Purple Hibiscus

  Chima chortled. “The tortoise has a cracked shell!”

  “Don’t you wonder how only Dog’s mother got up to the sky in the first place?” Obiora asked in English.

  “Or who the wealthy friends in the sky were,” Amaka said.

  “Probably Dog’s ancestors,” Obiora said.

  My cousins and Jaja laughed, and Papa-Nnukwu laughed, too, a gentle chuckle, as if he had understood the English, then leaned back and closed his eyes. I watched them and wished that I had joined in chanting the Njemanze! response.

  Papa-Nnukwu had woken up before everyone else. He wanted to have breakfast sitting on the verandah, to watch the morning sun. And so Aunty Ifeoma asked Obiora to spread a mat on the verandah, and we all sat and had breakfast with Papa-Nnukwu, listening to him talk about the men who tapped palm wine in the village, how they left at dawn to climb up the palm trees because the trees gave sour wine after the sun rose. I could tell that he missed the village, that he missed seeing those palm trees the men climbed, with a raffia belt encircling them and the tree trunk.

  Although we had bread and okpa and Bournvita for breakfast, Aunty Ifeoma made a little fufu to bury Papa-Nnukwu’s tablets in, soft spherical coffins that she carefully watched Papa-Nnukwu swallow. The cloud had lifted from her face.

  “He will be fine,” she said, in English. “Soon he will start nagging about wanting to go back to the village.”

  “He must stay for a while,” Amaka said. “Maybe he should live here, Mom. I don’t think that girl Chinyelu takes proper care of him.”

  “Igasikwa! He will never agree to live here.”

  “When will you take him to do the tests?”

  “Tomorrow. Doctor Nduoma said I can have two tests done instead of all four. The private labs in town always want full payment, so I will have to go to the bank first. I don’t think I will finish in time to take him today, with all those lines at the bank.”

  A car drove into the compound then, and even before Amaka asked, “Is that Father Amadi?” I knew it was him. I had seen the small Toyota hatchback only twice before, but I could point it out anywhere. My hands started to shake.

  “He said he would stop by and see your Papa-Nnukwu,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  Father Amadi wore his soutane, long-sleeved and loosefitting, with a loose black rope slanted around his waist. Even in the priestly garb, his loping, comfortable gait pulled my eyes and held them. I turned and dashed into the flat. I could see the front yard clearly from the window in the bedroom, which had a few louvers missing. I pressed my face close to the window, close to the small tear in the mosquito netting that Amaka blamed for letting in every moth that flapped around the light bulb at night. Father Amadi was standing by the window, close enough for me to see the way his hair lay in wavy curls on his head, like the ripples in a stream.

  “His recovery has been so swift, Father, Chukwu aluka,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  “Our God is faithful, Ifeoma,” he said happily, as though Papa-Nnukwu were his own relative. Then he told her that he was on his way to Isienu, to visit a friend who had just got back from missionary work in Papua New Guinea. He turned to Jaja and Obiora and said, “I will come by this evening to pick you up. We’ll play in the stadium with some of the boys from the seminary.”

  “Okay, Father.” Jaja’s voice was strong.

  “Where is Kambili?” he asked.

  I looked down at my chest, which was heaving now. I did not know why, but I was grateful that he had said my name, that he remembered my name.

  “I think she is inside,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  “Jaja, tell her she can come with us if she likes.”

  When he came back that evening, I pretended I was taking a siesta. I waited to hear his car drive off, with Jaja and Obiora inside, before I came out into the living room. I had not wanted to go with them, and yet when I could no longer hear the sound of his car, I wished I could run after it.

  Amaka was in the living room with Papa-Nnukwu, slowly oiling the few tufts of hair on his head with Vaseline. Afterward, she smoothed talcum powder on his face and chest.

