CHILDREN OF THE 90s:THE ORDER OF HIERARCHY II

Some names have been changed to suit my purposes...the stories included in this series are 85% accurate... just don't ask me what is real and what isn't...enjoy!

MS. STELLA

So I have told you about the order of hierarchy among kids in my primary school and you even got to hear about the disgusting teacher who was at the bottom of the social ladder among his peers. Well this time I am talking about the teacher who was at the top of the social ladder and had everyone under her thumbs.

In every school there is always that one teacher too pretty to be there. Teachers want to be noticed by her, kids begging for her attention and willing to be her servants. Oh Ms. Stella… so dark and lanky, with beautiful long black hair that always fell beneath her shoulders and danced as she walked. She never really smiled, seeming to keep that for rare occasions but when she did, it was always a glorious day for the recipient of her smile. The school head mistress/ owner Mrs. Adeboye had taken a quick liking to her soon after she joined the teaching staff in 1995 and she enjoyed special treatment. I remember almost everything about Ms. Stella; I was in primary three when she joined and she taught English Language to kids from primary 4-6. You could see how they walked taller at break time especially if they just had English Language the period before break. It was the glorious euphoria of having basked in her presence for 40 minutes and they rubbed it in our faces. Even Mr. Lekpe the most hardcore and anti-social teacher in our school started taking extra care about his appearance. Mathematics was almost always preceded with or followed by English and normally Mr. Lekpe gave the next teacher a curt nod before he left. He didn’t really care for chit chat and small talks but with Ms. Stella he would smile, scratch his neck, and stare abashedly at the floor with a shy look in his eye as he held a two minute conversation. Two whole freaking minutes! This man didn’t talk to anyone but apparently he could hold a conversation with Ms. Stella. There was an aura around her that asked you to be nice to her; her smile that inadvertently had you reciprocating, a playfulness that eased the tension in any room and a youthful beauty that encouraged you to take a second look at her.

So imagine our pride and joy when we moved up to primary four. We were stocked to be in her class. For the first time Shina the class bully was in good form. Homework was always on time, I wanted to do better just so Ms. Stella could look upon me with a smile and say “great job Chima, you are so intelligent”. Oh the joy! I was on an eternal high that no one could pull me down from and it got even better when Ms. Stella found out that I lived on Odolowu Street, right behind Tiwo Street where her pen pal boyfriend lived.

You see back in the day the internet was not a thing and neither was mobile communications. All we had was NITEL and NIPOST, the former which only the rich and some middle class families could afford and the latter which took at least two weeks to deliver a letter out of state. Ms. Stella had found her delivery service in me and I was very happy to do something for her. Three times a week I waited by her desk after school as she drafted a letter to the man of her dreams. The words were always carefully written, every syllable in place to mean something. She would fold it gently, caress it and place a kiss on the envelope as a seal of her affections before handing it over to me like it was a national treasure. My classmates would stare at me, envy coloring their faces at the responsibility Ms. Stella had placed on my shoulders because they could see that it brought us closer in a way. The next day at school she would have a barrage of questions for me. Who opened the gate? Who collected the letter? Was his mother there? Did I meet him at home? How was his countenance upon receipt of the letter? Ms. Stella later confided in me that she had never met her pen-pal boyfriend; a mutual friend had exchanged their contact details and that was how they started communicating. I was her eyes and ears and she lived vivaciously through the stories I told her.

Ms. Stella was not the angel we all thought her to be; it took a bit of time but we all started noticing small changes in her behavior. She was nasty to her female colleagues with the exception of her boss, she never greeted them even if she was the youngest among the staff, she threw jabs at them because of the way they dressed and she started beating us in class! A stroke here and there till she learned the Akuma style of flogging (a system where you hold the cane at an acute distance of 45° then drop it suddenly and swiftly with its tip on the back of the erring pupil). She became a vicious bully.

We started dreading English class and it affected our performance; Shina didn’t even see the need to behave anymore. Finally, the scale dropped from our eyes and we realized that that Ms. Stella’s face was riddled with pimples; black, dried big ass ugly pimples that stole the freshness of her youth. Her hair wasn’t pretty, it was dull and lifeless and that glow we thought she had, well she was a very good actress to have fooled us for so long.

Her bitchiness came to a zenith one day in class when she was in a foul mood, and the bad energy from her was rubbing on us and making it hellish for anyone to concentrate. She asked a question and no one knew the answer. So she punished us by telling us to stand up, raise our hands and close our eyes for forty minutes. 10 minutes into the punishment, Adaeze the daughter of the Home Economics teacher moved and lost her balance. Ms. Stella took that action as a show of defiance and flogged her continuously till there was blood on the floor. It was surreal to say the least. Not only had she gone too far, she did to the daughter of a fellow teacher… what was she thinking!!! After school she asked me to wait behind to deliver another letter for her and I told her no. My classmates were surprised because we had all just witnessed what she did to Adaeze, but I was righteously angry and enraged plus I knew there was nothing she could do seeing as delivering letters for her was an after school activity. The next day at school, you could cut the tension with a knife. The teachers all had a solemn look on their faces; the pupils came in way too early for a school morning. We all mingled in groups waiting for the show down we knew would happen. At 7:30 Mrs. Arinze, Adaeze’s mum walked through the school gate in all her 230 pound of glory ready to ground Ms. Stella’s 110 pound frame into the floor.

Where is that manner-less bitch eeehn?? Where is that whore from Ogbomosho that beat my precious daughter?? Stella show yourself ooh!! I will kill you today or you kill me because one of us must die today!!!

Ms. Stella ran to the Headmistress’s office and hid, crying out that she was sorry while Mrs. Arinze tried to use her body weight to force the door open! You couldn’t get this kinda entertainment on Nollywood back in the day. The teachers somehow managed to get Mrs Arinze to calm down and Ms. Stella apologized for what she did blaming it on the devil (devil my ass!). From that day, Ms. Stella became public enemy No.1 for the rest of her stay. I personally hoped that her relationship with lover boy went to complete shit.

People will always reveal their true nature in time…you can’t be someone else for too long because cracks are bound to show eventually.