The Girl Who Never Cried

The first time I broke a plate, I broke a full cooler of them. The crashing sound of their fall made my head ring like a cymbal, or an old alarm clock so senile it rang at the time of morning when sleep was sweetest. I stared at the ceramics sliding down the now-open cover of the cooler.

A part of me was working itself into a panic because I knew my mother would surely kill me, flay me, and spread my skin on the grill. Yet something bubbled in my throat. My hand crept over my neck in an effort to stop the laughter from spilling out of my mouth just as my mother ran into the kitchen.

“Jesus! Jesus!” my mother cried out.

You see, my mother was a woman particularly inclined to strong emotion. She could rave and scream at the slightest misbehavior, talk late into the night when annoyed, and engage in many other obscene behaviors. I stared at her as she looked at the wall and tried to control her breathing. Then she bent down, picked up the cooler cover, and bludgeoned me with it.

Instinctively, I raised my hand to protect my face from the onslaught. She hit me over and over again, crying out as she did.

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I must speak in my mother’s defense.

At that time, we were quite poor and could not afford the mass destruction of valuable kitchen utensils (which we were not even allowed to use for everyday meals), like the ceramics. She kept repeating “I don’t know” because she truly did not know what to do with me at that moment.

No one ever knew what to do with me. One day, my biology teacher caught me making a noise in class and came over to me angrily.

“Precious Makinde! What is your problem?” he asked.

I stared at him, a little confused. What did he mean by what is my problem? Was it my fault that my classmates enjoyed my wry humor, which wasn’t even humor at all but an unconcerned attitude toward things that cracked them up daily?

“How did you do on that maths assignment?” Jide asked me.

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Cletus, seeing as he’s the one marking the sheets,” I replied.

The whole class burst into laughter, some throwing their heads back, others hitting the table outrageously. It was obvious to me that their laughter was exaggerated. I looked at them, puzzled for a moment, before I realized they were not laughing at today’s remark alone, but at the countless other remarks I had made before.

Sometimes my remarks were not even that funny, and even my classmates, children at the time who barely understood anything, knew there was something wrong with my behavior. One day, after break time, I returned to my seat and my seatmate, Chidera, told me snidely, “Bolu, your best friend, came to see you again today.”

I looked over at Bolu, who was sitting at the other end of the class, eating an apple sloppily. Bolu was a student with Down syndrome who had developed an inordinate amount of affection for me.

Truth be told, she wasn’t learning anything, and the only reason she had been allowed to remain in our class was because her mother begged fervently, saying Bolu loved to be around her age mates. In our class of fifty, I was the only one who could ignore Bolu’s crooked walk and sloppy mouth, and that was because I didn’t care. How did her disability have anything to do with me?

Later, when Bolu came over and stood by my table, looking down at me with that permanent grin pasted on her face, I called her name to be sure I had her attention.

“Bolu.”

Her smile faltered, a sign that she was listening.

“I want you to stop coming to my seat. Don’t come to my seat again,” I said.

Chidera looked at me, shocked. The whole class stopped what they were doing and watched us. Bolu kept staring at me, but her face was no longer smiling. This puzzled me, because I had always believed the smile was permanent.

After some time, in which I busied myself copying notes and she busied herself staring at the back of my neck, Bolu walked away. No reply. No protest. I suppose I hurt her feelings.

That is why I could not blame my biology teacher for getting annoyed that I turned his class into a marketplace. I received three strokes of the cane that day. During the caning, I stared at him much like Bolu had stared at me when I dismissed her. I was not going to cry, but I was deeply disturbed that he didn’t know I was trying to change.

Periodically, I tried to tone down my interactions with other students because I knew that anything I said would always end in laughter.

***

“Precious! Come and see,” my mother called out to me one day from the sitting room.

I was in the kitchen washing plates, but I quickly wiped my arms and went to her.

You know when people say “come and see o!” it is usually something exciting or something terrible, as the case may be. My mother stood in the middle of the sitting room, wearing a loose buba. She kept adjusting the shoulders, not really giving me the chance to see if they were sitting well, because she kept forcing them to look like they were.

I folded my arms and stared at her. When she finally gave up tugging at the buba, she picked up the wrapper that had been pooling at her feet and tied it around her waist. After tying it, her face lit up. She raised one arm and admired herself, then raised the other, striking that proud pose African women adopt when they believe they look good.

“How do I look?” she asked, beaming at me.

“You already know now. See how you’re smiling,” I told her. She eyed me with a sneer.

“What are you saying? How do I look?” she asked again.

“Let me go and bring the tall mirror for you,” I said, walking into the house.

