Madam Koi Koi had died six different ways in our dormitory.

Uju’s version was a motor accident. Ruth said students pushed her down the stairs.

Someone in SS2 had said she hung herself inside a toilet after the principal sacked her, but nobody believed that one because our toilets did not have anything sensible to hang yourself from.

“Pipe,” Ruth said.

“The pipe will break.”

“You have tried it before?”

That finished the argument.

The only part everybody agreed on was the shoes.

Red. High. Loud.

Koi. Koi. Koi.

If you heard them after lights-out, you stayed in bed.

If you were already outside, God had left you to your own devices.

Our school had long corridors, which helped.

Almost anything could become Madam Koi Koi after ten o’clock. A bucket falling. The night guard knocking his torch against a railing. Senior students going to urinate and running back in slippers.

We frightened ourselves properly, but then that was half the entertainment.

Nkem came second term.

Her father carried her box into the dormitory even though men were not supposed to pass the veranda. He argued with the Matron until she let him.

The box had wheels.

We hated her immediately.

Not seriously. Boarding-school hate. She had too many provisions and spoke with an American accent on certain words although she had only visited Atlanta once.

She said water strangely. She also had three tins of Milo. People forgave her.

Nkem slept under me.

For the first week she complained that my mattress dipped through the metal springs and touched her mosquito net.

“There is nothing I can do.”

“You can turn.”

“How will my turning change the mattress?”

She thought about this.

“True.”

That was Nkem.

She could surrender an argument without suffering. I liked her for it.

She heard about Madam Koi Koi from Uju, of course. Uju waited until Saturday night, when Matron had finished inspection and the emergency lamp had started losing charge.

“She used to teach here.”

“She didn’t,” Ruth said from her bunk.

“Were you there?”

“She taught in Government Girls’.”

“My cousin went there. She said she taught in Queen’s.”

“Nobody asked your cousin.”

Nkem was eating Cabin biscuit under her blanket.

“So which school did she teach in?”

Everybody spoke.

This was the first problem.

The second was that Nkem started laughing.

Not loudly. Biscuit still in her mouth.

Uju stopped her story.

“You are laughing.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Nkem swallowed.

“Okay. Small.”

Nobody told her anything else.

For three days.

Then she gave Uju a sachet of Ribena powder and the embargo ended.

The sound came during prep.

Not night prep. Afternoon.

Two knocks against the corridor.

Koi. Koi.

Half the class looked up.

Mr Eze continued writing simultaneous equations.

Somebody snorted.

Another two.

Koi. Koi.

Mr Eze turned.

“Who is doing that?”

Nobody answered.

He stood there with chalk on three fingers.

Koi.

This one came from outside.

Mr Eze walked to the door.

We waited.

He leaned out, looked left, then right.

“Idiots.”

He came back in.

That should have killed the whole thing.

It did not.

Before dinner the story had already improved.

SS1 said Mr Eze saw a woman.

JSS3 said she wore red.

One girl said Mr Eze fainted.

Mr Eze was teaching Basic Science at that exact moment.

Nobody cared.

Nkem found this hilarious.

“You people just manufacture things.”

“You heard it too,” I said.

“I heard somebody knocking.”

“With what?”

“How should I know?”

That evening we went for beans.

Nkem saw her three weeks later.

At least she said she did.

She went to the toilet sometime after midnight because her stomach was running.

I remember this because she blamed the moi-moi.

I told her everybody ate the same moi-moi.

She said her own piece tasted suspicious.

There were eight toilets behind the dormitory, four working, and only one door that locked. We usually went in pairs at night.

Nkem woke me.

I refused.

She woke me again.

I told her to use my slippers if hers were too far under the bed.

This did not address what she was asking.

Eventually she called me a wicked person and went alone.

I fell asleep.

She was sitting on my bed when I woke again.

Not crying.

That would have been easier.

Just sitting there.

“Nkem.”

She put her finger against her mouth.

“What?”

“Shh.”

I sat up.

Her hand was wet.

She had gripped my ankle with it.

“What happened?”

