UNDERAGE BY BOB EJIKE

UNDERAGE

BY BOB EJIKE

I returned to the room, spellbound by expectancy. She broke the spell when she strode out of the bathroom, stark naked from head to toe, water dripping resplendent from her freshened body, all her contours sharp, shouting and threatening to detonate. I savored the sight of her superb beauty which seemed to illuminate the room, exciting my entire anatomy. She walked into my waiting embrace and my body struggled to free my soul from my jail of skin. My fervent kisses spilled all over her face. Her reciprocal response was swift, inspiring and electrifying. I lifted her off her feet and placed her on the bouncy soft mattress of the bed. She filled the entire bed with her brown self, eager and waiting.

 I did not have time to cement a proper bond with Diane that long vacation of hers. Our connection became mainly telephonic and my urge for her gradually waned, as I had stolidly predicted. However, she persisted boldly on the phone, calling as often as she could to proclaim the details of her days’ activities and relate small gossips or humorous jokes in heightened witticism. Deep into the holiday we had become little more than good friends. One stormy night she called and revealed that she was returning to school the following day and would be there for the next three months and she wanted me to drive her to her school which was about 150 kilometers from town. I agreed and cancelled my work programs, a thing I normally would not do.

When I came to pick her up at our meeting point beside the coal monger’s, I could hardly recognize her. She was in blue school uniform and had cut her hair student-low and was looking too young and glum. All her maturity and sensuality had vanished within the formality of the starched school dress and haircut and she looked like an overgrown baby. I was suddenly sure that she had lied to me about her age. She did not look more than seventeen. My stomach abruptly churned with the sudden fear of getting into trouble with the law and the environment trembled. It was not unusual for a man to be arrested here for just being in the company of an underage girl. Even if he was not having any amorous rapport with her the punishment was frequently long prison terms for ‘attempted defilement of a minor’.

I helped her stow her cases in the boot of the vehicle and she stepped into the passenger’s side, sat down and pulled her blue uniform over her knees. We drove to her favorite shopping mall by the congested city market and she shopped endlessly for provisions. I trailed after her as she pushed the shopping cart almost dramatically, continually asking. ‘Honey, is it okay if I get this?’ as she picked the most exorbitant packet foods, beverages, detergents and academic materials. The presence of uniformed security guards in the shop made me uncomfortable and I wished she would stop calling me ‘honey,’ so that we could at least pass off as father and daughter. We looked alike and had the same complexion, so that deceit would have been easy. Luckily, by the time she pushed the overfilled shopping cart up to the counter, with me following her closely in quick steps, I had enough cash to pay for her needs, and of course her greed. I was stuffing my wallet back into my pocket when a hand touched my shoulder. I was momentarily startled, sure that that was it. I turned slowly. It was not a law officer but Harriet, my housing agent friend, a tall, very dark, elderly woman. Harriet’s lanky black frame shone ebony as her stretched hair retreated perpetually from the advance of scalp, bold eyes aglow. ‘How are you?’ She warmed up to me.

‘Fine, and you Harriet? Long time, you should drop by at the studio and see me sometimes.’ I requested pleasantly, regarding the lanky property agent.

‘Yes, it’s just that work is getting harder. The tenants don’t want to pay for our services and the landlords also don’t want to pay agents,’ she fussed.

‘I am sorry about that. It will get better.’ I tried to cheer her up.

She looked beyond me at Diane who was busy packing her shopping into large polyethylene bags branded with the name of the supermarket. ‘This girl with you is very beautiful.’ Harriet observed smilingly and asked mischievously. ‘Who is she?’

‘My sweet heart, Diane’ I said, cheering up to Diane, but Diane did not look up, rather she kept on packing her stuff as if I had not spoken. There was some mildly manifested diffidence and impersonality in her deportment.  Harriet’s jaw sagged low, bequeathing upon her a sudden sad expression. 

‘Okay. Have a nice day.’ Harriet wryly grinned off the slight, gave Diane a measured glare and proceeded on her way.

I tried to fathom the reason for Diane’s superciliousness to Harriet. Could it be jealousy? Could Diane possibly believe that I could sleep with such an old hag? Was that the level of her esteem for me? Or was she avoiding public identification with me? I quickly dismissed the odd second option. My fame, physical and fiscal advantages were enormous and enormously pronounced, making such condescending consideration impossible, I reasoned.  I could not imagine any young woman here that would not wander around the crowded City Center hugging me and shouting proudly into a megaphone to announce to the world that I was her man. Yet my mood had been soured. 

