy season. A newly dug well had some excavated mud around it. And in front of the compound, before the red kerosene tanks lined at the foot of the pavement, was soft ground that didn’t have too many stones. Kosi and I set up our playground there. We drew a small rectangle on the soft wet ground. We divided the rectangle into two, the way I did whenever I was asked to compare things in a tabular form. He took the left side and I the right side. We would take turns throwing nails into the boxes of our separate sides, making sure the nails stick before they are counted. Whoever filled his portion first won.
The interesting thing was that the nails required a unique finesse to make them stick on the wet ground. For starters, the nail was held on its neck between the thumb and the side of the forefinger, with the nail’s tip pointing upwards. To increase our chances of success, we used tall fat nails. Thin, bent, or crooked nails were harder to throw. Sticking these nails into the ground, we could see the older kids playing football on the untarred road just before the bakery.
Manna Bakery was two blocks away from our compound. Walking down the street the delicate milky fragrance of their bread filled the air. On some days Kosi said the aroma invaded his house; he could perceive it all the way from the second floor. Just before Manna Bakery’s main entrance, along the tall and barbed-wired fence, were piles of wood used in the oven. A lorry came every two days to dump more wood there. Kosi and I liked watching giant woods tumble out of that lorry. But what we liked more was the jack-like device underneath the cart that elongated to tilt the cart, emptying its content on the ground. We called that jack-like device the lorry’s penis, and exchanged knowing looks the minute it surfaced.
Sometimes when the lorry wasn’t making any deliveries, we stole matchsticks from my mother’s kitchen, looked for nails on the ground, and picked up a big stone on our way to the wood pile. We would find a big wood and dusted debris and weak old barks off it. Kosi pressed the nail on the wood to make a nail-wide hole. I scraped the head of the matchsticks into the tiny hole. Afterwards, I pushed a nail into the hole and hammered the nail with the stone to produce a small bang. That small bang thrilled us. We called it knockout. If the matchsticks we stole were plentiful, we took turns making the knockouts.
One day, matchsticks were in short supply, so I had to do the hitting since I was the one who stole the matchsticks from my mother’s kitchen. Kosi insisted that he too wanted to hit it. I said no. The main materials were from my mother’s kitchen, and I carried out the bulk of mischief: I deserved to hit the nail. Kosi refused and we got into a quarrel, and then a struggle and the stone fell off his hand and crushed my thumb. The pain was sharp and thorough, burning my finger. I cried nonstop, my face covered with phlegm and tears. Helpless and unable to console me, Kosi burst into tears too. When Kosi’s mother saw us, it was difficult to tell what happened until she noticed my hand covered in blood. Kosi got an earful from his mother, and that was it. I imagined if the roles were reversed my mother would have made sure a long cane was broken into smaller bits on my body.
Weeks after the accident at Manner Bakery, Kosi discovered some tyres and wheels under their staircase. With tyres we rolled to Saint Peter’s Hill and then raced down to our compound. Nobody made a two-lap race, up and down, with tyres. They were hefty, and difficult to roll, let alone roll up the hill. It was easier to nudge them down the hill, and follow them fast-fast. We reserved two-lap race for the wheel. The trip from our house to Saint Peter’s was exhilarating. We started from the border between our house and the next compound, then past the next compound, past the Farm House, past the red gate house, past the yellow block of flats, past mama Ekene’s shop, and then we climbed the steep beyond mama Ekene’s shop before Saint Peter’s Church comes into view. By the time we have wheeled down from Saint Peter’s with our wheel and spoke or tyre, our shirts would be soaked in sweat.
The wheel was our last form of play before Kosi left for boarding school.
***
Kosi and I fought on the last weekend before Christmas, the evening we had the End of the Year Party in our compound. The wide space that was usually crammed full with cars was empty, the cars parked outside the gate, and Uncle Jude, one of our neighbours who worked at Manna Bakery, set the stage.
Uncle Jude threw a silk material on the tables, and had us children arrange the hired plastic chairs. The rented chairs came stacked together and we climbed the stacks, sitting on the topmost chair, and being thrilled by the height, by the feeling of having people at your feet. After my turn, I stood below and thought Kosi needed to know the thrill of sitting on stacked plastic chairs. I looked around but he wasn’t with us. I imagined Kosi cooped up in his house, quarantined, waiting for whatever infection he contracted from his boarding school to run its course.
