I RESOLVE TO GO TO MASS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A long time to pray for a good exam result, but not at Holy Trinity Church. Once in a while I am drawn instead to the Chapel of the Resurrection at the seminary school to see the young rector with a Roman nose and laughing eyes celebrate a lively Mass, and to hear the silky-voiced Reverend Sister sing.
“Heaven helps only those who help themselves.” Machebe’s sneering voice follows me to the seminary.
I walk through the high security gates into a large, pine-scented school premises enclosed in a prison-high wall. And then I walk up a paved drive fringed by an orange orchard and a patchy football field where cows are grazing. One cow looks up, sees me, and scowls at me as I cross. I stop and scowl back at her; we lock our stares like two boxers. After a while she loses interest in me and returns to grazing. I go my way, feeling like a winner.
The first diversion to the left leads to the Chapel of the Resurrection. It is screened off by flowers and tall pine trees with long green pins looking as threatening as Uwakwe’s needles. A gentle wind whispers in the pines, blending with Handel’s Alleluia Chorus. A marble statue of St. John holds my stare for a while in front of a cream-and-green house adjacent to the orange orchard; this is the rector’s residence. The house overlooks another diversion that dips into a landscaped courtyard, rising gently again to the shoulder of an eminence seated by a cashew orchard. The orchard hems another green football field. The ground below the orchard is in soft shadows. An atmosphere of divine presence rules the premises, with birds fluttering about noiselessly. A cow mooing once in a while disturbs the governing saintliness. Smoke pluming into grey skies over the kitchen roof seems to transport the hymn to the high heavens. The Chapel of the Resurrection is as beautiful inside as it is outside. It resounds with the hymn beautifully rendered by students dressed all in blue. I feel myself drowning in a vast volume of voices, my eyes following the pretty Reverend Sister everywhere in the church. She is wearing a blue habit that startles today. I shut my eyes and think about heavenly angels as she sings in her faultless voice, which stills the candle flame and moves everyone to sing lustily along. I imagine the heavens opening and the Holy Spirit descending upon her in a flock of doves. The more she sings, the more the heavens open wider to release more doves into the church in a fluttering of white wings. When she stops singing, the doves stop fluttering their wings and silence falls on the church. A white and still silence.
“She has many skills,” whispers a woman sitting beside me as if reading my mind. “She decorated the altar.”
My eyes move to the altar covered with table frills—white, soft, and delicate, set with exactness—and I nod and smile at the woman. I haven’t been to the confessional for how long I can’t remember, and I know that my sins are as red and bloated as a baboon’s butt, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to have the beautiful Reverend Sister feed me with the Holy Communion. I avoid the priest’s line for hers, my heart leaping with excitement as she draws closer to me. When it is my turn, I stick out my tongue, showing her only the tip of it because I want her fingers to touch my lips. Her fingers are warm and delicious. I waste a bit more time on the queue to inhale her clean linen. Her eyes are beautiful, with heavy lashes and pupils so dark and so penetrating, complementing the golden chalice of her skin.
“God took time to create her.” The man who speaks is sitting in front of me.
He probably noticed I was staring. The man has a big nose, but it fits him. He has a big voice that startles me, a voice that is so loud a few people will cast glances in our direction whenever he speaks, so loud it drowns all other voices when he sings along with the choir or when he recites the Credo. There is a little extra to everything he does, like when he grips my hand tightly during the Peace Offering; his big, rough hand is clammy with sweat.
The result of the exam is released sooner than I expected, but I am afraid to go see it. I cannot imagine another bad result.
“A real man doesn’t celebrate and get drunk,” Machebe swipes at me again. “He is bold enough to go face his result.”
We end up exchanging a few swearwords and hooking each other by the collar, dragging each other this and that way.
I resolve to go and check the result, hoping to spite Machebe with a possible success. My heart beats fast as I approach a cybercafé at Ogige market. I have to pass this time. I cannot face Machebe’s taunts if I fail again. And I cannot disappoint my family a second time, my sister Ekete especially. My legs are shaking. I can feel my bladder full to bursting. I stop to urinate into a gutter, feeling the hot singeing urine as it whizzes through my pintle. Cold sweat breaks out everywhere on my forehead. My brain feels fried.
Suddenly, I turn and beat a hasty retreat. Maybe my maths teacher was right when he called me “a big irony.” I did not know what Nza meant at the time, but I knew it wasn’t good, because I had failed all the questions in his test. Failure is not the character of someone who is valiant, which is the meaning of my name; a valiant person would walk into that cybercafé and boldly pick up their result.
Determining to play the valiant even for once in my life, I head in. Three girls and a young man my age are seated at desktop computers in the illuminated room. The luminous blue light of the computer screens fill me with fear. I approach the young man. I don’t want the girls checking the result for me and laughing at me for failing. I figure guys are supposed to be more sympathetic to one another. I pay for a scratch card and I sit down to wait while the young man fiddles with the mouse. He appears to be wasting time, his palm clasped over the mouse while he moves the cursor around annoyingly.
“No internet,” he says. “You have to wait.”
My fear pounds my heart to fufu in my chest as I wait for the internet to come back from wherever it’s gone to. Why has the stupid thing chosen today of all days to wander away? I will flee from home if I don’t make it. I do not know to where I will flee, but flee I must; perhaps to my sister Ekete’s place in the mangroves of Unadu. My mind lulls at the thought. It takes ages and leaves me as soft and done as my mother’s cocoyam by the time the internet dawdles back, dragged in by the mouse.
“Congratulations!”
I don’t realize the young man has spoken to me until he says it a second time.
“Congratulations! You cleared your papers!”
Startled, and overcome with joy, I gape at the result sheet that slides out of a printer. I allow the tears to roll down my cheeks as I drop to the floor on my knees to thank my aunt Okike, my mother’s God-of-the-Selected, my father’s pantheon of gods, and all who pulled together to make my success possible. I want to do things as if by magic, I think, as I walk away from the cybercafé. I want to sit behind blue screens and churn out good news and make all right in the world again.
I race home.
My mother smiles at me; we embrace each other, and, watching us, the younger ones giggle with joy at our newfound friendship, a moment of reconciliation. I am sure Okike will be very pleased in her grave. Everything seems right again. But I am missing Grace. Egoyibo! The man who married her stole a decent part of my joy. In a moment of wool-gathering, I see us sitting on the tomb and laughing over my result. I would have revisited the scene of our affection. I would have strolled down the wooded village path, watching the striking cobras and listening to the chatter of sparrows. But after considering my badness—the iniquity of the bordello and the indignity of masturbation—I decide that, until I penance myself, I am too unclean for golden memories like hers.
“What kind of student hires someone to write their exam?” Machebe smirks. “How are you going to succeed at the university?”
I don’t know how Machebe nosed out my exam deal with Amechi. He won’t believe me if I tell him that I wrote the exam without anyone’s help, so no need for that. Still, I have been pondering his second question myself, looking up the long, rough vista of the road to the university. By passing my GCE exam, I have only succeeded in grabbing my dream by one third. The other two thirds are waiting in the university beyond Edaga Hills. I still must climb that unforgiving height back to Oregwu with a degree all on my own.