Purple Hibiscus

  We stood underneath a huge flame-of-the-forest tree. It was in bloom, its flowers fanning out on wide branches and the ground underneath covered with petals the color of fire. When the young girl was led out, the flame-of-the-forest swayed and flowers rained down. The girl was slight and solemn, dressed in white, and strong-looking men stood around her so she would not be trampled. She had hardly passed us when other trees nearby started to quiver with a frightening vigor, as if someone were shaking them. The ribbons that cordoned off the apparition area shook, too. Yet there was no wind. The sun turned white, the color and shape of the host. And then I saw her, the Blessed Virgin: an image in the pale sun, a red glow on the back of my hand, a smile on the face of the rosary-bedecked man whose arm rubbed against mine. She was everywhere.

  I wanted to stay longer, but Aunty Ifeoma said we had to leave, because it would be impossible to drive out if we waited until most people were leaving. She bought rosaries and scapulars and little vials of holy water from the vendors as we walked to the car.

  “It doesn’t matter if Our Lady appeared or not,” Amaka said, when we got to the car. “Aokpe will always be special because it was the reason Kambili and Jaja first came to Nsukka.”

  “Does that mean you don’t believe in the apparition?” Father Amadi asked, a teasing lilt in his voice.

  “No, I didn’t say that,” Amaka said. “What about you? Do you believe it?”

  Father Amadi said nothing; he seemed to be focused on rolling the window down to get a buzzing fly out of the car.

  “I felt the Blessed Virgin there. I felt her,” I blurted out. How could anyone not believe after what we had seen? Or hadn’t they seen it and felt it, too?

  Father Amadi turned to study me; I saw him from the corner of my eye. There was a gentle smile on his face. Aunty Ifeoma glanced at me, then turned back and faced the road.

  “Kambili is right,” she said. “Something from God was happening there.”

  I WENT WITH FATHER AMADI to say his good-byes to the families on campus. Many of the lecturers’ children clung tightly to him, as if the tighter they held him, the less likely he could break free and leave Nsukka. We did not say much to each other. We sang Igbo chorus songs from his cassette player. It was one of those songs—“Abum onye n’uwa, onye ka m bu n’uwa”—that eased the dryness in my throat as we got into his car, and I said, “I love you.”

  He turned to me with an expression that I had never seen, his eyes almost sad. He leaned over the gear and pressed his face to mine. I wanted our lips to meet and hold, but he moved his face away. “You are almost sixteen, Kambili. You are beautiful. You will find more love than you will need in a lifetime,” he said. And I did not know whether to laugh or cry. He was wrong. He was so wrong.

  As he drove me home, I looked out of the open window at the compounds we drove past. The gaping holes in the hedges had closed up, and green branches snaked across to meet each other. I wished that I could see the backyards so I could occupy myself with imagining the lives behind the hanging clothes and fruit trees and swings. I wished I could think about something, anything, so that I would no longer feel. I wished I could blink away the liquid in my eyes.

  When I got back, Aunty Ifeoma asked if I was all right, if something was wrong.

  “I’m fine, Aunty,” I said.

  She was looking at me as though she knew I was not fine. “Are you sure, nne?”

  “Yes, Aunty.”

  “Brighten up, inugo? And please pray for my visa interview. I will leave for Lagos tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” I said, and I felt a new, numbing rush of sadness. “I will, Aunty.” Yet I knew that I would not, could not, pray that she get the visa. I knew it was what she wanted, that she did not have many other choices. Or any other choices. Still, I would not pray that she get the visa. I could not pray for what I did not want.

  Amaka was in the bedroom, lying in bed, listening to music with the cassette player next to her ear. I sat on the bed and hoped she would not ask me how my day with Father Amadi had gone. She didn’t say anything, just kept nodding to the music.

  “You are singing along,” she said after a while.

  “What?”

  “You were just singing along with Fela.”

  “I was?” I looked at Amaka and wondered if she was imagining things.

  “How will I get Fela tapes in America, eh? Just how will I get them?”

  I wanted to tell Amaka that I was sure she would find Fela tapes in America, and any other tapes that she wanted, but I didn’t. It would mean I assumed that Aunty Ifeoma would get the visa—and besides, I was not sure Amaka wanted to hear that.

  MY STOMACH WAS UNSTEADY until Aunty Ifeoma came back from Lagos. We had been waiting for her on the verandah, although there was power and we could have been inside, watching TV The insects did not buzz around us, perhaps because the kerosene lamp was not on or perhaps because they sensed the tension. Instead, they flitted around the electric bulb above the door, making surprised thuds when they bumped against it. Amaka had brought the fan out, and its whir created music with the hum of the refrigerator inside. When a car stopped in front of the flat, Obiora jumped up and ran out.

  “Mom, how did it go? Did you get it?”

  “I got it,” Aunty Ifeoma said, coming onto the verandah.

  “You got the visa!” Obiora screamed, and Chima promptly repeated him, rushing over to hug his mother. Amaka and Jaja and I did not stand; we said welcome to Aunty Ifeoma and watched her go inside to change. She came out soon, with a wrapper tied casually around her chest. The wrapper that stopped above her calves would stop above the ankles of an average-size woman. She sat down and asked Obiora to get her a glass of water.

