THE BOY WHO ONCE HATED ENGLISH (Fiction)

My name is Tiwalola Smith, a 17-year old, Year 12 male student of Stellar College, one of the highly ranked secondary schools in Lagos. “Virtually throughout my first nine years of school, learning was really arduous for me.” I struggled academically, struggled to concentrate in class, struggled to understand what I was being taught, struggled to read well, and struggled to pass tests and exams. 

However, during the first term of my 9th year, something life-changing happened. I had failed my exam, as usual, and when my Mum saw my report sheet, she cried, as usual. For the first time, I was touched by her tears and I too dissolved into tears. I apologized to her for making her cry again and I promised her I would change, though I had made that same promise many times before. This time, she knew that I really meant it. So, two months after what I had promised would be my ‘final failure’, she did something that amazed me: she resigned from her taxing but financially rewarding job; a job she had held for about twenty years. 

The day she quit her job, she returned home earlier and happier than usual. When I asked to know why, she only handed me a neatly folded letter. Curiosity propelled me to hurriedly unfold the letter. 

“Mum, you resigned?” I queried. She was smiling as she nodded. 

Rather than ask her why, I simply read on and I was taken aback when I read about the motive behind her resignation: “My only child needs me more than any other thing or person in the world…” I looked into her eye and she still held that smile. Young as I was, I could see the pains concealed behind the cheery smokescreen. I burst into tears, shattered by the thought that I had pushed her into doing that. Through my tear-glazed eyes, I took another glance at the letter, and that’s when I noticed the date; she had written it two months earlier.

I fell before her, on my knees, teary-faced and just then, I saw her facial smokescreen crash and her smiles morph into tears. I apologized profusely for making her resort to taking such a decision but she repeatedly shushed me and asked me to stop blaming myself. “You are my business, henceforth, my love.” She said. 

Before that day, my Mum’s driver would convey me to and from school but after her resignation, she took over that duty. I started getting to school earlier than usual. Every day, once we got back home from school, and I had had my lunch, she would ask me to summarize ‘everything’ we did in school – inside and outside the classroom. Gradually, my retelling the events of the entire school day began to help me build my confidence to stand and speak boldly before anyone. Besides that, I started paying more attention to details, because I would want to give Mum accurate details of everything! I never wanted to see her cry again, because of me. 

While Mr. Smith – my inflexible dad – was coldly scolding me unrelentingly, for making him ‘waste’ his money on giving me an expensive education, my Mum kept working with me lovingly. She expanded her collection of endearment terms, beyond the only three I had grown used to: ‘Tiwa love’, ‘My boy’ and ‘My dear son’. She started using “King Tiwa-Smith”, “My hero”, “My Superman”, “My Idol”, “My Future”, “My Father”, “My Solace”, etc. and she would constantly say, “You are the best, my son.”

Then, I started becoming more and more interested in class activities and my Mum started giving me prizes. I would receive prizes when I did well in class tasks, tests and exams and each time she received a message from the school about a merit I had won for good character or for some core skills I had exhibited outstandingly. 

At the end of my 9th grade, I came 9th in the class of 25 students – my best record ever! Then, my Mum cried again. I didn’t know why but I cried too. Later, she said, “I cried, this time, because you made me happy and proud.” 

Despite that progress, Maths remained my most dreaded subject, though I wasn’t doing very well in English, Chemistry and Physics, too. 

Within my first two years in the senior school, I had moved from being a below-average student to being an above-average student but Maths remained an albatross I longed to overcome. However, as if in answer to an unsaid prayer, in the 3rd term of my penultimate class, a new Math teacher, Mr. Edet, joined my school. With him as our new Maths teacher, my ‘woes’ started turning to ‘wows’. 

That term, I scored 70% in Maths and with my previous scores of 35% in the 1st term and 45% in the 2nd term, I escaped repeating the class, by a whisker, with a slim aggregate score of 50%. Though students are never asked to repeat classes in my school, my dad had firmly communicated to the school principal that should I fail any core subjects at the end of any academic year, I must be made to repeat the class. So, I was elated to have escaped that fate, very narrowly. After my promotion to the final class had been confirmed, I vowed to give it my all, to ensure I leave a mark, before exiting this school, to make my Mum proud.