When Diane finished packing I helped her carry some of the heavy bags to the vehicle. The sun was trashing heartlessly, making people squirm with discomfort, dark shadows brooding over the ground. The wind blew hot air in our faces as I opened the back of the vehicle and we crammed the shopping there. A newspaper vendor wooed me and I bought the Red Pepper, a popular gossip tabloid that featured semi-nude models and bizarre stories.  An army officer had shot nine people dead in a nightclub after a call girl who had stolen his money ran into the dance-hall and the hefty bouncers would not let him go in and retrieve his cash from the whore.

We entered the car and closed the doors and I drove out of the parking space into the jammed traffic.

‘Where are you going?’ Diane inquired with a daunting look as I turned left towards the motor park.

‘To the park’ I declared stiffly.

‘But you are taking me to school.’ she said uncertainly.

‘No I am not. I have a lot of work to catch up on.’ I declined. Her avid shopping aptitude or her disdainful attitude to Harriet, or both, had put me off and I had no desire to do the long drive with her.

‘You are taking me to school’ she rasped, giving me a robust nudge.

‘I told you I have work’ I said archly.

‘You have to take me to school please. I am carrying too many bags,’ she implored me; ‘I don’t want to enter these rickety buses. They are unsafe.’

‘You have used them all your life and you are still here.’ I declared, a little jokingly.

‘Take me to school please darling’ she mumbled, looking at me pleadingly.

‘No’ I said, ‘and this is final.’

 I dropped her in the flood of humanity by the crammed motor park, in the infernal commotion of minibuses, under the spell of the rhythmic chants of destinations by conductors, among rushing passengers, hand-pushed trucks and wheelbarrows, and ill-clad, sun-darkened load-carriers, staggering under the exaggerated weights on their heads, still protesting, and remonstrating with me for the colossal injustice.

As soon as she was gone I was sucked back into the throes of running an entertainment outfit and launching a foreign act in a highly competitive, impecunious environment.  Much of my time was spent on radio and television programs, propagating my artistic ideals and advertising my artistry. Here an artiste did not just have to donate his works to the record shops for gratis but also had to give free concerts to the innumerable nightclubs and discotheques if he wanted to remain relevant. Most unemployed youth declared themselves artistes with no financial expectations, further cheapening the serious professionals, so almost no artiste got paid for these promotional shows but every artiste, new and old, budding or famous, struggled to get on stage.

 Diane and I kept contact by phone. Since students were not allowed to keep cell phones in her school, she would pretend to be sick and go and visit a friendly doctor in the school dispensary and call me with his phone. I would call back immediately and we would talk endlessly about her school, academic program and her school friends, and end up laughing for long periods. I was not anything like crazy about Diane, but she had become an essential part of my existence, like an eager relative or an emotional depend-ant, gradually becoming an important part of my life.

My swashbuckling manager Carly and my devoted choreographer Neman had talked me into becoming one of the sponsors of the Supergal singing contest. I only had to avail the contestants of my studio facilities for a month, they had argued, and the studios would enjoy all the television publicity that would go with the entire competition. That was how my studios came to play host to a gaggle of over fifty unruly feminine music star aspirants. The moment I opened my door, the entire compound was taken over by noisy females of various shades and sizes. They filled up the studios, veranda, corridor, reception, even my office, rehearsing singing and dancing, and recording, with several of them boisterously trying to catch my attention. The only one that actually scored the goal of my heart was Kasha. She was a rich dark and had big round boobs waiting to explode and all her attractive properties stood on massive hips and a big well-shaped bottom. She did not attract me with her gorgeousness but with her suitable silence and immobile decorum. So we were eventually smiling and talking to each other, but I was determined to keep it casual because I did not want any rapport that would threaten Diane’s position.

All the activities were being recorded by television cameramen like Big Brother. It was a Herculean task for Carly, my secretary, Belinda, the two security men, the Alsatians, and I, to maintain order and secure our equipment in the face of this feminine invasion, and the girls had only been here for one week. In that period I had not been able to go home once. Anyway I had gotten used to virtually living in my office. This was the challenge I was facing when my phone rang one lackluster afternoon and it was Diane.

