Anytime it re-occurs her mind, she'd just wish she never knew him in life. Till today, that scandalous experience that looked like a worn out cab horse remains ever green in her memory, and sometimes she begins to imagine what geared her towards that action.
He was a friendly, generous, social, intelligent, and down-to-earth kind of man, dark in complexion, four feets tall, flogs students so much, likes discipline and hate lies and stubbornness. He happened to be her class teacher and had a motorcycle whose sound was familiar and customized to almost all the ears of the Students, well known to Parents and loved visiting his students on weekends to see how they were carrying on and may be discuss some weak points to their Parents.
Unknown to Sandra, the turn for her to be visited came. It was on a cool Saturday evening, cold winds blew out the few dried leafs of the old mango tree in their compound, the tall grasses crumpled to the ground and she was there playing and enjoying in the occasional breeze of the early October.
Suddenly, she heard the sonorous sound of Mr. Okon; her class teacher's motorcycle from afar, she stood there for a while wondering where the young man was passing through their street to. The sound drew nearer and nearer and by this time she knew quite well that he was coming to visit her.
Sandra was known to be a very clean and decent girl in school, but contrary to this, she stood there gazing at her black - stained and shabby look. "No, this man must not see me, I'm too dirty" ; she exclaimed. Like a memory lost and recovered, as fast as the speed of light, she took to her heels. With all her might and strength, she ran straight to their toilet to hid herself, breathing so fast through her mouth as a fish undergoing cutaneous respiration in water and sweating like a dog with evolutionary sweat glands. Sandra stood there with her mouth completely deprived of saliva, her legs shivering at angle 45 and her hairs scattering like a sinusoidal wave form .
The man drove right into their compound and Sandra's mum warmly gave him a welcome. After several minutes of discussion in Sandra's absence, Mr. Okon requested for her. "Where is Sandra?" He inquired. "Oh, she's inside, perhaps not aware of your presence", Her mum replied. "Sandra! Sandra!! Sandra!!!" she called out but heard no reply. "Let me go inside and announce your arrival to her".She concluded; and off she went.
Unknown to this woman what was on ground, she marched straight to the rest room through the parlour and to the dinning then to the kitchen in search of Sandra, but to no avail, Sandra was no where to be found, "where else could she be?" she pondered.
Outside there Mr. Okon sat for a while seeing neither her mum nor Sandra. "Maybe she's dressing up, she's a very Decent girl and may take some time to come out"; He thought. "I'd go and ease myself first then I'd return to meet her here", He concluded.
There in the toilet, Sandra leaned to the wall with a sigh of relief, perhaps the man had gone. As God wanted it, the easy - going Mr. Okon walked down the path to the toilet to ease himself. On hearing the foot steps; "Who is this one coming sef?" She asked herself. Closer and closer he walked, stronger and stronger he approached. Being familiar with his foot steps from school, this time her heart was beating very fast and she wished the ground should just open and let her in. He finally appeared.
Just like a Nollywood Movie showing two dudes falling in love for the first time, her eyes got a very close, direct and steady contact with that of Mr. Okon, eyeball to eyeball. She almost fainted, she was dispirited in Spirit (if such grammar exists), where can she hide her face.? For the first time in her life, she was lip-sealed.
"What was she doing here?" She knew he asked himself. He stood there staring at her from head to toe without uttering any word, And possed neither the unshakeable optimism of the previous generation nor the blind pessimism of the Younger generation.
Hmmm, how light faded in that scenario, how her mum reacted afterwards, how Mr. Okon's face was whenever he met her in school, all constitutes the rhetorical stories of her life, she can't explain it till today.