  “Kambili,” Papa-Nnukwu said, when he saw me. “Your cousin paints well. In the old days, she would have been chosen to decorate the shrines of our gods.” He sounded dreamy. Some of his medications probably made him drowsy. Amaka did not look at me; she gave his hair one last pat—a caress, really—and then sat down on the floor in front of him. I followed the swift movements of her hand as she moved the brush from palette to paper and then back again. She painted so quickly that I thought it would all be a muddle on the paper, until I looked and saw the form clearly taking shape—a lean, graceful form. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, the one with the picture of the Pope leaning on his staff. The silence was delicate. Aunty Ifeoma was scraping a burnt pot in the kitchen, and the kroo-kroo-kroo of the metal spoon on the pot seemed intrusive. Amaka and Papa-Nnukwu spoke sometimes, their voices low, twining together. They understood each other, using the sparest words. Watching them, I felt a longing for something I knew I would never have. I wanted to get up and leave, but my legs did not belong to me, did not do what I wanted them to. Finally, I pushed myself up and went into the kitchen; neither Papa-Nnukwu nor Amaka noticed when I left.

  Aunty Ifeoma sat on a low stool, pulling the brown skin off hot cocoyams, throwing the sticky, rounded tubers in the wooden mortar and stopping to cool her hands in a bowl of cold water.

  “Why do you look that way, o gini?” she asked.

  ‘What way, Aunty?”

  “There are tears in your eyes.”

  I felt my wet eyes. “Something must have flown into my eyes.”

  Aunty Ifeoma looked doubtful. “Help me with the cocoyams,” she said, finally.

  I pulled a low stool close to her and sat down. The skins seemed to slip off easily enough for Aunty Ifeoma, but when I pressed one end of a tuber, the rough brown skin stayed put and the heat stung my palms.

  “Soak your hand in water first.” She demonstrated where and how to press, to have the skin come sliding off. I watched her pound the cocoyams, dipping the pestle often into the bowl of water so the cocoyam wouldn’t stick too much to it. Still, the sticky white mash clung to the pestle, to the mortar, to Aunty Ifeoma’s hand. She was pleased, though, because it would thicken the onugbu soup well.

  “See how well your Papa-Nnukwu is doing?” she asked. “He has been sitting up so long for Amaka to paint him. It’s a miracle. Our Lady is faithful.”

  “How can Our Lady intercede on behalf of a heathen, Aunty?”

  Aunty Ifeoma was silent as she ladled the thick cocoyam paste into the soup pot; then she looked up and said Papa-Nnukwu was not a heathen but a traditionalist, that sometimes what was different was just as good as what was familiar, that when Papa-Nnukwu did his itu-nzu, his declaration of innocence, in the morning, it was the same as our saying the rosary. She said a few other things, but I was not really listening, because I heard Amaka laughing in the living room with Papa-Nnukwu, and I wondered what they were laughing about, and whether they would stop laughing if I went in there.

  WHEN AUNTY IFEOMA woke me up, the room was dim and the shrills of the night crickets were dying away. A rooster’s crow drifted through the window above my bed.

  “Nne.” Aunty Ifeoma patted my shoulder. “Your Papa-Nnukwu is on the verandah. Go and watch him.”

  I felt wide awake, although I had to pry my eyes open with my fingers. I remembered Aunty Ifeoma’s words from the day before, about Papa-Nnuwku being a traditionalist and not a heathen. Still, I was not sure why she wanted me to go and watch him on the verandah.

  “Nne, remember to be quiet. Just watch him.” Aunty Ifeoma whispered to avoid waking Amaka.

  I tied my wrapper around my chest, over my pink-and-white flowered nightgown, and padded out of the room. The door that led to the verandah was half open, and the purplish tinge of early dawn trickled into the living room. I did not want to turn the light on because Papa-N
nukwu would notice, so I stood by the door, against the wall.

  Papa-Nnukwu was on a low wooden stool, his legs bent into a triangle. The loose knot of his wrapper had come undone, and the wrapper had slipped off his waist to cover the stool, its faded blue edges grazing the floor. A kerosene lamp, turned to its lowest, was right next to him. The flickering light cast a topaz glow over the narrow verandah, over the stubby gray hairs on Papa-Nnukwu’s chest, over the loose, soil-colored skin on his legs. He leaned down to draw a line on the floor with the nzu in his hand. He was speaking, his face down as if addressing the white chalk line, which now looked yellow. He was talking to the gods or the ancestors; I remembered Aunty Ifeoma saying that the two could be interchanged.

