me. I got a bit emoshanalll. Am not gonna cry but I want to do samthing crazy.
XOXOXOX,
Sylvia
p.s. Thanx for the crisps
p.p.s. Lok your lips and thro away the key
This momentous incident had taken place that morning, while everyone was waiting for the morning bell. Mwaba, a precociously tall thirteen-year-old often seen with his arm around Nancy, had been standing at the back of a crowd around the car window of someone’s older brother – cigarettes or beers were being exchanged. Sylvia had mustered up her courage and tapped Mwaba on the shoulder. He’d turned with a raised eyebrow. She’d mumbled a greeting.
‘Okay, hi,’ he’d replied, staring at her with a puzzled look, as if a chicken had suddenly turned its head to him and spoken. There was a long pause.
‘Checkit, I’m gonna bounce,’ he’d said finally and moved deeper into the cluster by the car. Sylvia had stood dumb, ringing with wonder, watching as he disappeared amongst the backs jostling in front of the older brother’s Benz, joining in the collective sound of disappointment – ‘Nooooo…’ – as something fell outside the car window and landed with a thud.
* * *
Sylvia handed the note to her friend at the start of fourth period, as they settled in their chairs before the hulking black typewriters at their assigned desks, Sylvia’s directly in front of Mutale’s. Mutale read the note, rapidly scrawled a reply, and passed it forward to Sylvia:
I need to open my typewriter before the teacher comes. What do you mean you want to do something crazy? Don’t do anything stupid. It’s just a (disgusting) boy!!!!!
God bless you and your family,
Love,
Muta
Sylvia’s brow and stomach knotted. She shoved Muta’s useless note beneath the corner of her typewriter as the teacher, a short fleshy woman strapped into a blue skirt suit, walked into the room.
Mrs Makaza taught all of the typing and secretarial classes. The students called her Yakuza and they feared her mightily. They removed the black plastic lids from their typewriters as Yakuza waddled to the front of the class, stiff-backed and regal despite all that juddering flesh. She smacked a stack of white paper onto her desk. The rustling in the room ceased. Then she faced the students and snapped her gaze up. Her eyes bulged under her thin-tweezed eyebrows.
‘Begin!’ she trumpeted.
The prefect bolted to her feet, ran to the front desk, fetched the stack of paper, and darted down the aisles handing the students two sheets each.
‘Heads forward!’
Sylvia sat up straight. She imagined herself a soldier, one of the rigid bodies that stood in front of the Zambian White House when the national anthem played on TV Zed at 1700 hours each day.
‘Put your peppas in!’
The shiver of the sheets slipping into slots.
‘Scroh!’
A sound like fingernails on jeans as the students scrolled their sheets.
‘Fingahs on the keys!’
A crowd of mice stomping in unison.
‘Okay! Begin! A. Spess. A. Spess. A. Spess. A. Full-stop.’ Yakuza began to stalk the aisles to the marching beat of the students’ typing. ‘S. Spess. S. Spess. S. Spess. Nexti-line.’
Overlapping shwings as the students hit the release levers, sending their carriages flying to the right.
‘A-S-D-F. Spess. Semi-cologne-L-K-J. Spess.’
Now, individual letters rose ranks and became words, which became battalions of sentences.
‘The red fox jamped ovah-the-fence,’ Yakuza barked. ‘Nexti-line.’ Shwing.
Soon the typewriters were clattering, no longer in unison but for the cascade of metallic shwings at the end of each line. Sylvia fell into the rhythm, her carriage chuck-chuck-chucking, her typebars kicking high to land their feet on her page. It was a respite: typing strange sentences about animals she had never seen, being told what to do and being relatively capable of doing it.
Only when Sylvia smelt soapy sweat and dusty pantyhose did she realise that Yakuza was hovering over her shoulder. Sylvia kept typing but her chest rose with anticipatory pride. Her lines were perfect. Routine had done wonders for her spelling and not once had her typebars tangled. She was caught off guard when Yakuza abruptly snatched the note from under her typewriter.
Without preface, as if continuing her dictation, Yakuza read Mutale’s note to Sylvia out loud: ‘I need to open my typewriter before the teacher comes.’
Methodically, all the students except Sylvia and Mutale began typing it out. This was an unusually coherent sentence for Yakuza but it made a kind of classroom sense. One boy even smiled, noticing that all the letters in the word typewriter were in the top row of the keyboard.