James was waiting at the end of the road, which meant I had about forty seconds to be clever.
I saw him from three houses away. He was sitting on the culvert outside Mammy Ansah's gate with his legs spread and his schoolbag on his knee, eating a banana with the grim attention of a man starting a long business. He is fourteen, as tall as a door and about as flexible. He has a thick neck, small eyes and a smile that arrives a second before his hand does.
I have known him my whole life. For eleven of those years, I have been losing to him.
"JJ!" he called, delighted. "Good morning!"
"Good morning, James."
"Late again?"
"Always on time. The school is just early."
"Ha. Ha." He stood. The banana skin dropped at his feet. "Come and walk with me. We'll go together."
I should explain what walk with me means. It means a path, a hedge and a small, quiet corner behind the church where nobody can see. It means my school bag, which he will hold upside down, and my lunch money, which I do not have. It means a sharp, bright, humiliating little pain, and a long walk to school afterward with my ears ringing.
I looked at the road. I looked at him. I looked at the long brown puddle on the left, which had been there since the rain, and which was about the size of a small pond.
And I had an idea.
* * *
Now, you should know that I do not like to run when I can think. Running makes your heart pound, and a pounding heart is a stupid heart. Thinking, on the other hand, is free.
"James," I said, with great respect, "I would love to walk with you. But I must warn you about the shortcut."
"What shortcut?"
"The one by the goat compound."
He stopped. His small eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because it is very good," I said. "It is much faster than the road. Everyone who knows about it uses it. The only problem is the goat."
"What goat?"
"The big one. He lives by the fence. He is very strong and he does not like tall boys. Last week he chased Mr. Kofi's son for ten minutes." I leaned in confidentially. "He has horns this long."
James swallowed. I watched him do it, a ripple of doubt moving down his big neck, like a pebble down a well.
"I'm not afraid of a goat."
"Of course not."
"I could fight it."
"Of course you could. You're much bigger." I nodded wisely. "It would just be a pity to ruin your trousers."
Now, I should tell you that I had never seen such a goat. There was only one goat in the whole compound, and it was an elderly lady called Mabel who ate paper and looked at the world with the vague, sad patience of a retired schoolteacher. But James did not know that. James knew only that a stranger had told him there was danger, and that the stranger's face was perfectly calm.
"Fine," he said. "Lead the way."
"I would, but I'd better stay here. If the goat sees me, he'll know it's a plan."
"A plan for what?"
"For your brave walk," I said. "Go ahead. I'll catch up in a minute."
He hesitated for one second. I held my breath. Then he squared his shoulders, hitched up his bag and strode off down the narrow path toward the goat compound, muttering, with his chin up and his fists clenched, ready to fight a creature that would not have hurt a fly.
I counted slowly to ten.
At eight, I heard a splash.
At nine, I heard a roar.
At ten, there was a long, wet, very loud thud, followed by a pause, and then a deep, bewildered, indignant voice:
"Why is the path made of MUD?"
I did not wait for the rest. I tightened the straps of my bag, and I ran, as fast as my bare feet could carry me, along the road, over the culvert, past the church, and down the long gravel road to school.
I would pay for it later. I knew that. But there is something to be said for a good morning, even if it only lasts a quarter of an hour, and I carried the sound of that splash with me like a small, shining coin.
* * *
I did not make it to the gate before the bell.
I never make it to the gate before the bell. It is not a matter of speed. It is a matter of geography. The school is an hour's walk from my house, and my legs are only twelve years old.
The disciplinary teacher, Mr. Aaron Attah, was waiting at the gate with a list.
I should describe him. He is a small, neat, square man, with a narrow moustache and a tie that is a little too tight. He stands at the gate every morning, rain or shine, with a clipboard, a whistle and the weary dignity of a man who has seen every excuse ever invented and found most of them boring.
"Here he comes," said Mr. Attah, to nobody in particular. "Janah Jackson. On time to the minute."
"Good morning, sir."
"It is a quarter past eight."