Then, during the last summer holiday, my Mum insisted, against my wish, that I spend the holiday with her sister’s family – the Bakares – in Ibadan. The Bakares’ is a forest of books and a home of weird aficionados. However, in spite of their weird intelligences, they are a very sociable family – I found out they had had a dozen social functions already lined up for the summer holiday. I never went with them to any of those events. I would always bury myself in books, as advised by my Mum. 

Mrs Oni-Bakare Bimbo, my oldest cousin and first child of that family is a very brilliant Chemistry & Physics teacher. Because her husband had recently travelled to Canada for a 6-month course, she had had to return to her family, to spend the holiday. Throughout my 4-week holiday with that family, I was constantly under her tutelage, as she took me into the wilds of Chemistry and Physics, demystifying knotty concepts, updating my old knowledge and introducing me to new information. 

Her younger brother, Jacob Bakare (whom I fondly call “Bro. Jacs”) was rounding off his second Master’s degree – he had earlier studied Microbiology and Cell Science before choosing to pursue Parasitology and Etymology, both at Master's level. Under his brotherly and masterly guidance, I finished reading and digested several topics in Biology and even solved a great number of past questions. He kept commending me on how quickly I was learning. 

The Bakare kids got their colossal brainpower from both their mum and their late dad. Their mum, Mrs. Karen Bakare, my extremely beautiful aunt, is a cerebral professor of English at the University of Ibadan. She devoted every one of the four Sundays I spent there to schooling me in topics in English. The topics I used to dread – summary writing, essay writing, grammatical structure, transcription, English vowels and stress placement – were so skillfully elucidated that I wished I had got the opportunity of that tutelage long before then. I started attempting transcribing, wrongly or rightly, everything and anything – our names, English words, strange words, etc.

Then, there was the bespectacled Bola Bakare, the shy mathematical prodigy! Bola is 17, just like me, but her hot brain has always dwarfed my intelligence! She recently won five scholarships from five different universities in Europe. Bola ‘eats’ and ‘drinks’ Maths. I humbly submitted myself as her tutee, as she magically taught me Maths and Further Maths. I wished the blissful holiday would never end but it did. The day I was leaving the Bakares, returning to Lagos with my Mum, I wept buckets. In all, the hefty knowledge I took away and the loads of books gifted to me have continued to console me that the Bakares are closer to me than wicked distance allows. 

When my school resumed nine weeks ago, I heard my mates and other students chatting hysterically about their wonderful holidays in France, London, the U.S, Canada, etc. Though I longed to travel out too – of course, my parents too could afford it! – I have never regretted not going. As far as I was concerned, I had the best holiday. 

In the last nine weeks, I have stunned, not only my mates but also all my teachers. In fact, this term, I have represented my school in two separate competitions – that had never happened to me before – and on both occasions, I came home with winners' prizes. In our last mid-term test, not only did I score 20/20 in nine out of my ten subjects, I also won 7 merit cards – the highest to have been won by a single student in just one exam, in the history of the school. That day, my name was repeatedly announced on the assembly and everyone, including the teachers, applauded me unendingly. There, I fell to the ground and cried. My dream was becoming an actuality. 

While I have become a cynosure to many people in the school, there are some students in my set who now loathe me, seeing me as a threat to their ambitions of emerging as the valedictorian – the huge monetary reward my school attaches to this title has always made many students covet the title, desperately. Anyway, for now, my eyes are on a higher honour, as I shall soon be leading a three-man team to represent Lagos at a National Science Quiz Competition at the University of Ilorin. 

How can I thank the Bakares? How can I thank my Mum for her immense investment in me and for insisting, against my wish, that I spend the last summer holiday with her sister’s family? How best can I thank Professor Karen for helping me hone my writing skills and for making it possible for you, beautiful readers, to read me, a boy who once hated English?