The Reverend Sister
I didn’t want to be in that office that afternoon. It was the last place I wanted to be.
The plain quaintness of the old office with stones carved into its walls was becoming all too familiar. It was not a place you wanted to be called to. Getting called there always meant something dreadful; a dismissal, a suspension, a dead parent. And yet there I was, the silence of the dread in me ripped apart by the shuffling of feet and the occasional pulling of desks and chairs coming from the Form Four class above.
What happened that afternoon was just one in a series of events that created a deep disdain from the school principal on my person, ultimately leading to him almost refusing to sign my transcript at the end of the school year; transcript that I needed to apply to a university in the states. I was ultimately denied a visa by a rude and impetuous consular officer, but that is a story for a different day.
That day in the principal’s office marked the beginning of my dislike and distrust for clergymen and women, particularly of the catholic faith.
I didn’t want to be in the office that afternoon. My afternoon was well-scheduled. I had made up my mind to dodge the allotted time for studies, and stay instead in my room in the dormitory and spend the full 90 mins gazing at the picture of and daydreaming about my girlfriend, far away in another boarding school. We had not been able to communicate for close to two weeks.
But there I was, standing in the principal’s office, trying hard to convince myself that I did not know why I was there whereas I knew all too well why.
It had been a tense three weeks. I had been called to the principal’s office twice already in that space of time. The first time, Mr. K, the French teacher, had reported me. It was very uncommon for a teacher to bypass the authority of the Discipline Master and go straight to the principal to report a recalcitrant student.
But I had dodged French classes so much that school year that Mr. K, a scrawny man with a thinning grey scalp and beard’s patience had finally worn out. He had resorted to invoking the sacred adjudication of the principal himself, a priest. I was called into the Sanhedrin one morning after assembly and given a serious talking-to by the principal; much to the disappointment of Mr. K who stood by in exaggerated reverence, both hands clasped in a prayer position as he watched the principal scold me. He had wanted more than a scolding for me. That slap on the wrist I had just received was not something he was happy with, but his obsequiousness to the reverend gentleman did not let him say it or show it.
He traipsed behind me in silent disapproval as I hurried off to class, eager to gloat to my classmates about my near misadventure.
That did not stop me from dodging his classes.
The truth is, I was good at French. But I was also tired of Mr. K walking into class, sitting down, and asking me to go to the chalkboard and conjugate French verbs while the other 2 students in class copied into their books. Mr. K was the French grammar teacher, and French grammar classes coincided with Maths Classes. The other French language students from the Arts class were out studying mathematics with the students in the science class. And so it was just us 3 musketeers who had not taken up mathematics and our Cardinal Richelieu.
We had to suffer 90 mins in the torture chamber of –AR and IR verbs. And so I dodged, hiding away in the study hall reading a novel, or doing an Economics assignment — better use of my time, I told myself.
I can’t blame the man too much. I was one of his star students and no one had had an A in the GCE in four years and I was one of those he was counting on to pull it off.
Well, I didn’t. No one did, as a matter of fact.
In a way, I felt like I had betrayed the man, and in another way, I didn’t care much either because the B grade I scored was more than enough for me.
I preferred the other French teacher — the French literature teacher. A short, clean-shaven man with large, deep pores on his face, and who wore oversized shirts and walked with one hand swinging indolently at his side. His lectures on Mongo Beti’s “Mission To Kala” was mostly his own lascivious stories from his younger and more agile days. He was in an odd way, responsible for a huge chunk of our sexual education, and us, mostly naïve 18 and 19-year-olds, relished and lived for his anecdotes.
His recount of his sexual encounters during a month stay in the southern parts of our country — which he paralleled to Medza*’s journey to Kala was one that kept us glued on his little self behind the desk that seemed to outsize the man.
He told us these stories in a way that was refreshingly honest, and had most of us — almost all virgins at that point in our lives — to look forward to something more than stealthily caressing the buttocks of the girls we met in night clubs when we snuck out on Friday nights — for those who had the heart to, anyway. I was not one of them.
I had been caught kissing my girlfriend in a janitor’s closet by the said janitor during the holidays and that encounter was good enough to scare me into not breaking bounds at midnight to go to the night club. I was contented with breaking bounds for an hour to buy roast fish.
The second encounter I had had with the principal had been an issue of corporal punishment. I had beaten up a student and the student told the principal I owned a cell phone. It was a miracle that I was not dismissed or suspended. I was told to hand over the phone and go to class. And so my phone went, along with a direct line to my girlfriend.
This was the third time. And this time around it was because of the reverend sister.
“You again, Chef.”
