Single

"Ma---Ar..i" and I were destined to sit next to each other on the same row for a year through the sixth form.

She was special in her ways, she was single(most avoided her) but then she always spoke of life in the double. I was most often her sole listener. She would tell me every morning, "I have two television sets, two computers, two refrigerators..."it was always two of everything. Listening to her I came to the conclusion that in her house, only noses were single.

I watched with admiration at the different copying styles she adopted  during tests.She could copy sideways, forwards and backwards. I watched her shift the strategy depending on  which part of our teacher was turned towards us.

And then one dramatic rainy afternoon, the nuns at the convent set out on a man-hunt. To be precise, it was  a hunt for someone who had stolen somebody's money. So I watched the placid faces of nuns draw in contours of contempt at the f0rbidden sin and we were lined up like in a concentration camp. We had our blue uniform checked inside out and when Sr. A.... placed her hands on the sides it tickled so much that I giggled until her glare stifled them.

"Ma---Ar" was cool when she was taken inside the inquiry room. But when her reappearance took longer, word was passed as to the identity of the thief.

I couldn't accept it within, not that she was special to me. But then when you sit on the same row for a term, you get so familiar with sounds and smells of  a person that it matters.

They found the stolen money inside her shoes. The class hushed up as she made  a re-appearance, her pair of shoes in her dark-skinned hands. Sr. A...paraded her down the corridor but as "Ma..ar.." walked past me, she stopped a moment and symbolically dangled the shoes. I counted them and spelt two . I think she felt honoured by my acknowledgement of the number because she had  relief in her eyes as she walked away.

Then I heard them say, "She has two fathers/ mothers"

That rainy afternoon, while others assassinated a character, I worked out what made single her count everything else in  life in the double.