"Yes, sir."
"School begins at eight."
"Yes, sir. I'm very consistent."
His moustache twitched.
I should explain the policy. It is the thing that makes our school different from every other school in the county. The head teacher, Mrs. Anani, is a modern woman who read a book once, and the book said that children should not be caned. So instead of caning, our school has a craft policy. Every latecomer must hand in a small handmade object. A paper boat, a clay bird, a little wire star. It is displayed in a glass cabinet in the main hall. The idea is that if you must be punished, you should at least create something beautiful.
I think it is a lovely idea. I also think it was invented by a person who has never had to be late.
"Well?" said Mr. Attah, and put out his hand. "Your craft."
I reached into my bag. I took out a small cloth bundle. I unwrapped it, very carefully, and set it on his palm.
It was a house.
It was about the size of a bar of soap. I had made it the night before, in the yard, by the light of the moon, from three discarded ice-cream sticks, a sliver of bamboo, a bottle cap and a pinch of mango resin I scraped off the tree behind the pharmacy. It had a pitched roof, a door with a tiny handle and two windows, one of which had a shutter that actually opened. If you looked through the window with one eye closed, you could see a very small table.
I had spent four hours on the table.
Mr. Attah looked at the house for a long time.
He turned it over. He opened the shutter. He closed it. He lifted the roof, saw that it was held on with a little hinge of bent wire, and put it down again with the care of a man handling an egg.
"Where did you buy this?" he said.
"I made it, sir."
"You made it."
"Yes, sir."
"Last night."
"Yes."
"Out of ice-cream sticks."
"Mostly."
He stared at me. I could not read his face. It was a face I knew well, closed, tidy and suspicious, but there was something underneath it that I had never seen before. It was like watching a locked door in a very old hotel, and realising that somebody on the other side had just turned the key.
"Janah," he said slowly. "I have been collecting your crafts for two years."
"Yes, sir."
"I thought you bought them from the stall by the market."
"No, sir."
"I have a cabinet of them. The wooden boat. The little well. The lamp with the paper shade. I assumed—" He stopped. He swallowed. "I assumed you were spending your lunch money."
"I don't have lunch money."
"No," said Mr. Attah, very quietly. "I suppose you don't."
We stood there for a moment in the morning light, a small man and a small boy and a house the size of a soap bar. A bell rang somewhere inside the school. A group of children ran past, laughing. Neither of us moved.
"Go to class," said Mr. Attah, at last.
"Yes, sir."
"And Janah?"
"Yes?"
"Tomorrow," he said, "I would like you to be a little less consistent."
I smiled. It was the first real smile I had given a teacher in my life. I could not help it. It broke out of me like a sneeze.
"I'll try, sir," I said.
And I went to class, with my chest up and my bare feet light on the stone, carrying the strange new feeling that somebody had looked at me, at me, and seen something that was not dirt.
* * *
Mrs. Sylvia Johnson was already teaching when I slipped in.
She is my class teacher, and she is the only grown-up in my life who has never once looked at me as if I smelled bad. She is a tall, soft-voiced woman with spectacles on a chain and a gift for noticing the exact moment a child has stopped understanding something. When I came in, she did not stop speaking. She only moved her eyes, once, toward the empty desk at the back, and let them rest on me for a second, kindly, before returning to the blackboard.
I sat. I opened my exercise book. I tried to keep my breath quiet.
"Janah," she said, lightly, without turning round.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"There's a stool in the corner, if you'd like to sit nearer the front."
I looked. There was. A small, new stool, beside her desk.
I did not know where it had come from. I had never seen it before. But in the front row, among the clean uniforms and the sharpened pencils, a very small space was waiting, exactly my size.
I took it.
And I did not look at the back of the room, where the other children were whispering, because I did not want to know what they said. I only looked at the blackboard, at the neat white chalk, at the sums that Mrs. Johnson was writing, and I thought: Somebody left a stool.
It was a very small thing. But I held on to it, with both hands, for the rest of the morning.