UCHENNA ONYISHI

I still think about him, and her, and all of them. I remember what we did to him, and I tell myself we were just kids then. You did not know better, the devil whispers. He wants me to forgive myself. But he lies.

I cannot pretend to know all the reasons why Agu, in his heart, desired, in his head, rationalized, and in his mind, made peace with putting Malachi through his personal purgatory—to wash away the stench of his own past. At what point does a young boy decide it is acceptable to slowly kill, with his hands and the most creative cruelty, another child? What spirit dwells within a person, binding them in paralysis as they spectate their own torture? And for those of us who sat still, armed with silence and laughter, what real estate in hell awaits us?

I think of Malachi now, as I listen to my father’s voice over the phone, heavy with disappointment and hope, reminding me to come back to Enugu, or Lagos—anywhere but Beijing—and carry on with his legacy.

***

I was in my third year of junior secondary school when I watched Agu—or System Unit, as some of the guys in our class called him—walk up to his friend Malachi and slap him on the back of the head. We were between classes, and the teacher from the last period had just left. Until then, my secondary school experience in Abuja, after moving from Enugu two years earlier, had been reasonably quiet. I had just transferred to this school after the owners of the previous one failed to resolve a land dispute that led to the foreclosure of the school’s properties.

I was thirteen at the time, and Malachi, like me, was one of the youngest students in our class. And yet, it seemed to me that he had somehow skipped important lessons on self-esteem.

 I noticed that about him. So, it did not surprise me that Agu noticed, too. What surprised me, though, was what Agu would do with that information.

Agu was far from the brightest student in our class; the opposite was closer to the truth. Once, when our Computer Science teacher asked who invented the computer, Agu had exclaimed, “System Unit!” The class lost its composure, and the name stuck.

Agu and I shared a quiet, unspoken bond—one that felt almost brotherly. I believe he had moved from Enugu to Abuja that school year and was still finding his footing in the Federal Capital. Perhaps his father had received a big promotion or landed a significant contract; I do not recall exactly what my father said about it. What I do know is that Agu grew up in Nsukka, my hometown, and attended a private school that was a small step above public schools. 

His thick Igbo accent, however, betrayed his attempts to blend in with the Northern boys in our class—boys who had grown up in Abuja, spoke Hausa with ease, and carried little shame about their shaky relationship with the English language.

I knew the stubborn version of Agu he had worked hard to leave behind in Enugu because he was a distant relative from my father’s side—an identity I was in no rush to acknowledge. Like Agu, who insisted on being called by his middle name, Paul, I, too, had partially adopted my middle name, Silas. But unlike Agu, whose restless efforts to belong to a crowd seemed relentless, such endeavors did not come to me with ease. This ease would soon become an inconvenience for Malachi, the unwitting target of Agu’s initiation into the group.

When the sharp sound of Agu’s hand meeting the back of Malachi’s head demanded the attention of everyone in class, the silence that followed felt appropriate. But then Kabir laughed, and Malik did too, and soon the whole class was laughing in unison. I sat there, watching, wondering why Malachi said nothing. He rubbed the back of his head, muttering to himself, as Agu strutted back to him. With a grin that showcased all thirty-two of his teeth, Agu began to apologetically massage the spot he had slapped. Malachi finally snapped and asked Agu to stop, and the grin on Agu’s face dissolved.

The second slap did not need to ask for our attention. The first one, and the strangeness that had followed it, had already captured us, holding our eyes hostage. Kabir laughed again, Malik followed, but this time the rest of the choir remained silent. Agu’s eyes scanned the frozen faces in the classroom and returned to Malachi. He was bent over on his desk. 

Agu leaned over and patted his back. I could see that he wanted to say something kind, maybe even reassuring, but Kabir’s lingering chuckles broke the fragile moment. Malachi stood abruptly, his left hand rubbing his cheek, and walked out of the classroom. He was not crying.

I did not see Malachi again that day. That was the first time I got to peek inside the notebook he was always busy with in class. It was empty, save for a few pages in the middle that had been torn out, and a strange, impressive drawing near the end—a crude depiction of two beast-like creatures on the page before the last.

I knew Agu, and he knew me well, too. But I never asked Agu to stop what he was doing. Instead, I focused my attention on Malachi.

“Fix your pants,” I would urge him. Here, pull your pants down a little. They are too high up. Let me help you with that. Why do you wear them so high up your waistline? It does not look very good. That is why they are calling you jack-up and all those other weird names. Malachi had become a target because he looked like one. And if he could look less like one…

But he did not care much about what the others had to say about his appearance, or so it seemed. At least, not until my kind words left me. But maybe he always did. I cannot say for sure. He wore his school uniform proudly. His white dress shirt and oversized navy blue blazer were always perfectly ironed. He never let his hair grow beyond brushing length or his desire for a woman travel beyond his eyes.

***

I can name the girls that all the boys in my class wanted. Malik was with Faridah. Their relationship was a cycle of makeup sessions that followed abusive episodes. Adefemi was with Amina. She introduced him to a side of himself I wished had won the battle for his soul. Kabir never failed to leave behind a suggestive look whenever his eyes met a woman’s. Ezra, my close friend, spoke well of Victoria. And I liked Amina—not Adefemi’s. Her cousin. Same first name, different last name. She had the most impressive face and a kindness that matched it. She was my junior in school.

All my poems were about her. My writing, then, had life because she resided in it.

The day I was ready to let her know I needed her close to me, Tega, my elder sister’s classmate, a senior I shared the bus ride home with, spoke on my behalf. 

School had ended early that day.

“Afam wants to know if you would be his girlfriend,” Tega asked her while I hid my nerves behind a wall, struggling to steady my pounding heart.

“Of course,” she said. Of course. Not sure, not okay, not I’d like that. Of course.

