Name: Derrick Oduagbon
Subject: Literature-In-English
Teacher: Sister Agnes-Mary Onyeoma
Assignment: Book Report for “An Introduction to Stories and Plays in English, Abridged for the Commonwealth Student” by Edmund Waite (twelfth ed.)
OVERVIEW
I did not want to write a report for this book, but Lady Koi-Koi convinced me to, even though she says it “does a disservice to our own stories.”1 I also have to pass my WAEC, and this book is on our reading list for the mock exam, so, fine. I will discuss the author of the book (“Author”) and the main ideas (“Main Ideas”). I will also tell you what I think about this book (“Evaluation”) and why I agree with Lady Koi-Koi (“Conclusion”). But first, I will have to tell you how I met Lady Koi-Koi (“Introduction”).
INTRODUCTION
At about 2:30AM on Saturday 16 February 2019 (I know because I always look at the clock when I wake up), I woke up in the hostel because my bed was shaking. It was lights out, so I could not see if anyone else was awake. But it did not sound like any other bed was shaking apart from mine.
I knew something was wrong because I sleep on the top bunk, and the bottom bunk was empty (my bunkmate, Osbert, sleeps there, and you know how he was suspended the day after valentine’s for leaving school to meet his girlfriend in town?). So at first, I didn’t come down to check what was shaking the bed. Rule Number One of sleeping in the hostel is that nothing at the bottom of the bed concerns you in the top bunk, especially at night and in the dark. But the bottom bunk was empty because no Osbert, and the bed did not stop shaking, and no one woke up, and I could not go back to sleep because my head kept banging against the iron frame.
So I came down.
The shaking stopped, and when I found my torchlight and flashed it around, there was nothing and no one there. Of course, this was me breaking Rule Number Two of the hostel: never flash your torchlight in a room full of sleeping boys. The way they all hissed at me, half-awake, like a choir of snakes, I turned off the torch really fast before they could wake up. At least one morning every week, there is a provisions locker that has been mysteriously broken into in the night, corn flakes and powdered milk missing. Nobody wants to be caught walking around in the night except when they’re going to pee.
But as soon as I climbed back up, the shaking started again. So I got down this time and broke Rule Number Three: I looked under the bed.
I didn’t even have to shine my torch. The eyes there that met mine had a light of their own, like the stray cats we sometimes see near the bush. But these ones were staring back at me knowingly, as if they had been waiting for me all this time. I guess it was in the shock of it, the panic, that made me turn on my torch and point it there.
She looked really normal at first. Like my Auntie Georgina when she dresses up for church. Young like her, too, like she could be my older cousin. Her hair was long but not straight, laying on her shoulders in that coiled-up way you know it’s not a wig or a weave. Her clothes were the worst possible clothes for hiding under a dirty bed: a clean, pressed gown, armless and stylish.
But the most important thing was her shoes. High-heeled, shiny, blood-red.
As I stared at her, the world shifted for, like, a blink. Suddenly, I was looking at another person. Or thing. Hair still long, but now like cobwebs, like something ancient and abandoned. Skin wrinkled, possessed by lines and distortions, or maybe just also abandoned. Gown weathered and ragged, threadbare. But the shoes were untouched—still high-heeled, still shiny, still blood-red.
I blinked again, and she was back to looking like Auntie Georgina.
My heart beat in my mouth. My hands and legs couldn’t hold me. I wanted to scream.
But then she said, "Do not be afraid."
Her voice was raspy and shrill and sweet, the way your favourite teacher’s voice cracks when she’s telling an exciting story, and immediately I knew I was wrong, because this woman under my bed was not a demon or ghost, but an angel.2
But why is an angel hiding under the bed? I wondered.
Then she said it again: "Do not be afraid, Osagie."
And that's how I knew she would not harm me, because she called me by my home name, Osagie, and not Derrick like everyone else at school. And when someone calls you by your home name like that, you feel, inside, that you are home.3
AUTHOR
When you gave us this assignment, the first thing I did was search for the author Edmund Waite on Google. Did you know he died in 1974? I thought maybe you didn’t know when you put the book on our list, or that maybe this was the wrong person. But then I saw that this book has been on the reading list for the WAEC Literature-In-English exam since the formation of the examination body in 1952. That means this book existed before Nigeria even gained independence! That means the same person who taught my parents is teaching me!
It didn’t make sense to me at all, which was why I was thinking of it when I met Lady Koi-Koi the second time—the next weekend after that night under my bed. At midnight, I went out to pee and she was standing under the moon in the courtyard near the toilets. She looked different from last time, because one half of her hair was plaited, but the other half was unplaited, as if she had been at a hairdresser’s and then had stood up midway and came here.
We sat in the moonlight, and that was when I asked her what her name was.