‘How are you Diane?’

‘Am fine’

‘Where are you?’

‘I am in town, honey’

‘In town? Why?’

‘I sneaked out of school’

‘What? Why did you do that?’

‘I was missing you so much, honey. I couldn’t wait any longer. Won’t you come and get me?’

‘Of course I will.’ I rejoined, both disturbed and flattered that she had taken such a high consequential risk for me. ‘Where exactly are you?’

‘Opposite Radio One’ she responded and hung up.

I handed over the day’s operation to Carly, hoping that nothing would go wrong, then I got into my RAV4 and Edward, the security man, threw the compound gate open. I drove speedily out into the street. I was in the winding Ggaba Road in a few minutes. Dozens of rough-looking, leather-clad motorcyclists swiftly blocked the road as they raced noisily for supremacy, forcing me to slow down. A  mini bus with three young roller-skaters clinging precariously on its rear to save on transport fare overtook me. The motorbike addicts soon disappeared as quickly as they had appeared and the road was free again. The Pearls flashed past. Since Winston Churchill had flatteringly referred to Uganda as ‘The Pearl of Africa,’ virtually everything here has been named Pearl. Pearl Restaurant, Pearl Dry cleaners, Pearl Pharmacy, Pearl Supermarket, Pearl Amusement Park, Pearl Pastries, Pearl Bakery, Pearl Butchery, Pearl Laboratories, Pearl Clinics, Pearl Mechanics, Pearl this, Pearl that, and no one cared that there wasn’t an iota of pearl anywhere in Uganda.  Well, with the exception of mine.

 I was in Nakasero in thirty minutes. I found my  pearl in the jammed City Center, in a swelled junction in the middle of the traffic-jam, beside a man who was selling pictures of President Museveni, former dictators Milton Obote and Idi Amin, other past presidents including one that had been unfortunate enough to rule for just three months, past and present Kabakas or kings of Buganda, and the Cranes, Uganda’s national football team, where a ponderous preacher without a megaphone was shouting  croaky, virtual inaudibility  about the end of the world, which he said was at hand, amidst the anatonal symphony of the sounds of the city.

 Diane was in her blue school uniform, clutching a travel bag.  She had lost some weight and thus had apparently grown taller. She had added more hair on her head and was looking older in spite of her regimented garment. She was nervous, sweaty, tired and reeking of heat, congestion and rough travel, but we started laughing once she entered my vehicle. We laughed genially, our felicitation spilled into the automobile and we became virtually  oblivious of the vehicles that thundered around us, motorcyclists that almost flew about, the hectic movement of pedestrians, load-carriers shouting their right of way, their voices frustrated by the burden on their heads, the surging throng of people, smartly suited workers hurrying to the bus stop, flamboyantly under-dressed black women with painted faces, straining under the weight of their oversized artificial Caucasian hair and sweating their way to their various appointments. I did not know why we laughed, maybe the intrigue of her furtive escape, how she had slunk away from school.

‘What did you tell the school authorities that made them allow you to leave?’

‘I said I was sick and I acted very sick’

‘And your doctor friend helped you, I suppose?’

‘Exactly’ she grinned.

A newspaper vendor waved his ware by my window. I bought the Onion, a gossip magazine that tilted towards mild pornography. I knew that young women liked it. Diane grabbed it immediately and read it aloud as I struggled through the traffic, out of the city. A student had killed his girlfriend who had given him HIV. A farmer in some village strangled his wife and hanged himself for the same reason. She stopped reading and started talking, recounting her tedious academic program as I drove back towards the studio on the stately Ggaba Road. I stopped at Doctor’s Plaza, opposite the majestic American Embassy.

‘What are we doing here?’ Diane demanded as I backed the vehicle into a parking position.

‘HIV test’ I declared.

‘You think I have AIDS? Is it because of the stories in the magazine?’ She looked hurt.

‘No, but it is routine’ I insisted in an affable tone.

‘So you think I escaped from school to come and fuck you?’ Her voice rose discourteously. ‘I am a virgin for crying out loud.’

