PART ONE
Shame is in the eyes.
Puberty is painful, powerful. You smell different, and not in a pleasant way. Hair sprouts in all of the places you would rather it didn’t. Underneath your arms, in your pubic area, but not on your face. Edu, your classmate and friend, whose light skin accentuates the dark beards he has started growing looks like a real man beside you. And all the girls want to fuck him. The girls like you because you make them laugh. They slap their thighs when you make fun of teachers and awkward students; when you do impressions complete with facial expressions. They do not want your hands on their thighs.
Each time you look at your body in a mirror, you wonder how long this will last, why you do not look like any of the other boys, same age as you, who seem to be developing normally; why your chest is not like Ali who has perfect pecs like his older brother Sule. None of them ever lifted weights or went to a gym. Your areolae look swollen and when you touch them there is a hard painful mass of flesh that feels like a miniature knee cap. So you never take your shirt off. When you play football, you are out quickly. First, because you cannot run to save your life. You are convinced there is something wrong in your chest or heart or both. After fifteen minutes of running, a sharp pain starts to build in the left side of your chest just where the heart beat is. But more importantly, because teams did not use jerseys, one team would have to play bare-chested so that they could identify their team mates. This is the one thing no one could get you to do, take off your shirt in public and expose those swollen areolae.
Often you take a shirt to the bathroom so that your chest is covered as you cross from the bathroom past the kitchen in the courtyard, to the room you shared with your younger brother and aunt.
Once, you didn’t take a shirt because you thought you were home alone. As you bent to dip the plastic pail into the bucket of water, you heard noises. Your parents had returned. There was no hiding now. The towel was not big enough to cover your chest as well as your lower body so you waited until you thought they were in their room to run across the corridor. As you emerged your mother was also emerging from the bedroom.
—Sunny Boy, she called out to you. Are you just taking your bath now?
—This is the second time, you lied, then greeted her and your father who was now behind her.
You prayed for her eyes to remain at your eye level, just long enough for you to dash into the room and wear a shirt. Almost as if you had been thinking aloud, her eyes began to move. They widened with horror as they landed on your chest. They darted from left to right and then to your father.
—What is that? She said, motioning with her head, almost as if she was afraid to point with her fingers. Or perhaps ashamed.
—What is what? You replied pretending not to know what she was referring to.
She turned around to your father.
—Is that normal, she asked.
And the shame moved from your face to your father’s face.
What sort of question is that, he said curtly after which she dropped the topic. That was the longest walk to your room. You didn’t dash. You just walked, one slow painful step after the other. You struggled not to cry.
Shame turned to pain and then resentment.
You never forgot to take a shirt to the bathroom after that.
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