Barrister Ada

Chapter 6: 72% and a Folded Photo*

Result day was chaos.

The SS2 board was packed. Girls were shouting, crying, laughing.

I stood far back. My hands were sweating.

Tolu pushed through the crowd. “Ada! Move!”

She grabbed my arm and dragged me forward.

And there it was. My name.

*Ada Okafor: 72% - 4th in Class*

I stared at it. I read it twice.

72. I passed.

“YOU DID IT!” Tolu screamed and hugged me so hard I almost fell.

Mrs. Ade saw me from her office window. She nodded once. Then she sent a note with a prefect: “See me after prep.”

Not everyone was clapping.

During lunch, Chika from 2A blocked my path.

“So you’re the new ‘scholarship girl’ now?” she said, loud.

“Your aunty paid once. Let’s see if she will pay till SS3.”

Some girls laughed. Some looked away.

My face burned. I didn’t answer.

Tolu stepped in front of me. “At least she wrote and passed. What did you get? 51%?”

Chika walked off, angry.

Tolu squeezed my hand. “Ignore her. You earned this.”

That evening, Mrs. Ade gave me the scholarship form.

“Fill this. If you keep 70% next term, it’s yours,” she said.

For the first time, my future had paper.

*[Holiday. The Shelter.]*

Term ended on Friday. No car came for me.

Aunty Ngozi was at the gate with her car.

“Let’s go home, Ada. Work is waiting.”

The shelter was louder than school. Children. Women sewing. Beads on tables.

On Saturday morning, Aunty gave me a nylon of beads and thread.

“Sit. Learn,” she said. “Fingers will hurt first week. Then they won’t.”

My fingers bled by noon. I cried in the bathroom. Quiet.

An older girl, Mama Zainab’s daughter, sat beside me later.

“I paid my JAMB with beads, you know,” she said. “Small small, it becomes money. Don’t quit.”

I wiped my face. I threaded another bead.

It happened on Sunday evening, right before I was to settle in for the week.

Aunty Ngozi called me to the gate.

“Ada,” she said, frowning. “Someone came this afternoon. Didn’t enter. Just dropped this and left.”

She handed me a brown envelope. No name. No address.

Inside was one thing: a faded photo.

My mother. Young. Holding baby me. She was smiling.

No letter. No words. Just us.

My breath caught.

“Who was it?” I whispered.

“The security man said it was a man,” Aunty said. “Cap. Sunglasses. Didn’t give his name. Said ‘Give this to Ada Okafor.’ Then he left.”

My father? A relative? Someone from my old area?

I held the photo tight. My mother’s face. Alive again on paper.

But why now? Why like this?

That night I wrote in my book:

_72%. Jealousy. Beads. And a photo with no name._

_I don’t know who sent it. But I know this: Someone still remembers me.