“Precious Makinde!” she shouted after me. I did not turn back.

***

There were times when I actually got into trouble for my strange behavior. One time in church, I had been staring at a six-year-old girl as she rubbed her feet against the floor with the carefreeness of the very young.

We were all in the children’s session of church, with two Sunday school teachers watching over us and teaching us the word of God. The little girl kept rubbing her high-heeled shoes on the tiled floor as though it were snow and she could not wait to skate on it.

I knew she was doing something unwise, but I could not bring myself to call out for her to stop. A few minutes later, she slipped and fell with a heavy thud. The split second it took me to realize she had fallen was enough for her to feel the pain and cry out. I burst into raucous laughter, holding my stomach with one hand and gripping the chair with the other to keep from falling.

There was silence. Even the crying girl seemed shocked out of her tears. When I realized no one else was laughing, I stopped abruptly.

“Precious Makinde!” one of the teachers called out. His voice trembled with anger. He motioned for me to follow him to his table at the other end of the hall. When I sat in front of him, he peered at me over his glasses.

“Why did you laugh when she fell?” he asked. I stared at the hairs moving inside his flared nostrils.

“Nothing, sir,” I replied.

“What do you mean by nothing? A little girl fell, and you burst into loud laughter. Did you not feel pity for her? Why did you not feel pity for her?” he pressed. As he spoke, I noticed an edge of accusation in his voice. I looked at him incredulously, and the old man leaned back at my stare. Suspicion filled his eyes.

Somehow, I knew he thought I was possessed. There could be no other explanation for my callous behavior than a demon.

I was made to sit through an hour of dull advice. He spoke about loving my neighbor as myself, using several biblical examples. Afterward, he prayed for me, asking the spirit of God to enter my heart and make me pure in mind and spirit. I thanked him and returned to my seat, quietly wondering about the futility of the prayers.

***

The boys at school were fascinated by me. We were SS2 students, old enough to start thinking about romance. Many of those boys approached me and received the verbal flogging of their lives.

One day, Emeka came over to meet me. Emeka was a boy I secretly admired because he bore some resemblance to my elder brother. Anyway, he swaggered up to me one fateful Tuesday while I sat quietly in my seat, reading a short novel for entertainment.

“Precie,” he called, in a way he must have thought was endearing.

“My name is Precious, and what can I do for you?” I asked. I didn’t even bother to look up from my book.

“Haba now, Precious. Won’t you at least look up and see who’s talking to you?” he asked.

“I know who you are. How can I help you?”

“You’re talking like you’re in an office. Now I’m too shy to say what I wanted to say,” he complained.

“That’s too bad. And your time is up already,” I said, finally looking up at him. He stared at me, incredulous.

“What?” he asked.

“Time up. Please leave my seat. Thank you,” I said, returning to my book.

He stood there for a moment, perhaps hoping I would lift my head and acknowledge his existence again, but I did no such thing. Eventually, he walked back to his seat. The way I treated them all made the boys see me as some sort of challenge, or worse, a rite of passage into manhood.

What puzzled them was that I wasn’t rude, yet my words could be sharply biting. I had no trouble expressing myself. Once, I told a boy that his mouth smelled and that he should speak to me from a respectable distance after he leaned too close, his awful breath overwhelming my senses. When he told his friends, they laughed loudly, many of them saying they didn’t blame me. The boy’s mouth truly smelled like a sewer.

During break time, they would stand by the classroom door and watch me in what they believed was a discreet manner. They held parcels they planned to offer me to curry favor. I rejected every gift from the boys brave enough to approach my seat.

I didn’t need their snacks or drinks. I had my own money and could buy whatever I wanted, and even on days when I wasn’t given money for school, I was too proud to stoop that low.

I’m sure I caused many sleepless nights for SS2 boys and their girlfriends, who disliked me because of their boyfriends’ foolish fascination with me. Those girls belonged to what could only be described as the “Girlfriends Association,” though it would have been more accurate to call it the “I Hate Precious Association.” They tried their best to get me into trouble with teachers, but it never worked.

I was simply a very good student, quiet, respectful, and always eager to absorb a new novel or scientific theory. Their plans failed repeatedly, and by the time we entered SS3, they gave up. Perhaps their oil lamps of hatred had burned out, or they had finally gained some much-needed sense and realized that I didn’t care much about the boys, or them.

***

When I got into the university, I showed my excitement at my good fortune by burying myself in my books and keeping mostly to myself. To my surprise, the university was nothing like secondary school. Here, no one cared if you wanted to be alone. People were willing to bootlick, scheme, or even fight their way into friendships, so long as they believed the connection would benefit them somehow.

