Friday comes. The exam is slated to start immediately after break-time and after the exam we can go home. I am nervous, but I feel prepared, too. As prepared as I’m ever going to get.
Break-time comes in a flash. And my heart begins to pound.
Before long we are called to our classes. We stand outside and our names are called alphabetically. We are led to different seats. The chairs have been rearranged and spaced.
We write three subjects; Mathematics, English Language and Civil Education.
The questions were nothing like I expected them to be. I do my best, after trying to calm my nerves for about a half hour.
I am more composed the next day when we write Physics, Chemistry and Biology, yet the exams are almost impossible and I wish I’m in the commercial class. But I don’t have that choice in my life either. My parents decided that I would be a doctor or nothing else. I mean that’s very hypocritical of them. None of them is a doctor or even a lawyer for that matter. Saturday came and went and I already know my fate.
It was that Saturday mom finally tells me what happened to Rich. He ran away from home. Apparently his brother got himself arrested for dealing drugs and his parents refused to bail him out. They feel a few months detained will transform him into the son they always wanted. Rich didn’t agree with them. He begged them to release his older brother, and when they continuously refused, he took off one night.
I begin to wonder; if I get arrested, would my parents bail me out? Or would they leave me there and hope I somehow metamorphose into the type of child they always wanted?
It seems like something mom would do, but she loves me. She might not act like it… a lot, but I know she does. And as for my dad, I can’t say. As it turns out he’s not the person I thought he was.
They said the results of our mock exam would be out by Monday. I’m nervous throughout Sunday and worse on Monday. Naomi’s class calms my nerves a bit. There’s something about her voice that makes me stop thinking about everything else.
It’s wrong of me to feel this way about my teacher, I know, but I started feeling this way when she was just a stranger, and stopping now that I know how smart and truly beautiful she is seems impossible for me to do.
The results weren’t released that day. And my nervousness continued. My mom doesn’t make me read that night–she hasn’t made me read since after the exams–but I make myself read, and for a while it calms me.
Reading is also a way I found to avoid my father. I really don’t want to look at him, because then I’ll get angry and eventually spill what I know about him. And that would only destroy my home. It shouldn’t be my job to keep our home together. But I can’t let my words be what destroys it, no matter how much keeping this from my mom kills me.
The next morning I’m late to prayers and for some reason my mom doesn’t complain. My dad however, does.
“Let this be the last time you come late to morning prayers. Am I understood?” I nod. “When I speak to you, you speak back.”
“I’ve heard you.”
“Daniel, don’t be rude,” mom warns.
How’s that rude?
“We’re now mates. That’s why he feels he can talk to me anyhow he likes.”
“Daniel, apologize to your father.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“Louder,” mom says, getting pissed at my attitude.
“You’re the one spoiling this boy. I keep saying it. He’s his mother’s son. If you do your job well–”
“Don’t talk to her like that!” I snap.
“Daniel.” Mom is surprised.
“He shouldn’t talk to you like that,” I try to explain.
“It’s not your job to decide how he talks to me.” My father stands up. “Where are you going? We’ve not prayed.”
“I’ll pray on my own. It’s not compulsory we pray as a family every day.” He goes back up.
We stopped being a family a long time ago. I’m surprised he doesn’t hit me. I expected it. Part of me wants him to. I want another reason to hate him.
Mom gives me a stern look then starts praying and I join her. I guess her respect for God is more than her need to hit me.
My father doesn’t come down for breakfast. Mom has to take his food up to him.
“You have to apologize to him.”
“Why?”
She looks at me, bewildered. “Because you were wrong to talk to him like that!” she says.
“I was defending you.” I wasn’t entirely doing that. I was only lashing out.
“It’s not your job. Not from your father.”
A lot of things are not my job, but I do them anyways.
I go to school that morning without apologizing to my father. That afternoon during break, the results are released. I only passed four subjects: Civil Education – C4, Agriculture – C6, Biology – D7, Geography – D7.
I fail the rest. I cry. I wait until I get to an empty lavatory on our block, but I cry nonetheless. Thankfully, today is one of the days were the lavatory is neat. Everything hurts. And what makes it hurt even more is that the results were pasted publicly. The tears hurt my eyes. I began to realize that I’m not just crying because of the failed mock exam. I’m crying because of everything wrong in my life; my parents always treating me like I’m inadequate–like I’m not what they bargained for when they decided to have a child–, my parents controlling my life without me having a say in it. I mean, it’s my life for God’s sake. And then there’s that cheating bastard. And Rich’s no were to be found, and now this.
My life sucks. I don’t know why, but it does. And I hate it.