A Story Of Deceit

Episode 35

‘Yemisi, then if the father is not Dayo, who is?’, I asked again for the umpteenth time. Yemisi wasn’t giving me a straight answer. I was so curious, that I went as far as asking her if it was the gateman, which got her extremely angry. I didn’t care, I just wanted to know who was responsible.
Besides Dayo, there was no one else that visited her constantly. I asked her again, before she finally said, ‘I promise to tell you some other time’, then she ended the call. I called her back immediately but she refused to pick up. Dayo not being the father of the child, wasn’t a justification for all his wrongdoings but, I realized, I had been blaming the wrong person all those while.

I remembered his innocent claims of not having anything to do with the child but, how was I supposed to believe him, when all he ever told me were lies.

After Dinner, I went straight to my room, Yemisi still hadn’t called me. I was tempted to call but then, I thought, if she wasn’t ready to reveal the name of the guy, I has no right to force her, she had cleared Dayo’s name and that was all that mattered. I spoke to David and decided to sleep as I didn’t want to over think things. In anticipation of the next day, I couldn’t really sleep, I was just waking up between time intervals for fear of oversleeping.

The next morning, my mum barged into my room. She pinched my right arm, like she was trying to use a screw driver to fix a knot from a generator. ‘Ye, ah ah, mummy na’, I screamed in pain. ‘you don’t know, it have after seven, it’s like, something are do your brain’, she teased. I jerked up right away. ‘After seven?’, I asked. ‘No, after five’, she replied.

Waking up late was what I tried to avoid, that’s why I woke up at intervals during the night, still I woke up a little late. Any minute from then, my uncle would start waiting in the car, he told me strictly that departure time, was 7:15am. I didn’t want him to see me as someone who was not serious or unprepared. I just had few minutes left to prepare. I rushed into the bathroom, had the quickest bath ever, I moved my things out of my room and took them to the boot of my uncle’s car. Before I was able to do all this, my uncle had come out already dressed. ‘Okay, let’s go, let’s go’, he ordered. Breakfast was way out of league, there was no way I would tell my uncle that I had not eaten, not that he was inconsiderate or anything, I just wanted to avoid lateness on my first day of resumption. I wasn’t even aware that my mum would go with us until I saw her entering the car with us. Ngozi hugged me tightly and encouraged me never to deviate from good ways, she also promised to call constantly. ‘Bye bye oooo’, Stella’s mum said. ‘Thank you ma’, I replied. ‘They will not send their own children to school’, she grumbled. ‘Mtcheeeeew’, she hissed and went back upstairs. Stella didn’t even come downstairs, I wasn’t sure she was awake. It was none of my business, Stella and I were not pals anyway.

It was a long drive, I saw parts of Lagos, I hadn’t seen before, more beautiful than where we lived. Hours later, we arrived at the school. It was huge, I was expecting something small as my uncle had explained but it was really huge. The name was written boldly “PRESTIGE FASHION SCHOOL”.

My uncle handed over a letter to me and asked me to go straight to the registration office. ‘Me?’, I asked, ‘Yes of course, you. You’re not a child, I’ve done everything necessary, you just have to show them this letter, they’ll give you a number and keys to your dormitory’, he explained. ‘Okay sir’, I replied. ‘Take, this, it’ll sustain you for a while, then, when this one is exhausted I will send more’, he said handing over a certain sum of money to me. ‘Thank you very much sir, thank you sir ‘, I said.

My mum also thanked him and it went with the usual reply of my uncle, ‘Don’t thank me, it’s God’. After goodbyes and hugs, my uncle and my mum left, leaving me inside the school. I stood there with my things, I couldn’t leave them there so, I struggled with the luggage to the registration office ignoring inquisitive and penetrative eyes staring at me. I thought, the registration was a quick process but, there was a long queue. I stood there for almost an hour before I was attended to.

My case was a little different so, the lady there asked me to wait a while. Others were with documents and cash, I was just with a letter, so she thought, I didn’t know what I was there for. I waited for almost three hours again safeguarding my things, I was getting impatient but I was still trying to be nice.

I started observing that there weren’t many guys there, there were numerous girls, the office was a little wide but not wide enough to accommodate everyone as there was still a long queue outside, everyone seemed to mind their business. I got so bored, I began to notice different designs on the bags I carried and I even recounted the bags. At a point, I got cheesed off, it occurred to me that, my uncle said he had completed my registration process and handed over a letter to me. I was different from everyone there who had bills to pay. I pushed my way through to the front of the lady who dismissed me a while ago still dragging my things along carefully. ‘My registration process is complete’, I said abruptly showing the letter to her.

She collected it and read the headlines aloud which confirmed that my statement was true. She immediately brought a file, asked me to fill it and input my signature. She told me the number of my room and handed over a single key to me with instructions not to lose it. ‘Yes, ma, thank you ma’, I said and collected the key.

‘Phew’, I heaved a sigh of relief.

If I had kept quiet, then I’d have probably remained there all day. I got to the room and fixed the key into the hole, I realized I locked the door instead of opening it, which meant there were people inside already.

My thoughts were confirmed, when I heard, ‘Come in’. I entered pushing my things into the room with so much effort. There were three girls in the room, two were about my age and the other lady was obviously way older than me.

I settled in eventually with the help of my room mates. They were all very nice, though I observed little flaws but those flaws, didn’t define who they truly were. One of them was even my namesake, just that, she was light skinned so, we were able to identify each other by saying, “Uwa dark” and “Uwa fair”.

My name sake was just like me, she was new, just that she arrived a week ago, we were same age, she had almost the same views and opinions as me. I don’t know if it was because she beared my name, but we became pretty close in just a matter of weeks.
Fashion school was really exciting and stressful. I knew next to nothing about fashion so, it was difficult to comprehend many things but, I was grateful I had Uwa, her mother was once into fashion, as a result of that, assimilating complex designs were very easy for her so, she was able to teach me. I had started talking to Dayo but not really well, he was not as important as David was in my life. However, I started losing trust in David on a day, I skipped sewing lectures and went to visit him.