In Block C of a hostel that had once been a seminary before the government repurposed it into a federal university lodge, time moved slowly; especially between 5:50 and 6:10 every morning when the sound of her slippers announced the beginning of day.
Not the usual flip-flop rubber ones, no. These had rhythm. A gentle clap…tap…clap… as if her feet negotiated with the earth while walking. She never dragged them like other girls who had given up on softness. She glided. The tiles, old and cracked like promises, gave her a percussion section. I began to set my alarm not by time, but by her.
No one else seemed to notice. Or maybe they noticed but didn’t assign poetry to it like I did. Her name was Adaeze, though she never told me herself. I got it from the register they pasted on the common room board when NEPA took light for the third day in a row and we all went down to sign the protest letter.
She always walked with a purple bucket. And she always wore a yellow scarf. Not the lemony type that announces itself. A faded yellow, like it had once held brightness but chose peace instead. I told Wigan one day—my roommate who spent more time betting on football than attending classes—’The girl with the slippers, she’s not like the others.’
Wigan didn’t look up from his phone. ‘You dey fall for leg sound now? Bros, na ment.’
But I knew what I heard. And more than that, I knew what I didn’t hear. I never heard her gossip. Never heard her laugh that fake laugh girls use to bait boys. Never heard her knock on anyone’s door except her own. She was silence wrapped in noise, and the slippers… those faithful, rhythmic slippers… were the only voice she allowed.
One morning, maybe a month after I first noticed her, I found myself brushing my teeth outside while she passed. I didn’t plan it, I swear. I just… wanted to see. Maybe even smile. Maybe she’d smile back.
She didn’t. But she nodded.
Just a small one, almost invisible, like a leaf swaying against the wind.
That nod sat with me the whole day. In class, in the queue at the canteen, even during night prep. I replayed it like it was a scene from a film I’d acted in and didn’t want to forget.
The day she stopped walking was the day the hostel fell into chaos. It started with murmurs. That she was sick. That she’d been rusticated. That one lecturer with a limp and a hunger for final-year girls had summoned her too many times. Wigan swore he saw her crying at the bursary office. But I didn’t believe any of it.
I waited.
Day one. No sound.
Day two. Still silence.
Day three. I woke at 5:30 and stood by the door like a soldier. Nothing.
By day four, I accepted that she had left. The slippers were gone. The bucket was gone. Even the yellow scarf that once hung faintly from her window grille… gone. The corridor felt louder in her absence, as if silence had unbuttoned its shirt and started pacing.
I won’t lie. I took it personally. It felt like betrayal. Like someone had made a quiet promise with footsteps and broken it without a word.
I tried to erase the habit. Brushed later. Slept longer. Let my own slippers slap the ground without rhythm. I even tried to forget her name. But her absence had turned into a shape inside me, and nothing else fit.
One afternoon, I passed by Room 3… hers. It was open. Empty. Two cleaners were mopping the floor, chatting loudly about pepper soup and salary arrears. I looked inside. No trace of her. Not even a pin. As if she’d packed up her essence too.
That night, I did something foolish. I wrote her a letter. Never posted it. Never planned to. Just needed to exhale.
‘Dear girl with the purple bucket and yellow scarf,
You walked like a whisper and left a silence that screams…’ I stopped there.
Weeks passed. Exams came and went. ASUU threatened to strike again. Life, as it does, insisted on continuing. A new girl moved into Room 3. She wore loud perfume and louder wigs, and her slippers had no music. Just a tired slap-slap that said nothing and meant nothing.
But sometimes, in the haze between sleep and morning, I still heard it… clap…tap…clap… Not real, just memory. Muscle memory. Ghost sound.
Then, one harmattan morning… long after I had stopped expecting… I heard it again.
I was halfway into a dream when it pierced through: clap…tap…clap…
I shot up.
I knew that sound. My heart didn’t even ask for permission… it just ran.
I opened the door and there she was.
Not in yellow. Not in anything I recognized. She wore a faded university works vest and jeans that had paint splatters on them. No scarf. No bucket. Just a wrench in her hand. Two maintenance men followed her, struggling with a faulty tank.
She walked ahead of them like she owned the ground.
Our eyes met. She paused. And then, just as the corridor held its breath, she said:
‘Morning.’
That was it. One word. One voice. No music behind it. No echo.
But it rang like a bell.
Her voice was not what I imagined. It was steadier. Firmer. Like someone who had been broken and reforged.
It wasn’t soft, but it was honest. Like the kind of steel that learns not to rust even when drenched.
She didn’t wait for my reply. Just turned back to the tank and started pointing instructions.
I didn’t speak. Couldn’t.
But I smiled.
Like a man who had waited at the edge of a desert and finally smelled rain.
After that day, the rhythm never returned. I never heard the slippers again. Maybe she stopped wearing them.
Maybe she gave them to someone who didn’t understand. Maybe she no longer needed their voice.
But I didn’t mind.
She had spoken.
And somehow, that was louder than all the mornings before.
—–
Image: ChatGPT remixed