Words matter. And she knew precisely which of them to put together, efficiently, to calm my heart. She understood something about me that I never knew how to communicate to anyone at the time. I could never say out loud the words that threw themselves onto my notebook. She saw that my silence was not an abundance of what Tega had, but a lack of it. And still, I was enough for her. But the confidence she instilled in me with those two words was short-lived.

I wish I had known then that my shell ran deeper than most. We never spoke again after that day. She was with someone else when she learned I wanted her and had planned to end things with him. I did not like the attention it brought—not after the boys in my class started addressing me with a tone that carried an uncomfortable adoration. I was afraid of what would become of me if I succumbed to the same plague that had already consumed Agu.

I can name all the girls that the boys in my class wanted. Agu liked Christabel, and Daniel liked Kainene. If we sat down, I could list them all for you. At thirteen and fourteen, that was all we talked about when we were not debating who the best rapper alive was or which football team would win the Champions League. But Malachi did not care much for these things.

If you asked Kabir, he would say Malachi did not care much for girls. But a lack of one thing is not proof of the presence of another.

Malachi came to school one day in September, at the start of our first year in senior secondary school, with a bald patch on his head. Kabir had smeared a handful of hair remover on his head and eyebrows while he was asleep. When I asked him what happened, he laughed. And I laughed too. It was the first term of that year—a year since Agu’s absurdness had unveiled itself to the class.

Bullying thrives in its theatrics. The bully is a showman who performs for an audience and aches for their applause. And Agu was a decent showman. At fourteen, he was well aware that every good showman needed a recurring act, and Malachi was a natural fit—a brilliant puppet with no visible desires. At thirteen, Malachi understood that desires—the type that consumed the rest of us— were a dangerous prop to carry on stage. The exposure they brought was risky. When the show was over and the applause faded, and Malachi was left safe by our neglect, when Agu turned his attention elsewhere, fear, self-loathing and loneliness came for him. They took their turns with him, and he slowly unraveled.

It started with his white shirts. He stopped ironing them. Then he stopped cleaning his black dress shoes. When his khaki pants tore, he did not bother to have them repaired. December came, and with it, the end of the first school term. Malachi’s grades were abysmal, but he did not seem to mind that either. He laughed about that too. He was laughing a lot now. And as long as he was laughing, they were laughing with him, at him.

He laughed when the maths teacher asked him a question, and he did not know the answer. He laughed when Kabir asked if he was attracted to him. He laughed when Mr. Ben, the chemistry teacher, insulted him. He even laughed in geography class, though I was sure he was the best geography student in our year. All Malachi did was laugh. He laughed when he did not know what to say, when he did not know what to do, and even when he did. Malachi laughed and laughed and laughed, perhaps because if he could not find humor in the torture he held a controlling share of, and innocence in his audience of seemingly decent people, he would have no choice but to succumb to the other side of his hysteria.

I do not remember when the boys in my class stopped calling Agu “System Unit,” but they did. Before that, he had fought Malik and won. He had also bought one of those belts with spinning dollar signs that were popular back then, wore shoes that looked like Nike Air Force 1s, and made a clumsy attempt to fix his hairline. It is hard to say when the name faded, but everyone called him Agu now. And some—the new girls he talked to—called him Paul.

Just like that, and without any noteworthy occasion, Agu moved on from Malachi. He had Christabel to think of now. But the laughing did not stop.

No one told Malachi it was okay to stop laughing. I never told him it was okay to stop laughing. How could I, though? I never believed he was really laughing—not while I searched for the courage to ask him about the drawing in his notebook. I am not sure any of us ever interpreted those cackling sounds he made back then as genuine laughter.

I never asked him about the little men with distorted heads in his notebook. Instead, I stole the notebook and took it home for closer inspection. The drawing was an unsettling depiction of two beast-like boys with grotesque, twisted bodies that bent unnaturally around each other. Their skin resembled peeling bark. Each figure’s face was a nightmare of sharp, exaggerated features. Their expressions were a blend of anguish, ecstasy, and malice that sent chills to my core. And their hands were made of ropes and knives. 

At first glance, I thought the figures were engaged in violent conflict. Yet, as I stared at them, I noticed a disturbing intimacy in their movements, as though the violence was inseparable from an act of frenzied love. They seemed to be strangling and stabbing their own bodies.

I still have Malachi’s notebook. I meant to return it to him but held onto it after he was hospitalized. Kabir had accused him of touching him inappropriately while he was sleeping in the dormitory. And some of the boys in class brutalized him after hearing Kabir’s accusation. The two of them were roommates.

I went to see him while he was still in the hospital. The stitches around his mouth formed a disturbing grin that made my stomach churn. He did not return to school the following term, and I did not see him again until my parents shipped my sisters and me to Beijing.

I think about Malachi a lot now. And Agu too. I also think about the boy I used to be back then, and about Amina. I saw her wedding photographs—the face that taught me to really see myself—and I wonder if she remembers what we did not have.

Malachi tells me he is doing okay now. I spoke to him some time ago. He works for National Geographic and is married to a woman who calls him by a different name. He showed me his wedding photos. His pants have sharp lines running down their length, and he wears them above his waistline, like he used to. His wife is beautiful, his black shoes are well polished, and he keeps his hair within brushing length. 

I want to be happy that everything good has come to him. But these are all lies. 

I heard what later happened to him, years ago, while I was in university in Beijing, and I was not surprised. These stories never end well.

***

My father is still on the phone. He tells me I am five years behind schedule, and I agree with him, silently, but for other reasons. His voice continues, steady and relentless, as my mind drifts far from his words, far from his legacy, to the rest of my life.

“Afamefuna, Afamefuna! Can you hear me?” he repeats, louder each time.

I do not say a word.