A Stethoscope, Wig and Helmet
“Where’s Barrister?” Mrs. Lucy Nnubia asked and whom she had in mind was her twenty-old Barry Second Son Second Year-Law Student.
The answer she got was that Barry Nnubia had gone out some ten minutes ago.
“To___?” pressed Mrs. Nnubia, a little offended by the handed reply. “Honestly, I wouldn’t know,” Questioned Beatrice readily freed from her prodded lips. “My Younger Brother by Nearly Five Years hardly mentions to me his decided long and short movements out of house!”
This time, twenty-four-year-old Beatrice did not bite and bleed a regretting lower lip as was her custom while making this kind of painful disclosure. Still easily, Mrs. Nnubia was able to pick her much more offended feeling as well as the authority of the voice vehicle for the feeling…
“Alright. But don’t let us go into that, now,” Mrs. Nnubia heard herself begging Daughter Beatrice with a smiling promise that she would handle the matter, soonest.
That was a beautiful sharp checking by Mrs. Nnubia or so she had thought of Daughter Beatrice intended reeling of the litany of unforgivable wrongs she had had to suffer at the hands of Barry. Yet, it did not stop her from voicing like she would irritatingly do that some legal matters of serious kind had dragged the feet of her Barrister Barry out of doors, because he would want to speedily thrash them out!
“Christ! Only legal matters and court cases have a way of chasing this guy out of his filled-with-law-books room… Actually, Law Chamber in Disguise!”
Sometimes, when matters had climbed and got to this stage, Daughter Beatrice Nnubia would try to help out Mother Lucy Nnubia with cajoling consent to the presence of a roomful Law Books, Law Reports, Law Journals and Video Clips about The Lawful and The Unlawful in her Barrister Barry Brother In-House Chamber. But today, visibly overpowered by hate, she had vouchsafed not a half comment on Mother Nnubia’s half-crazy half hallucinations about her Still Second Year Law Student Son, who can have gone out to see his Reginald Girlfriend or watch a Chelsea Match, against Man City.
By and by, that was Mrs. Lucy Nnubia, in a manner of speaking, a secondary school dropout, except that Early Marriage was completely behind the dropping! But one could see her whole appreciable awareness of Merits of Academic Excellence and preparedness to praise their pursuers to The High Heavens. Thus, it had also been easy for her to make up her mind that The Best of Scholarship was what her four kids deserved, from Day One working, towards The Target. A bit disappointingly, Beatrice, her eldest child and only daughter stood as a bit of A Slow Coach for having managed to pick A Diploma in Catering from A Privately Owned Polytechnic. In contrast, Kenneth, twenty-two, Barry, twenty and Agunna, Eighteen, were able to round off their Primary Education, before they glimpsed the Age of Eleven and their Secondary’s, before they balanced on ‘Eighteen.’
Agunna himself was wonderful; though the last of them all, Quite Marvelous at Book Work. To his credit, he had sat the Compulsory Common Entrance Examination for Primary Six School Pupils while at Primary Five and the Junior School Certificate Examination for Third Year Secondary School Students while in Second Year, coming out cleanly. Not quite, four years later, he clinched a place in The Faculty of Engineering of the University of Abassi, finally joining his two elder brothers, Kenneth and Barry, as Undergraduate.
A Morale-booster, isn’t it? In point of fact, one of the rarest of Happy Developments! Consequently, anything Mrs. Lucy Nnubia said or did began to win easy approval, circulate like fast news and penetrate into initially disinterested eardrums! Importantly, friends and neighbors started addressing the Forty-Two Year-Old Maternal Success as she had openly wished it: Mama Doc Barrister and Engineer!
Not for one moment did Mrs. Lucy Nnubia make the least effort to stop the unsure stories her admirers wove around her children’s academic achievements. Popularly, it was Three Angels of the Lord or rather God himself who had handed Mrs. Lucy Nnubia in a dream A Doctor’s Stethoscope, Lawyer’s Wig and Gown and Engineer’s Helmet with Dungarees! All in one night! The Year 2010, Month, December, Day The Thirty-First, shortly after her return from a Friday Holy Communion Class. Now, why should she, Lucy, bother her head at all about An Innocent Bit of Untruth, which she had had no hand in its fabrication?
Rather in Mrs. Nnbia’s Brain was lodged ‘The Truth’ that her three gifted sons were, indeed, Doctor, Barrister and Engineer, respectively.
“You mean Doctor Kenneth didn’t leave word behind before venturing out,” Mrs. Nnubia would question another child of hers, whenever Kenneth had breezed in and soon took a French Leave…
“And My Young Engineer, for three days now sick…. I… I hope he’s begun to bounce back with the drugs “Mrs. Nnubia would ask, of all persons directing the question to Under-Achiever Beatrice!
“But they’re misnomers for now, Lucy,” a female co-parishioner had to tell her on one occasion. “I mean calling your eldest son, Kenneth, Doctor, , Physician, Surgeon and all that while he has yet to round off his Fourth Year in Medicine and Surgery… I reckon you’ve been doing likewise to Barry and Eighteen-Year-Old Agunna”
“Oh! Buzz off!” Mrs. Nnubia had ordered The Lady, doing so in exasperation but not forgetting a well-planned sneer on the fringes of her already pursed lips, the next minute wanting to learn from the lady, if her kids were not going to graduate after all.
“No, I haven’t yet said so” corrected Mrs. Answer “My interest is in your continual asking for God’s Heavenly Grace on The Academic Career of your children, for anything can happen any time to a mar a dream.”
Not a complete stranger to courteous manners, Mrs. Nnubia softened up to thank The Philosopher over and over again. This though she did in a voice any keen listener would have sworn had just managed to disguise her injured pride besides a building disdain for The Source of The Philosophy.
Unforgettably in the end, Mrs. Answer’s Philosophy proved its sanctity and permanence. Mrs. Nnubia’s Final Year Medical Student Son Kenneth was to lose his Chance of Graduation from Medicine to an eleventh-hour rape incident involving a female colleague, whom he had all along hated her guts. Barry himself had been too early in life A Reactionary - Real Hot Head! He was captured by both their University’s CCTV and a handful human eyes exchanging butter blows with another student in his Faculty, not over a Legal Matter but Girlfriend Stuff, for the act bagging immediate expulsion while Youthful Agunna, unbelievably The Second in Command of Their School’s Dominant Secret Cult, had to be rusticated against the back- drop of repeated confrontations with Her Security Unit.
All these had happened in less than two years to hurt The Hell out of Lucy who had disdained the priceless words of a Lady Answer, rather forcing her to answer her embarrassing questions.
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