Still Waters

FIFTEEN

Fifteen

"Can someone please tell Mrs Kit that her gown is transparent?" Susan whispers to me.

I look closely and indeed it is. She is wearing a purple chiffon-like dress. The fabric beautifully filled with beautiful with flowery but too it was too thin. And while she was smart enough to wear a vest underneath, she seemed to have forgotten there was something called an underskirt, opting instead for black tights that stopped mid-thigh and did nothing to hide the contours her hips clearly visible under the dress. She stays embarrassing us steadily.

"She should have worn an underskirt." I point out. I wonder if no one saw her before she left her house this morning.

It is Monday and Mrs Kit is giving us one of her cherished ted talks. It is a bright and beautiful day, so beautiful that the sun's lovely golden ray's slithered through the blinds in front of the huge glass windows. Mrs Kit is strutting up and down in front of the sun-lit blinds unaware that we are getting a clearer view of her thighs as the day gets brighter. It is barely 7am and boy, what a show. I struggle within myself if I should step up and whisper to her to move to a darker part of the room. But I remember how she left me high and dry during the EFCC case. I cross my legs on top of each other and sit more comfortably.

"Didn't she look at herself before coming out to work?" Ajoke wrinkles her nose in disgust.

I hold back a smile. "In her defence, the sun was probably not up when she left home". I whisper back. Most bankers leave their homes while it's still dark. How else do you think we are able to beat the chaotic traffic and get to work on time.

"Amara, Ajoke, what are you discussing?" Mrs Kit's sharp voice suddenly whips at us.

"U--ugm. Nothing ma." Ajoke stutters.

"Stand up. Two of you"

Yikes! We do. All eleven pairs of eyes in the room turned to us, hungrily awaiting more drama.

"What was the last thing I said?" Mrs Kit sneers at us.

Ajoke goes first. A brave one she is. "You said we must take the recovery exercise seriously, and even resume at the customer's homes if we have to".

I'm so glad she went first. I didn't hear anything like that. Before Susan got my attention, I was busy replaying scenes in my memory from when Tonye took me to his village. My heart broke at what I saw.... still breaks when at what I remember. To say there is pollution there is an understatement. There is injustice there. The media does not show up to 10% of the true state of the villages in the Niger Delta. We travelled part of the journey on speed boats. It almost felt like a sight-seeing adventure until the air became pungent. I began to smell the crude. If it smelt like this in open seas with strong winds, I imagined that the villages would be worse. And they were...

"Yes, take your loan recovery seriously...very seriously oh..." Mrs Kit yells drawing me out of my thoughts. I wonder why she is yelling in this little room. "You children of this generation are too soft..."

Did she just call us children?

My mind suddenly replays images of the children I saw in Tonye's village. Most looked sickly with scabby-like skins...

"When I was your age, I was vert agile." Mrs Kit yells on. "I was a go-getter. I processed a contract finance facility of fifty million naira for a customer and he tried to divert the funds when the company paid him. I packed my things and went to his house with my little children and my mother. I told him if he didn't pay, I would surely loose my job and was going to be homeless, so I might as well start living with him..."

She turns around again in dramatic fashion and her chiffon frilly gown twirls with her, giving us another good view of her hip silhouettes. I caught some of the guys averting their eyes in embarrassment, some looking up at the ceiling. Poor guys. James was staring straight on though, a smirk on his face. He was obviously enjoying the show. Mrs Kit had nice ample hips; I'd give her that. She twirls back to face us prancing around excitedly as she narrates further. I perceive this is a story she likes to tell.