It was through this selfishness that I somehow ended up with two friends: Ruki and Ambrose. Over time, I had to admit that I actually liked them.

Ruki had a dry sense of humor that almost matched mine. Ambrose, on the other hand, was a curious mix. I always thought of him as a guy on the outside but a girl on the inside. He understood me in ways that sometimes startled me into liking him even more.

He respected my need to be alone more than Ruki did, and my emotional detachment never seemed to bother him. At some point, he became more of Ruki’s friend than mine. She needed him for his excellent “guy advice,” and since I was completely starved of male attention at the time, I had no use for his services.

Then I met Andrew.

We met at the bank, both seated on the chairs in front of the cashier, waiting our turn.

He was light-skinned and solidly built, and, annoyingly, bold. Bold enough to start a conversation with a girl who clearly wasn’t interested.

“It’s appalling how they keep us waiting here, right?” he said.

I adjusted the earbuds in my ears to show I wasn’t listening. He sighed softly, muttered an “okay,” and turned away. Oddly enough, I felt uncomfortable afterward. Not guilty, just unsettled. Still, I blamed him for trying to talk to a stranger who was obviously wrapped up in her own world.

Later, after we had both been attended to, we met again at the door. With a dramatic sweep of his arm, he gestured for me to go first. I rolled my eyes inwardly and stepped out.

The doorman wished me a nice day as I descended the steps into the blazing sun. I’ve always had issues with harsh sunlight, so I raised my hand to shield my eyes.

“Hey,” the young man called from behind.

I turned to see him standing beside a dark blue car, keys in hand.

“Can I drop you off?” he asked with a smile.

I looked at his dimpled cheeks, then at the car, and finally at the unforgiving sun. For once, I decided to defeat my flesh and accepted the offer.

He was a perfect gentleman during the ride. We talked about the deplorable state of our school environment, the even more deplorable state of the country, and soon discovered we had something in common: We had both given up on school and the nation entirely.

When we reached my hostel, I slung my bag over my shoulder, thanked him, and was about to leave when he asked for my phone number.

That evening, he called and invited me to dinner at a nearby restaurant. I declined.

Two days later, he called again, this time when I was bored and vulnerable.

I told him to call me back in ten minutes. Then I called Ruki and told her a guy wanted to take me out.

She screamed so loudly I had to pull the phone away from my ear to save my eardrums from certain death.

“Ohhhhhhhh! I’m so happy for you!” she squealed.
Then she caught herself. “Tell me something about this stranger though.”

I told her his name was Andrew and how we met. She asked if he was cute and whether he looked financially comfortable. I told her he was light-skinned, with dimples and a hot body, and that he looked rich and soft.

She screamed again.

I ended the call.

***

Andrew and I went out for a month before one evening, without warning, he told me he couldn’t see me anymore. I was sitting cross-legged on my bed when we had the conversation.

“Why have you come to this decision?” I asked. My voice was calm, almost disturbingly so.

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to do this anymore,” he replied.

“This?” I laughed, a sharp, hysterical sound that surprised even me. “This like the sex? Or the love you claimed to have for me?”

“Precious, calm down,” he said. “I hope we can still be friends though. I’ll see you around.”

Then he ended the call.

I stared at my phone in disbelief. For a brief moment, I imagined myself flinging it against the wall, like they do in movies. But this was real life, and there was no point destroying a perfectly good phone over a perfectly rotten man.

I rolled the word rotten around on my tongue.

Then I laughed.

***

I waited for something to happen next.

A heaviness in my chest.

Tears.

Anger.

Regret.

Nothing came.

I lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to locate the feeling everyone talked about when they spoke of heartbreak. It was supposed to arrive uninvited and overwhelming, like a storm. Instead, there was only a quiet, almost embarrassing emptiness, an absence so complete it felt deliberate.

I wondered if I was broken.

People always said love leaves a mark. That loss bruises. That endings ache. Yet here I was, freshly abandoned, and all I could think about was how strange it was that I felt… normal. Not relieved. Not devastated. Just untouched.

Maybe this was how life worked for some people. Maybe emotions didn’t always announce themselves loudly. Maybe some of us experienced things the way you experience weather through a closed window. You know it’s raining, you acknowledge it, but you never actually get wet.

I got up, washed my face, and went on with my evening.

The world did not pause.

My heart did not protest.

Life simply continued.

And for the first time, I understood that not everyone breaks the same way. Some people shatter loudly. Others never seem to crack at all.

Maybe that was my burden.

Or maybe it was my freedom.

Either way, it was mine.

All images are sourced from unsplash