"TriniBoys" by Daniel Ogba
Read an interview in which Daniel Ogba discusses classical music as inspiration, how it doesn’t get easier, and short stories that lay it all bare.
1.
He asked me to call him O.J. He was the new principal's son.
We didn't like the new Principal because he did not understand the way things worked. See, before his unwelcome advent at the beginning of our final year, we already had a running system at Trinity Catholic Boys School. Perfect. Suitable. We weren't doing bad in academics. No, we were doing marvelous—take, for instance, bagging first place in both junior and senior categories at the regional Cowbellpedia last session, no small feat. If you think it is, ask the boys we beat from Central High with their razor-sharp uniforms, oven-hot brains, and blazing Cortina sandals that mirrored their loss when the results were announced. The shock on their frozen stockfish faces lives rent-free in my mind. They didn't believe then; common Trinity boys, what did we know? But as Father McKenzie used to say, sometimes it's rarely about the what and more of the who. All it took him was a phone call straight to the regional HQ two days before the competition, and the next thing we had was the white paper on our desks. We began ruminating over problems, poring over solutions; each X to find and each Y to express. Competition day came, we went there, in and out. Brought the trophies home. Champions.
We liked Father McKenzie better—God rest his soul. He had this simple philosophy: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Only he changed Jack to Triniboys. After evening lessons, he’d play basketball with the students, and in his shorts and white Adidas canvas exposing his oiled smooth legs, bouncing and running and tackling, he was not the man in flowing white cassock floating around the school compound, hands interlocked behind his back and a rosary between his fingers. Nor was he the man gracefully flinging the thurible that doused sweet incense on our faces during Adoration. He was just a man.
And because of Father, fear ran four-forty from our eyes. We did not fear the green algae-ridden water from the school’s well, though it itched our skins and made pockmarks on our faces, hands, backs, balls, and we would walk around with our bodies calamine-lotioned. We did not fear the high-rise fence that shielded the world from us. Same as we did not fear Bagger with his dog, man and his beast sitting on the other side of freedom. And even when Bagger and his dog caught us after sneaking out, submitting us to Father McKenzie’s merciful hand, we only got three hours of kneeling before the Blessed Mother of God, chanting hail Marys till our mouths, full, spilled with so much grace.
2.
When Father McKenzie died of a heart attack toward the end of our penultimate year, the new principal just waltzed in, a pot-bellied knight in shining armor. Thinking he could tear everything down and build it back up. When he's not even Jesus.
He came with eyes that begged for trouble.
And trust us Triniboys, coconut heads wey no dey ever hear word, to reciprocate. Madness best responds to madness.
During Father Mckenzie’s benevolent rule, the morning assembly had been at 7:30. But on the new principal’s first day, the bell went at quarter past 7. And we boys do know how to take our time preparing: polishing our shoes till they reflected the sun, deep brushing our hair to keep the waves rolling, crisp white shirts straightened with contraband irons. I was still unboxing my uniform when I heard the bell ring and thought what madness? Next thing—chaos. Temple Run. People were jumping from bunks, Jackie Chan style, flying over cupboards. Wetin dey sup? The new principal stood at the hostel’s entrance armed with a black koboko. YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO LEAVE, he thundered, his voice a forerunner of impending doom. ONE! No time to process, I gathered my uniform and shoes. TWO! Wearing only boxers and singlet, I ran out of the hostel. THREE! My trousers slipped from my hand and crumpled straight into mud water. FOUR! I'd forgotten to padlock my cupboard. I picked up my trousers, gas in my heels. FIVE! Jesus. It was barely 7:27 when we reached the assembly venue but according to the principal, we were late. He announced his own philosophy: "Punctuality is the soul of business." He made us kneel in front of the entire school, that is the few students who'd made it into paradise, the wise virgins from the Bible. Kneeling in front of juniors who had revered us, this man legit watered down all our reps, mixed it with konkri and force-fed it back to us. We were the foolish virgins, some of us with trousers worn halfway, shirts unbuttoned. The master had come, and he'd found us unfit for his kingdom. But this was only the beginning.
