Running Away Solves Everything

Ekene

Never have I ever prayed so hard for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Never have I ever not stopped praying for this. But why should I? I was the first to fail the family. The first to not get higher than the sibling preceding him. And now, I would face the wrath of both my parents. And the disgraceful eyes of all my siblings.

My phone is just lying in my hand and the whole family is staring at me.

“So?” Egodi pressures. “What did you get now?”

Not knowing what to say is the least of my problems as Dad collects the tab from Egodi. They would also be speechless when they see the results that lie on my palms. Then, they’d pass all the aggression it brings on me. All the aggression I deserve.

Dad has the television on the ATP World Tour, but calls me to his side and pushes the remote control away. I wonder how fast I’d take the place of that remote control. Before I even sit, he snatches the tab from my hand.

“Hmmm...” He inspects the page. “Why is it so tiny?”

“Come on, Daddy,” Egodi laughs over Dad’s shoulder. “Old man.” She places her thumb and index finger on the screen and drags them further away from each other. And as she sees the grades, the punch she gives my shoulder joint is so severe, I let out a cry.

“E-kene! O gini bu iha?! What’s this?” Dad raises the tab and my eyes are showered with so much light from the topmost brightened screen. That’s the excuse I apply, as to why I don’t look my Dad in his eyes. I suspect mortification. The deepest kind.

The sitting room is closing in, and I know it. “Weta ya ebea!" is what I hear from somewhere near the dining, and it’s Mum. “Will you bring it here?” she repeats in English. I’m immobilised with fear, so Emelie seizes the tablet from Dad and delivers it into Mum’s palms, and she becomes worse than me. I would say I’m petrified Gini Weasley from Harry Potter and she’s frozen Anna. It’s when I feel my result can’t do any more damage that she crashes to the ground alongside the tablet.

Everyone rushes to succor Mummy. Everyone except me. Feeling too sorry, I move a foot from where I stood to see what’s being done for Mummy, and that’s it. I’m relieved when it’s diagnosed to be just a dramatic faint. But everyone is worked up by me.

Dad, most of all. “Inye nwa nzuzu bu otu nnoo aru ndi umu ohuru!” The slap his hand gives the wall jolts my siblings and they get to their feet beside Mummy. At an attention and not at ease. Dad angrily translates what he said to English, “Giving birth to a fool and suffering miscarriage all the time is just the same!” Louder, ferocious, highly apoplectic. “Tell me the difference, Ekene!” He races to my shuddering physical structure. “Ekene, tell me!”

The ground quakes with everything in it. My cheeks are decompressed from the sparks from his palm. It’s not just our household that’s utterly silent. Holding my cheek, suppressed with overflowing tears, I hear how everyone breathes. Dad and Emelie, faster and more severe than the rest of us.

“Daddy…” Ezechukwu moves to the fore of my Dad and I’m completely obliterated from his sight.

“O gini?!” He's patience is long lost. "What?!"

“This result is better than my own,” he defends me.

“O ihe ne me gi ni ishi?” He stutters. “Is there something wrong with you? How many As do you see there?”

“Daddy, but this is all distinctions. You don’t see this kind of result… just like that.”

My father swallows balls of rage instead of speaking.

“1A and 8B2’s.”

“So, you’re comparing that to your result?” He sponges just above his eyebrows with his palm, then uses the same hand to firmly hold his cheekbones, vibrating like a mother at the doorstep, waiting for her child to return home. “Chineke ekwekwala ihe ojo!" The child in this scenario, however, was a 'God forbid!’ and wasn’t wanted anywhere around what he called home.

“I got a C.”

“Is it not that…”

“Catering.”

“Hmmm… And you had all your main subjects A. Tell me the difference?”

“But distinc..”

“Don’t talk to me about distinction! Is that what will put him inside school! Even with this one that WAEC is now… so easy.”

Ezechukwu revolves his head till it faces me. “Ekene, What happened?”

“Don’t you even…” Shifting Ezechukwu to his rear, Dad stands in front of me, and taps my shoulders to the ground. “Shey, you and Unilag…” He looks down at me. At, in, under, over, above, whatever preposition pleases this setting… He belittles my being, he’s irritated by my presence. “You’re on your own!”

My soul's ripped out of my chest, then shattered by the twelve eyeballs that do nothing but demean me. Ebuka’s dispirited and untainted eyes, learning to do the same.

If I don’t weep, my heart does. It resents the way I am tortured. Keenly. The moment I accompany it to war is to be called the time of my life. Whence I shall be bestowed a title equivalent to Alexander the Great's. But that was highly unnecessary, because a part of me was facing a greater pain. To hit the nail on the head, this part of me is my eyes. These divine entities had taken it upon themselves to carry my name and examination number in their petite hearts. Alongside the grades that posed beneath them. For some fifteen minutes… or more.

“What did you get now?” My eyes burn and I don’t need a deity to inform me that they’re red. Egodi snatches the tab from me and wastes no time to hand it to Daddy.

He screams out of his couch, and is catapulted to a frenzy. One I have never seen before. “Chai o!”  It’s during this frenzy I realise how little I actually am, because before Mum digests the page that is placed before her naked eyes, my feet leave any grounded surface, and I’m traveling through the air. “Son… Thank you.” Most assuredly, without wings.