SHORT STORY BY WUN MI
As Daisy walks towards the cafeteria, she imagines how the dialogue she is about to have with Emeka will turn out. She does a quick sign of the cross at the door. As usual, Emeka is sitting at the center of the table, by the way the other prefects are staring intently at him, Daisy concludes that he is probably telling them one of his many fibs about his trips abroad, maybe it’s Uzbekistan this time.
‘Emeka, may I have a word with you’, she says sotto voce.
‘Yes, what is it?’, he asks before they even get to the door.
‘I missed my period’, she looks away, trying to avoid the sunlight.
‘What period? First or second period? Maths or English period?’, Emeka replies, trying hard to be stupid or ignorant, Daisy couldn’t determine which one yet.
‘No, I don’t mean class periods, I’m talking about my menstrual period’, she whispers, still looking away.
Emeka bursts into an unexpected laughter. He scratches his forehead and appears to be solving some math problems in his head, and then he points at his wristwatch and asks, ‘how can you be pregnant at his time?’
At first, Daisy is confused, wondering what time of the day the idiot thinks it is okay to be pregnant.
‘I said how can you be pregnant at this time? It’s been three months since we broke up, about four since I last I put it in, what are you talking about?‘
She tries unsuccessfully to interrupt him, this is unlike any of the scenes she had played out in her head,
‘Hmnhmnn, you SS2 girls are all the same’, he claps three times, the kind of clap that her grandmother does to buttress her expression of frustration, coming from him, Daisy finds it really irritating.
‘Look, I couldn’t have gotten you pregnant, we did it just once. Do you have an aristo? Maybe he can take care of it for you.’ He points at her face and squints really hard to put together a serious-looking appearance,
‘Let this be the last time you come to me with this kind of joke, okay? I have better things to worry about, like my o’ levels’
His crooked legs take him farther and farther away from where she stands, hands akimbo, from the way his shoulders move up and down, Daisy can tell that he is laughing hysterically. She wonders what it was that had initially attracted her to Emeka.
She will be fifteen tomorrow. She thinks it is not a bad idea to have the abortion tomorrow, that way if there are any serious complications, her tombstone will read something like this ‘Here lies Adesola Bali, a daughter, sister, friend, niece, cousin and above all, a disgrace. She spent exactly fifteen years on earth, leaving behind her unfinished homework and disappointed parents’, she pictures the look of satisfaction on her father’s face when he spits on her grave and she bursts into tears.
She quickly dries her eyes as she walks back to her class, there’s only one more person she can talk to.
She taps Fassy on the neck and drags her to the back of the class, Daisy can’t help noticing the smirk on her face as she explains her plight, Fasilat adjusts her bow-tie, the way she does when she is about to give a speech,
‘Dr. Stanley is the best, he specializes in D and C, see, he can’t treat typhoid in his hospital, if you have malaria and he prescribes a drug to you, he’s just using idea o, all he knows how to do is abort. He’ll fix you up but since you’re over three months, he may charge you like fifteen grand. Bring your phone, you may pay an additional two thousand for the emergency, normally, we book like three days ahead’, she types in an MTN number but Daisy isn’t looking.
She is sitting on the closet in the ladies as she fumbles with her phone, she tries the first time and there is no answer, determined, she dials the number again, it is not the MTN number Fasilat had given her, when she hears the ‘Hello’ on the other end, she bursts into tears, and narrates her story from the beginning,
‘How far gone are you?’, the voice asks
‘About four months’, Daisy answers between coughs and hiccups.
‘Go home and pack a bag, you’re keeping it’, her mother says, a note of finality in her voice.
It isn’t until Daisy hangs up that she realizes her mother had been crying too. She steps out of the ladies, goes to her class and as she picks up her school bag, Fassy asks ‘how far?’, Daisy ignores her as she walks out of the class, and out of the school she is sure she will never see again.
Wun Mi is a writer, blogger, professional cook and an editor. She is presently working on a collection of short stories.
Pearls & Oysters 