The principal called everyone “Chef” and it was difficult sometimes to tell if it was out of affection or rebuke. This time, it was out of rebuke, disbelief and reprimand.
“Just last week, I had to take your phone from you, and this time it is an even more serious offense.”
I was going to say something in protest but I decided to stare quietly at the man. He was a portly, dark man, with a very noticeable stomach. It protruded majestically from below his torso and had earned him the nickname “Squealer,” after a character from George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’. It was not a very popular nickname, known only to us final year students, and it was said in loud hushes within the walls of the Upper Sixth dormitory and classrooms.
He blended nicely into the darkness of his office, and as I watched him swing around in his chair, shuffling papers and hitting keys on his computer in a histrionic show of his own importance and authority, I couldn’t help noticing that obvious stomach. I remembered the nickname and the twitch of a smile flashed quickly across my right mandible. I would not have helped laughing were it not for the gravity of the situation.
I had laughed before, openly, and to his hearing.
On the first day of school after the Easter holidays, during morning assembly, as the principal walked out of his office for the usual assembly prayers, we all noticed that the stomach had visibly reduced — no doubt due to the Lent fasting. We were all lost in wondrous contemplation when our surprised and hushed murmuring was broken by a comment from a classmate.
“Please Father, you have cut down” my classmate complimented loudly in a sweet and innocent, yet slightly mocking tone.
I, along with every one of my classmates, choked my laughter through the entire prayer and announcements. And the minute the principal entered his office we all burst out laughing openly. Why the principal chose to ignore that remark remains a mystery to this day. We all knew for certain that he had heard it.
But now was not the time for laughter. I was alone with him in that office and it was not to share tea and biscuits with him.
“Sister says you threatened her, and almost beat her,” he said.
The force of that accusation took me completely unaware. Even if I wanted to, there was no way I would have threatened the reverend sister, talk of less of attempting to beat her. I would have been dismissed and would have had to face my father.
“That is impossible, Father. I never threatened her.” I argued.
“That is not what she told me. You raised your voice in anger and threatened to beat her up”
“Then she wasn’t forthright with her answer, Father. We saw differently on an issue and I made my position clear to her.” I counter-argued in the most catholic way I could muster.
I don’t know why, but the word ‘forthright’ felt to me like the most biblical thing to say that would give a layer of credence to my defence. I had long learned that I had a knack for using the English language to my advantage and knowing the rights words could help assuage tense moments and give me some leverage. But would ‘forthright’ be enough to defuse this situation about the Reverend Sister.
Ah! The Reverend Sister. That witch…
I didn’t care too much for the woman. She was just another reverend sister that was lathered unto us by the catholic institution to serve as the school bursar. Somewhere in the unwritten book of the catholic quest for gender parity, it seemed it had been noted that the principal would be a priest and the bursar would be a sister — a system of checks and balances ordained by God himself and to be given the thumbs up by the laity.
I wouldn’t say before that, that I liked the woman very much; she was visibly annoying and I knew to keep my distance. She seemed to do too much. The previous bursar had been a calm lady who knew to share enough toilet paper. This one was just all over the place, petting junior students and poking holes at the hierarchical structure that the school prefects had set up — holes that were part of the reason why we, as an entire prefect-body went on strike.
The woman just didn’t know her place.
She had this ridiculous obsession with twins. She, a twin herself liked to be seen with the few pairs of twins that were in school; taking photographs with them and having what I presume were perp talks with them. Two of the people in her audience were fellow classmates. I considered telling her once that I was the child of a twin myself just to know what thrived in those secret meetings, but the painful ire of my classmates’ faces after a photo session with her was enough for me to give up on the subterfuge.
I had considered asking them what they spoke about but I never got around to doing it even after my little plan had canceled.
My issue with her stemmed from what remained of my school fees. It was my seventh and final year in secondary school and most of my textbooks had been bought in my 6th year. My school fees had been paid in full at the start of the academic year, which meant that since I was going to use the same textbooks in my final year and not take up some new optional ones, I was definitely going to have some balance from my school fees.
And I did. It was 53,000frs — not a small sum by all accounts.
For a student to get the balance of their school fees, they needed to get a signed authorisation from their parents. A few brazen students resorted to forgery; they simply had another classmate with a “fatherly” handwriting write and sign an authorisation for them.
It was the case of one of my classmates; a lucky witness to the altercation I had with the sister. Lemon, we called him. Lemon had the strange habit of giving you a handshake as though he were trying to dig into your fingers. He held his right arm high, opened the palm of his hand wide, his fingers locked together, and nose-dove the whole thing into your waiting handshake. He had earlier told me he had the balance of his fees with the bursar when I told him that I had as well. How the conversation came up, I don’t remember. I only remember that he was in a little fit, trying to find someone with big enough balls to sign him a forged letter.