She looked towards the dormitory door.

“She’s outside.”

I knew immediately.

That annoyed me.

“Stop.”

“I saw her.”

“Nkem, abeg.”

“She’s not wearing shoes.”

I stared at her.

This, somehow, was the stupidest thing she could have said.

“What?”

“She’s not wearing shoes.”

Madam Koi Koi without shoes was like Father Christmas without Christmas.

I started laughing.

Nkem slapped my leg.

“I’m serious.”

“What was making koi koi then?”

“Nothing was making koi koi.”

“So how is she Madam Koi Koi?”

“I don’t know.”

Uju woke.

Then Ruth.

Within a minute six people were sitting up.

Nkem had to tell it again.

She had finished in the toilet. She was washing her hands at the tap outside. Somebody stood near the mango tree.

A woman.

No, maybe a girl.

No, she couldn’t see the face.

White nightdress.

Or white skirt.

There was mud on it.

No red shoes.

No shoes at all.

“What did she do?” Uju asked.

“She asked me something.”

Nobody laughed now.

“What?”

Nkem rubbed her wet hand on her nightdress.

“She said, ‘Have you seen my shoe?’”

Ruth hissed.

“Liar.”

“I’m telling you.”

“One shoe?”

“Yes.”

“What colour?”

“How would I know?”

“You didn’t ask?”

This made Nkem angry.

“Yes, Ruth. I saw a dead woman at two in the morning and said excuse me please what Pantone is your missing shoe?”

I laughed so hard Matron shouted from her room.

Everyone scattered back into bed.

Nkem stayed on mine.

I let her sleep beside me.

Her feet were filthy.

The story became a nuisance.

People wanted Nkem to repeat it.

She refused.

Then she repeated it.

Then she complained that people were changing it.

“I never said she had blood on her.”

Uju shrugged.

“Somebody said you did.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“I never said she was floating.”

“I didn’t say you said it.”

“You just said—”

“I said somebody.”

Nkem began correcting everyone.

The woman was barefoot.

There had been no sound.

She stood under the mango tree, not beside the toilet.

She had asked about a shoe, singular.

This mattered enormously to Nkem.

Nobody else cared.

A week later JSS1 girls were saying Madam Koi Koi had lost one red heel.

Ruth said that had always been part of the story.

“It was not,” Nkem said.

“It was.”

“You told me she wore two.”

“When?”

“When Uju told me the story.”

“I wasn’t even there.”

“You were lying on that bed!”

“Which bed?”

I watched Nkem’s face.

She looked frightened then.

Not ghost frightened.

Something worse, in a way.

The look you get when four people remember your own life differently from you.

She stopped arguing.

Nothing happened for a while.

Exams came.

Two girls got caught with notes inside their socks.

Someone stole my Lux soap.

Nkem’s mother sent chin chin in a large Golden Morn container and half of it disappeared before evening.

Harmattan cracked everybody’s lips.

Madam Koi Koi returned to wherever she went when people had mathematics to fail.

Then Nkem disappeared.

That word is not quite true.

This is where people always interrupt me.

Nobody vanished into smoke.

Her bed was empty after morning devotion.

Her box remained under it.

The wheeled one.

Her bucket too.

One slipper near the door.

Matron said her parents had come for her.

Nkem had been sick.

Nobody had seen her sick.

Apparently her father arrived very early.

Nobody saw him either.

“Maybe before five,” Uju said.

“The gate isn’t open before five.”

“Then after five.”

“We were awake after five.”

“You were brushing.”

“For one hour?”

Uju got irritated.

“Go and ask Matron then.”

I did.

Matron was sitting at her table marking something.

“Nkem went home.”

“Why?”

“Are you Nkem’s mother?”

“No, ma.”

“Then face your studies.”

Her cane lay across the desk.

I faced my studies.

Nkem did not return that term.

Or the next.

Her box disappeared during holiday.

Someone said she transferred to a school in Lagos.

Someone said Abuja.

Uju heard she had typhoid.

Ruth said Nkem had been expelled because she climbed the fence to meet a boy.