  “Chineke! I thank you for this new morning! I thank you for the sun that rises.” His lower lip quivered as he spoke. Perhaps that was why his Igbo words flowed into each other, as if writing his speech would result in a single long word. He bent down to draw another line, quickly, with a fierce determination that shook the flesh on his arm, which was hanging low like a brown leather pouch. “Chineke! I have killed no one, I have taken no one’s land, I have not committed adultery.” He leaned over and drew the third line. The stool squeaked. “Chineke! I have wished others well. I have helped those who have nothing with the little that my hands can spare.”

  A cock was crowing, a drawn-out, plaintive sound that seemed very close close by.

  “Chineke! Bless me. Let me find enough to fill my stomach. Bless my daughter, Ifeoma. Give her enough for her family.” He shifted on the stool. His navel had once jutted out, I could tell, but now it looked like a wrinkled eggplant, drooping.

  “Chineke! Bless my son, Eugene. Let the sun not set on his prosperity. Lift the curse they have put on him.” Papa-Nnukwu leaned over and drew one more line. I was surprised that he prayed for Papa with the same earnestness that he prayed for himself and Aunty Ifeoma.

  “Chineke! Bless the children of my children. Let your eyes follow them away from evil and towards good.” Papa-Nnukwu smiled as he spoke. His few front teeth seemed a deeper yellow in the light, like fresh corn kernels. The wide gaps in his gums were tinged a subtle tawny color. “Chineke! Those who wish others well, keep them well. Those who wish others ill, keep them ill.” Papa-Nnukwu drew the last line, longer than the rest, with a flourish. He was done.

  When Papa-Nnukwu rose and stretched, his entire body, like the bark of the gnarled gmelina tree in our yard, captured the gold shadows from the lamp flame in its many furrows and ridges. Even the age spots that dotted his hands and legs gleamed. I did not look away, although it was sinful to look upon another person’s nakedness. The rumples in Papa-Nnukwu’s belly did not seem so many now, and his navel rose higher, still enclosed between folds of skin. Between his legs hung a limp cocoon that seemed smoother, free of the wrinkles that crisscrossed the rest of his body like mosquito netting. He picked up his wrapper and tied it around his body, knotting it at his waist. His nipples were like dark raisins nestled among the sparse gray tufts of hair on his chest. He was still smiling as I quietly turned and went back to the bedroom. I never smiled after we said the rosary back home. None of us did.

  PAPA-NNUKWU WAS BACK on the verandah after breakfast, sitting on the stool, with Amaka settled on a plastic mat at his feet. She scrubbed his foot gently with a pumice stone, soaked it in a plastic bowl of water, rubbed it over with Vaseline, and then moved to the other foot. Papa-Nnukwu complained that she would make his feet too tender, that even soft stones would pierce his soles now because he never wore sandals in the village, though Aunty Ifeoma made him wear them here. But he did not ask Amaka to stop.

  “I am going to paint him out here on the verandah, in the shade. I want to catch the sunlight on his skin,” Amaka said, when Obiora joined them.

  Aunty Ifeoma came out, dressed in a blue wrapper and blouse. She was going to the market with Obiora, who she said figured out change faster than a trader with a calculator. “Kambili, I want you to help me do the orah leaves, so I can start the soup when I come back,” she said.

  “Orah leaves?” I asked, swallowing.

  “Yes. Don’t you know how to prepare orah?”

  I shook my head. “No, Aunty.”

  “Amaka will do it, then,” Aunty Ifeoma said. She unfolded and refolded her wrapper around her waist, knotting it at her side.

  “Why?” Amaka burst out. “Because rich people do not prepare orah in their houses? Won’t she participate in eating the orah soup?”

  Aunty Ifeoma’s eyes hardened—she was not looking at Amaka, she was looking at me. “O ginidi, Kambili, have you no mouth? Talk back to her!”

  I watched a wilted African lily fall from its stalk in the garden. The crotons rustled in the late morning breeze. “You don’t have to shout, Amaka,” I said, finally. “I don’t know how to do the orah leaves, but you can show me.” I did not know where the calm words had come from. I did not want to look at Amaka, did not want to see her scowl, did not want to prompt her to say something else to me, because I knew I could not keep up. I thought I was imagining it when I heard the cackling, but then I looked at Amaka—and sure enough, she was laughing.

  “So your voice can be this loud, Kambili,” she said.

