Pantie Rule

04 | Now!

One would've thought I'd wait by the end of school, but immediately the jangles of the school bell had reached my ears, I made a run for it.

Quickly, I returned to the hostel, had a shower and went for my lunch. Very watery palm oil-battered beans was what we had for lunch, with a carton of Five Alive fruit juice that was to be shared among twenty-four people. Splendid!

"Senior Zainab, good afternoon." I greeted the refectory prefect. She was kind but insane. She had reduced our lunchtime from fifteen minutes to five minutes, claiming it was a lunch gathering and not a church gathering.

Lemme tell you, she was right. But wrong also! It wasn't a church meeting, true, it wasn't also a sex-in-the-toilet contract of hungry teenagers. It was lunch for sane human beings!

"Omotara, how are you doing?" She replied, in a motherly manner.

"I'm great!" I smiled, proud of the fact that I knew her on talking levels. Other girls didn't, and they envied me for that.

She wasn't sitting. She just stood, her watchful eyes on us girls-almost two hundred of us. Then I guess, she'd eat after we're all done and gone. Or does she eat before we all do? I haven't asked that question... and maybe I don't want to ask it.

"So, have you read it?" She looked my way.

Read what? What was she talking abou-

Oh! Yes, I think I remember. I had asked her for deep info about the bloody, Nigerian civil war that claimed so many lives and almost erased the entire Igbo population. I had always been fascinated by the tales of Biafra(By the way, she's Hausa, not Igbo, from the name Zainab).

I asked her because it was a clash between the Northerners, seemingly her people, and the Easterners. She had told me she couldn't tell me because she didn't know all the facts. She strikes me as someone who loves to be sure of what she says. That's why when she talks it's with so much power and panache and possessiveness that she commands so great a respect.

She had told me to read;

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimmamanda Adichie and; There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe. Lovely reads, I heard they are.

I'm a lover of books, but I hate romance, horror, and sci-fi(I can't bear it). Thus, my dream genre: historical fiction, comedy, thriller, teen-fiction; with little or no love in it. I was really scared of catching any feelings.

The only romance I ever read wasTwilight. My God! Stephanie Meyer is such a great author. She made me cry, smile and ponder deeply about life, and fall in love - bad thing.

It was after then I had my first kiss with Taye and my first near-deflowering experience. It was my fault really. The full story is that I'd jokingly told him I'd never kissed before whilst we did our school assignments together, and then was leaning toward and them his soft lips graced mine and our lips began producing those strange sucking noises.

In minutes, I was on the cold, tiled floor as his hands unzipped my shorts. Then. . . Bam!

Mum came in. I would never forget her horrid expression. She was shocked to the cells. Taye and I quickly stood up, but my unzipped shorts and the annoying bulge in his trousers gave us away. Trust me, I almost died on the spot.

I was whipped mercilessly that day. Dad was cool though. He spoke a series of advising words to me and hugged me afterward as I cried in his chest. Dad had always been my best friend. Mum? She was more on the devil's side.

So, you see, anything that could arouse feelings, I'm out!

Senior Zainab jabbed my shoulder.

Ouch.

I blinked myself back to the present and hesitated for a while trying to remember the last question she asked. So have you read it? No.

"No, I haven't."

"You're always absentminded." She frowned.

"Oh. I'm sorry." I chuckled.

"No, no, no, no problem. I just hope you're okay." Her caring eyes hovered above me while I helped myself to the ridiculously minuscule piece of meat on my plate. "Hope nobody dumped you?"

"What? No." I laughed. Now that was funny. Nobody could have me, talk less of dump me. Impossible. "No, I just daydream sometimes. I think maybe I could write a book about the civil war or something."

She considered me. "Your drive is amazing! So maybe I'll find you Half of a Yellow Sun from a friend. She loves novels too." She smiled and winked.

"Oh. Thanks. Thank you so much."

Gbagaun! Gbagaun!! Gbagaun!!!

That was the bell.

Her two hands produced a sharp, deafening sound and a great number of girls whipped around to be sure no one was slapped. "One more minute girls! Get up! Stop your lunch! Now! And go wash your plates!" She ordered, and the girls shot up at once. "Go! Go! Go!"

There was chaos as girls chattered and murmured. The sound of heavy wooden benches scraping the floor, the clashing of plates, the slapping of feet against the terrazzo floor. I always enjoyed watching them panic. Such a gem to sight!

Then from nowhere senior Zainab's eyes caught me on my seat and literally turned red. I quickly shot my butt off the hardwood and headed straight to the gathering of girls by the wall. At each wall, there were ten hand basins to wash plates so each girl had to line up behind these basins. And you know one thing about lines?- especially in Nigeria? They hardly move.

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PS: Igbo and Hausa are one of the major tribes in Nigeria, then there's the Yoruba tribe.