CONFESSION

By Esomufu Ebelenna

Father, oh holy Father, I cannot see your face, but I know you’re not faceless. I will perhaps say to you that I am worse than Darko’s
Poison if you hear this sin I committed when I was in secondary school
many years ago. But I will confess this filthy sin to you because I
have learnt the importance of being ernest. I committed this sin when
Chimaraoke Mbadinuju was destroying Anambra State like anthills of the
Savannah. I wanted to confess this sin to one Catholic priest named
Emma through so long a letter I wrote in 2004, after my uncle’s
demise, but two things restrained me: Pride and prejudice. I viewed
the Roman Catholic Church through a wrong lense. This sin,
Father…this sin is dirtier than the diary of a young girl, perhaps
dirtier than even the sin caused by the picture of Dorian Gray. It is
horrible, this sin. It refuses to free me from its prison. It haunts
me, it haunts my house, it haunts my office. It even invades my dreams
in the form of owls, hooting, flapping, deriding. But to kill the
mocking birds, I cannot. My confidant Johnny asked me to wait, that
time would help me get over this. And so I waited and waited until it
dawned on me that I was waiting for Gordot. Then I came to you.
Father, oh good man of God with sense and sensibility, pray for me.
Pray for Mrs Obioma…
Oh, hail Mary, Mother of God
Pray for us sinners…
Oh Father, speak. Speak! Since Mrs Obioma’s dismissal from Merchant–a
school of scandal–I cannot fish my happiness back into my net. I am
young, Father, but I am like the  old man and the sea.
Father, can this transgression be forgiven, erased, disremembered?
Must I be  crucified by my thoughts on my farmished road, hit by the
arrow of God. Father, I want a  voice from  above to say to me, Weep
not, child.
What is this sin, you wonder, Father?
Oh, you will certainly yell in horror or stifle a howl, but I will
confess this sin, I must confess this sin My monumental sin, I must.
Perhaps you have heard worse from your penitents. Of course the world
is replete with young devils. Old devils.
Father…Father? Are you still with me? Oh you are: I heard you
cough…Please listen…I. Will. Be. Slow. Because. My. Heart.Is.
Heavy…

When I was in JSS 3 class at Merchants of Light(or Venice, as I liked
to call the school)–when I was in this school located in my hometown
of Oba, here in Anambra State, my 47-year old English teacher, Mrs
Obioma, told me that her husband had gone with the wind to South
Africa for an academic conference. And when I, her Romeo in a crisp
black and white school uniform, knocked at my Juliet’s door that
frosty night, she pulled the door open,  closed the door behind me
silently, switched off the light silently, removed her clothes
silently, removed my clothes silently,  removed the novels on the
bedclothes silently, turned up the volume on the Sony CD, and then we
made love, our moans submerged in the music of Shaggy:

All the time she was standing there\she never took her eyes off me…

I guess you are not into American pop, Father? Well, we did make noisy
love, yes. Or fucked, as she liked to put it with a contagious smile.
After having acrobatic sex, she would wash my fifteen-year old body in
the detol-smelling bathroom and tease me about how my single thrust
could suspend memory.  Then her egg-shaped face, which had the colour
of fine chocolate, would drop into solemnity, and she told me that she
wanted my love for her to be wider than the Sahara deserts and deeper
than the ocean. She implored me to be indifferent to every Lolita, to
all the girls at war because she was irreversibly in love with me. She
implored me never to leave her and never let this romantic paradise to
be lost, never  to trample her poor heart in the dust, or break the
heart like a wineglass, and I slobbered a kiss upon her powdered cheek
and reassured her that instead of breaking her dear heart I would
rather break my father’s telelvision. Why should I do that to my
sweetheart who speaks like a book and taught me to do likewise? This
query tickled her and she giggled like a teen, like her enchanting
twin daughters who were first-year students of anthropology at Nnamdi
Azikiwe University, Awka. And we fucked again in the bed, on the
carpet, in the bathtub. Mrs Obioma said that I was Oliver Twist in
bed: I always wanted some  more. And I told her that she was James
Bond whenever I mounted her: fast and furious. And that was why I
always wanted some more. In the morning, I wanted some more: Electric
Slide Style in the bed. Erotic Accordion on the carpet. V for Vixen in
the kitchen. We had mastered all these sex styles from the Concise
Couples she bought to improve our sex life. And the book did improve
our sex life and we always wanted some more. When my knees began to
tremble like a mango leaf in the wind, I  pulled on my boxer shorts
and told her that I did not want some more. She wanted some more, but
she pulled on her Y-shaped pink panties and searched for her bra. She
joked that I should never swig alcohol like the Mayor of Casterbridge
and sell her. Joked that I should be far from the madding crowd. Or
did I want her to cut someone down with a matchet and hang herself
like Okonkwo? I cackled at  her unflagging creativity and remarked
that she would be my benefactress and her death would disclose my
great expectations and I would be out of these hard times and fly to
England where I could peddle our love stories in two cities and would
only return to Nigeria if I became famous, to trade a tale of two
cities. She smiled, and through the kitchen window , we watched the
half of a yellow sun hidden behind the dancing avocado tree.
The first time I set my eyes on Mrs Obioma, this book-obsessed English
teacher, that’s when I was a soft lad in JSS One class, I did not
imagine Mrs Obioma’s heart to be violent like harmattan wind
whistling and bending a purple hibiscus. I thought that behind that
exquisite facade of hers lay a stone; or, to borrow her phrase, a
heart of darkness.  Mother said that beautiful people are generally
wicked creatures that make things fall apart. But Mrs Obioma is the
definition of beauty and yet she could hardly bring herself to make
you feel no longer at  ease let alone  make things fall apart; she was
a darling to me and to all the students at Merchants of “Venice”, Oba.
Father, we loved Mrs Obioma with a love that was more than love.