‘It’s a basic commonsense rule that anyone getting intimate with another person should test for HIV. I had never allowed myself the risk of getting really intimate with any woman here before I met you. You are the first, the very first and only one. You are a very young woman; you don’t need to take any risks. Let’s do the test, please.’ I pleaded.

‘You think am here to make love to you?’ She queried, visibly appalled.

‘What I think doesn’t really matter  but the natural thing when a man is close to his woman is that they may start getting physical, so it is expedient that we ascertain our statuses and be sure that we are safe, before even getting near to each other, okay?’ I persisted and stepped out of the auto. She followed me unwillingly.

 A friendly lab technician, who introduced himself curiously as Nkrumah despite not being a Ghanaian, took our blood samples and we waited for half an hour, reading back issues of medical magazines before the results came out proclaiming both of us negative. We strolled back into the auto and drove to Wav’s End, a small but well-guarded hotel made up of rows of bungalows divided into tiny rooms for temporary lodging with a mini club, bar, sauna and massage and no questions asked, at the Bbunga side of the long and broad Ggaba Road. I did not want us to occupy an anonymous room but the hotel’s proximity to my crammed studios made it convenient. It was not more than ten minutes drive to my workplace and I needed to be able to reach both the studio and Diane at short notice and thus kill two birds with one stone.

Diane waited in the auto while I booked a simple clean room. She stepped out, closed the door, tugged her big bag and came with me into the chalet. She looked around expressionlessly then dropped her bag and went into the bathroom. A moment later the shower was running. I left the room, locking the door gently behind me. I walked round the lodges to the restaurant and ordered lunch, then I returned to the room, spellbound by expectancy. She broke the spell when she strode out of the bathroom, stark naked from head to toe, water dripping resplendent from her freshened body, all her contours sharp, shouting and threatening to detonate. I savored the sight of her superb beauty which seemed to illuminate the room, exciting my entire anatomy. She walked into my waiting embrace and my body struggled to free my soul from my jail of skin. My fervent kisses spilled all over her face. Her reciprocal response was swift, inspiring and electrifying. I lifted her off her feet and placed her on the bouncy soft mattress of the bed. She filled the entire bed with her brown self, eager and waiting. I frantically took off my shoes, suit, shirt and underpants and crawled into the bed, up from between her outspread legs, moving towards the small central bushy hill, my manhood turgid and thumping. She grabbed me gently and caressed my back, kissing my ears, face and lips. My edgy hands caressed every space of her soft body, feeling the loveliness of her chocolate flesh, bewitched by desire. My fingers travelled gently through the bushy mound, up the little wetting hill.  I put my hand in the tiny pond at the centre of the petite rise and tried to penetrate with my smallest finger. The hole was so tiny and so tight as if there was really no opening there, and she squirmed with pain each time I attempted entry. I hated to see her in any form of discomfort, so I stopped.

‘Honey, I am very close to my mother,’ she confessed as I pulled out my little finger. I was slightly stunned as I wondered why she had chosen this moment to give me this piece of information. I withdrew from her and lay down beside her.

‘Why did you say that?’ I demanded, perplexed.

‘I am not sure I can keep a secret from Mom’ she revealed.

‘Which means if I make love to you, you will tell her?’ I probed.             

‘Exactly’

‘So how is that a problem, Diane? You are eighteen, the age of legal consent’

‘In this country it is the mother that decides the age of her child; whatever she tells the court is my age’ she revealed ominously.

I considered the portentous disclosure without losing sight of the underlying threat, aware that this was an easy way for parents of young girls to use their young-looking daughters to blackmail unsuspecting prosperous men. Suddenly I felt a flash of insight and declared. ‘The truth, Diane is that you are underage, isn’t it? You lied to me about your age, didn’t you? You are not yet eighteen’

She looked guiltily away as she admitted. ‘Yes, I am seventeen years old. I’ll be eighteen next year in August.’

A shiver ran through me at the horrific realization that I was in bed with a minor. I climbed out of the bed, stood by the window and instantaneously envisaged the door coming down and police orderlies shouting, as they handcuffed and dragged me naked into their waiting van, with the entire hotel guests watching, pressmen taking photographs and TV cameramen shooting the sting operation. I saw myself behind the counter in a dreary office in a horrible police station, surrounded by cells full of hardened criminals, with throngs of curious passersby rushing in to catch a glimpse of the unprincipled defiler, the unscrupulous cradle snatcher. I visualized myself in the courtroom before an awesome old and ugly female magistrate with a mouth that looked like a festering injury, and heard her pronounce, ‘animals like you should be off the streets so that our adolescent daughters can be allowed to have proper upbringing, their education and development unhindered, without these innocent children being defiled, infected with HIV and AIDS and killed!’