He found his balls in Ebanga, a Bayangi boy who, till today, I am still shocked was able to drum up the courage to write the said letter. He was the last person I would have imagined taking such a risk. Ebanga wrote what could have easily passed for a codicil, instructing the “administration” to “bequeath” unto his “son” what remained of the school fees that he, the “father” had paid.
He wrote the letter in French. And signed it with a rich man’s signature. Three strokes of the pen, as he explained with a very serious look on his face that “only poor people have long signatures.”
He even wanted to stamp it but didn’t have the time to dodge to town and make a fake stamp. I watched all of this in amazement and felt sorry for his parents. Thanks to God, he turned out alright. My man went from an expert forger to medical doctor.
Lemon, a Fulani boy, met me that afternoon in the vestibule of sister’s office armed with the letter from his Bayangi father.
Strange times.
He greeted me in his usual style as his locked fingers dug sharply into my waiting handshake.
“Sister dey inside office di receive some person,” I said. “As soon as the person comot, I go enter take ma dough, then you go follow.”
She was with one of the twins she fawned on. Soon enough the child left her office and I knocked quietly on the door and stepped in.
“Good afternoon, Sister,” I said in the meekest manner possible; a true lamb from the flock of the shepherd she worshipped.
“Yes, what can I do for you?” she asked. She was standing behind her desk, rummaging through a cupboard, picking out some thick ledgers, looking at their covers, and then putting them back in the cupboard.
“Ahem!” I cleared my throat. “I believe I have some balance from my fees. I have with me a signed letter from my father where he asks me to collect the balance.” I said with one hand outstretched, giving her a sealed envelope.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Lemon in the vestibule. He was tall and very lanky; and with the forgery in his hand, he looked even lankier — like an astonished man from the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Sister sat down settling a ledger on her desk, took the envelope, tore it open with a letter opener, and proceeded to read the letter in a quiet, pensive mood.
I imagined what it would be like if I asked why she wouldn’t offer me a seat or if her seats were reserved for her special twins. I laughed in my head at that thought. I could kiss my money ‘bye-bye’ if I dared.
She had an average frame, this woman. Behind her white and grey uniform, she could have easily passed for someone’s unassuming aunty. She wasn’t very tall, nor was she short. Not a sight to behold and not plain-looking either. She stood on some sort of holy middle ground. There was some mild Victorian quality to her- something stern, Jane Eyre-rish, if one could put it that way. She could have easily been a black governess in an English aristocrat’s home. There was a certain religious austerity and poise to her bearing that tendered the plausibility of her blending into such a portrait.
She had a spruce of grey hair that peeped from under her white veil on the right side of her head. She was always well-presented; her polished brown sandals and the shiny crucifix that hung from her neck added just the right layer of puritanism to make her feel approachable, even affable and yet revered. She reminded so much of my headmistress from primary school.
“What is your name?” She woke me from my thoughts.
“Daniel Ngongang.” I said “I’m in Upper Sixth Arts” I added for good measure.
She opened a thick ledger, ran her fingers through, and stopped at what I assumed was my name.
“You are right. It says here you are owed 53,000frs.
“So, I am going to open an expense account in your name. I will give you 7,000frs today and you can come next week and take another 7,000frs and so on till the money finishes.” She added as she opened a drawer on her desk and brought out a wad of old banknotes.
“Excuse me, what?” I asked, very surprised.
“I said I am going to give you 7,000frs every week. That should take you through the entire school term.”
“Sister, I am not sure you understand. The letter asks that I be given ALL the money.”
I pointedly made sure I did not make her the subject of that sentence just so she understood that even if it was Judas Iscariot himself, Jesus’ own bursar sitting in that seat, ALL my money was to be given to me.
“And I will give you all the money. Only in the way I have planned it.” She said, indolently.
At this point, I was beginning to get irritated; by the indolence and the sheer audacity of the woman. I had made plans for that money like my life depended on it. 25,000frs of it was already to be paid to a classmate, the treasurer for our end-of-year party. The rest was to go to a number of things, things whose details I would spare you. I had lied to my father that the balance of my fees was 10,000frs because I didn’t want him to ask me to use the actual balance as pocket money. And this woman was foiling all my plans with this absurdity. At this point, I had lost my knack for using English to assuage my interlocutors and leverage things my way. The Pidgin English in me was beginning to impugn my good sense of diplomacy.
