I HAVE JOINED THE SCHOOL’S MAIN FOOTBALL TEAM, and have played well in the interhouse matches. It has helped me to blend in. We have been training for the Unity Cup final match in a competition that involves all the secondary schools in the region. I helped my school qualify for the final match. There’s excitement in the air as the match approaches. Lioness, the teachers, and the students are all talking about it.
At last the day arrives. The whole school empties to Government Field, the venue of the match. The crumbling pavilion is filling with spectators as we dress in jerseys and warm up. Soon we are at it, playing with tenacity, like it is a World Cup final. I assume my usual position in the attacking midfield. Every contact I make with the ball is greeted with shouts of “Etim Esin!” by the fans from my school, after the famous midfielder who played for the Nigerian national team.
The ball sails across to me from an aerial pass, a perfect telegraph sent by Ife after he spots me alone and well positioned towards the edge of the right flank. Ife and I always make a good pair, like Eke and I did. We understand each other, and it is easy to destroy opponents when we both are playing. I gain control of the ball, lifting high above its flight to chest-trap his delicious pass in that easy and elegant way that always triggers ovation from the fans, especially the girls. A defender from the other team charges forward to stop me from making a dangerous incursion into his team’s eighteen-yard box. I tap the ball smartly, rolling it in between his legs and skirting around him neatly to collect the ball again. My clever move sets off another sky-high ripple of applause from the spectators, and more shouts of “Etim Esin!” Our boys are howling their support and motivation from the touchline, the girls screeching with delight, trying to outshine the rival school’s fans. And then I set the stadium on fire as I dribble past the defenders and drive the ball hard into the far corner of the opponent’s goal.
My goal gives my school victory. I enjoy a ride high up on the shoulders of the fans at the end of the match, and a bear hug from Lioness. The victory is important for the school, the first time we have won the cup. The celebrations last for days. A lesson-free day is granted.
Suddenly, I am the toast of the school.
Weeks later, I’m sitting by myself in class at break time, nursing my ankle after a game. I’ve been playing almost every day since my victory, pushing my body to its limits to maintain my status at school.
“Does it hurt a lot?” she says, coming to stand near me with hands on her hips, Grace, the girl who gave me six strokes of the cane on my first week.
I stare at her, surprised she would stoop to speak to me, with all her prettiness and her posturing.
I’d hurt myself playing against Nnamdi Adaka, limping off the field back to the classroom to sit alone and think of what lay ahead for me: the long, painful trek home. And then she’d appeared.
“I am sorry.” She sits close to me, making me feel awkward alone with her in the empty classroom.
My leg is swollen and I dread the hot water my mother will use to treat it. She has a particular way of treating wounds. The day I stepped on a nail, she held my leg to her lap with the heel pointed up. While my siblings held down my hands, she dunked a red-hot kitchen knife into a tin of palm oil buried in a smouldering charcoal fire, lifted the knife, and carefully dropped the shimmering, hissing oil into the wound in my heel. I saw open white expanses of pain.
“But why don’t you stop playing football to avoid injuries like this?”
I stare through the window framing the football field to hide the feeling of shyness that my face must betray. Grace is one of the sly, intelligent girls—the school’s prettiest girls—who gossip and giggle all the time. The field is a confused blur of blue and white as students are kicking balls around and engaging in other playful activities. My glare rests momentarily on Nnamdi Adaka for inflicting the injury on me. He was furious at the shameful way I’d dribbled him, envious of my new fame. The spectators had booed him, so he’d given me a hot chase. I’d felt his anger like the cutting edge of a knife on my back just before he unleashed a sliding tackle from behind. I’d been expecting it. I’d leapt out of harm’s way, neatly dodging the tackle that would have cut me like a machete blow. The crowd had booed again, inflaming him the more, and then he’d charged at me, and this time he’d caught me at the right ankle.
“What will you do now? How will you walk home?” She breaks into my train of thought.
“I will manage. My mother is going to treat it with hot water.”
She makes a face. “But won’t you go to the hospital?”
I almost laugh. I want to tell her that I have never been to a hospital besides when a madman bit off my ear. As a child, my mother would oil my body with palm kernel oil when I got feverish, and when I got really sick, when I started vomiting and shaking violently, she’d summon Uwakwe, who forced me to swallow big white tablets and long capsules. He’d drive a long needle into my buttocks. I got well again after the injection, but sometimes it resulted in an abscess, forcing me to walk like a stooped old man. Then my mother would invite Uwakwe again to cut the big, ripe boil with a short knife to release thick yellow pus that spattered everywhere like custard cream.
“I am sorry.” Her voice is whispery, the words falling softly like a feather. Suddenly, she is not the same rebellious girl shrieking and giggling in class. “I should not have answered the question that day, should not have beat—” The feather drops.
She flees the class.
The trek home could not be more painful, with the sun sharp and biting. I think of Grace’s unexpected apology. She couldn’t possibly have guessed how much I cherished her soft, feathery words, her gentle scolding, and her company. I spend a long time on the road, arriving home with a leg twice swollen. My mother and I go through the ritual of hot-water-palm-oil-swearing massage.
“What I will not condone is your going to school and bringing back injuries like this,” my mother protests as she presses a cloth soaked in hot water to my ankle.
My mother’s scolding worsens the pain. Injuries like this make me wonder if I will ever play football again, but I see myself returning to the field as soon as it heals. Ebube and Ihebube return again and again to say ndo to me where I am relaxing on the tomb after the treatment.