"I have been called many things, depending on who you ask," she said. "I used to have a name before, one that was just my own. But somewhere between these many names, it was lost, and now I no longer remember it." She paused. "Of the new names, the one I like best is Lady Koi-Koi. You can call me that.”4
"Why that one?"
"Because when a part of you is replaced, you want the new thing to maybe respect you a little, to be as close as possible to who you are. Lady Koi-Koi says I’m a lady, which is true. The other names—Bed Shaker, Bush Baby, Headless Girl—are all based on stories that surprise even me.5 They're meant to terrify, to paint me as a devil or demon.”
"You are not a demon." I felt like I had to say it because no one had told her this in a long time.
She shook her head slowly. "No. I just like high-heeled shoes."
She sounded so alone.
Later, when I left to go back to bed, I saw her take off her head, place it on her lap, and begin to plait the other side of the hair that wasn’t finished.
MAIN IDEAS
Okay, so in this book, Edmund Waite is doing two things: (1) Before every story, he tells us what to look out for when reading, stuff like “character” and “plot” and “theme”; and then (2) after each story, asks us questions and gives “sample answers.” Some of the stories are nice—I like the Shakespeare ones because there's always a sword or dagger or bottle of poison somewhere, and you always know someone will be bleeding or dead before the story finishes. I like the Edgar Allan Poe ones, too. I don't know how they got in there, because sometimes I think they're there by mistake, but I'm not going to ask you to remove something I enjoy.
I guess what I don't like the most is the "sample answers" part because I feel like Edmund Waite is asking me to say things that I did not think when I was reading. Like in The Merchant of Venice, I was not thinking about "the hazardous path to marriage in the 16th century" but instead that I've never met anyone named Bassanio, so why am I reading about this guy for WAEC? Why am I not reading about somebody called Osagie?
And then I'm looking at the reading lists of other smaller state schools and they have stuff like The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Purple Hibiscus that are not abridged.6 Those ones have names in them like my friends and I have, which is making me wonder: is there a book with sample answers for “character” and “plot” and “theme” for those stories? Where is the Introduction to Nigerian Stories and Plays for the Nigerian Student? Why is that not on our list?7
I asked Lady Koi-Koi these questions, and she said, “Your feelings are valid,” but that she would not help me avoid the assignment because “How else would you learn?” It sounded so familiar, the way she said it, and it took me a moment to remember that’s exactly what my father says.
This was our third time meeting, by the way—also at night. She did not come close to the hostel this time, so I had to go outside and meet her near the bush. I knew she was there because I heard something like a baby crying, but it was just some wild cat that sometimes follows her around. She says that unlike most people, the cat sees her, but much like most people, is stuck somewhere between fear and fascination. So, she lets it do what it wants, tell itself whatever it wants to believe about her. Unlike most people, it chose to stay.
I can’t even remember what we talked about. All I remember is how I felt. Or more like how I didn’t feel. I didn’t feel like I do when I’m coming back here after holidays, and I get in the chartered bus and wave goodbye to my mother, but she’s always on the phone and doesn’t see. Or back in my junior years when I would sometimes miss my way in the corridors because they confuse me, and the seniors and housemasters would punish me, and the boys would just laugh. Or when the boys choose football teams during PE and say they’ll sub me in but never do, and I sit on the bench for a whole period like a sixth finger no one knows what to do with.
When I returned to the hostel, Osbert—back from suspension—rolled over and pointed his torch in my eye.
“You piss forever these days,” he said, eyes like a lemur. “You dey thief something?”8
EVALUATION
What do I have to say about this book? That reading it and writing about it is just one more thing in this world that I don’t want to do but I have to because I don’t get to choose. Lady Koi-Koi says the world is cruel like that, and that this is not a feeling that will go away. She says it’s better to focus on the parts that we get to choose, so that is what I’m doing here. I’m writing this book report because you asked me to, but I get to choose what I write. So here you go.9
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of this report, I said I will conclude by explaining why I agree with Lady Koi-Koi. Now that I think about it, maybe “agree” is not the word I was looking for. Maybe more like “vibe”. Because that first day when I found her under the bed, she told me not to be afraid. But I think she’s the one who's afraid.
I wanted to ask her about this when I saw her for the last time before mid-term break (and before I turn in this paper). But she looked so sad that I was leaving, so I didn’t bother. Instead, I asked her something else that had been bugging me for a long time: Why was she appearing10 to only me and not the other boys?
It took her a long time to answer that.
“You are only talking to me now, Osagie, because you, too, know how it is to be lost and alone.”
When mid-term break came and the chartered bus arrived, I didn’t get on it. For the first time ever, I called my parents and told them I wasn’t coming for the short holiday, that I needed to stay back and do some reading and prep for WAEC. They were surprised, confused even. But I think what they felt most was pride.