We converted all our pencil trousers to Evangelical-mission-brothers style. The principal took the liberty of confiscating trousers that hugged close to our calves like second skins and with these new baggy ones brooms were redundant; they did a fine job sweeping the floors clean of dirt.
Our heads were next. The principal started visiting class after class with a pair of scissors going after ungodly haircuts. In our hostel bathrooms, we lathered our Afro-punks and Mohawks with soap and shaved our dissidence low with a Gillette razor.
We were ready to chest anything he threw our way, Bongo trousers and all. But the thread tethering our patience soon snapped, and a nut unfastened in our collective brains when he banned the social night activities. We could no longer watch NatGeo Wild or Eurosports after dinner on Saturdays because he thought we were not studying enough. And wasn't that why we came here, to study? So we rolled up our sleeves to show him he was not the only one with games.
We deflated both front tires of his gray Corolla, mixed his gallon of fuel with water. The car's engine knocked and Mr. Principal took a bus to school for a month. The night Nigeria beat Burkina Faso to win the AFCON title, we were busy stowing dead rats in his vent.
3.
A week of battle between us and the principal had passed. We were queuing in the refectory for the sweetened hot water and half-loaf for breakfast when he came up from behind and asked for my name.
"Ugo."
"Nice, nice. I'm Ojukwu, but you can call me O.J.," he said, teeth like rain-rinsed clouds bared.
He had his cup of hot water in his left hand, vapor rising from it, and he cradled the bread under his armpit. He brought out his right hand for a shake and I almost took it. But then he said: "I'm the new principal's son." The world blurred over his dark chocolate face and nothing else he said entered my ears. I walked away.
O.J. sat two lockers away from me in class. After Geography on Thursday, he came to my desk and asked to see my notes.
"I didn't get the last few lines, this teacher dey too fast. Can I complete mine with yours?"
"Why me?" I asked, looking up from my desk. I noticed the tiny mole beneath his right eye.
"You look like you have small sense." He started to chuckle.
"I have sense or they won't talk to you?"
"Whatever. I fit use your note or not?"
To the rest of the Senior Class 3 boys, O.J. did not exist. Ojukwu who? He was invisible. It was a fate reserved for the outcasts, the most despised. His father being principal and principality earned him the position of class nonexistent number one. He would have become the automatic CLASS PUPPET as our former classmate, Kosi, had once been, were he not muscled and somewhat mean-faced.
Kosi hadn’t resumed with the rest of us for the final year so the title remained vacant. Kosi had been a rat and Triniboys, we didn't fancy rats. The new chemistry teacher, Ms. Carol had come during the first period to teach us chemical bonding. She was fine as hell, no cap. As she turned to the board, someone whistled from the back, said: Caro your body necessary! The class had erupted in volcanic laughter. Ms. Carol whipped back in anger, demanding who made the statement. The class stilled as stone. If there'd be consequences, we'd bear them in solidarity. One heart, one mind. She threatened to fail us all if the culprit didn't materialize. Kosi raised his snitch finger and our eyes followed as it traveled the air to land in Obembe's face. Obembe got suspended for three weeks and Kosi got an A in chemistry. Kosi bragged: "Honesty pays, you know?"
When we caught Kosi huddled in the darkness with a junior after lights out we didn't choose honesty. Some boys among us gave him confam decking first, but didn't report him. Expelling was the punishment for such a hideous crime, but they wanted to set him on the edge at all times, a perpetual reminder of what became of rats who let their mouths run loose like slackened rubber. They had him by their noose, strung him to do their biddings, and mocked life out of him till he became empty as a coconut husk. His secrets were safe with them at a price. Kosi was ill when he left school, drained by the wanton callousness of the boys. Next, we heard his parents flew him abroad where hands wouldn't reach him. Where he could be both rat and faggot.