The sun above resembled an overripe orange that Monday morning and
colourful birds raced each other.
Father, I was  huddled in the tranquil greenness of the school field
watching a troupe of colourful butterflies flitting over a row of red
roses and brooding over the Principal’s wife’s derogatory statement
against me during the morning assembly. She was a member of the teaching staff,
but Father, that did not accord her the right to say that I probably
did not have a penis, that I should be sent home, or perhaps to Girls
Secondary School, Oba, because Merchants is a boys’ school, that my
beauty was startling. Spooky. Devilish. Look at his slender hands.
Sculpted nose. Rosy lips. Curly hair. And a voice like classical
music. A boy, no! Impossible! A male teacher must help us take off his
shorts to examine if…Am sure this boy is a girl?

“I heard the teachers mistook you for a girl at the assembly,” Mrs
Obioma said, after I had greeted her and scrambled to my feet.
“Yes, Ma”, I said, my eyes following a grasshopper on the grass. A fly
dropped down on a dead lily in the field from nowhere. A red-headed
lizard nodded its appreciation to God, and then scurried forward. But
the fly buzzed and took flight. I did not look up to see its
destination. The lizard looked at us, did a few press-ups to impress
us, and then scuttled off.
“Look me in my eyes”, Mrs Obioma said.
I did not, could not, look her in the eyes.
She told me never to listen to those artless mongoloids that called me
a girl at the assembly. Then, quite suddenly, she took my hand and
walked me to the direction of her office, her turquoise gown flapping
in the breeze. Upstairs in her book-filled office, she asked me if I
was hungry for food. I said yes, and she gave me ten children’s
novels. I wasn’t surprised. People said that books had made her a
little crazy. I reckon The Maids Are Not to Blame was one of the
novels, but I am not sure. She even furnished me with eccentric pens
and eraser and asked me to go and read or draw President Olusegun
Obasanjo to forget my humiliation at the assembly. But I did not draw
Obasanjo because I did not like his face. I liked Mrs Obioma’s face,
so I drew her instead.
The next day, during Break/Siesta, Mrs Obioma invited me to her
office, and when I came, she requested to see my drawing. Or the
synopsis of any of the novels. But I did not tell her that I did not
read any of the novels and I did not give her the picture. I could
not. Father, I could not because I put too much of myself in that
picture. I was afraid: my romantic feelings for this woman who was old
enough to be my mother was evident in every shade and curve of the
picture. I painted her face with my friend’s brown crayon. I painted
her lips dark red with my best red crayon and my blood.(I cut my thumb
with a razor and mixed the blood in the dissolved crayon). I took off
her short black hair and crowned her with very long gold  hairso that
her beauty would eclipse the beauty of Water-mermaid in my fairy tale
book, which,according to my classmates, was the most beautiful
creature in the world. All my crayons and my friends’ crayons were
used. It was my childhood masterpiece, the picture.

2002. I was promoted to JSS2 and Mrs Obioma was still demanding for
the private assignment.
“Nna, I really want you to sketch Mr President or review any of
those literary works, eh?”
“Yes, ma,” I mumbled. “The picture and the review will be ready
next week.”
But that was the last time I saw her that year. Governor Mbadinuju did
not pay the teachers and so all secondary schools in Anambra were
drained of life. Elephant grasses swallowed the classrooms at
Merchants and hoodlums frequently converged there to smoke wee-wee and
talk about football and sexy Oba girls. My friend Peter cried when my
father came to take my luggage and drive me back to College of
Education, Nsugbe where he worked as the Chief Executive Officer. I
was crying in my father’s Peugeut 504 because I would never see Mrs
Obioma, my sweet English teacher. I wanted her to cry when I rang her
up and told her that Dad had come to take me back to Nsugbe, but she
did not cry. I  cried and cried into my handkerchief. I wanted her to
cry into her handkerchief, but it was only Peter who cried. He said he
would miss me, poor Peter. I wiped his eyes with my tear-stained
handkerchief and stumbled to my father’s car.