“This is why we sent you there,” said my father. “To gain independence. Become your own man.”
“Okay,” I said, and hung up.
ASSESSMENT
Score: N/A
AutoComments: Student failed to keep to the task at hand or demonstrated divergent or indulgent engagement.
Teacher's feedback to student: See me, Derrick!
Teacher's notes to disciplinary committee (private): Derrick is a smart boy with a fascinating command of language and a voracious appetite for telling and consuming stories. Unfortunately, this means he is prone to daydreaming and an overactive imagination, a less-than-desirable habit for such a promising young man. Especially when such daydreaming results in disciplinary hearings such as this. While I would advise this behavior be tempered early (if not outright curtailed), I would suggest, for a start, less punitive measures such as parental intervention. In the interim, Derrick earns a pending mark for this assignment.
FOOTNOTES
1 Her words, not mine.
2 Because that is what the angels in the Bible always say, right Sister? “And she was afraid at the glorious sight of the being before her, but then the angel spoke and said, “Do not be afraid,” and that is how she knew this was of God.” Lady Koi-Koi did not say “Peace be unto you” like the angels always do, but she did not need to, because I already felt peace after she told me not to be afraid.
3 I cannot say I have always felt at home at The Virgin Immaculate. Remember when I just arrived at this school, Sister? I had never been away from my family before. Don’t tell anyone, but I secretly cried like a baby. The other JJC students laughed at me, even if I knew they were missing their family too but they were just hiding it. Then you came and said everything will be okay, and you were there to help me. You were the one who took me around and showed me everywhere I needed to go and everything I needed to do on that first day (especially the library—remember how excited I was to see so many books, and the big smile you had when I kept mentioning all the books I had read?). Normally they make a senior take the JJCs around, but the seniors like to use that opportunity to do what they call “initiation.” They take JJCs to a corner and beat us and warn us that if we tell anyone, they will stab our eyes with forks and cut off our tongues with broken bottles, so that we cannot see and report anything like that ever again. But it was like you knew about it, and you wanted to save me from them. This is why I’m telling you about Lady Koi-Koi, because I think you will understand, because you know what it’s like to want to help someone not feel so lost and alone.
4 You know the story of this name, Sister? They tell it in the hostel sometimes. They say she used to work at a boarding school just like this one, and that she was a teacher or headmistress or secretary or something (they are wrong). They say she was very beautiful (correct) and used to wear bright red lipstick (wrong) and bright red high-heeled shoes (correct). The shoes used to make koi-koi, koi-koi, on the ground as she walked, and that’s how they knew she was coming.
5 The way they tell it in the hostels, they say she used to be a wicked teacher who flogged students until they bled. They say she enjoyed it so much that it was no longer about what the students did, but that she just enjoyed torturing them. And because the school did nothing about it, the students decided to corner her one day near the school bush. They beat her the same way they beat JJCs, used the heel of her red shoes. Maybe they even put forks in her eyes and cut her tongue with broken bottle, I don’t know. But they say she died after, and then they threw her body into the bush. They say if you hear something like a baby crying in the bush in the night, you should not go there because that is a Bush Baby calling you to your death—you will never be found again. (“But none of that is true,” says Lady Koi-Koi. “If you go into the bush at night all by yourself, chances are that you will get lost. Next time, bring a map and a torchlight.”)
6 Merriam Webster’s Dictionary says that abridged means “to make a piece of writing shorter by removing the unimportant parts.” How does Edmund Waite know what is important to me?
7 I know I asked you this question in class before and you said the notes you dictate for us to take down are enough, and that the WAEC board selects the books and not you. But you were also not supposed to take me to the library yourself that day and yet you did. I think if you wanted to change the books on the list, you would know how to.
8 I know you said we should never use pidgin in our writing, but Lady Koi-Koi says it’s “a language as valid as any other.” Again: her words, not mine.
9 I asked her some other questions, but I didn’t want to put them in the report because they would just make it longer. Here are some of the things I asked her, and what she said:
Why do you come to secondary schools? “Where better? You're old enough to understand and young enough to still be convinced. You’ve been set apart from the world, from its cruelness and twists and complexities. Everything here has routine, order. This kind of flatness opens your eyes, allows you to see the extraordinary in ordinary things, and the ordinary in the extraordinary.”
Why do you keep coming back? “Because there are things I want to tell you, things that only people like me know, people who live outside of time and space as you experience it. But no one will listen. They are too concerned with the way I look, the way I exist. This is why they never learn. This is why they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. Big, irreversible mistakes, but also small ones that grow into monsters, like this book on your reading list since 1952.”
10 She doesn’t like the word haunting. She says, and I quote: “A haunting is just a reminder manifested. All I’m here for is to remind. I hope that by the time you leave here, I will have reminded you of something important.”