But O.J. proved he was one of us when he helped Aburo not become a father at fifteen. After Aburo hooked up with his girlfriend from the neighboring school during Inter-house, his blabbermouth came to gist us. The girl had finally let him go all the way. He'd become a full man!
We asked: "Did you use protection?"
He retorted slyly: "My pullout game dey strong jare."
Then two weeks passed and the girl took ill. Aburo came to us a bag of fear: "It can't be my own, I swear."
We asked: "How you take know say no be you get am?"
He asked: "Wetin I go do now?"
We responded: "Na to dropout, wetin else?"
He cried: "My parents will kill me."
It was not an exaggeration. His parents would kill him. Aburo's father owned one of the big city churches; his mother, an Evangelist. His three elder sisters had married either pastors or sons of pastors.
"Na small pregnancy dey make you cry?" O.J. had asked him. "Aren't you a man again? No dey fall hand." He knew a place that treated that sort of illness. "With just chinkili money. And dem dey low-key." He’d been their customer and volunteered to take Aburo and his babe there. Each of us contributed half of our pocket money, and they set out to do the needful the next day after dismissal.
The only one of us all brave enough to suggest the unthinkable, O.J. was a mystery slowly unfolding and I became drawn to him like a moth to the flames.
4.
O.J. wanted to know my plans for the midterm. Aside from playing video games or reading classic romance novels on my father's shelf, I didn't have plans.
"Ahn-ahn. Lover boy", he teased.
The books belonged to an old Monsignor my father used to work for up north, inheriting them upon the man's death—the romance novels, picture diaries of saints and bishops, devotionals, a collection of Dan Brown that I'd read many times over. During the Kano riot, the books were the first of things my father gathered in a box before we fled to the East.
"You know," O.J. said while we packed our Echolac boxes, "My favorite musician will be performing in Onitsha this weekend. I'll be going to watch him. You'll come."
It didn't sound like he was proposing a question, but I said, "Sure. Sure, I'll come."
I met O.J. on Tasia Road. He wore ripped blue jeans with a black polo that had MY MONEY GROWS LIKE GRASS inscribed on it. He flagged down an Okadaman. The stadium was a sea of heads by the time we arrived. The bouncers at the gate, John Cena had nothing on them. O.J. bought two tickets and held my right hand as we squeezed through sweaty bodies till we emerged at the foot of the stage. The musician began performing, jumping around, flashing gold jewelry and a halo over his head. All around us was the sound of thumping bass. Our bodies morphed into collapsible borders, bopping up-down against each other, time dissolving, adrenaline peaking, blood replaced with electricity, snare drums coinciding with our heartbeats. Our lungs filled with a new kind of air as we sang along, even with our throats hoarse. We floated in the swells on the wings of several trumpet horns, transcending, only to be furiously pulled back by the sound of multiple gunshots.
The musician had disappeared from the stage by the time we returned to our bodies. The DJ, too, had unplugged his speakers. People scampered onto the stage, moving anywhere but toward the eye of chaos. We crawled backstage, picked race with others till we burst outside the stadium gates.
"Are you alright?" I asked O.J.
He was bent over with both hands on his knees, catching his breath. "I dey ok. You?"
"Good. Good."
He stood straight, looked at me and we began to laugh at once. Nobody knew what had just happened but, in the heat of commotion, O.J. had found the musician's gold-ringed hat. He fixed it on his head with both hands, and the halo came alive. He asked me: "Shebi, I look like a celebrity?"
It was late and no more buses were going towards Umuoji, so we trekked. O.J. dangled an arm over my neck, and I leaned in towards him, the dim sentry streetlights mapping our shadows.
The next day at past seven while my parents busied themselves with the evening news, I climbed out my room window and joined O.J. on his way to fellowship. I had my Bible with me. O.J. took one glance at it along the way and his entire body folded with laughter.
"Why are you carrying that?" he asked, pointing to the big black book.
I did not understand what he meant. "We're going to fellowship na, aren't we?"
"Yes. But I no talk church fellowship na, did I?"
