Chapter 4

The next day, Mr. Matthew woke up and checked the time on his bedside clock. It was 6am. He brushed his mouth and sprinkled some water on his face. He then wore his tracksuit and went down the stairs. He knocked on his mother’s room but there was no reply so he peered in. His mother was not in her room. He closed the door gently and went to the kitchen to check if his mother was there. There was no one there either. He turned around to go out but stopped when his eyes caught a small piece of paper pasted on the fridge. “That’s new,” he thought to himself and walked towards it to investigate.

It was a note from his mother. “Gone out for my morning joggings. You stay home and clear your mind,” he read it aloud. He squeezed the paper and threw it in the dustbin which was beside the door. “Great! Now my own mother thinks I'm a disappointment,” he mumbled as he went back upstairs to change back into his pajamas. After changing into it, he went back to bed and slept until his alarm clock woke him up at 9am.

He stood up and then went downstairs to the kitchen again, this time to prepare his breakfast. He measured two cups of rice from the rice bowl and dumped it into the pot. He then started adding any spice or seasoning he saw on the kitchen counter. He finally added water and a pinch of salt, and then covered the pot. He set the gas cooker to the lowest heat capacity. 

No matter how hungry you were, his mother had always insisted on the gas cooker being at the lowest that it possibly could be. If she ever caught any of her children cooking with just as little as a degree above the minimum heat capacity, she would turn off the gas cooker and walk away, without saying a word about it to the now-hungry children, who would be waiting either in their rooms or in the living room for their meals. 

It was when the hunger had severely set in and they decided to check on their food that they would learn that they had done something wrong and were going to be disciplined for it. Then they would have to go and meet their mother and write a foolscap sheet of their being sorry for disobeying an instruction and a promise to always cook with the lowest heat capacity of the gas cooker. They would then sign and submit the written apology to their mother for reviewing. Then, and only then, would their mother sign under it too and keep it by her bedside drawer. Because of that, most times, they always cooked with the lowest gas heat. That was why, in their own neighborhood, their gas was always the last to get refilled.

He smiled fondly. “Memories,” he thought. Because of that disciplinary action from his mother, he and his sisters always made sure that they followed the regulations of the kitchen. “If only all parents were like mom and disciplined their children likewise, he knew that the world would have less of the likes of Adolf Hitler," he mused."Those little devils in my class act no different from young Nazis,” Mr. Matthew said to himself and then shook his head in disgust.

He scouted the kitchen counter for any other thing he could find, in order to add to his meal, and saw carrots on the top of the cupboard in the kitchen. He picked one, rinsed it and after chopping it, added it to the rice. He then went to the sitting room, which could be easily accessed from the kitchen. He sat on the couch and then, using the remote control, he switched on the television.

He yawned as he stroked his ruffled hair. “I'm due for a haircut,” he thought aloud and pressed the remote once again, this time changing the channel to News O’Clock, a TV station that always showed international and local news throughout. The news that morning was about two local robbers who were captured the previous night and locked up in the cell. The robbers looked scruffy and had unkempt hair. One was short and fat, while the other was a little bit tall and skinny. The tall one was missing a tooth. 

Mr. Matthew gave a malicious grin as he looked at the screen attentively. “And they have parents,” he started his soliloquy, shaking his head. “It’s the fault of the parents and the school authorities,” he muttered. “If only their parents, or the principal of the school they attended had buckled up and had hired teachers like me, maybe by now, the short one would have been a baker, and the tall one, a pope,” he said as he shook his head in utter disgust at the failure of both the home and the school to sanitize the society.

He closed his eyes for a moment and began to daydream about a world where every teacher was like him and every student was well mannered. His daydreaming was roughly interrupted by a burning smell coming from the kitchen. “Oh geez! My food!” he cried aloud and ran hurriedly to the kitchen.

He quickly turned off the gas cooker, and after wearing two large mittens, removed the burning pot from the cooker. He opened it and the first thing that greeted him as the smell of burnt rice.

He brought out a plate from the plates rack and dished out what he could manage to salvage onto the plate. Although it was not fully burnt, it was an eyesore. Now he really understood why his mother always on the gas cooker being at its lowest heat capacity. 

“This gas cooker cooks too fast,” he complained to no one in particular as he soaked the pot with some water. 

He covered his food, which was on the kitchen counter with a bowl and then went to wash the pot immediately. His mother would bawl at him if he didn’t immediately clear up the mess which he had made. 

His mother was a no-nonsense person and would tolerate no indolence, especially from an adult child like him. When he was done, he took his food to the sitting room and kept it on the center table. He then used a remote control to switch on the two gigantic fans which stood beside the flat screen television which was still on the News O’Clock channel.

He said a short prayer of thanksgiving, and after doing that, took a spoonful of his rice. He swallowed hard and gulped, then he dropped the spoon down and looked at the food sitting on the table right in front of him. “This is disgusting,” he thought to himself as he frowned.

“Well, no one said a bachelor’s life was gonna be a rosy one, and not every bachelor can cook half as good as I,” he said, reassuring himself. He dipped the spoon into the bowl of rice and was about to take another spoonful when he heard a knock on the door.