In the backyard, the mothers of each family in our compound congregated around a big pot on fire. They prepared the food to be eaten at the party. Kosi’s mother stirred the pot with a long stirrer and my mother sat on a plastic chair peeling onions.
“Kene,” Kosi’s mother called me.
I answered.
“Go upstairs, tell anyone you see in the house to give you a bowl.”
“Ok.”
I zipped upstairs and rapped on their door.
Kosi answered. He was alone. He looked flabbergasted. Since he lied to me about not racing me to Saint Peter’s Hill, we had not spoken. I sulked for days, but playing had not been the same since that time.
“What do you want?” He said coldly.
“Your mum asked me to get a bowl from your house.” I said, following him into the house.
He brought a stool in the kitchen, climbed it so his hands could reach the shelves. As he combed through the shelf, searching for a bowl, I rattled off about the stacks of chairs, how he needed to try it, how fun it was, and that every kid downstairs was enjoying it. Kosi climbed down from the stool, a red bowl in his hand.
“Will you come downstairs?” I asked.
“No.” He handed me the bowl.
“Why? Why don’t you play with me again?” I looked hard at Kosi and wondered if I had it all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t boarding school that changed him. Maybe he now couldn’t stand me; he disliked me, he disliked playing with me. Did he prefer playing with other kids in my absence? No, I didn’t think so. If he preferred to play with other children without me, I would have seen him trotting around with someone else. What happened to Kosi in boarding school?
Kosi took a long stride into me, held my face with his two hands. His hands were warm and shaky. I wondered what he was up to. I looked into his eyes and I could see a hint of desire, fearfulness, and the little Kene that I used to know hidden somewhere in those deep brown eyes. Kene pushed his face into mine. His mouth was on my mouth the way people did on TV. The bowl dropped from my hands and shattered on the tiled floor. I froze, paralyzed by shock and uncertainty. None of my body parts responded to my movement. I felt Kosi’s tongue prising my lips apart, the fusty smell of saliva wafting into my nostrils. Pleasure and disgust swirled inside me. I wasn’t sure what annoyed me more—that he tried to force a kiss or the idea that I liked it. When my body became responsive, I pushed Kosi away, rubbed his spit off my mouth with the back of my palm and swung my right arm to his face. While he mouthed off about how long I intend to be a kid, and how I should grow up, he retreated to his room, and I followed him closely, repeatedly asking, “Are you insane?”
It was him calling me a child that peeved me the most. I threw another blow at him, and Kosi ducked and pushed me away. I attacked him again, and locked him by his waist. Kosi drummed blows on my back, my breath faltered with each pound, but I held on tightly. I shoved him, and he receded until his reading table, with books arranged neatly above it, cushioned him. He tossed me on the bed like a piece of cloth he donned off. Kosi looked defensive, didn’t want to fight me, but would protect himself from any and all attacks from me. My breath stank with rage. I jumped down from the bed and we began swinging arms clumsily at each other. My hand grazed his cheeks. “Kene!” He cried out and dashed towards me. He rammed his fist into my stomach. I saw the blow coming but I wasn’t fast enough to stop it. For a moment, my lungs were emptied of air, totally robbed of oxygen. As pain washed over me like a fever, I gulped and gulped for breath. Kosi pushed me to the wall. On hitting the wall, air came into my lungs. I dropped on the floor and coughed out blood. Sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall, I started crying. Kosi dropped on the bed and started crying too.
Kosi’s skin was now red; his cheek had laceration, the map of my fingers.
“I am sorry,” I said.
“I am sorry too,” he replied.
We sat in silence and in the clutter of Kosi’s room. I could hear the voices of women cooking downstairs. The smell of blood and sweat dulled the smell of floral air freshener that always pervaded Kosi’s room. I was tired and still shaken up by the throb of his blow. Kosi and I had never fought. We often quarreled, but that was it. Never had our quarrel evolved into fist fights. Now, because of boarding school I am fighting with my best friend, we’d drawn blood from each other.
“Kene,” Kosi said, “bia, come, let me tell you about boarding school.” I moved to the bed and sat beside him.