When I thought about it I saw how wrong I’d been and my expression steered into deep embarrassment, but O.J.'s countenance softened. He drew his face close to mine, placed his hand on the Bible.
"Ah shit", he said. "I no know say you be JJC. I should have been plain, my bad." He collected the Bible from my hand and tossed it. "You no go need am for the fellowship, eh."
The Bible landed at the corner of a stall along the route to my house. My jaw dropped in disbelief. O.J. looked dismissively with raised eyebrows, said, "Wetin? It'll still be here when you come for it. Besides, who'd thief a Bible anyway?"
Fellowship was on the rooftop of an abandoned construction site, what should have been a church with its wide, arched window spaces. About seven or eight boys I'd never met sat around in a semicircle wrapping grass in slim brown papers. O.J. anchored each of the boy's hands in a cryptic greeting, exchanging light banter. I followed stiffly behind as he introduced me to the crew.
"This one looks too tight, gbo," one of the boys said to my face, his breath tainted by nauseating smoke. "Here, collect." A joint was pushed to my lips. "After two drags you go dey loose like wrapper."
I looked to O.J. for help. He cocked his head slightly, smirking, but saying no word. I understood and didn't want to let him down. In his silence I saw a chance to redeem myself, to prove to O.J. that I was no JJC.
The tip of the joint was moist on my lips, and I felt my intestines surging through my throat. When I took the first drag, my eyes crossed in my head and I briefly touched hell's gates. My legs buckled like wet concrete, my chest burned like it had hot coals inside. I coughed a long, racking cough to get all the smoke out. O.J. was on the floor with me, rubbing my chest, saying, "Easy, easy. Get it all out." The other boys stood cackling like hyenas.
When my eyes had cleared I asked O.J. to teach me to blow grass.
"You sure?" he asked. I grinned nervously and he smiled. He pulled a drag and held the paper to my mouth. "Oya suck small," he said and I obeyed. He watched my face with a quiet dedication that undid the knots in my chest. "Gentle, gentle, ehee… now, swallow and release." I made a tiny hole with my lips and let a whorl of smoke escape from it. I looked at him.
"Like that?"
"Just like that," he replied. "See? It's easy." There was warm satisfaction blanketed over his face.
The second time we went to fellowship, it was just the two of us. He taught me how to mold and make a ring with the smoke. We lay on our backs, sharing a joint in silence while I counted the stars.
"You know why this building was abandoned?"
"No, why?"
"They say one of the builders had fallen off from the scaffolding and split his skull. The church didn't pay the man's family after his burial, so his ghost started appearing to the other builders at work, and they all resigned, one haunted builder after another."
"Nonsense," O.J. laughed. "You don't believe that, do you?"
"What does it matter whether I believe in the story or not?" I asked him. "So you don't believe in ghosts then?"
A moment lingered. Two more drags, a blink, and an exhale.
"I'm not sure… but I did see my mother several nights after she passed," he said. "If that counts.”
It had never occurred to me to ask about his mother, and not intending to find out like that, I felt guilty, didn't know what unawkward response to give.
"Oh...I'm sorry." I wanted to ask how she died but figured that would be rude, so I asked instead: "Is that why your dad's like that?" I realized as soon as I did that I shouldn't have asked that either.
He laughed, "Like what?"
"You know, all—"
"Tough and heartless?" O.J. laughed some more then dragged the joint longer than usual. "No. He's been that way since Adam."
"I like that you're not like him," I said on a whim.
"Mm-hmm." He flicked the stub between his fingers over and over. "We've run out of smokes," he said. "We should go home."
A heavy downpour had begun by the time we walked to the junction. We took refuge under a locked shed, hands stuck in our jeans pocket to keep the cold breeze away, waiting for the rain to let down.
"Do you like me?" O.J. asked out of nowhere.
I thought perhaps I hadn't heard him properly because of the pattering on the zinc.
"What?"
He leaned in closer. "You said you like that I'm not like my father, so I was asking if you liked me."
I laughed. "Of course, I like you."