There were no boys for several kilometres unless Nkem had developed serious commitment.

I wrote her a letter.

No address.

I gave it to Matron.

It came back inside my locker.

Maybe Matron put it there.

I don’t know.

I threw it away eventually because the paper had started collecting silverfish.

Our version of Madam Koi Koi changed.

I noticed because new JSS1 girls arrived.

One night I heard Uju telling them.

There had once been a teacher who wore red heels. The students hated her. Depending on Uju’s mood they either killed her, caused her death or falsely accused her of something and got her sacked.

She returned to the school after she died.

Standard.

Then:

“She walks with only one shoe.”

I lifted my head.

Uju continued.

“One red heel. The other foot is bare.”

A junior whispered, “Why?”

“Nobody knows.”

I said, “That is not the story.”

Uju ignored me.

“If you meet her, she’ll ask whether you’ve seen the other one.”

“Uju.”

“What?”

“That was Nkem’s story.”

She looked genuinely confused.

“Which Nkem?”

For a second I thought she was joking.

Then I saw she wasn’t.

“Nkem. She slept under me.”

“Oh. Atlanta.”

“Yes, Atlanta.”

“What about her?”

I wanted to hit her.

Instead I said nothing.

You learn this in boarding school: sometimes rage has nowhere useful to go. You wash your plate. You spread your towel. You check whether anybody has stolen your milk.

I left St Gertrude’s in 2008.

For years I didn’t think about any of this.

University. NYSC. Work.

People became engaged. People had children. Somebody from our set died during childbirth and suddenly the WhatsApp group became active for nine days.

Uju sells property now.

Ruth is a pharmacist in Canada.

Nobody knows where Nkem is.

We have searched Facebook.

There are too many Nkem Okafors.

I once found one in Maryland who looked a little like her and spent forty minutes studying the woman’s wedding photographs before noticing she was seven years older than us.

I closed the app.

Last Christmas my sister brought her daughter to Enugu.

Fourteen.

Boarding school.

Not St Gertrude’s.

A school in Owerri.

She was on the floor sorting braids into sections while her mother complained that she had ruined her edges.

We started talking about boarding school.

I asked whether girls still told stupid ghost stories.

She looked up.

“Like what?”

“Bush Baby. Madam Koi Koi.”

She laughed.

“Of course.”

“Tell me your own Madam Koi Koi.”

“Why?”

“I want to hear.”

She rolled her eyes but started.

Teacher.

Red shoes.

Cruel.

Dead.

Corridor.

I nearly stopped her.

Then she said:

“She has only one heel now.”

I put down my drink.

“Since when?”

“What?”

“Since when does she have one heel?”

My niece stared at me.

“I don’t know.”

“What happens to the other one?”

“She lost it.”

“Where?”

“How should I know?”

Her mother shouted from the kitchen that the chicken was burning.

Neither of us moved.

I asked, “What does she say if you see her?”

My niece started laughing.

“Why are you so interested?”

“Tell me.”

“She asks if you’ve seen her shoe.”

The chicken really was burning now.

My sister swore.

My niece stood up to go help.

I caught her wrist.

“Wait. Does she wear a nightdress?”

She frowned.

“No.”

“White skirt?”

“No.”

“Does she stand under a mango tree?”

“Who told you this version?”

“Nobody.”

She pulled her hand free.

Then she stopped.

“Oh. There is one thing.”

“What?”

“She doesn’t make the koi-koi sound anymore.”

I did not say anything.

“Which doesn’t even make sense,” she said. “Because then why is she called Madam Koi Koi?”

From the kitchen came another shout.

She went in.

I stayed there with the half-finished braids.

Later she came back carrying two bottles of Fanta and asked if I wanted one.

Writer’s Bio

Patience is a Nigerian children book writer who writes imaginary stories. This story about Koi Koi however, is entirely true and a legend in Nigeria boarding school lore. Most references are regional and therefore might need extra researching to understand, but the name 'Koi Koi Koi' is derived from the supposed sound of the creature's shoes as it hits the ground.

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