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Healing Our Hurt: Chideziri POV
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2020-11-26 07:52:50With November on its way, the sun shines more often. Heavy veiled clouds ebb to reveal the naked Port-Harcourt sky—so pale it's ashy. It is fascinating how a billowy, lean sheet of gas can conceal behind itself a thing as wonderful and whole as the sun, blotting it out like only ink can.
Chantelle is staying with her elder sister, now—not her aunt, correction noted. She goes to school from Eneka, and does not have as much liberty as she used to. Immediately it's five o'clock she has to go. Her sister works shifts at the hospital, and her shifts always end at that time of the day—early evening, stuffed somewhere between late afternoon and twilight time.
Now that she's far away from her stepfather, has her sister to take care of her, I thought I'd ask her if she had told anyone else about the episodes, if she'd told her sister. Basically, if she wanted to report it to the police. She only shook her head vigorously. So vigorousl
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They hoot, holler, whoop, and cheer after I have finished. They didn't even let me have a break to catch my air. To feel self conscious after the last full-stop. The quietness that's overtaken Abe since Chantelle was hospitalized parts like a drape. He grins approvingly, and waits for a moment before he fills his ears with Nasty C, again. Pascal leans over, daps me up and snaps fingers with me. He tells me, "You get flows die, leave am." Ahmed does a wiggly waist dance thing in his sitting cross-legged pose. Joking, he says it's a good thing that not everyone in the squad lacks the essential sense of art. Chideziri beams at me, so bright, so hard, it's as if he's the full moon and I'm a moonlit night. Chantelle? Looks as if I gave her Mars, Pluto, and a crown and sceptre to rule over both of them.
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky Palms Open, Asking: Amanda POV
Sunday, after the lengthy grueling session that has become church, Aunty seed comes to pick me up. Okay, redress.Actually, Church isn't so piss-poor like it used to; with Chideziri in the vessel, I'm not sure it can ever be. He made us relocate to Teens Church ASAP—which ordinarily should feel like a demotion. Strangely it doesn't. The instant I stepped through those glass paned doors—saw how the dust sprinkled rays of Sunday's sun sliced past the windows, how teenagers our age where all about, doing what they wanted, on their phones chatting, making jokes—both dry and good ones—before the Sunday school teacher arrived—I was absolutely certain I would love the place.And I did.Some days, I pause in between doing goofy stuff like shaking it to Cardi B (of all people), singing loudly in the shower into my microphone/toothbrush and performing my poems to the mirror with the shower turned on
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky Palms Open, Asking: Chideziri POV
I finally summon up the bravado to ask Mumsi about the divorce on Saturday, late at night when she's still walking about the house with her faithful kerosene lantern, checking if all the windows, louvres and doors are closed. According to her, she's had that smoky lantern since her university days and though there are four electricity-powered lamps in this vicinity alone, she puts that thing in her room every night, at the farthest corner, filled to its brim with kero, flickering yellow on the walls and making every shadow creepier and more twisted. She sets down the lantern in the middle of the parlour. While she talks, I watch the yellow flame behind the glass globe, bouncing up and down on the wick, floating like a fairy. Just floating there. And she gets to a point somewhere, where the story of Amanda's Dad tumbles out. She doesn't finish it because her voice splinters at a bridge, and it can't go on. I don't say a word. Don't offer comforting words or a tissue; I don't have any
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky Ex-caution To A Private World: Amanda POV
I bop my head to the afro-beat playing on the keke's radio. We took an after-school trip to Eneka, to scope Chantelle's new place. "Think of it as an excursion." Abe said.Chantelle's big sister caught a night shift at work—unfortunately for her, fortunately for us. Pascal suggested we should go see the place. No one disagreed; that I heard of. Chantelle's dead quiet through out the keke ride. It is very obvious, since she's seated on my lap—there's only enough space for four persons in a tricycle, including the driver with whom Pascal has to share the slightly wider front-seat. Pascal is holding onto the rod overhead for dear life, sitting so his knees are outside the vehicle. He takes the opportunity of being upfront to holler and hoot at every passing car, until Abe makes him stop, only by telling him, "Oboy, can you please stop disgracing our uniform.". It makes us all snicker, Chideziri too, who has no right whatsoever to
