Crazy eye Kip

CRAZY EYE KIP.
Kip was born twice unlucky. As a child, he was diagnosed with a serious case of eye disorder that made his pupils converge over his nose bridge. The doctors said they couldn’t operate on the eyes without risking his sight. They didn’t operate on the eyes so Kim was destined to see things in doubles for the rest of his life. When he grew up, Kip’s visual disorder became so severe that he appeared as if he was permanently peering at the tip of his nose.
Then there were his teeth. Perhaps distraught with pain at her son’s visual disorder, Kip’s mother became careless. When time came for Kip’s milk teeth to be extracted, nothing happened. Other new row of teeth grew behind the loose milk teeth and Kip’s mouth became full of teeth. By the time he was in class five, his lips could barely close over his mouth.
It was normal that people felt nervous around Kip but after sometime, they learnt that he was a kindly soul who was amiable and reserved. They forgot about his strangeness and went on with life. Kip would have lived peacefully all his life hadn’t a classmate made a funny joke during the music lesson.
Chezea was the class joker, always looking for funny jokes and whispering them to his neighbors when the teacher turned to write on the blackboard. As Chezea was rarely on his desk during any lesson, he used to sit anywhere he knew he would make other pupils laugh and he enjoyed it very much. That morning, he was seated next to Kip. He waited until Mr. Mutisya had turned to the blackboard when he leaned closer to Kip.
“Listen to this,” he whispered.
Kip hushed him. Mr. Mutisya was known for his severity and strictness. He didn’t like any movement or sound in his class. He was fond of using his cane and anyone who crossed his path was always punished. But Chezea ignored Kip’s warning
Then Kip heard it. It was like a marching band with bass drums and smaller drums. He couldn’t help turning to Chezea with puzzlement. Chezea pointed at his stomach.
“I ate beans now am singing,” he whispered and the symphony in his stomach started. It sounded like a real choir. The deep rumble would start and then fade away only to be replaced by a thin sound like the twang of a guitar’s string. Kip would never have burst out had Chezea not closed his eyes and moved his head sideways as if dancing to an immensely enjoyable music from his stomach. Other pupils had heard and were staring at Chezea with repressed laughter.
Kip could feel the laughter building up and all of a sudden and was helpless to block it. It exploded from his mouth and nose like a pig’s snort.
Mr. Mutisya stopped writing and turned. His face was set and furious. He was looking at Kip whose face was frozen with terror at what he had done. Chezea stomach had gone quiet and the owner was busily scribbling on his book looking as if disowning all knowledge about what had happened. Mr. Mutisya looked around for a cane but he had forgotten it in the staffroom.
Looking a bit disappointed, he pointed at Kip.
“What is so funny Crazy eyes?” he growled. At the words ‘crazy eyes’ there were suppressed giggles which were quickly hushed.
Kip looked down and mumbled something. Mr. Mutisya had seen the pained look on the boys face and he nodded with satisfaction. That would teach the boy some manners. He would not be laughing stupidly in his class next time unless he was as mad as rabid skunk. But Mr. Mutisya was not finished. He had to say something memorable.
“You try to laugh again and I will hit you so hard you will look straight!” Then, “Crazy eyes idiot!”
The class was very quiet. Satisfied with his perfect handling of the class, he turned to the blackboard and promptly forgot about the incidence.
The class didn’t forget. The moment the lesson was over and the teacher was out, Chezea stood up and went to the front of the class. He peeped out to make sure no teacher was coming. Then he rolled his eyes until he was looking at his nose. In Mr. Mutisya’s voice, he growled.
“Call me Crazy eyes!”
The class exploded in a thunderous laughter that went on until class 3W teacher came yelling for it to keep quiet. Kip got a nickname.
If Kip had not been very conscious of the way he looked, he was now reminded painfully of it. He would be reading a book and the words ‘crazy eyes’ would be whispered from then corner followed by giggles. Or a daring girl would saunter over to him.
“Crazy eyes, where is my science book?” a girl would croon out to the amusement of the class. It was all harmless and fun to the class but Kip was hurting inside.
