Goody Goody – Mazi Nwonwu

I started following Zainab Isa in Primary 3.

Her mother brought her to our house on the morning of what was her second day in our school. From my perch on the round leather pouf with an embroidered Nigerian Coat of Arms in the centre, I watched the girl with the intense gaze as her eyes scanned our sitting room, sliding past the framed family pictures on the wall to hover for a second on the wooden room divider which doubled as a place-holder for our new Sony Colour TV and the ancient Bosch radio that my father refused to throw away because its ability to capture and hold BBC Radio broadcast was unmatched.

The girl’s head didn’t turn as she took in the room from where she stood beside her mother near the door, but I sensed that her big eyes captured everything, and judged them – and us.

She must have felt me watching because she rolled her eyes towards me. We went at it. Stare for stare. I was the first to look away.

‘She is new here o, make sure you watch over her and bring her home when school closes,’ her mother said as she held a plastic lunch box towards me.

Reluctance struggled with breeding as I moved to take the box from the oyinbo woman, allowing my ‘okay ma’ to be audible enough for her and my parents to discern but whisper-like enough to convey my unhappiness.

Married to a Nigerian a man from somewhere in the middle belt, Mama Zainab hails from one of those Arab speaking countries outside Africa: I thought Lebanon, but she could have been Syrian. She was a Christian.

Though our parents had lived in the same compound for years, Zainab had just moved back to Kaduna after spending the last six years in Kano with an aunty. ‘Not exactly a JJC, but too young to have known her way around before she went to Kano,’ Busola, my sister, had remarked as I complained to her about being asked to shepherd someone, a girl for that matter.

 It didn’t help that everyone at home started calling Zainab my wife right away. In secret, I didn’t mind. But I acted annoyed, all the same.

 I was all big brotherly for the first two days I led Zainab to and from school. After that, she stopped allowing me hold her hands as we waited for traffic to clear before we ran across the zebra crossing opposite Army Children School, New Cantonment A – our school. On that third day she did not even show up. Annoyed, I went to check up on her after waiting thirty minutes. I found her, to my annoyance, sitting in front of their apartment, waiting for me.

It became a habit. She became the leader. I became the one on a leash, one of several.

My sister said Zainab Isa had a magnetic personality. Even though my Oxford Children’s Dictionary did not help when I sought for the meaning of magnetic personality and Busola had refused to explain, I understood—magnets attract metal, Zainab Isa attracts people.

Besides the fact that she was the most beautiful girl in school, Zainab was the closest thing to a white person in Angwa Shanu, our corner of Kaduna city. Before her, Mama Idara’s yellow pawpaw daughters were the ones everyone called oyinbo. Idara and Ekaete’s claim to that tag faded away with Zainab’s coming, like the light of our lantern fades when the florescent tube that hung from our parlour ceiling crackled to life as NEPA blessed us with power. Zainab was that different. In our community, mixed race and white people were akin to gods – fantastic beings who could do almost anything, hence Zainab’s fame, or infamy, as Busola called it.

Everyone wanted to be friends with Zainab, everyone wanted to touch her wavy hair that was almost always pulled into a tight ponytail. In a school where every other girl wore the official plait of the week, Zainab had liberty—the sort that annoyed me to no end.

I soon got tired of hearing teachers mouthing fine girl this, fine girl that, when they should have been flogging her silly for being naughty, again. Where others suffered hot and welted backsides, she got sent to clear litter from the playground. As if there was an edict in school against giving Zainab Isa anything beyond the mildest scolding.

I hated her, I was sure, for getting people—me in particular—in trouble, but loved it when she looked me up during break time, when she held my hand as we walked to the canteen area, when she looked into my eyes and smiled.

***

I first voiced my feeling to Zainab in primary five.

 It was a Saturday. We had decided to be truants for a day, so skipped the extra lessons Mr Aliu arranged for our class. It was not an official class, so instead of continuing to school we walked past it and followed the sound of pop music we could hear from the road between the barracks and Government Secondary School, Kurmin Mashi.