 I saw myself being pushed into a dark, smelly, grimy cell in the dreaded Maximum Security Prison, a cell populated by AIDS-infested homosexuals, then the stern black-faced warder locked the clanking iron door and ferociously threw the key into the nearby Victoria Lake. 

It would not have been the first time such a thing happened. I read them in the newspapers almost every day. I was aware that many unscrupulous parents here connived with their young daughters and sent these underage girls to seduce and have carnal rapports with wealthy men, then they would call their contacts in the police who would raid the hotels or habitations where these illegal affairs were taking place, catch the men pants down and make them pay outrageously large amounts of money in bribes to avoid prosecution. This money would then be shared between the policemen and the girls’ parents.

‘But why?’ I demanded pointedly, ‘why did you lie to me about your age?’

She rose from the wetted bed and I felt her pointed nipples pushing into my back as her hands climbed under my shoulders to caress my chest. ‘Because I love you honey. I didn’t want to lose you on account of my tender age. I couldn’t give you up because of our age difference.’

‘You would rather send me to prison because your love for me isn’t strong enough to guarantee that you tell me the truth and keep our affair away from your parents for now,’ I reasoned aloud uncomfortably, turning to stare at her.

‘If you love me you will wait for me,’ she declared in a sublime voice.

‘For how long?’ I inquired.

‘For two years’ she responded flatly.

‘Why two years? Why not one year which is more humane. You will be 18 next year and legally eligible.’ I negotiated interrogatively.

She stood up and paced the room melodramatically, looking grimly around the room. ‘Honey, I’ve kept my virginity all these years on principle. I need to ask you a serious question. Do you love me or do you just want my body?’ She stopped in front of me and directed her gaze like a flashlight to me. My eyes focused on the well-groomed dark-ling bush between her seductive laps.  ‘Honey, I do not want to compromise myself before I finish high school. I will keep myself for you, for just you, you alone, only you, out of all the men in the world. If your love is real and you prove it by sponsoring the rest of my education, waiting for me to finish high school and not messing around with other girls, I will keep my virginity as a very special present for you and give it to you on a Plata of gold immediately I leave school. But you must have the generosity and patience required to get the price.’

I mentally reviewed her offer, which seemed more like a business proposal from a seasoned dealer than a romantic suggestion from an immature teenage lover. The first time she had hinted on her recourse to abstinence, and virginity and her steely resolve to maintain her virtue for the next two years was that night we went to Muyenga Club and I had not taken her too seriously, but contemplating the idea deeply now, the waiting period seemed long and the process seemed like a gargantuan task. Her decision to embark on elongated chastity was morally enviable, but even though I was not the typical male that was only after one thing and would dump the giver once he got it, I still hesitated at the thought of being the one to bell the cat for her moral choice.  It seemed somewhat unbalanced in my regard; therefore I felt that it was in some way unfair to me because she had the legal right to terminate her self-denial after one year and reduce the waiting period by half. It felt idealistically romantic, like something out of a medieval romance novel, yet I could not see how this abstinence posturing translated into love in this modern time?

I reasoned that her decision was based on her moral beliefs and lofty ego, not her affection for me but she was asking me to make a sacrifice without reciprocity. If her high moral choice considered my needs she would have been ready to make a sacrifice too, meet me halfway by reducing the waiting period by half.

 I saw no need for the emotional blackmail of threatening to tell her mother what we were doing; her good old mother didn’t need to know at this stage. Yet I respected the premise of her unusual proposition, the exalted integrity of a young woman who wanted to be straight in a crooked and complicated world where most privileges went to those wayward enough to engage in sexual barter. For this reason and my affection for her, I accepted her difficult scheme, agreeing to sponsor her education and wait loyally for her till her graduation in the next two years. That was when our affair in all its ramifications really commenced.

BOB EJIKE

email profbobejike@yahoo.com for the full book