“Well, sister, I don’t need you to plan my money for me, I am perfectly capable of doing that myself. The letter says the money should be given to me. All you have to do is give me the money and that’s it.”
“You say?”
“I said my parents trust me enough to spend the money in a responsible manner and I think you should as well.” I tried again with a different approach.
“What do you need all this money for anyway? Fifty thousand is a lot of money for you.”
There was the catholic puritanism I hated. I had spent enough time in a catholic school to know the whole institution was just another institutionalised money-grabbing scheme. I had had to see my parents groan over the prices of overpriced textbooks, overpriced uniforms, overpriced toilet tissue and a bunch of secret taxes levied on us in the name of a good education. It also hurt me sometimes that this was done with a high-handedness spoken from a moral and authoritarian dais raised on the shoulders of underpaid teaching staff and beguiled parishioners. I certainly did not need a cog in the wheel of that machinery giving me lessons on what constituted too much money for me. She was part of the system and her absolution, to me, was inchoate.
And was this woman even serious? I asked myself. Did she know that at that very moment in school there were students with over 200, 300 thousand francs of pocket money? What I was owed was pale in comparison to that. All this got me even more.
“Sister I am not one of your tw-… I am not a child! That is a conversation you should be having with someone in their first year. I am in my final year. I can perfectly handle 53,000frs. And that’s all I want.”
At this point, I could see Lemon twitching uncomfortably out of the corner of my eye. The lankiness was gone and he was standing rigidly in the vestibule, probably weighing his choices and wondering if that forgery he had in his hand was worth what he was seeing. Sister too was not having any more of my petulance at that point.
“I have told you that I will give you 7,000frs now and 7,000frs every week till the money runs out. If you do not want it, you can leave and come for the entire sum on closing day.”
“I am not leaving here without all my money,” I replied. Coldly. Calmly. Angrily.
“Get out of my office!” She said in a half scream, getting up from behind her desk and moving towards the door of her office.
“I’ve told you that I am not leaving here without my money.”
She was now standing beside the door to her office. Lemon had begun to retreat already, but changed his mind when sister appeared by the door, asking me to go out, the index finger on her left hand dramatically pointing to the floor at the threshold of the door, indicating the exit via which she wanted me to beat it. Sister had seen him and there was no way he could run now.
“Get out!”
“I said,” pause… “I am not leaving here without ALL my money.” And as I said so, I took a threatening step towards her.
Big mistake.
I am taller now than I was back then. But even then I was the fourth tallest person in school at a full 1m86, and I had a slightly athletic build. I have long legs and the office was a small one. The step I took brought me easily very close to Sister. I effortlessly towered over her, and as I looked down at her angrily telling her I would not leave her office until I had my money, I saw something in her eyes.
Fear.
The woman was genuinely afraid. She had taken an uncomfortable step backward, leaning back against her desk with one hand behind her back clutching it uncomfortably.
It was then that I knew I had gone too far. It wasn’t just for the fact that I was in a catholic school with strict discipline. I had not been brought up that way. I felt like I had disappointed my mother in particular. And to add to that, stories of students squaring off with teachers were sacrilegious.
A classmate of mine had just been deposed as a prefect and suspended for telling a biology teacher that she wasn’t teaching anything new and that he preferred solving Further Mathematics questions during her class. The poor madam had been so deeply hurt that she burst out crying and had run to the staffroom to be comforted by her colleagues.
The Discipline Master had stormed angrily into the classroom to confront the boy. But even he could not say much. Two years before he had suffered at the hands of the same student. It was during an Additional Maths class. I was wondering, as was usual, why I had taken up additional mathematics, while the D.M, our maths teacher as well had spent an agonising twenty minutes solving a maths problem and using the entire 3 rolls of the blackboard, at the end of which my friend had put his hand up, stood up rigidly and said -
“please Sir, I can solve that question in five lines.”
And he did. Everyone else was flabbergasted while I questioned my decision to pick up Additional mathematics more intensely than I had ever done. The D.M was in a mad rage, proud and admiring at the same time. I had never seen anyone go through that spectrum of emotions in so little an amount of time before.
The boy was the smartest student that had passed through the school in forty years and was, basically, untouchable.
I was not. I was as expendable as an old sock, and this situation with the sister was not helping me.
I relaxed, took a step back, and unscrewed her my face. This time, I saw shame rush to her face. No doubt a quick realisation that she had let a teenager take advantage over her. She tried furtively to take the upper hand and leaned forward from her desk — a more dignified pose worthy of the authority she had.