Government Secondary School was a big school, one of the few mixed secondary schools in Kaduna. There was no fence to hold us back. Of the barbed wire that once surrounded the compound, only the concrete poles which held them in place now remained. Cutting between buildings, we avoided the sharp-eyed gate man at the entrance—why there would be a gate man for a compound without a functional fence or gate was a question I never found an answer to.

The music led us to an auditorium where a disused water tank provided the height from which we looked through a window at the seated students from various schools facing a large stage.

The window was too small for the two of us to stand abreast, so Zainab rested her head on my shoulder. Her arms hugged me close.

Zainab was always comfortable sharing intimacies. A short time before then, she had pulled me to a corner at break time and lifted her skirt to show me her underwear.

‘E dey new,’ she said as I stared, speechless and wide-eyed, at the sky blue cotton panties. ‘You wan touch am?’ she asked.

I did not touch it. Same way I had not followed her into her mother’s room when she asked me to, about two months before the pantie episode. I never did find out why she wanted us to go into the room, but her amber eyes had lit up as they usually did when she was up to some mischief: enough warning for me to steer clear. Leaning on that window ledge, with her weight comfortable on my back, I knew a truth and named my feeling. “I love you,” I said as I exhaled.

I can’t remember what my thoughts were. Whether I felt any of those clichéd emotions such as a light bulb coming on in my head and exploding, an Eureka moment, or something stranger yet, I can’t recall.

Ray Parker Junior’s Loving You echoed through the building and vibrated on the cracked glass of the window. Two older boys were on the stage, dancing to the song, their legs, body and arms moving in time to the beat, synchronised. I liked the song, even though I could barely make out much beyond the refrain …loving you.

I liked to think it was the song, but it was most likely the tingling sensation I was getting from her body pressing ever so closer to mine, but what I did next surprised me.

I turned to her, held my lips close to her ear and whispered. She laughed. A rich laugh, mocking me. I moved to face her; annoyed that she was making fun of me. She was smiling. I liked the way her eyelids lowered when she smiled or laughed. I also liked how her smile played around the corners of her mouth. Secretive. Wise.

‘No matter how much, loving you means to me,’ she sang, in tune with Ray Parker Jr. I hadn’t known she knew the song. I laughed with her when she mumbled lines she didn’t know as she sang along.

We must have stayed like that for a long time, me savouring the closeness, she saying nothing. I recall that the Ray Parker Junior dancers gave way to some miniskirt-clad girls from Maimuna Gwarzo Girls Secondary school who swung their hips to Madonna’s Like a Prayer. and that they were still on the stage when the boys from Government College Kaduna, popularly called GCK, jumped on stage to perform Michael Jackson’s Bad. We clapped for the GCK boys. Zainab’s brother was a GCK boy — I would enrol there later that year — so they were the closest thing to a home team for us. We clapped, we yelled, and then we screamed when a lanky GCK boy floated across the stage just as Michael Jackson would. We must have yelled too loud for several eyes in the room turned to look up at us.

We did not wait to get caught. We ran, laughing as we went.

We did not stop until we crossed the school field, past the zebra crossing, through the mostly broken chain link fence of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) Sports Complex and were inside the obstacle course proper. Walls, trenches, rope bridges, tunnels and water troughs stretched behind and in front of us. We sat on the soft grass on the biggest obstacle, the one the military cadets had to run up then jump down from, and laughed as we tried to catch our breath.

“You see the girl, the yellow one with short skirt? That one that was in the middle, their oga na? Yes, her. That’s me when I grow up,” Zainab said as we looked towards the distance.

I smiled.

I could see our houses in the distance. Twin one-story buildings, olive green, with the sun glinting off its silvery roofs. I pointed. She looked, nodded. 

Storey buildings were rare in this part of Kaduna. My father said it was because Muslims, who were in the majority do not like storey buildings near their residences. Something to do with Kwunle—purdah.

