I was finally home. Without changing my uniform, I went straight to the TV. Thankfully, my parents were out. Serving myself a steamy plate of jollof rice and a glass of chilled Zonkom, a local drink mother had made the previous day, I sat down to enjoy my meal and the nollywood thriller on Metro TV.

Once in a while, I would hear footsteps and mutterings of passersby behind our window, forcing me to look outside or glance at the wall clock. If I glanced at the clock, my mind wondered off to the classroom where I saw Master Kutcher in front of the class, probably finishing his teachings on Parallelograms, digressing to talk about the Catholic Church, the Pope and 666, then coming back to Parallelograms.

“Whose bag is this?” A familiar voice asked.

I was so engrossed in the movie that I thought the voice was a character on TV.

A head appeared at the entrance of the living room. I turned quickly to face it.

Mother! When did she come?

Soon, she was in the kitchen, not to dish out some jollof but more questions.

“Who served the food I cooked?”

My heart beat faster as I fumbled to respond.

“Visitor? ” The words fell off my lips in shock. But how was I supposed to know? Nobody told me we were expecting visitors. Now I had eaten the food meant for them. I scratched my head for an explanation for my behavior but couldn’t find any.  Mother whipped and slapped explanations out of me. Soon, I found myself giving answers I knew not where they came from.

For my punishment, I was to take the fermented corn mother had soaked for three days to the mill and on my return, take frozen fish to neighborhoods nearby for sale.

I changed my school uniform, drained the water from the corn and took it to the mill. When I came back exhausted from walking through the scotchy sun, I took out the salmon and tilapia from the deep freezer, placed them in a pan, covered them with some ice and a jute sack to retain the cold and zoomed off to Mission Two.

Unfortunately for me, it coincided with closing time at school. In no time, I will bump into my classmates and friends, especially the big girls at the back of the class that I was always shy to approach, and they wouldn’t hesitate to mock me. Ouch!

The scholar was now a street hawker, haggling over fish prices with market women. Scandal!

I’ll be on the cover page of the class’ oral gossip newspaper…