The trouble with Agnes

I met Agnes today. I couldn’t remember her surname because by the end of senior six, she had earned so many nicknames. I say “earned” because Agnes was, by far, the most awkward person the S.2 class of 2004 had ever met. First, it was the fact that she used to tie a piece of cloth around her tummy area because she wanted a wasp waist. For this same reason, she walked with her stomach tucked in. I swear, that girl used to only breathe in or is it out…whichever of the two actions makes the diaphragm contract. I wasn’t paying attention when they taught that topic. My mind always drifted off during Biology lessons. But this story isn’t about me. It’s about Agnes and a few of her countless blunders. I remember when she received a letter from some boy and for some reason she decided to read it over and over. She was reading it for the umpteenth time during the Physics lesson when Mr. Murigita was teaching us about gravity. Like most teachers, Mr. Murigita expected us to keep our eyes fixed on him whenever he was explaining something. So when Agnes was caught with her eyes looking down at the pink piece of paper that contained the letter, she was told to stand in front of the class and read the content out loud. “Dear sister Agnes,” she began. And everyone burst out laughing because we all knew that the boy who had written that letter had addressed her as “sweetest love” and had promised to love her until an apple grew on an orange tree. For a while, she was ‘Sister Agnes’. Sister Agnes was obsessed with the idea of being a beauty queen. I guess that’s why she cut off her eyebrows and drew them back on with eye pencil. In that instant, she became “queen of the village.” Her reign was short-lived when the school administration informed her that students weren’t allowed to use make-up. Without eyebrows, she always had only one facial expression; surprise. When I met her today, her eyebrows were drawn on, her stomach was tucked in and her lips were painted red. So I said to myself, “Long live the Queen.”