Election Day

A fictional series

Last week:

I had won my seat… We are still waiting for nine results… I am a breath away from my ultimate goal….

…I remember all those years ago…. I was young but I had figured out that the only way out of my poverty was to excel academically….

…From that point, I’d begun to stay back at school to get my homework done….

…Christopher had also buckled down at school… It had been a big shock to everyone, when he’d passed his common entrance exams with flying colours; coming 30th overall and 11th for boys.((more))

…In the meantime, we’d continued sleeping beside each other…. There’d never been any conversation until one night, out of the blue…

“Kita?” he’d whispered.

“Yes,” I had whispered back.

“I going to be Prime minister one day.”

…He had changed so much since the accident; I think I’d begun to look up to him….

..Then one day, about a year later it happened.

I had been sitting under the shade of a plum rose tree… he’d come to sit beside me. Then I’d watched his lips move as he’d spoken the words that would turn my world upside down again…

The months went by in a hurry and soon that day, under the plum-rose tree, when Christopher had revealed that he was going to Canada; became a distant memory. His aunt had sent for him.

He had saved my life and as we had clung to each other and to the will to live; a strong bond had been formed. His presence had become a comfort to me. When he left I’d felt lost and exposed to the clutches of the nightmares and the torture of the unbearable memories.

I had escaped the four corners of my reality by diving into the imagination of writers. At first it had been simple children’s books; but soon Enid Blyton’s woodland creatures could no longer satisfy my growing appetite for adventure, knowledge and pure, sweet fantasy.

I had joined our local library and had read practically everything I could get my hands on: Caribbean short stories… old English poetry… American novels….

I would hide under our house during the day and at nights I would sit in my bed and use an old kerosene lamp to read. I began to live under an illusion and the world around me quietly disappeared. Inevitably my school work suffered.

The rude awakening came when I picked up my common entrance results and realised that I had barely passed. Devastated, I’d looked into my future and had seen nothing but the perpetuation of the poverty that defined me.

“Yo nah study yo book,” my mother had said as she’d passed the paper back to me and continued her washing. She’d emerged to some degree from her trance of grief; kicked out Christopher’s dad and had replaced him with another drugs man. I think it was at that point that I’d begun to figure out that my mother was an addict.

The truth is I did not need her or anyone else to motivate me. I had been determined to escape my circumstances and even though I’d let myself down; I was not prepared to give up.

“Mammy ah want to do over my common entrance.”

She had stopped her washing and looked at me thoughtfully, her eyes squinting from the brilliance of the afternoon sun. Then she had sighed and continued washing. That had been her only answer to my request. Later I had overheard her friend telling her to just send me to country school; but in the end she had allowed me to repeat junior five. Needless to say I did not mess about that time round.

Almost exactly a year later, I arrived at school to collect a second common entrance result. As soon as I walked into the compound I was summoned to the Head teacher’s office.

His name was Mr Otley – a large black man with an almost fierce presence that never failed to command complete submission and respect. The only other time I had been sent to his office was when I had been caught reading a Mills & Boon in class – an offence I had never dared repeat.

I could still see him sitting back in his arm chair, his shirt-jack pressed with military precision. My teacher was there too and my breathing was short and shallow as my brain tried to pinpoint the exact unpardonable deed that had warranted this meeting.

“Have a seat,” Mr. Otley had commanded in a no-nonsense tone. As I had sunk into the chair my heart had had sunk into my lower intestines.

“Kita, I called you into this office today; because you have done something that no one else in the history of this school had managed to accomplish.” He gave emphasis to every single syllable.

I continued to gaze at him with wide, frightened eyes….

More next week…