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky Ex-caution To A Private World: Chideziri POV
Believe it or nah, fate hasn't made any attempt to fuck me for a while now. It's been a long time since Daddy showed up, and I wonder some days when he pop up and crash my parade. Mumsi still slips out on cool Saturday afternoons. I look away—not even imagining what is going on is the goal. School is dope, too, all my tests were As besides Maths which was a close call away from a grade D—I guess somethings never change, eh.The squad and I spend break-time outside, sitting on the madly uncomfortable stone-bench that makes your bum feel like stones too, under the tree behind admin-block, that has besetting branches hanging so low they sweep the floor. I'm chewing on a pack of wafer sticks, pretending not to notice Amanda steal two from me. Abe and Pascal and Ahmed are battling with those anti-teeth doughnuts they make at school. Those things are so tough, the first day I tried to bite into one I almost lost my canines in the process. Chantelle's sipping her u
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky Green White Blue: Amanda POV
Monday, November, the 19th is the first day I wear my glasses to school. Chantelle spots me first, trudging down the hallway; she barks a laugh that makes me want to peel the spectacles off of my face and slip them into my pocket. I mean, I even try to. She doesn't let me. She says, "Now you resemble a proper professor.". She wraps an arm around my waist and herds me into the classroom, to my humiliation. Chideziri is playing X and Os with Ojeh on a piece of paper, nodding slowly to music from teal-coloured Ahmed's headset which is wound around his neck, giving off green and blue lights. At first, he doesn't seem to recognize me. Then he does, and a big-ass grin cracks open his face. He meets me halfway, takes my cheeks in his hands and pulls fondly."Ikuku."With my glasses, I can see for the first time that he has a small pockmark under his lip, small and marking. His face isn't as smooth as it used to be; and again it makes me want to slid off the thick lenses
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky Green White Blue: Chideziri POV
Amanda returns from outside school utterly short of breath.Her honey skin has gone bright ruddy. An explosion of raw redness that makes her face like a ready to plop tomato. I laugh, initially. Then she catches her breath enough to tell us what Abe and Pascal got cut up in. And it isn't even anywhere near good tidings. Dike is up and running before I can even blink. Half of SS3 is behind him, chicks and Gs. He storms into SS2 class where they are still waiting for their own after-school lessons."As e be so kasala don burst—" he's saying, when I breeze past the hallway, Ojeh and Cyril hot on my heels.Soon it's like the entire Senior secondary has emptied out into the field. Sprinting to the gates. Rushing past the gates. Storming the streets. Curving the corner, like a river breaking a dam—rushing.—Have you ever seen PH-city boys run into a fight?People say a lot of stuff about how and why PH-city
Last Updated : 2020-11-26She Belongs To The Sky URÏ: A Poet, Rising: Amanda POV
Chideziri makes me go the Poetry club on Friday, after normal school classes. Little feats runs these minut clubs every two days of the month, social gathering time. These clubs allow for the sustainable development of the child's intelligence quotient and encourage creativity and self-reliance—at least that's what the club manifestoes say. Chideziri is in the art club, because apparently, membership is compulsory. I told him that it would be nice if I joined the art club, too. I did not tell him that it would be nicer if we sat together at the back of the class and he ran his fingers over the M traced into my palm, like he often does. Either way, he said, "No. Absolutely not. You are only searching for an excuse yo sit next to me.""Of course not." I said, grimacing. "I don't need a babysitter."He laughed, pulled at my cheeks and said, "Says who?"Then he walked me to Poetry club. My hands shook the entire way—like
Last Updated : 2020-11-26
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