Point Of Correction
For the SS2 students of Great Immaculate Secondary School, 2013/2014 Academic Session.
Adaeze took no nonsense from anybody. Anybody at all. She was bold and outspoken. She knew what she wanted at anytime. Fear never occurred to her. She would be the first person ever in our school to challenge Scubo, the Scout man who made sure there was order in our school. He acted like some sort of security man. He organized the exams, made sure nobody cheated, took the exam papers back to the teachers. In addition to these, he instilled fear into the students. It was impossible for one to be normal in the presence of Scubo because his own flogging was more painful than that of everybody else who had the power to flog the students – the seniors, the teachers, the school director. If Scubo had ever flogged you, you had no other choice than to fear him. What I myself felt towards Scubo was just fear. I did not see Scubo as a normal human being. When I saw Scubo the only thing I saw was canes and torrents of harsh words which he used on the students – Nincompoop! You stupid boy! You rascal! Bloody fool! Are you an imbecile?
Every student was afraid of Scubo because of his flogging. And not just because of his flogging. I guess there are people who have the gift of strangling or swallowing other people’s voices when they entered a room. Scubo had this gift, but of course not everybody’s voice would be strangled by the way.
Scubo never spoke to the students like a normal human being. He shouted. He gave instructions in shouts. Everything about him was unnecessarily manic, the way he walked, the way he spoke, the way he looked at the students, but Adaeze wasn’t going to have any of that. She wasn’t going to have anyone shove no spit into her mouth in the name of school security and control.
It was a cool Monday morning in class, and we had a free period. The teacher wasn’t around, and so our class prefect was telling everyone to lessen the noise, else he would be forced to write the names of noise makers. Nobody listened to him. The noise was too much, a collection of English and Igbo words melding together in the air.
That was when Adaeze walked in quietly. Nobody knew she had walked in until Scubo’s shouting voice appeared in our classroom. There was quiet immediately. On a normal day, Adaeze wasn’t known to be a troublemaker, wasn’t loud or boisterous. She was just a normal, cool girl who liked to mind her business.
“Where is that girl? Where is that stupid girl? Where is she?” Scubo shouted. His English had a heavy Igbo accent, and we always mimicked him in his absence, never in his presence. Our class prefect often said he couldn’t understand how our school director would employ an illiterate to work as school security.
Nobody said anything upon hearing Scubo’s voice. Adaeze sat on the pew where she normally sat. Scubo scanned the whole class with his eyes until he picked Adaeze. “Were you not the one I was calling?” he asked.
There was silence. Nobody spoke for seconds.
Scubo asked her the question again. “Excuse me, Sir?” she said with a tone that clearly showed that she was ready for anything that would follow as the consequence of her action.
“Are you stupid?” Scubo asked. “Are you talking to me in that manner?”
“I don’t understand what is happening, Sir. Nobody called me. Nobody called my name.”
“So you won’t answer if you didn’t hear your name?”
“People only respond to their names.”
“Oh. You senior students have started growing wings, abi? I called you and you refused to answer me.”
“Point of correction, Sir! Nobody called me. If I had heard my name, then I would have answered.”
Those words Point of correction, Sir! hewn out of Adaeze’s mouth stood heavy in the air. The audacity of the words, the fearlessness and the poise of it made everyone uneasy. Scubo raised his cane to flog Adaeze but she held the cane with her right hand. “You have no rights to flog me Sir. You did not call me, and there was no way I could answer to a call which did not exist.”
We all watched in astonishment. Later, we would hail Adaeze and tell her that she would make a great lawyer, but presently, we all kept quiet. We all knew what had happened even though we weren’t there when Scubo called Adaeze. Scubo never called anyone by name. It would have been nice if he tried to know the names of the students and call them by names just like the teachers did, but Scubo never called anyone by name, never even bothered to do so. What he often did was to holler “Hey you!” and then all the students would turn in panic, and then he would point to the offending student and say, “Come here!” If you hesitate or say, “Is it me, Sir?” Scubo would yell, “It is you I’m talking to, you Nincompoop!”
Surely, Adaeze was in a big trouble, we thought. But Scubo walked out of the class without uttering another word. We waited for a retaliation, maybe Scubo would come back better armed. Maybe he would come back with more canes. Maybe he would invite the school director. But days passed, weeks walked past, and nobody mentioned Adaeze’s case again. Neither would Scubo come into our class to harass anybody again till we graduated. We gave Adaeze a nickname which she answered till we came out of secondary school. The nickname was “Point Of Correction”.