Avalanche
Not only does she take Chudi’s wonder drug in desperation to cure her obesity, she also resolves to coke and molly, and lands in a psycho ward. Apart from being overweight, she is bullied at school. She resumes classes to the harsh reality of offensive words scribbled on her desk, insults which transcend playful torments, restroom lock-ins.
She dies in the hands of her victimizers every day—thinks of fighting back—thinks of shooting sprees and whatnots. She justifies her reticence from violence with a crucial conviction: school shooters are usually bullies or victims of bullying. “Some people actually learn psychopathy,” she says to herself as thoughts of guns and blood flash through her mind.
But again—she considers the consequences and restrains herself from decadence— mass murders are more often than not accompanied by the annihilation of their perpetrators. She guts up and speaks to her teacher— she doesn’t want jail timeand shedoesn’t want to be a statistic. After she discusses with him, hestorms into her classroom in defiance, rebukes her classmates, insists they all apologize to her individually. Some students snicker still. One of them says he’ll rather put a knife to his throat than apologize to a fat idiot. She’s not surprised— the rite of apologies brings an imposterto light. She looks away from him as she’s not the talk back type, fumbles with the pen in her hand. Her eyes meet the teacher’s who’s looking on from a corner. He doesn’t notice the drama. It is brief and quite civilized. His staged apologies do nothing for her, she otherwise, becomes suicidal, until Chudi comes along.
Chudi. He’s as charming as he’s smooth. His easy smile and good looks stay long with her after their first hellos. When she opened the front door to let them in (her cousin and his neighbor, Chudi), his strong perfume rushes at her in wild resonance. It consumes her with a whim. She is startled when he pulls her for a hug, embarrassing heras she’s meeting him for the first time. She doesn’t know of any good-looking guy that likes fat girls. Shelooks away, confused.
He later walks into the kitchen where she’s doing the dishes and asks her for some water in a fake American accent. As she hands the glass of water to him, her eye catches a Cupid tattoo on his left arm. He winks at her and downs his water—watches as she fumbles with the runny tap. Her body is stocky and firm, she has big brown eyes, a round, pretty face, a wide and protruding tummy, and very thick arms.
He smiles.
“You should try ice— you know— it’s the street name for methamphetamine,” he says, leaning towards her. “It’s an appetite suppressant— one of my guys uses it for weight loss—you’ll be a freaking size zero in no time.”
She says nothing, looks away.
“Come on—you can trust me— me and you we’re like cousins now.” She steals a look at him and he pulls her in another embrace. This time she’s more than willing. “People do stuff to get stuff,” he adds.
She lay her head on his chest and closes her eyes as she nurtures a whimsy about him, their hearts beating interchangeably.
He’s been calling her Ice baby since she started taking his wonder drug. They are now friends with benefits and party monsters. They go partying with a bunch of reckless kids, smoke ice and other abominable things. After partying, they go clubbing, spend like monarchs. He says he’s got some money stuffed away. “We ain’t broke kids,” he says, smiling.
She doesn’t question him— Chudi can do no wrong. He solved the only problem bothering her and she’s grateful to him even though she suffers the consequences of her indulgences. When she tells him about the side effects of his wonder drug, he tells her he can fix it, small problem— but he can’t— not entirely tho’.
“Yeah, I can fix it, but it’s nothing if you don’t focus on it. It’s just ammonia in your sweat.I’ll give you some nice perfumes to cover up. Everybody is hiding something yeah,” he says, taking her hand.
“But my parents will become suspicious,” she says looking away from him.
“Forget them— set them straight— weren’t they making fun of you when you were overweight? You don’t owe them anything!” He says kicking the air. “Okay I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful—but youknow I suck at sucking up. However, they’re just speculating, they don’t know for sure yeah?” He asks, touching her face.
Chudi doesn’t give a hoot what anybody could possibly think about her doping.He thinks ice is everything she needs to stop her victimizers, even though her family members are beginning to notice her fallouts. Several people use hard drugs to cure their illnesses, become junkies and abusive due to impaired judgement, die from overdose. As morphine cures cough and body pain; cocaine, cold, headache, neuralgia and nervousness. Hitler’s physician allegedly injected him with high doses of cocaine and eukodal to cure his ear problem. It is said to be the reason for his alertness, and near success of conquering the world. Also, Nazi Germany troops turned to Pervitin and a cocaine chewing gum, which enabled them to advance in battle without the fear of death and fatigue. Oftentimes, hard drugs are used as a means of temporary escape from the psychological disturbance that bullying affords: Marilyn Monroe turned to barbiturates and amphetamines to cure insomnia arising from her bullying experiences in Hollywood, and dies from overdose.
She is now a size eight, ravishing, and confident. She isno longer bullied at school. Instead she watches as other students are being bullied—ripped off their pocket monies— while their victimizers debunk their allegations and continue to molest them.She’s not happy about it, but she looks away still. Thing isto speak up could mean being tormented for the rest of the school year and she wants none of it. She discusses it with Chudi—tells him she feels guilty—ought to do something. “It’s becoming rather unbecoming, I feel like an enabler—an accomplice,” she says with a deep sigh.
But he mimics her and laughs hard; a husky, well-meaning one. “Smart people don’t go about fixing everybody’s problem— or are you now Ojukwu? It beats mewhy people act like that. You don’t want to intervene and damage that pretty face now, do you?” he asks. They sigh and fall silent. As a minor, Ojukwu is docked for challenging a British teacher who humiliates a woman at King’s College, Nigeria. He wasn’t the type to look away when things are about to go south. On the other hand, Syrians in rebel-held Eastern Aleppo were slaughtered and forced to flee their homes due to airstrikes by al-Assad and his allies, and civilians in opposition to his regime were secretly hanged in Saydnaya prison while the world watched. In the words of Ojukwu, “the history of the world is a chronicle of oppression.” From the bloody enterprise of war and terrorism to drug and human trafficking to Holocaust to slave trade. Scourges from mankind to mankind.
