I can still hear the sound my hand made on Chigozie's face, my brain might have doctored it and included some interesting effects. It was just crisp and sharp. Like a textbook closing.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Or am I? Memory doesn't work that way, does it? It jumps around, doubles back, lies to you. Sometimes I think I remember being afraid before he slapped me even. Like I saw it coming. But that is probably my brain rewriting the past, making me out to be more intuitive than I actually was.
What occurs with being silent in a location such as this, part of the globe, or the entire globe for that matter, and I'm referring to genuinely silent, not simply shy, is that individuals mistake it for weakness. They observe you sitting there, constantly in the second row (never front, that's for the overachievers; never back, that's for the rebels), and they think you're soft. Easy prey definitely. What they don't understand is that some of us are quiet because we're calculating. Because we're watching and seeing. Because we know that if we ever lose it, someone's going to get hurt.
Chigozie had this laugh. Annoying and high-pitched, almost like a girl, which was funny because he was built like a small truck. Broad shoulders, thick neck, hands that could probably crush a mango without trying. His uniform always appeared too little; the shirt tight over his chest, the trousers' legs breaking just above his ankles. I remember thinking that his mother could not afford to get him new ones, yet he walked as though he owned the world regardless.
He'd been staring at me for weeks. I could feel it in class. Chigozie would lean back in his chair: he was three seats behind me, to the left, and I'd turn to catch him staring at me. Not quite hostile, but measuring. Like he was trying to figure out what I was made of.
The day it happened, we were supposed to be taking notes on photosynthesis. The teacher had written half the plant kingdom on the blackboard in her tidy, looping handwriting, and almost everybody was bent over exercise books, pretending to work. I was working (I always did) when I felt him stand up.
I should have known. His walk was a little too casual and purposeful. Like he was walking to the front of the room to answer a question, but there wasn't any question. The other students sensed it too. That static feeling you get right before something terrible is about to happen. Conversation ceased. Pencils stopped.
Then his hand landed on the back of my head.
Not a friendly tap or a nudge. A full-palm slap that rang my ears and sent my forehead almost smashing onto my desk. The sound echoed in the classroom like a gunshot.
"Ah, sorry o," he said immediately, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "I was trying to swat a mosquito."
A mosquito. At the back of my head. In the middle of the dry season. What a ridiculous joke.
The laughter started slowly. A few giggles at the back row, then like wildfire. Someone actually clapped. "Chigozie, you're mad o!" she said, but she was laughing. They were all laughing. Thirty-something pairs of eyes on me, waiting to see what the quiet boy would do.
I remember the heat spreading over my face. How my hands started shaking. Not from fear, although I was afraid, appalled really. Something (so many things) that had been building for months, maybe years. All those times when I'd chosen silence over confrontation because that's what good students do, what smart boys do.
But sitting there, beneath thirty pairs of eyes, hearing that moronic giggle of his, I knew something. Being smart doesn't save you. Being quiet doesn't help. Sometimes people only speak the language that is spoken to them first.
My "surviver" complex got the better of me and I rose to my feet. Chigozie was already heading back to his seat, most probably thinking the show was over. He'd had his laugh, made his point, asserted his dominance. Case closed.
I trailed after him.
He must have heard me coming because he turned around just as I reached him. His face was still twisted in that self-satisfied smirk, as though he'd just told the world's funniest joke. But when he saw me standing there, something shifted in his face. Confusion maybe. Or the dawning of realization.
"Wetin?" he said. "What's wrong with you?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. My throat seemed to be full of sand. Instead, I withdrew my hand, further than I needed to, perhaps, but I was attempting to be sure, and I swept it across his face with every ounce of strength I possessed.
The sound was so much crisper than his slap and clearer. Like the crack of a whip. His head snapped to the side and he stumbled backwards, knocking into somebody's desk.
Nobody moved for a moment. Nobody breathed. The classroom was so quiet I could hear the thud of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Then Chigozie's hand came up to his cheek, and I saw something in his eyes that I had never seen before. A 'more shocked than angry' look. Like he'd just discovered water could burn, that gravity could run upwards. That I would slap him back had just not occurred to me.
"You slapped me," he cried. "You actually slapped me."
"You slapped me first," I said to him, and I was amazed at how calm I was. Internally, I was screaming. Internally, I was planning my funeral already.
He was bigger than me and obviously stronger. If this turned into a real fight, I was dead. But something had shifted in the room. The other students were not laughing anymore. They were watching, yes, but with a different kind of attention. Like they were seeing me for the first time.
Chigozie stepped closer to me, fists tight. "You think you're tough now, abi? You think—"
"Chigozie, no!"
I do not know who broke the silence first, but suddenly everybody was yelling at the same time. Hands on his shoulder, pulling him away. Voices raised in that particular pitch which meant someone was in grave trouble. In the din, I heard my name being mentioned, not in derision now, but with what might have been respect.
"Let him be, joor. He's a good student."
"Don't fight here. The HOD (title of our block head) will kill both of you."
"Chigozie, your face is red o. Like tomato."
He let them hold him back, but his eyes never left mine. I watched him calculate, consider his choices. The classroom was too small for a good fight. Too many people around. And I was right, I was a good student. Teachers liked me. If both of us got in trouble, I'd get a warning and he'd get suspended.
"This is not over," he finally said.
"I know," I said.
But it was over. The tension between us would simmer for months, but the moment itself was over. The moment when everyone thought they knew who I was and what I was capable of. The moment when I thought I knew too.
I sat back down in my seat. I took up my pen. I continued to copy notes about photosynthesis as if nothing had happened. But my hand was shaking, and I was just making error after error. The letters seemed wrong, like they were written by another person.
I catch myself asking myself every now and then what would have happened if I'd just sat there and taken it. If I'd let him have his laugh and continued on with my life. Would I be someone different now? More passive? Would I still have that fuse of something explosive when someone pushes too hard?
I don't know. Memory has a funny way of doing that. It'll remind you of the person you once were but not the person you might have been. All I do know is that for a while, I threw caution to the wind and discovered that sometimes the quiet ones are the ones you should worry about the most.
Disclaimer: I hope this tale doesn't break any of The Inkwell's rules regarding violent content. It is shared solely for storytelling and entertainment value.
I would be lying if I said I would have done anything different had I been able to live it again. Our childhoods shape us, and that is part of what makes us human. That said, this is one of my childhood memories. And it remains so.
As an adult, I am absolutely against violence in all its forms. I consider myself among the advocates of peace and the believers in a world where violence is never an option.