Manuwa hostel, UNEC
tuesday 6:15am
Nonye woke up unhappy and tired, with a burning sensation in her eyes. She felt so unrefreshed, so pessimistic, after yet another night of unwanted wakefulness, another night of regret and melancholy and now, her mood was bitter.
Sitting on her six-spring bed, she wiped off the makeup she had just applied using the last piece of her make-up cleansing paper. After thirty minutes of painting and wiping, she wasn’t yet satisfied with how she looked. She wanted to look good, very good, to perhaps, get his eyes resting on her face again; yesterday, when she saw him at the hospital, he had coldly said ‘’how far’’ and walked away.
She got up from the bed and slowly walked to the window which had its blind rolled up. She still held the alcohol-damp cleansing paper and her pink make-up kit and, as she looked outside, fixing her stare first, at the dirty greenish wall of Adelabu hostel and then on the dusty roof of the bus stop inside which she would soon stand with other medical students, in white ward coats, to wait for the college bus, she contemplated whether or not to ‘’burst’’ clinics and lectures today; her head was not in the right frame to learn anything. But then, even if she stayed back in the hostel, she would still end-up achieving nothing in terms of jacking, as her roommates-her business student roommates, were most likely, as usual, to stay in the room and gist all day, thereby disturbing her concentration. And if she went to the library, she would end up sleeping all through her stay there, since she got very little sleep at night. The true story of a UNEC medical student. She shook her head. Exams, 3rd MBBS was knocking on the door.
She turned to look at her roommates: Wild-eyed Adaeze, noisy Ifeoma, beautiful and slim Jennifer, Chika, the one they called "Nwanyi Awka" and, as always the case when their loud gisting about their boyfriends disturbed her thinking or study or quiet time, there was this intense urge in her lungs to shout at them and tell them how uncivilized they were but, she could not say a word. She felt so powerless, stripped down by longing. Plus, her head was burning and she did not want the extra chaos which an early morning quarrel would cause.
She slowly unrolled the blind, letting it fall free, releasing fine dust. Then turning right to face the mirror, she meticulously reapplied her make-up once more: drawing a straight line with the eye pencil over her trimmed brow; brushing her chicks with the brown powder brush; running the pink lipstick on her lips, matting both lips together to even-out the smear.
She signed- a long sucking of her teeth, realizing now, what impact her sadness ever since Sam started staying away, had been having on her life: that for the past two months, including the period of her stay in UI for her short clinical posting, she had been missing clinics and lectures because she was always depressed and lonely; that her subservient nature had been returning once more. Because using now for example, instead of bluntly telling her roommates to stop making noise, she seemed to prefer to plead. A mindset she had sworn to get rid of after all the insults she endured in her first year when she licked a lot of ass because she feared that assertiveness would make people hate her.
She sighed again, cringing at the thought that she was now, even considering to talk to her roommates, to seek their advice on how to get back her Sam. Something she had never done before. She never ever discussed her guys with people except her elder brother. How did she become so weak, so helpless, so vulnerable, and so needy? Just then, Adale's "someone like you" started playing on her roommate's 'china' phone and she was moved to tears. That song had a way to her heart.
She climbed onto her bed and kept the make-up kit in the upper compartment of her cane rack nailed to the wall. As she sifted through her books, meticulously arranged in the lower compartment, she remembered with remorse how she had climbed onto the same bed to bring the packet of biscuit she had rudely handed to Sam, as he sat on the bed a few months back. He had come to tell her about his intention to run for the post of SUG secretary general and she had felt so proud, with the way her roommates respected him, how they listened attentively as he told them his vision for the SUG. She was charmed but, on the outside, she had treated him with very little respect. It showed especially in the way she spoke to him. “Must I see you off? I didn’t bring you so you can find your way out”. Just to show her roommates that the guy they all would kill to have was not worth anything to her. Yet, later, that night she went to bed thinking over and over, the words with which Chioma, her next door neighbor had used to describe Sam.
“Such a cute guy! Above 6ft! Flat abdomen! Knotty arms! Not to talk of the sexy chest and, excellent American English. Nonye, don’t let him slip away because if you do, I’ll be the first to throw myself at him o!”
“He is too small for me”, Nonye replied in that causal tone of hers that exuded swag and power.
“Ah! I took it too far”, she muttered now, still standing on the bed. How she wished now, that Sam understood she was not being arrogant in the real sense of it, that she was just showing “effizzy” to her hostile roommates.
She climbed down from the bed having brought out “weather’s histology manual” and she gently wiped it using the hem of her wrapper. It was the last of his books still in her possession, one of the many he had given to her. It reminded her of him, the more, of his extreme caring nature, of those days when he newly started asking her out.
The first time, he had taken her for a walk to Cosharis. It was dark and under the mango tree, he took her right hand, after he smoothed her hair and, then pulled her into his chest, his rapid heartbeat hitting her swollen breasts. Later, after he had left, she rushed to her bible and prayed and stopped believing in superstitions because it had started raining just as he was about to whisper words into her ears. The rain made her fearful that perhaps, nature did not sanction what he wanted to tell her.
Some days later when he finally texted her. “I want you to be my girl because my love for you is now a raging flame threatening to burn my heart”. She felt her breast fill up with warm blood, her nipples hardening.
“Finally”, she had muttered to herself closing her eyes, taking a deep breath. She had taken five years to nature her own love for him, ever since they met in secondary school, ever since he helped her knot her tie, on her first day at school.
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