There was a valley between the twin houses and us. I thought of birds, I thought of flying home. I looked at the birds circling in the harmattan sky, effortless. I could get home in the blink of an eye. I told her this. She smiled.

‘Let’s kiss.’

I was stunned. ‘What did you say?’

‘I say let’s kiss. I see two oyinbo doing it inside movie wey my brother bring yesterday. I Spit on your Grave. na bad film. Dem dey watch am for Mama Idara’s house. Dem no know sey I dey bedroom with Idara and Ekaete, I see di man kiss di woman, an dem start to do am’

‘Do what?’

‘They started…you know…oya let’s kiss.’

We kissed. More like a peck. Muaaah. We made the noise as our lips met. More like blowing air. We laughed. Then we walked home. Along the way, we would look at each other and laugh. Yes, we had just kissed. We were one.

***

When I fell out with Zainab Isa, no song played. If ever there was a song, then it must have been in my head, a buzzing that seemed to have a rhythm, a beat even. 

Our relationship had gotten more complex. Before I left primary school, there was a big commotion about a ring. I think she told someone I gave her the ring. That someone told someone else and the gist spread until it got to the teachers. The teachers were alarmed that kids in primary five were exchanging rings. It was not too hard enduring ten hot strokes of Mr Ajayi’s cane across my buttocks. It was harder facing my elder sister, who screamed at me when we got home, but just as I had done in school, I kept mute. I never told anyone else the truth about the ring: that I didn’t give it to her, that I knew who did—Chuks, whose house was on the way to school.

Life went on.

 I left for secondary school a few months later, doing only a couple of weeks of primary six. I was a GCK student, deemed intelligent enough to handle junior secondary school when most of my mates were still in primary six. I was an afternoon section student in a school whose route was 45 degrees from the one we used to take to Army Children School. This was when we really began to drift apart. We did see each other, on the weekends, but even the how fars became stilted, a mere formality, devoid of their former glory—if you can ever call hyperventilating lungs and a surging heart rate glorious.

Then she came to me.

It was during the long vacation. I was in JSS 3, she in JSS 2 in Queen Amina Secondary School. She was at this moment a buxom beauty with shoulder length ponytail and skin the colour of ripe udara. I was in our shared backyard, crouched over a Hadley Chase paperback, struggling to finish it before the owner came for it later that day when the noon breeze brought a distinct smell and palms crossed over my eyes.

My heart was threatening to burst as I called out her name.

‘How you sabi sey na me?’ she asked as I turned to face her, still holding on to her hands.

I smiled, said, ‘cocoa butter.’

‘But my sister dey use cocoa butter cream na, in fact, na her own I use.’

Yes, I smiled, but your sister will not try to cover my eyes.

Later, sitting on the raised side of the small bridge over the gutter in front of the twin storey buildings, she told me about my letters. ‘I kept every one of them. So you really love me that much?’ she asked.

‘Yes!’

‘But why you no say anything?’

‘I did, I said something, several times.’

‘When?’

‘In primary five, the day we went to Government Day Secondary School to watch the dancers, then in my letters.’

She laughed. Her eyelids met as her eyes dimmed. ‘I don’t remember primary five. You say all those things in your letters, when I return from school you no dey talk anything.’

‘But, what could I have done?’

‘Plenty things. E dey bi like you be two different persons, the one inside the letters and the one I know.’

I smiled and said nothing. We sat like that, me staring at the bright coloured birds chirping as they foraged for food among the harmattan dried corn stalks in the garden; she staring at me in that intense way she is wont.

What would I have said? That I always had a thousand things to say to her, but I allowed my jealousy over her numerous admirers get in the way? That I wanted her to really tell me what she felt about me?

I said nothing.

‘Take,’ she said. I looked up to see her holding out a bar of goody goody chocolate.

‘Thanks,’ I said as I collected the chocolate from her and stuffed it into my pocket.

‘Eat it na,’ she urged.

‘I go eat am later,’ I said. To stop her pressing on, I asked, ‘When are you going back to school?’

