There was a note.
A small white paper, torn from Yoba’s math notebook. It bore the words: “Ihe nile m nwere bu nke gi, kpakpando m.” After lunch, he slipped it into my palms. Giving one’s all for desire seemed so sweet, Gozie, Emeka, Patrick, and I thought, until the note fell into the wrong hands. Just before we were summoned to Minister Gordon’s office, the boy who reported the note said he did it to save us from hellfire, and Yoba, grumbling as we matched, promised to break his nose once we returned.
We knelt at Minister Gordon’s command, our heads level with the sizeable crucifix on his table. He could punish us in many ways: making us crawl the length of the soccer field all night counting Hail Marys; extending our siesta into hours of grass-cutting with a machete; or worse, detaining us in the school chapel for a week, our daily meal the body of Christ contained in flattened circles of wafers. Once, a boy endured that punishment for missing morning prayer, and on the third day, screaming, he swore he had seen the face of Christ on a pew.
But now, Minister Gordon sat silent, his gaze fixed above our heads. My eyes were on his cassock, a startling white, same colour as the marble floor. The sun peered in.
“Who made you?” He began. His voice was easy.
“God made me,” I replied, the proper catechism answer. Yoba remained silent. The room was hot.
“To whose image and likeness did God make you?” Minister Gordon continued.
“God made me in His own image and likeness.” My fingers quaked at Yoba’s silence. I looked to the crucifix. Christ’s face was turned right, his eyes left, amusingly askew. My guilt was my shame and amusement.
“To whose image and likeness did God make you?” Minister Gordon thundered at Yoba, who raised his eyes, tense silence matching the knot in my stomach.
“What is this? Whose image of sodomy and disobedience?” Minister Gordon stood, his cassock swooshing like parade banners. “Whose image is this?” Again at Yoba, again silence. Tears glazed my eyes; for a moment, the room appeared submerged.
I expected to hear a whip, but Minister Gordon forcefully picked Yoba up and hurled him across the small room, small enough that Yoba met the wall head-first with a sickening thud, then crumpled, unmoving. Later, I will think of this, how sorry all our living is fragility, instances of what can un-become, and then we die and can never be broken again. But then, I watched Yoba’s blood snake across the white marble, marring its brilliance. I screamed. Minister Gordon was frantic. There was a phonecall–I don’t know; sirens–I don’t really know. Yoba remained motionless until white-suited medics carried him away in an ambulance, Minister Gordon’s Mercedes trailing behind.
That evening, only Minister Gordon returned, fingering a rosary, head bowed. The bell rang and we filed into a hall for evening prayers. The prayer was unusually slow, unusually solemn, I don’t know. Minister Gordon took long pauses to wipe the tears from his glasses. We recited an unusually long psalm. Then, at the end, Minister Gordon said, “May the soul of Yobachukwu Ireana rest in peace.” We chorused, “Amen,” and proceeded to our dormitories.
A boy began to sob. The night breeze feathered my face, and I recalled it–the particular weightlessness of Yoba in the air, like his cursive, kpakpando m. Some boys approached with concern in their eyes, and all my body could do was collapse under the starry night.
