BEFORE WE LEAVE

A story in parts

PART FOURTEEN: ELIANA

Bunmi arrived at Eliana’s house at seven in the morning with a makeup bag, three opinions about the dress, and absolutely no intention of leaving until everything was exactly right.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing at the chair at Eliana’s dressing table with the authority of someone who had been waiting for this day for months.

“Bunmi, it’s valedictory. Not a film set.”

“It is the most important day of our secondary school lives and you are going to look like yourself but better. Sit. Down.”

Eliana sat down.

Bunmi’s own outfit was already on, a champagne gold lace dress with a sweetheart neckline that her mother had spent two weeks looking for, her hair in a sleek high bun with soft curls falling at the front, and a face of makeup so flawlessly applied it looked like she had been born wearing it. She looked, in short, stunning, and she knew it, and this gave her the confidence of a woman operating at full capacity.

Eliana’s dress was burgundy, a fitted Ankara brocade with a modest neckline, structured at the waist, the fabric catching the light in a way that made it feel ceremonial without trying. Her mother had picked it three weeks ago, altered it once, and pressed it that morning herself. Her hair was in a twisted updo, two soft pieces falling at her temples the way Bunmi had insisted on during last night’s practice run.

“Eyes closed,” Bunmi said.

“You’re only doing mascara.”

“I’m doing mascara and a little liner and a nude gloss and that is the absolute minimum and I will not discuss it further.” A pause, brush in hand. “Hold still.”

Eliana held still. Through the bedroom window came the familiar sounds of the Surulere morning, a hawker already calling, a generator humming two compounds away, the distant sound of a bus pulling onto the street. She had grown up with those sounds and today they felt different, the way the same music sounds different depending on what season of your life you are listening to it in.

“There,” Bunmi said, stepping back. She looked at Eliana for a long moment with the unfiltered satisfaction of someone whose work had come out exactly as intended. “Omo. Eliana.”

“What?”

“I just—” Bunmi pressed her lips together. “You look like you, but the version of you that the whole world is about to meet.”

Eliana looked in the mirror. She looked like herself. She looked like herself in a dress that meant something, with her hair done properly and her eyes slightly brighter than usual, on the last day of a chapter that had taken everything from her and given back more.

Her mother appeared in the doorway in her own formal blouse and wrapper, looked at her daughter, and said nothing for a moment. Then she came in and straightened a hairpin that did not need straightening, and kissed Eliana’s forehead, and left without a word. Which was more than enough.

Valedictory day arrived with the kind of Lagos morning that felt like a gift, the sky slightly overcast, the air cool enough that the heat had not yet remembered to be itself, a breeze moving through the Vivian Grace compound before the chairs and the families and the ceremony filled it.

The hall filled steadily. Parents in rows toward the back, teachers along the side walls, SS3 students in the middle. Out of uniform for the first time all together, they looked both like themselves and like strangers, the familiar faces inside unfamiliar formality. The girls in their dresses and pressed Ankara and careful hair. The boys in suits and agbadas and blazers, some more convincingly than others. Kelechi had arrived in a full purple agbada and matching cap that he wore with the complete lack of self-consciousness of someone who had considered his options and made peace with his choice. Biodun was in a dark suit. He had looked at Kelechi’s agbada and said nothing, which was its own kind of response.

Chibuzor wore a charcoal grey suit and looked exactly like a Head Boy who had become a Head Boy because he was genuinely the right person for it. Simi was in a sage green dress, understated and quietly lovely in the way that suited her.

Tito was in a navy blue suit, white shirt, no tie, the collar open one button, which was the one small departure from full formality that somehow suited him exactly.

Eliana noticed none of this consciously. She was reviewing her opening line in her head and telling herself she was not nervous.

She was slightly nervous.

Daddy T.O. sat at the front in his ceremonial robes, looking like a man who had invested deeply in these students and was present to see the return.

The programme moved through its stages: opening prayer, welcome address, academic awards. Chibuzor received the outstanding leadership award with the quiet nod of someone who had done the work and was not performing surprise. Kelechi received the award for most spirited contribution to school life, and his acceptance speech — which nobody had asked him to give — was long enough and loud enough that the parents in the back were laughing and Biodun had his face in his hands. Tito received the sports excellence award and walked back to his seat with the same steadiness he brought to everything.

Then Daddy T.O. said: “We will now hear the valedictory address from our head girl.”

Eliana walked to the front of the hall.

She looked at the room — her classmates, their parents, the teachers who had stretched and corrected and believed in them, the junior students watching the people they would one day become — and she held what she was about to say for one breath before she began.

“I want to talk about ordinary days.

Not the results we are celebrating today. Not the awards or the offices or the things that will become testimonies at church next Sunday. I want to talk about the Tuesday morning when you were tired and you showed up anyway. The free period you spent helping someone who did not ask. The meeting you stayed for even when you did not have to. The prayer you prayed quietly, in the back of a danfo, on the way home, when nobody was watching.