When the persecution persisted, Kip told his mother he didn’t want school. After a lot of threats, Kip told her what the problem was. Angry but helpless to do anything, the mother reported to the head teacher who advised her to buy some tinted glasses for her son. The mother bought them but they exacerbated the persecution. Not having seen any pupil with glasses before, most pupils even from other classes spent most of their times staring at Kip during break time. Chezea and others would grab the glasses and hide them. Kip would spend the day hiding his face behind his hands.
After the mother complained of the persecution the second time, the head teacher advised her to take the boy away to another school. The other school was fifteen kilometers away and the mother wasn’t her son would not be treated the same way in that new school or even worse. She went home and advised Kip to persevere.
That Kip cleared his class eight was a miracle. He got a slot in a day secondary school near his home but the nickname followed him. By the time he was in form two, Kip was a bitter boy. He had completely changed from a carefree quiet boy to a dour and morose student who kept to himself. Every laughter or guffaw, even when not directed at him ignited insane rage in him and he had to resist the urge to rise and kick the laughing student.
His first suspension from school came in form three. A girl had called his crazy eyes with yellow teeth. Kip had hurled a large Oxford dictionary to her face and her lips split. The girl had screamed and dashed to the staffroom. Kip got seven canes and a two weeks suspension from school. That break was a welcome relief to Kim who was finding the school a miserable place to be.
When he went back, he was given a large stony plot to dig and he did it gratefully. Anything that would keep him away from classroom was welcome. After that incidence, the word got around: Kip was volatile and was likely to explode at the slightest provocation. The persecution towards him lessened.
Then he got another suspension, this time for three weeks. He had gone to class in after lunch and found people giggling. He looked around and saw the cause of his mirth. Someone had drawn a caricature of him on the blackboard. The caricature had huge mouth with teeth protruding out like elephant’s tusks and small eyes that seemed to meet in the middle of his face. Kip headed straight to the corner where Njai, the class artist, was grinning with pleasure at the excitement he had created in class. Without a word, Kip grabbed Njai’s head and banged it twice on the locker, face down. Njai’s nose swelled like a balloon and Kip got another suspension.
This time, the principal was as hard as a hoof.
“If you are brought to my office again for fighting, you are going home forever!”
Kip got the message. But the students also didn’t make fun of him as they had done before. he lived on in relative tranquility till he did his K.C.S.E. He got a D- and the year after clearing school, Kip was certain he would never go to college. Apart from the weak grade, he had become averse to places where people, especially students, gathered. Luckily, he found a job as a night security guard at a boutique in the town.
He had replaced the glasses with dark goggles which he wore wherever he was meeting people. It was only his mouth that he couldn’t cover. His job gave him some peace of mind that he hadn’t found in a long time.
As a night guard, he would sit dozing by the small fire and reflect on the day’s activities. The darkness of the night and the deserted streets gave him a kind of inner serenity that he found strangely calming. He felt he was one with the night. During the day, he whittled away the hours closed in his one-roomed house and waiting for the darkness to set him free. He gradually came to cherish his company and loneliness. The silence around him was so addictive that he developed a phobia for people and every time he heard people laugh outside his house, he tensed thinking it was him they were talking about. He resisted the urge to ran out and kick somebody on the teeth with a lot of effort.
Then he was re-scheduled for the daytime shift. The day guard had quit suddenly after getting a job as a cab driver. Kip tried to plead with his employer, a truculent Asian lady, to maintain him in the night shift but the woman stubbornly maintained he was now on the day shift. Even the dark glasses he wore to hide his eyes were painfully inadequate. They didn’t prevent him from being aware of the incredulous look he received from shoppers when they gawked at him. Kip tried to ignore them as much as he could.
One afternoon, a small boy was passing near the door where Kip sat when he pointed at Kip.
“Mamma, what’s wrong with that man?” he was pointing at Kip. Other passersby slowed down and turned to look. The mother to the boy grabbed him and hurried away casting nervous glances over her shoulders. Kip grabbed an old newspaper and covered his face pretending to read.
