One coconut, two coconuts, three coconuts...

I didn't marry him. I am back in high school. My dad is driving me to high school. I attend a boarding school; a prestigious boarding school. I have my trunk full of my provisions and supplies to last me six months. In six months, it will be the first occasion for me to visit my parents and be home on a vacation which will be four weeks long. I shall meet boys, play and shop until I drop dead. Believe it or not my school is a girls only boarding school. When I begged my parents to pay the steep fees for my attendance, I thought that I was entering the world of feminism. Guess what I was in fact entering: the world of female criminals most of which were sent to boarding school to be hidden from the men that they did not want to remain married to or from crime or from other women whom they discovered their attraction to. Others were running away from arranged marriages, while some were political prisoners on the run. Quite a few were very old and were seasoned wives of doctors who managed to marry without an education and were playing catch up.

When I first realized that, I cried because I knew then that I was going to waste my time with damaged people who were updating themselves by seeking exposure to our novice lives. We had no life experience. Getting to university was going to be our first life experience. First, we had to finish high school.

I wrote my mom and dad when I realized that my roommate was a wife of a physician who worked where my mom worked as a nurse, I was distraught and very upset. She did not look old, but she indicated that she had three kids. I was only thirteen from a wholesome family where my mother was a nurse, and my dad was a college professor. The only strangers that I was familiar with, were helpers who occasionally visited us at home and cleaned after us if my mom was busy or needed a rest. They were strangers who could not wait to be done washing our dishes and sweeping our floors because they had lives of their own. I liked them because they had somewhere to go and were eager to leave us than the roommates that I had in school who anticipated being in the same room with me as though I was the only thing that mattered in their lives.

I remember falling in love with watching the sun rise in the morning because I just wanted to be out of that room. I was tired of hearing what her husband, the doctor did a couple of months before she was offered room in my dorm. I also was tired of the freedom fighter who could not be seen eating lunch in the lunchroom with other students because the government might be watching! What about the gay classmate who stopped by my dorm room to check if I was gay yet. It just was not what I wanted my boarding school experience to be. I would hang on to the phone close to my mouth wanting to tell my dad that a girl asked me if I prefer to be a man or a girl if we do date. Or that my roommate had three children and all of them were with their dad. She wondered if I knew her husband. She seemed to realize that I frequented my mom's hospital where she worked and supposedly where her husband also worked. Instead, I would whisper in my husky voice, "Dad I need more coffee and tea bags. I am out. Will you mail them or drop them this time:"

"Hey, Simanga, where did I leave my stamp for my class? Did you see it? Where did you leave the ink. Remember I asked you to put it away. I need it. I have a meeting this morning."

"Dad, I want to come home. I hate it here. I changed my mind. I want to come home. I can be a leader from a day school."

"You can't! Your mom works nights. we found a nanny who can stand your brother and your sister. It is working very well for us. We just won't know how to deal with you and your schedule."

"Dad, that sounds like you are throwing me away to these people!"

"Give it a try! If it gets worse after a year than I will let you attend my old high school where I taught. Where is my stamp?"

"It's in the drawer in the desk in the living room."

"Do you need money?"

"No dad I don't" (I am gonna go and cry now!)

I would rush back to my room hoping that my married roommate has found older women to talk to about her husband and old age. Instead she would find her sitting on her bed folding her clothes and listening to music. As soon as I enter our room, she without fail start telling me about a vacation that she took with her husband where this song was in the background of what seemed to be a very memorable moment with her doctor. It was then that I understood that my parents saw something in me, and they wanted it out of their lives. They just did not like me. Look what I have to endure. I attracted inappropriate people who were generaous givers and liked to share their inappropriateness. A knock on the door with another adventure would soon seep into the room and suddenly the room will be full of girls, woman/child with breasts and stories.Squeaky, high strung voices and high-sounding laughs. I thought I was going to meet nice girls who wondered about the mysteries of the universe. Who had no entanglements. Not adults who knew more than my mom and my dad combined.

It was a high school and my age, and my report card called for me to be attending a high school no matter who other students were. We would wake up one day and find out one of the girls missing! She had to skip town; the cops found out she was hiding in the dorms. This information was just too much for me and I asked for special permission to speak to my dad.

"Daddy, I want to come home"

"I am in the middle of a lecture. I am a Lecturer remember? I have office hours. I am no longer the principal of a high school. I cannot just take off and pick you up. I have a schedule." he said to me, and I thought I sensed his sadness at not being able to help me with a problem that also worried him.

Six months of such daily pain with a brief moment of fun when we all go to the entertainment hall for a movie. Odd as it was to watch a movie with a group of girls it beat being in a room with older girls with men problems and feelings of wanting to rush back home to the arms of their men!

My dad, no it was my uncle who picked me up in his new car with my cousin sitting at the back in is his school uniform. He too was returning from his boys only boarding school. He was happy to be away from testosterones. I looked around in the back seat wondering if there was another relative in the back seat. There wasn't. It was a day earlier than our actual departure for the end of the semester holidays. Infact I was hand delivered by my school secretary who interrupted my dining hall experience by shouting out my name and asking me to excuse myself from my lunch mates. The dining hall was buzzing with noise as it normally would a day before the end of the mid school year. I excused myself from my head dining mate and left with my lunch bag to the common room where I was told to collect all of my belongings and meet my uncle because I was leaving early. I was happy and thought that my dad was actually surprising me by taking me away from this school of adult supervision.

I was taken aback to find my uncle sitting with his son in the car not saying a word except to thank the school secretary for letting me leave early. I packed my trunk and my bags in the car. We had to tie my shoe rack on the roof of the car. I noticed that everyone was oddly silent because it was well known in the family that I wanted to be picked up because it just was not what I expected my boarding school experience to be like.

We drove away and as we departed after talking to the security guard at the gate, my uncle turned around and said to me. "Simanga your dad died! That is why I had to pick you up. We had to pick up your cousin from school too because the funeral is tomorrow!"

I am standing next to him in my wedding dress. Him my husband. I am well rested and pure. I don't remember how I got here. I walked by myself to the alter because I did not have a dad. My mom is sitting with her back at me. My siblings are sitting looking at me like I am the star. Their lovers are sitting next to them holding on tight at their shoulders. All of it is a delicate balance. The priest is reading something in a bible or maybe it is one of those booklets that our church usually gives us. They have daily scriptures and parables associated with a daily lesson. The only person present and alive in the church is my husband that I am marrying. We all died when my dad died!