  She showed me how to prepare the orah leaves. The slippery, light green leaves had fibrous stalks that did not become tender from cooking and so had to be carefully plucked out. I balanced the tray of vegetables on my lap and set to work, plucking the stalks and putting the leaves in a bowl at my feet. I was done by the time Aunty Ifeoma drove in, about an hour later, and sank onto a stool, fanning herself with a newspaper. Sweat streaks had washed away her pressed powder in parallel lines of darker-colored skin down the sides of her face. Jaja and Obiora were bringing in the foodstuffs from the car, and Aunty Ifeoma asked Jaja to place the bunch of plantains on the verandah floor.

  “Amaka, ka? Guess how much?” she asked.

  Amaka stared at the bunch critically before she guessed an amount. Aunty Ifeoma shook her head and said that the plantains had cost forty naira more than what Amaka guessed.

  “Hei! For this small thing?” Amaka shouted.

  “The traders say it is hard to transport their food because there is no fuel, so they add on the costs of transportation, o di egwu,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  Amaka picked up the plantains and pressed each between her fingers, as if she would figure out why they cost so much by doing that. She took them inside just as Father Amadi drove in and parked in front of the flat. His windscreen caught the sun and glittered. He bounded up the few stairs to the verandah, holding his soutane up like a bride holding a wedding dress. He greeted Papa-Nnukwu first, before hugging Aunty Ifeoma and shaking hands with the boys. I extended my hand so that we could shake, my lower lip starting to tremble.

  “Kambili,” he said, holding my hand a little longer than the boys’.

  “Are you going somewhere, Father?” Amaka asked, coming onto the verandah. “You must be baking in that soutane.”

  “I am going over to give some things to a friend of mine, the priest who came back from Papua New Guinea. He returns next week.”

  “Papua New Guinea. How did he say the place is, eh?” Amaka asked.

  “He was telling a story of crossing a river by canoe, with crocodiles right underneath. He said he is not sure which happened first, hearing the teeth of the crocodiles snapping or discovering that he had wet his trousers.”

  “They had better not send you to a place like that,” Aunty Ifeoma said with a laugh, still fanning herself and sipping from a glass of water.

  “I don’t even want to think about your leaving, Father,” Amaka said. “You still don’t have an idea where and when, okwia?”

  “No. Sometime next year, perhaps.”

  “Who is sending you?” Papa-Nnukwu asked, in his sudden way that made me realize he had been following every word spoken in Igbo.

  “Father Amadi belongs to a group of priests, ndi missionary, and the
y go to different countries to convert people,” Amaka said. She hardly peppered her speech with English words when she spoke to Papa-Nnukwu, as the rest of us inadvertently did.

  “Ezi okwu?” Papa-Nnukwu looked up, his milky eye on Father Amadi. “Is that so? Our own sons now go to be missionaries in the white man’s land?”

  “We go to the white man’s land and the black man’s land, sir,” Father Amadi said. “Any place that needs a priest.”

  “It is good, my son. But you must never lie to them. Never teach them to disregard their fathers.” Papa-Nnukwu looked away, shaking his head.

  “Did you hear that, Father?” Amaka asked. “Don’t lie to those poor ignorant souls.”

  “It will be hard not to, but I will try,” Father Amadi said, in English. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

  “You know, Father, it’s like making okpa,” Obiora said. “You mix the cowpea flour and palm oil, then you steam-cook for hours. You think you can ever get just the cowpea flour? Or just the palm oil?”

  “What are you talking about?” Father Amadi asked.

  “Religion and oppression,” Obiora said.

  “You know there is a saying that it is not just the naked men in the market who are mad?” Father Amadi asked. “That streak of madness has returned and is disturbing you again, okwia?”

  Obiora laughed, and so did Amaka, in that loud way it seemed only Father Amadi could get out of her.

  “Spoken like the true missionary priest, Father,” Amaka said. “When people challenge you, label them mad.”

  “See how your cousin sits quiet and watches?” Father Amadi asked, gesturing to me. “She does not waste her energy in picking never-ending arguments. But there is a lot going on in her mind, I can tell.”

  I stared at him. Round, wet patches of sweat encircled his underarms, darkening the white of his soutane. His eyes rested on my face and I looked away. It was too disturbing, locking eyes with him; it made me forget who was nearby, where I was sitting, what color my skirt was. “Kambili, you did not want to come out with us the last time.”