We arrived Nsugbe and Dad fascinated my brothers but peppered me by
pontificating about how Mbadinuju had brought our great state to its
knees and how Bakassi boys were slicing people like Ofoma bread and
roasting them like yam. I faked a wild yawn, but Dad did not shut up.
I  yawned again and closed my eyes. In my dream, I saw Mrs Obioma
scampering toward me with a smile on a garden. We hugged, my chest
crushing her breasts. I woke up shivering.
“You take Mrs Obioma as your mother or what?” Peter asked me, one hot
afternoon when he visited me here in Nsugbe from his father’s house in
Onitsha.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s like a mother, and I have drawn her
pictures. I think they are twenty one. Do you want to see…”
”No”, Peter said with a force that startled me. “God forbid, no. Her
pictures can’t be beautiful because she’s old. But if I grow up I will
still be beautiful–like Mr Okeke, our Maths teacher. Mrs Obioma is
old and she is mad.”
“I know.”
We were seated in the living room, our heads facing the Cartoon Network
on the Panasonic TV Dad brought home from the 2001 Chapel of the Holy
Spirit barzar. The smell of curry wafted from the kitchen and filled
our nostrils.
“She doesn’t even know how to teach and she’s old.”
I turned my face to the TV. “Peter, look at what Tom is doing to
Jerry–ha-ha-ha!”
“Mrs Obioma, the old bitch, said she would leave corrupt Nigeria for
America…”
I turned sharply to Peter, frozen in amazement.”What? What, Peter?Why
did she want…?”
Peter laughed without mirth.”It’s a joke. But, Oh God, you love that woman!”
I did not talk to Peter again until Mother gave him pocket money and
asked me to see my friend off.
“Farewell, Peter,” I said to him when the bus started.
“Bye, Nna.” He circled his arms around me and I wriggled out of his
embrace because he was heavily perfumed. “I will miss you, Nna. But
you will miss Mrs Obioma.”
“Bye-bye, Peter.”
But Peter stood there staring at me with moist eyes as the car honked
impatiently. “That woman is old, Nna,” he said, and climbed into the
L300 Mitsubishi bus.
I hurried home, locked myself in my room and closed my eyes. I touched
myself, thinking about Mrs Obioma. Can this be forgiven, Father?

2003. The strike was called off…nine months later, I think. And Mrs
Obioma was still at Merchants of “Venice”!
She hugged me, covered my new crisp uniform with compliments, and
asked me to take a seat. I sat down in her new swivel chair and
then–finally–I gave her the picture I drew sixteen months ago. And
for what seemed like eternity, she stared at the ” masterpiece”, her
mouth forming the letter O.
“Oh my God!” she cried. “You’re only fifteen, Nna, but you are Da
Vinci. Leornado Da Vinci reincarnated. I wanted you to draw President
Obasanjo, but you drew me! Wow, I am fla—”
“I like you, madam.”
Awkward Silence. Then she said, “It’s good to like your teachers and
neighbours as the Bible teaches…”
“I love you, madam.”
Her eyes bulged. I waited. The ceiling fan blades sliced through the
air, ruffling the files on the desk. The almanacs flapped against the
peeling wall and, above the rattling window, a fly buzzed with
monotonous regularity. “Don’t talk like that, Nna,” she said, her
voice soft and sad. “Now, you can go to the field and play football
with your classmates.”
Ah, Father! I was crushed. After that day of love confession, Mrs
Obioma’s eyes avoided mine. Peter looked happy again; he drew nearer
to me. But I told him that I wanted to draw nearer to my English
teacher. “She’s a witch, Nna!”
I said nothing. The Principal’s Volvo thundered into the school just
then, raising clouds of dust, the black smoke its exhaust expelled
enveloped two female teachers who were prattling about the hostility
of Governor Mbadinuju. “I bought this ice cream for you,” Peter said,
shoving it into my face. “It’ll calm you down, my dear. You look
distraught. Take it.”
“I detest ice cream, Peter!”
“Please…it’s for you. Take it. I hate to see you looking sad.”
I reluctantly took the ice cream from Peter and left him standing
there like a television pole in front of the Main Building. I strolled
over to Mrs Obioma’s office and offered her the ice cream. She grinned
at me and placed it in a salver on the desk. And we talked about the
stories in my books and drawing and painting and the beautiful flowers
the Principal had cultivated. Before I withdrew, I made her roll her
eyes by telling her that those flowers were really beautiful, but she
was more beautiful than them, the flowers, and I was like the
butterflies that hover over them in the sunlight. She did not close
the door when I turned to leave.

There was an awe-inspiring rainbow in the sky the day Mrs Obioma
agreed to be my lover. “You are a good boy, Nna,” she said, her head