"Then I like you, too." He crossed my face. "I like you very much."
Our eyes locked. O.J. flattened a palm on my chest, as if to quiet the rising storm in my boxed heart and kissed my cheeks.
5.
Three months after he passed, Father McKenzie was buried at the Basilica.
Triniboys went in our usual white-and-white with the official school blazer and a red bowtie. We were double-filed at the gate with teachers inspecting, sternly warning students to either tuck their shirts in or flatten their blazer lapels and roll the sleeves down. Lined up, I remembered how each morning at the assembly Father McKenzie would tell stories of his own days at the college, his “decadent age” he called it. He had not regretted anything from those times: skipping evening mass to play a game of Ludo, marking of school walls with charcoal, or breaking into the refectory to thieve scoops of milk into white nylons for resale to fellow students in need of a sharp brain during the exam period. Until his senior year when the Lord arrested him.
From behind the queue, I noticed O.J. cutting me an eye, and as soon as the teacher inspecting his line had moved further, I watched him shrink into the shallow gutter and disappear toward the laboratory blocks. I knew I had to follow, my own decadence unfurling.
It became like that between us after the midterm incident, quick, like ravaging fire. We didn't talk about it. Perhaps it was I who didn't want to, but that night under the shed a part of me I hadn't known existed yawned alive.
At school, I kept with O.J.'s flow, his many signals, without any initial trepidation. O.J. would cut me an eye during Math class, and I'd meet him behind the quadrangle after the teacher had left. A note tucked between the pages of his Ababio textbook left cryptically on my desk: FELLOWSHIP? meant I'd hide behind my cupboard, waiting after the hostel had emptied of students during the evening prayers. We didn't need words. Once, during morning Mass while we recited the Rosary and waited for the lights to come on, he guided my hand to his unzipped fly and I rubbed him warm till his kingdom came on my palm and the chapel floor. We might well have been caught because of the way he rested his head on the pew and moaned through the Lord's prayer. It was the first day I missed Holy Communion.
O.J. didn't care that his father was the principal, or that whatever we did had consequences. But inside me, the vestiges of doubt had begun to sprout. I had desecrated the state of grace and now I would chant repeatedly the Act of Contrition after each hidden encounter to nurse the remorse gnawing at my chest.
One day he chuckled and whispered, "I put a spell on you."
I wanted it to be true. I needed an excuse for why I couldn’t stop seeing him.
Another time, we climbed into the Chemistry lab through a faulty window, and there we mapped nameless universes on our bodies, mixed nameless liquids, and watched in mischievous ecstasy as the test tubes frothed dangerously, exploding to the ceiling, our mismatched bodies exploding with it. With O.J. there was an abyss of recklessness I was willing to dive into, a waxing appetite for danger I was unsure I could swallow.
6.
The first time I told him "I think we should stop" we were sitting on his bunk after Visiting Day, in his corner lacking sufficient natural light.
"Why?" he asked, rubbing his palms together.
I couldn't tell him what my mother had said after he’d greeted her earlier that day: This your friend looks like trouble, Ugochukwu. Are you sure you've not joined bad gang? She did not like that O.J. flew his shirt, the upper buttons undone to flaunt the chest hairs newly sprouting, a proof of budding adolescence. I told her he was the principal's son and she said: So what? Then later, I'm not saying you shouldn't keep friends o, but you must remember you're not like them. This one has bad air around him, I don't want you around him again, Inugo?
My guilt asked him instead, "What if we get caught one day? You know what will happen to us?" I thought about what TrinyBoys had done to Kosi and it made my skin crawl. I told O.J.
O.J. interlocked his fingers with mine. The rising storm in me returned. "But we won't", he said. There was a faint note of assurance in his voice.
I disentangled from him, swallowing the storm before any of the other boys returned.
The second time was on a Sunday afternoon in the refectory.