Kip’s fear of people’s comment on how he looked became so great that it turned into helpless self-pitying bitterness and finally into murderous anger. He became extremely irritable and he exploded at the most harmless provocation. When he rudely answered two clients, they reported him to the boutique owner who gave Kip stern warning and unwanted advice about courtesy. Shaken at how close he had come to losing his job, Kip resolved to ignore any comment made about him. His resolved lasted exactly two days. Then he exploded again.
A woman shopper had looked at him and gasped.
“God!” she had breathed. Kip had turned to her and felt himself losing control. Before he could hold his tongue, he heard himself say,
“Go hang yourself!”
The Asian lady was on the other side of the counter haggling over the price of a chignon with a customer. She heard Kip’s words and turned. She saw the embarrassed look on the client’s face as the latter tried to apologize to Kip.
“You are fired! You don’t insult my customers!” the lady snapped.
In a shock-induced daze, the words sounded empty to Kip. He went to the inner room and changed into his clothes then went out in the streets. He walked like an automaton; the realization that he had lost a job trickling slowly in his mind like an acid stream. He was now among the millions of jobless people in the city.
It was lunch time and he needed somewhere he could think. The nearest place he found was a bistro that was crowded with eaters. Kip squeezed his way to the counter with his head bowed. He didn’t want to be seen. He ordered a cup of tea and sat sipping it oblivious of the waitress stare. He was thinking about his joblessness state. He wasn’t sure what he would do.
He took of his glasses to rub his aching eyes. The glasses slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor. He felt very exposed; almost as if he was naked. The crash made the buzz in the bistro to stop and heads turned. Kip stared at the tea in his cup, not daring to look up.. After a while, the conversation started again and Kip sighed. He stole a surreptitious glance around him to see whether anyone was looking at him.
A pair of eyes in a table to his right was watching him. The owner was smiling! Kip turned away quickly, a hot flash of anger shooting through him. He sat still for some few moments then stole another look. The man was still watching him with that annoying smile.
Kip’s anger welled up in him like air in a balloon. That man had no right to watch and laugh at him after he had lost his job! Kip sipped his tea preternaturally conscious of the eyes digging holes on him. He could almost feel them sweeping over him like a painter’s brush on a pastel. Finally, he couldn’t bear the tension. Kip placed his cup on the counter and turned fully towards the man. The man was still watching him, grinning! Something snapped in Kip. Numbness flooded into his body like water from a swollen river. Like one in a dream, he got of his stool and approached the man.
Incredibly, the man’s grin seemed to widen.
“What are you smiling for?” Kip asked angrily, fists clenched by his side. The man clumsily placed the soda he was drinking on the table.
He looked up, a huge smile on his face.
“Am not smiling!” the man squeaked with fear.
Kip felt his head humming with anger.
“You are laughing at me!”
Other people turned and the place went quiet. The man looked helplessly around him and licked his lips nervously. He smiled wider than ever though his eyes were rolling in his head with fear.
“Am not laughing at you sir,” he said desperately.
This denial was too much for Kip. Feeling like he was under the control of some alien influence, he picked up the man’s soda and poured it on the man’s head. There were gasps from the people and the owner of the bistro dashed for the phone to call for police. Kip didn’t notice.
“Why are you laughing at me?” he demanded shaking the bottle over the man who was now trembling.
The man shook his head in desperation but his mouth was stretched to the limit in the largest grin Kip had ever seen on anyone’s face.
“Am not laughing!” the man whimpered the smile intact on his face.
With a snarl, Kip brought down the bottle on the man’s head. There was a stampede as people dashed out screaming. The man slumped on the puddle made by his soda. He rolled slowly on his back and was facing the glass ceiling. The fog of red rage in Kip’s mind evaporated as he stared at the unconscious face with eyes closed.
The man’s huge smile was still intact!
A waiter came closer. He glanced at the unconscious man then at Kip with goggle-eyed wonderment.
“My God! This fellow is still smiling!”
Kip dropped the bottle on the table deeply in shock. He turned and tottered back to his stool on the counter like an old man and waited for the police to arrive.