Smiling Days

Abstract

Smiling Days Arinze Ifeakandu (bio) I forget, for a moment, that I am not home. The dormitory is still dark, very dark, but I can see small particles of light stealing into the window gauze. It deceives me for a brief moment because that is exactly how Mma’s house is: the windows have tiny-tiny squares, and sometimes in the morning, you can see the moon peeping in, and, in the teensy moon light, you can see all these tiny particles of dust. The tiny light is shaped like a cone; it is conical. I like fancy words like that, I am thinking. I am also thinking this is not Mma’s house; this does not smell like Mma’s house. There is no Nonso snoring like an old man beside me, no caw-caw sound coming from the chicken cage outside the window. This room is big, very big, and the windows are far-far away, and now that my eyes are beginning to open small-small, I see all these iron beds—they call them bunks—and I can see buckets under the beds, and jerricans, and chains tying the buckets and jerricans to the bunks. This place smells strange, like too many people I do not know. Something is rising inside my chest—it is heavy and swollen. I don’t know when I start to cry. When the morning bell rings, it is loud: grome-grome-grome. The room is suddenly bright and loud with shuffling, the iron legs of the bunks scraping the floor, everybody rushing, talking. I sit on my bed, confusion dancing inside my head with its many-many feet; I am trying to remember what we are supposed to be doing now. Someone is shouting, “You have five seconds! One, two, three …” Five seconds for what? I stand up, and my head hits the edge of the top bunk. The pain is sharp, as if someone took a knife and punched it into my skull, but it is not only that pain that I feel. I feel another pain in my heart, inside my chest: I cannot believe why all this is happening to me this morning. I think of Mummy—she will be awake now, making the fire for bathwater, thinking her son is okay, thinking her son is happy at his new school. “Hey, what are you doing standing there? You want me to slap you?” I look up and this tall boy is standing by the door, frowning at me. He is wearing blue trousers instead of shorts, which shows that he is a [End Page 73] senior. The dorm is almost empty—only a few boys remain—and they are all sliding past him, squatting down as they get to the door and ducking their heads, the way a dog does when it is afraid you will beat it. I begin to walk to the door. He looks at me real mean. “Where are you going in your pajamas?” he says, and his voice is harsh, like he hates me, but he doesn’t even know me, so how can he hate me? Fear has paralyzed my legs, has washed down from my head and is grabbing my two-two legs and sewing them to the floor. “Fresher,” he says and does his nose like he can smell something stinky in the air. “Go and put on your blue day wear, mister-man!” He turns his head sideways, and I notice a boy kneeling by his side, the frown on the boy’s face making me think of a curtain, a dark-dark curtain. “Stand up!” the senior says, barking like a mad dog; I don’t like this senior. “Your punishment for the rest of the morning is to serve this fresher. Follow him everywhere, show him what he is supposed to do. After morning assembly, you come and report to me.” I am back to my corner, opening my iron box—that is the only kind of box they say we can bring if we don’t want the other boys to use a razor and slash my bag and steal all my things—but...