Those days. I want to talk about those days because I believe those are the ones that built us.

We came into this school not knowing what we were being formed into. We just showed up. We did the next thing in front of us. We tried to lead well even when we were not sure what leading well looked like. We tried to love our friends and did not always get it right, and we tried again. We guarded the things worth guarding. We were brave enough, most of the time, to be honest with God, with each other, with ourselves.

And somewhere in all of that, in the ordinary, unremarkable, un-posted, un-celebrated ordinary of it, something was happening. We were being shaped into the kind of people who will walk into rooms we cannot yet imagine and feel at home there. Not because those rooms will be familiar. But because we will know who we are when we enter them.

I am leaving this school in three days for something I did not plan and could not have predicted. And I am not afraid. Which surprises me, because I am generally someone who thinks carefully before she allows herself to not be afraid.

But I am not afraid because I know what Vivian Grace gave me. Not only the education. Not only the certificate. The character. The discipline. The deep understanding that your influence is not measured by how brightly you shine in any given moment but by what remains in people long after you have left the room.

And because today is a day of celebration, the very potters sent by God — the ones who commenced, so patiently, to mould us into beautiful works of art — must be acknowledged.

First, I give all the glory to my Heavenly Father. Without Him, I would have been nothing. I thank Him for guiding me every step of the way. I thank Him for all my victories, and for my numerous failures too because He used both, evenly, to shape me.

To my parents, my number one supporters. Thank you for your parental care, your love, your advice, and for the sleepless nights you stayed up with me until the thing I was studying finally found its way into my head.

And to our teachers, the ones who believed in us even on the days we did not believe in ourselves, thank you. Thank you for the motherly advice in the corridors. Thank you for the fatherly steadiness in the classroom. Thank you for making the difficult subjects tolerable, and for the small ordinary conversations that taught us the true things the syllabus could never cover. Thank you for the life lessons you slipped into our afternoons without ever announcing that you were teaching us anything at all. We were paying more attention than we looked like we were. We remember. We are carrying you with us.

To my class: we did this. We showed up for each other in the ways that counted, even when we were imperfect about it. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.

To the students still here: let the ordinary days do their work. Do not rush through the becoming. The formation is the point.

And to this school — to every corridor, every courtyard, every conference room where something real was decided, every assembly ground where we sang and prayed and tried to mean it — thank you. I will carry you into every room I walk into for the rest of my life.

Before we leave: just know — we were already becoming who we needed to be.”

The applause began somewhere near the middle of the room and spread until it filled everything, and Daddy T.O. was nodding from the front with the slow, deliberate nod of a man who knew the difference between a school speech and the real thing.

Eliana walked back to her seat. Bunmi grabbed her hand immediately and held it tight and said nothing, which from Bunmi was the loudest possible response. Chibuzor, two seats down, met her eyes and nodded once — the last paragraph. I told you.

She sat down and let the applause settle around her.

She did not look across the room for Tito. She did not need to. She already knew he had heard every word.

After the final prayer, as the parents began rising from their chairs and the hall filled with the warm noise of people finding each other, Daddy T.O. took the microphone one last time.

“SS3,” he said, with the particular warmth he reserved for moments that meant something to him. “Tonight, Vivian Grace celebrates you properly. The SS3 Celebration Dinner begins at six o’clock in the multipurpose hall. You came to school today already dressed for it.” A small ripple of laughter through the room. “We will see you there. Do not be late.”

Bunmi turned to Eliana with the energy of someone who had just received very good news.

“Do not say anything,” Eliana said.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Bunmi said.

“You were going to say something.”

“I was going to say,” Bunmi said, with great dignity, “that tonight is going to be lovely. That is all. Nothing else. Just — lovely.”

Eliana looked at her.

“And also that Tito’s suit is very nice,” Bunmi added. Then she stood up before Eliana could respond and went to find her parents.

Author’s note: I forgot an author's note on Part Thirteen and some of you noticed and mentioned it. I love that you all read my notes. It means everything. 🤍 Now. Can we talk about Eliana's mother coming in, straightening a hairpin that did not need straightening, kissing her forehead, and leaving without a word? 😭 That IS the African mother. No speech. No long talk. Just hands on your hair and a kiss and she's gone and it said everything. I was not okay. Bunmi said "the version of you that the whole world is about to meet" and I had to put my laptop down. And then Eliana stood up and gave THAT speech in front of everyone and I, the writer, was in my feelings from the first line to the last. Also Kelechi showed up in a full purple agbada and matching cap. Full. Purple. Agbada. This man will never change and I would not have it any other way. 😂 An era is coming to an end and we watched them grow right before our eyes, from that folded note in a school bag to this moment. I made this chapter extra long for you so settle, read it, re-read it. The dinner is tonight. One more chapter. 🤍