 “Oh great, mom’s here,” he thought to himself as he got up from the sofa and headed to the door.

“Mom, you really stayed a little late on your jogs today,” he started as he opened the door, but stopped when he saw that it was not his mother who stood outside his door knocking. A woman stood there, carrying a brown box in her arms, a handbag was slung across her left shoulder. A little girl stood there beside her. A car stood far back but Mr. Matthew could not see who was in it as it had tinted glass.

“She’s my mom, not yours! Yours is an old granny”, Molly uttered rudely as she eyed Mr. Matthew.

 Mr. Matthew frowned at her, extremely shocked.

“Molly, be nice,” her mother said and smiled indulgently, touching Molly’s small soft nose. 

Molly giggled. 

Mr. Matthew made a low grunting sound. He hated the sounds Molly made when she giggled.

Molly and her mother both raised their noses up and sniffed the air. “Mr. Matthew, is there something burning? I think something’s burning in there,” Molly’s mother said as she tried to peer in but Mr. Matthew blocked her view.

“Everything’s under control,” he said and rolled his eyes, wondering what they wanted.

“My mom said that you would die soon,” Molly said and giggled. 

Mr. Matthew tried so hard to hold his anger. He looked furiously at Molly's mother for an explanation, but she only smiled, slightly embarrassed and looked at Molly.

“Molly, don’t be naughty,” she said and gave her a playful knock on her head. Then she turned to face Mr. Matthew. “Well, I did not exactly put it like that, I just said...er... what I meant was that, uh, you know what I mean, don’t you?” she said looking up at him in exasperation as she fumbled for words.   

“You know what, just forget about it," Mr. Matthew waved her off. He looked inquisitively at her hand. 

"What’s that?” he asked as he pointed at the package.

“Oh, I'm so sorry Matthew, this was what I should have done first,” Molly’s mother started but was cut short by Mr. Matthew.

“I'll prefer to be addressed as Mr. Matthew, if you don't mind,” he said curtly, stressing on the need to honor him in all formalities.

Molly’s mom smiled and bit her lips.

“Mr. Matthew, well, your mom asked me to drop this since yesterday but as I wasn’t chanced then, that’s why I'm dropping it this morning,” she said and handed him the box. Mr. Matthew nodded and collected the box from her.

“Why isn’t she in school?” he asked, managing to point at Molly.

“Well, we’re going to see the family doctor for check-ups,” Molly’s mom said. 

Mr. Matthew just nodded. “Why couldn’t they go to their family doctor after school hours? Or on a weekend?” he thought to himself. “This was why most of the kids nowadays were spoilt, because they were over pampered by their own parents,” he thought, then shook his head and turned to go in.

Molly and her mom also turned and started walking towards the car with the tinted glass. Molly turned back and made faces at Mr. Matthew as she walked behind her mother. 

Mr. Matthew frowned angrily and grabbed a cane from behind his door. He always kept one there for special occasions like this. He tossed the box on the floor and launched at Molly. Molly screamed and ran towards her mother, who looked back, startled. 

Mr. Matthew reached Molly quickly and just as he was about to raise the cane up, the car door opened and a dark, heavily built muscular man came out. He stood menacingly in between Molly and Mr. Matthew.

 Mr. Matthew gasped as he compared the size of the muscles of the man with his scrawny ones.

The man gave Mr. Matthew a mean look, and then pushed him roughly to the ground and after making sure that his daughter and his wife were seated comfortably in the car, went to the driver’s seat, started the car and drove away.

Mr. Matthew stood up slowly and looked at the ground where he had fallen. He had landed on his special cane and it had broken into two. He picked up the two broken pieces, looked at them and frowned angrily. He threw them into the dustbin outside his house and then went inside. 

He took the box to his mother’s room and then went back to his food. He finished his food quickly and then switched on his phone.

He put in his password in order to unlock his phone. The phone took some time to refresh, then some messages started popping in. His mother had sent him a message so he read that first. In her message, she had written that she would come home later in the evening as she was with her friends, chilling in a spa. 

“Aren’t you too old to be going to spas, mom?” he asked himself loudly.

His mother had also said that she was expecting a package, and he should be nice and well behaved to whoever was delivering it. He sent her a reply; “Ok, got the package,” and then he glanced at the other messages: there were some from his sisters, his pastor, his old childhood friend who had moved to Gongola, a small country in the eastern parts, to pursue his dream of teaching the children of that city, who were mostly uneducated as the country could not afford and didn’t have enough qualified teachers. 

He ignored all those messages and scrolled to the last message on his list. It was from Miss Stacy telling him how she would take good care of his pupils and make sure she upheld his legacy.

 He raised an eyebrow. “What legacy would those wild brats be able to digest in?” he thought to himself. He sent her a short “Ok” as a reply and almost immediately, another message from Miss Stacy popped in about how she thought his approach to teaching was brilliant.

He replied “Ok” again and was about to close the message app when another message from Miss Stacy came in. This time she was asking if they could organize a meeting somewhere to discuss more about the children and how they could approach them in more teaching ways, “I’d love to learn from you,” was what she ended the message with. 

He replied her “Ok” again. He waited for a few moments, and when no message came in again, he closed the app and sighed resignedly as he slumped back on the couch.