“Get out.” She said. Calmly.
I looked at her for a few seconds, just so she could know that I had let her have control of the situation and that it was really I who held the reins. I left the office, but not without saying
“You can keep the money. I don’t want it anymore.”
Later that day, Lemon caught up with me and told me that Sister had given him the entirety of his school fees balance. 60,000frs. I winced painfully. I had fought his battle for him. He understood that and offered to buy me some Scotch-egg as consolation. I politely declined.
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“So, sister says you threatened her, and almost beat her”
The force of that accusation took me completely unaware.
“That is impossible, Father. I never threatened her.” I argued.
“That is not what she told me. You raised your voice and threatened to beat her up”
“Then she wasn’t forthright with her answer, Father. We saw differently on an issue and I made my position clear to her. Think about it, Father. How can I want to BEAT sister? It’s unheard of. I would never do such a thing!”
How could that witch have lied so blatantly?
“She said you stood over her, raised your arm, and threatened to hit her with it unless she gave your money.”
“What?! Absolutely not! That is not true!”
“Are you seriously saying Sister is lying?”
The way he said it, you would think butter would not melt in her mouth. Like she was born from an immaculate conception, had never eaten the forbidden fruit and was blessed with papal infallibility.
“Father, if you think I am lying, please call Sister and ask her to come here and let her swear in front of you.”
Another big mistake.
I had crossed another line and regretted it almost immediately. The priest’s face had darkened and his stomach throbbed visibly in anger at my defiance.
“Chef,” he said “I shall hear no more of this matter. I have instructed Sister to give you 15,000frs tomorrow. She will give you the rest of the money as she planned she would.
“And you better keep a low profile — he added — this is the third time you have been to my office on matters of indiscipline. I won’t be so kind next time. And I want you to apologize to Sister. I insist on the apology.”
“Yes, Father. Thank you, father.” I answered resignedly. There was no point arguing. He had adjudicated and that was the end of it.
I grumpily left his office.
The following day, I went to Sister’s office. As I got into the little vestibule that doubled as a small office for the school clerk, I imagined what it would have been like if Lemon had gotten in before me. He was also a no-nonsense person but I doubted he would have been as brazen. Perhaps he would have, and I would have gotten all my money instead.
I peeped into the office and sister was there, with one of the twins. The same one I saw on my last and all so memorable visit there — I guess. You can never always tell with twins. I didn’t wait for her to finish whatever it was she was discussing with the boy. I knocked softly on the wooden beam of the doorway and walked in resolvedly with a scowl on my face.
“Good afternoon,” I said bitterly. “Father says you have some money for me.” I continued, not letting her answer my greeting. I never expected her to, anyway.
There was a moment of silence between us. She stared at me. Expectantly. I realised then she must have been waiting for an apology. Father had, after all, insisted on it. Little did she know I had made up my mind the moment I had stepped out of Father’s office the day before that I was not going to apologise.
“You go wait that apology sotay grass go grow under ya foot.” I thought to myself.
She must have felt it too. Because right at that moment, she reached into her drawer and pulled out 15,000frs and gave it to me.
I took it without looking at her and left her office.
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I avoided her as much as possible. The few times I had to go there to claim the bits of my money were quite embarrassing. I had to pass by line a bunch of Form 1s and 2s, lined up to receive money from her. I never waited in line with the little scoundrels. I went into her office and with a knowing look made her understand I was there to collect what I was due. She made sure she took her time, no doubt making sure the little crowd of small scoundrels noticed that the big prefect who was shouting at them up and down the hallways was really no different from them — incapable of being responsible for large sums of money and was entrusted, just like their parents had entrusted her with their pocket allowance, to wait in line also to receive money from her.
Very humiliating.
My last visit to her office was the day the academic year ended. All the other students were going home while we, 5th year and 7th year students had to stay in school for another 3 weeks to write our GCEs. She had been quite unavailable the previous two weeks and I was really broke. I had 10.000frs in her possession and was sure to get all of it that day.
I got into her office and looked at her. There were no greetings from me. We had long stopped exchanging civilities. We both knew they did not come from an earnest place and so there was no need for it.
She counted 10,000frs and gave to me. And then, to rub salt into my wounds in what must have been a sadistic show of her victory over me, she said: “These are your last weeks here. Behave. Don’t carry that attitude into your life after this.”
“Carry ya lass.” I muttered angrily as I made for the door.
“What did you say?”
I didn’t reply. I left. There was nothing she could do. School was over. I could not be dismissed.
1–1
Medza* — the hero and principal character of the book “Mission To Kala” by Mongo Beti
