— There won't be anyone in Aweil. No one will still be there.
— Commander Santo said the SPLA is different now.
— Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But look at you. You've never fought in your life. You wear glasses now. How will you shoot if your glasses break?
I did not really think this argument would work, but it did. It worked immediately, and that was the end of Achor Achor's army career. I am fairly certain that he was simply looking for a good reason not to join, something he could say when or if he were ever asked. He never spoke of the SPLA again.
I do not want to be indelicate but it is important to note that we were not long past puberty, and some of the younger boys in the class were still in the thick of hormonal change and a deeper awareness of the opposite sex. Thus what Miss Gladys did next stirred havoc among us young men at a time when there was already sufficient physiological turmoil. My first hairs had recently appeared in small thickets, a few patches in my underwear, one in each armpit. I was later than many other boys, but we were all developmentally tardy, we were told, due to the trauma we had endured and our ongoing state of malnutrition. But at that juncture of our development, our Miss Gladys had a very strong impact on our lives. With her open and confident sexuality, she was the constant igniter of everything flammable within us. It was enough to see her twice a week with the drama group, but when she walked into our history class she took it too far.
— Ah, Dominic! Good to see you! she said.
This was a semester after she began with the Napata Drama Group. We had not been told that there would be a new history teacher. Our previous instructor, a Kenyan named George, seemed capable and permanent.
— You're teaching this class? I said.
— You sound unhappy to see me, she said with a theatrical pout.
I did not know what to say. Her presence in Napata was manageable, given I could mask my nerves and weak stomach under the guise of my acting. But with her as my history teacher, I knew immediately that I would not be able to concentrate; my grades would drop. All of the inherent problems issuing from her presence were doubled by a new wrinkle to her personality. Something about history brought out the provocateur in her, and this simply destroyed most of the fifty-eight boys who sat on the ground beneath her.
She didn't talk about sex outright, but she seemed to find a way, during her lectures, to include the sexual habits of whomever she discussed, no matter how incongruous the context.
— Genghis Khan was a very harsh dictator, she might begin.-He was cruel to his enemies but he loved women very much. He had a great appetite, it was said. The rumor is that he had impregnated over two hundred women with his seed, and often visited three or more women in one night. He was also known to take certain tools into bed with…
The first day, one boy fainted. We were utterly unprepared for both the discussion of sexual appetites and for such discussion to spring forth from the mouth of the goddess named Gladys. Why was she doing this? She controlled us all, fifty-eight boys, she possessed us utterly and sometimes without mercy. The discussion about the sexual mores of Genghis Khan and his ilk went on for the full period and left us spent.
Our confused and longing faces had an effect on her, and that effect was to spur her on, to the point where she made a point to insert some sexual fact or aside in each day's lesson, and we could count on it, and dressed appropriately. The fainting boy brought with him wads of paper to stuff in his ears when she began expounding on the subject, for his parents were in the camp and he was sure they would know if he returned home with that sort of information in his head.
Among the few girls in the class, there was a broad sort of annoyance with Miss Gladys's antics and the boys' obsession with her. But there was one girl, younger than the rest, who seemed to enjoy Miss Gladys, and laughed at her jokes even when we didn't recognize them as jokes. This girl was Tabitha Duany Aker. I had not seen her for a semester and a summer, since we had been in home economics together, but I was very happy to see her again, and to see that it was only she who laughed when Miss Gladys made the joke about Idi Amin in the sauna. The joke was met by silence by all except for a loud guffaw from the side row. Tabitha covered her mouth and exchanged a long look of mutual admiration with Miss Gladys, and from that day on I took an interest in her, and tried to see her outside of class, at any opportunity at all. In many ways she reminded me of Maria-in her wit, her quick way with words, her heart-shaped face-but she was more girlish than Maria. She had a wild femininity about her that she tamed and mastered, I believe, by studying every movement and gesture of Miss Gladys.
Meanwhile, the rest of the boys, those who had just become acquainted with our new history teacher, spent a good deal of time alone and together thinking about our new teacher, about her various lessons. Miss Gladys became the most famous and sought-after teacher at Kakuma, and with her, the notoriety of us Dominics grew. There were four Dominics in that history class, and because she seemed very familiar with us, the rest of the boys looked at us with murder in their eyes, for we clearly had an inside track to her heart. Whenever Miss Gladys was mentioned, her favorites were also noted, the four Dominics from the Drama Group. Our real names were all supplanted by Dominic only, and our notoriety bound us closer. When we played basketball together, our team was the Dominics. When we walked by, people said, 'There go the Dominics.' And the numbers of random boys wanting suddenly to study acting-and history, in our class, no matter where in the camp they lived-grew unabated. Miss Gladys allowed none of them to join, because we did not need more boys.
We had too many boys already, and it was becoming a problem that because the troupe had only two girls, the majority of the women in our plays had to be played by men. In particular, the women's roles were played by one of the Dominics, whose real name was Anthony Chuut Guot. He was fearless about wearing a dress, or any other female clothing, and was unafraid to walk and talk like a woman. It was for his courage that we nicknamed him Madame Zero, after a cross-dressing comic-book spy. This was a name he enjoyed, at least initially. It was when the nickname extended beyond the Dominics that he became less amused, and this led to his and Miss Gladys's insistence that we recruit or somehow find at least one young woman for the club.
Thus, on one glorious afternoon, Tabitha joined the Napata Drama Group.
Tabitha was a friend to Abuk, the oldest of Gop's daughters, so even outside of classes such as home ec and history, I had been able to observe her, and knew certain things about her. I knew first of all that she was permitted to join the group because her mother had been an actress herself, and was an enlightened woman who wanted Tabitha to take advantage of any opportunities in the camp. I also knew that she had a face unsettling in its perfection. When I first knew Maria, I had feelings for her, but looking at her, speaking to her, was not a challenge for me. She seemed as much a sibling as anything else, and I felt when standing before her that she was a young person like me, that we were both refugees, that nothing about her intimidated me.
But Tabitha was not like this. I was not alone in knowing that Tabitha's face was unparalleled in its symmetry. Her skin was without blemish, the lashes on her eyes of a length that defied any precedent. I knew all this from far away, and after observing her more closely I knew that when she walked she walked slowly and deliberately, no part of her body moving with any effort whatsoever. From a distance, it seemed that she floated, her head never bobbing, the movement of her legs barely detectable under her skirts. I knew this and I knew that she touched the forearms of her friends as she spoke. She did this frequently, and when she laughed she would grip the forearm and then pat it twice.