Earlier, during the revival organized for aspiring seminarians, the priest from the Jesuit Society had, among several admonitions, read 1 CORINTHIANS 6:9. The verse haunted me with such vim, and remorse dragged me by the heavy wrist to the confession booth. Bless me Father for I have sinned, I cried, and proceeded to spill everything, layer after layer of guilt unwrapping itself in my throat. I came away from penance with light fingers, heart bleached of iniquity, and a burgeoning conviction that the Lord had arrested me as he had Father McKenzie; my worthiness had been renewed.
Around us was the chatter of hungry students hunched over tables, and the cacophonous music of silverware must have made it impossible for O.J. to hear me say, “I think we should stop.” He sat across from me and maintained eye contact as he spooned hot white rice into his mouth, rolling it with his tongue to cool before chewing. He didn't eat the stew the matrons served because the first and only time had given him diarrhea for a week.
"Is it because you're going to become a priest?" he asked. "Did you pick the form to run away from me? From yourself?"
What did he mean by from yourself? My head spun with exasperation, his voice tinged with accusations. I told him that it was complicated. Every moment with O.J. was complicated.
The plan to attend a seminary after Trinity had been conceived long before I met O.J., long before I knew how to form words. My parents, the devout Catholics they were, had decided. They'd been married for ten years without a child, and I arrived four miscarriages later, a product of several novenas and laying of hands. Like Elkanah and his drunk wife, they'd both vowed to return the child to God. My mother had picked the form herself and brought it along during Visiting Day. She'd long invested herself in the future God had chosen for her son. My father had his reservations because, let's face it, having his only son become a priest was similar to having none at all, no hope for the furtherance of his name.
I couldn't fault them; they were holding up their own end of the bargain, and I was willing to dance along, even though it wasn't my dream. Even though I had never heard the feather-light voice of God beckoning in my dreams as others claimed they had.
I didn't know what my dream was, to be fair. Two weeks before Visiting Day, during JAMB registration, other students had filled out their choice universities and courses with sprightly fingers. Mostly medicine, law, engineering—the holy grail. I stared at the paper, my tongue dry, feeling like bolo, not knowing what to put down. O.J. had applied for music at the University of Benin. His father wanted him to study law. But since when has he ever listened to the man? He didn't even care about music like that, he just wanted to leave home and chose a course that would guarantee him admission into a university at first trial.
"You don't need to have everything figured out now," he told me that day in an embrace. "We still dey young, plenty time go dey to figure our shits."
7.
The day we completed our senior certificate exams, we were determined to tear down Trinity's walls with our voices. We'd become free at last.
We chanted ill-composed victory songs as we stomped around the school blocks, our heads steeped in clouds. Our voices strained hoarse singing the school anthem for the last time. We built kites from the pages of our textbooks and shot them into the golden sky, ahead of ourselves, into the future. Against school regulations, we signed our names on the classroom walls in indelible ink. Because how else do we prove that we were Triniboys except by leaving evidence? In red ink, I wrote on the wall above my locker: UGOBEST WZ HIA!
We heaped our uniforms in the center of the quadrangle, doused a piece of firewood with kerosene, lit a match to it, and watched as the hungry flame licked the fabrics. We had passed through the school. It was time to let the school pass through us.
As a final act, someone took advantage of the lights out and catapulted fresh, nylon-wrapped shit to the doorstep of the principal's office.
The thing with O.J. had stalled before the exams. We did not exchange more than a head nod wherever our paths crossed, and he didn't come to my corner to sign his name on my locker, a parting tradition. When I finally sought him out, I found him sitting by himself on the stairs of the lower field, loosened from the shenanigans of graduation, digging his bare feet into the wet grass. I sat beside him. A moment passed with the weight of all the things we had to say hulking between us. It was our final night together. I willed the world to slow its mad spin. I moved and put my head on his shoulder. O.J. put an arm around me. We sat in the quiet and watched as the chilling terror that was our future, like a flower, opened.
Daniel Ogba is a Nigerian writer. His work has appeared in Lolwe, Tint Journal, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the 2024 Fresh Voices Fellowship and the 2022 Toyin Falola Short Story Prize.