‘Tomorrow. You go visit me?’

‘When is your next visiting day?’

‘June 8. Why you no wan eat the goody goody?’

‘I said I will eat it later na. Shey you have given it to me already?’

She frowned. Though I was aware of her explosive temper, what she did next shocked me.

‘If you no go eat am, give me back my goody goody,’ she said, stretching out her left hand towards me.

***

The news floated in. It was Rukiya, the girl whose father worked at the local clinic, who first told me. She had just been admitted into Queen Amina and was home for the first term holiday.

‘Zainab is a witch,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone, her finger digging furrows into my arm.

‘What do you mean ‘Zainab is a witch?’ I asked, letting my voice carry my impatience.

‘She is. She and some other girls turn into cats at night. Everybody in school knows their story.’

‘Everybody in school is a jealous busybody joor. Don’t tell me you went to school to become a gossip?’

‘Eeeehn…I am only telling you because you are her husband. Don’t eat anything she brings back from school. Don’t let her initiate you.’ Rukiya said as she ran off to whatever errand she was on before she spotted me.

Zainab didn’t come back to Kaduna that holiday. Her brother said she went to Jos with her school mother, but there was a ruckus in their house a few days after school resumed. She returned home, on suspension from school, and we heard the loud shrieks and ululations of an Aladura priest, who rang his bell in a rhythm that complemented his Yoruba chants.

Busola later told me how a parent had reported that her daughter confessed that Zainab initiated her with a chocolate bar. A search of Zainab’s locker had revealed packets of unopened goody goody bars. Zainab had refused to reveal the source of the chocolates and greeted the question; ‘Are you a witch?’ with silence.

News has a way of running faster than its source and the story of a beautiful mixed-race girl who was initiating the girls in her school into witchcraft, spread as easily as drops of groundnut oil would on a hot pan. Taking children to deliverance session became commonplace in our neighbourhood and Zainab became a hermit. I don’t know for sure if she chose to spend her time indoors or if her parents barred her from going out. I do know that I didn’t see her for weeks.

Then I got her note.

Meet me in the building opposite by 11 pm

***

‘You believe in witchcraft?’ Zainab asked me, her eyes holding my own.

We were seated on the wooden bench I had borrowed from the mechanic workshop that occupied the frontage of the long-abandoned building we were in. I could feel the chill of the coming harmattan probing like sharp needles through my cotton shirt. It was my favourite shirt. I called it my shirt, but it had once belonged to my father. I had dug up the shirt, as I had the opanka sandals I wore, from the big leather trunk my father inherited from the Indian family that used to live down the street—dug up because the 20-year-old red, blue and yellow check pattern came back in fashion. Minus the extra pocket on the right breast, the shirt was on point.

Zainab, who was sitting beside me on the bench, drew closer and turning away from the pockmarked road where a passing okada’s headlight cut a wide swath of yellow through the grey moonlight, pressed her warm cheeks to my chest. I followed the orb of headlight as it washed over the twin storey buildings across the road from us. I marvelled at how the yellow of electric lighting seeping through the glass panes of steel framed windows lent a postcard quality to the view. I wondered where our parents would think their children were—obviously not snuggled together in the uncompleted building across the street.

I spoke my thoughts out loud. Her laugh didn’t surprise me. She lifted her head from my chest to look up at me. She was smiling, understanding, but not falling for my attempt to dodge the question she had asked earlier.

‘You believe in witches?’ She asked again, her eyes steady on mine, perhaps trying to catch a lie.

‘I don’t know, but I know I want to be here with you,’ I said, hoping it was the right answer. She hugged me tight and tried to bury her head into my chest again.

I guessed I must have provided the right answer.

‘You want see wetin I fit do?’ She murmured into my breast pocket.

I felt that familiar quickening.  ‘Yes,’ I said.

I heard a rustle and looked down and saw her hands holding up a goody goody bar.

‘Take,’ she said, smiling up at me. I looked from the chocolate bar to her face and felt a chill climb my back as cats meowed nearby

End