  “You do not look happy, Aunty,” Jaja said.

  “Oh, nna m, I am. Do you know how many people they refuse? A woman next to me cried until I thought that blood would run down her cheeks. She asked them, ‘How can you refuse me a visa? I have shown you that I have money in the bank. How can you say I will not come back? I have property here, I have property.’ She kept saying that over and over: ‘I have property.’ I think she had wanted to attend her sister’s wedding in America.”

  “Why did they refuse her?” Obiora asked.

  “I don’t know. If they are in a good mood, they will give you a visa, if not, they will refuse you. It is what happens when you are worthless in somebody’s eyes. We are like footballs that they can kick in any direction they want to.”

  “When are we leaving?” Amaka asked, tiredly, and I could tell that right now she did not care about the woman who had nearly cried blood or about Nigerians being kicked around or about anything at all.

  Aunty Ifeoma drank the whole glass of water before speaking. “We have to move out of this flat in two weeks. I know they are waiting to see that I don’t, so they can send security men to throw my things out on the street.”

  “You mean we leave Nigeria in two weeks?” Amaka asked, shrilly.

  “Am I a magician, eh?” Aunty Ifeoma retorted. The humor was lacking in her tone. There was nothing in her tone to speak of, really, except for fatigue. “I have to get the money for our tickets first. They are not cheap. I will have to ask your Uncle Eugene to help, so I think we will go to Enugu with Kambili and Jaja, perhaps next week. We will stay in Enugu until we are ready to leave, that will also give me an opportunity to talk to your Uncle Eugene about Kambili and Jaja going to boarding school.” Aunty Ifeoma turned to Jaja and me. “I will convince your father in any way I can. Father Amadi has offered to ask Father Benedict to talk to your father, too. I think it is the best thing for you both now, to go to school away from home.”

  I nodded. Jaja got up and walked into the flat. Finality hung in the air, heavy and hollow.

  FATHER AMADI’S LAST DAY sneaked up on me. He came in the morning, smelling of that masculine cologne I had come to smell even when he was not there, wearing the same boyish smile, wearing the same soutane.

  Obiora looked up at him
and intoned, “From darkest Africa now come missionaries who will reconvert the West.”

  Father Amadi started to laugh. “Obiora, whoever gives you those heretical books should stop.”

  His laugh was the same, too. Nothing seemed to have changed about him, yet my new, fragile life was about to break into pieces. Anger suddenly filled me, constricting my air passages, pressing my nostrils shut. Anger was alien and refreshing. With my eyes, I traced the lines of his lips, the flare of his nose, as he spoke to Aunty Ifeoma and my cousins, all the while nursing my anger. Finally, he asked me to walk him to the car.

  “I have to join the chaplaincy council members for lunch; they are cooking for me. But come and spend an hour or two with me, while I do the final cleaning up at the chaplaincy office,” he said.

  “No.”

  He stopped to stare at me. “Why?”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  I was standing with my back to his car. He moved toward me and stood in front of me. “Kambili,” he said.

  I wanted to ask him to say my name in a different way because he did not have the right to say it the old way. Nothing should be the same, was the same anymore. He was leaving. I breathed through my mouth now. “The first day you took me to the stadium, did Aunty Ifeoma ask you to?” I asked.

  “She was worried about you, that you could not hold a conversation with even the children upstairs. But she didn’t ask me to take you.” He reached out to straighten the sleeve of my shirt. “I wanted to take you. And after that first day, I wanted to take you with me every day.”

  I bent down to pick up a grass stalk, narrow like a green needle.

  “Kambili,” he said. “Look at me.”

  But I did not look at him. I kept my eyes on the grass in my hand as if it held a code I could decipher by concentrated staring, as if it could explain to me why I wished he had said he didn’t want to take me even that first time so that I would have a reason to be angrier, so that I would not have this urge to cry and cry.

  He climbed into his car and started it. “I will come back and see you this evening.”

  I stared at his car until it disappeared down the slope that led to Ikejiani Avenue. I was still staring when Amaka walked over to me. She placed her arm lightly on my shoulder.

  “Obiora says you must be having sex, or something close to sex, with Father Amadi. We have never seen Father Amadi look so bright-eyed.” Amaka was laughing.

  I did not know whether or not she was serious. I did not want to dwell on how strange it felt discussing whether or not I had had sex with Father Amadi.

  “Maybe when we are in the university you will join me in agitating for optional celibacy in the priesthood?” Amaka asked. “Or maybe fornication should be permitted all priests once in a while. Say, once a month?”

  “Amaka, please stop it.” I turned and walked to the verandah.

  “Do you want him to leave the priesthood?” Amaka sounded more serious now.

  “He will never leave.”

  Amaka tilted her head thoughtfully, and then smiled. “You never know,” she said, before walking into the living room.

  I copied Father Amadi’s German address over and over in my notebook. I was copying it again, trying at different writing styles, when he came back. He took the notebook from me and closed it. I wanted to say, “I will miss you” but instead I said, “I will write you.”

  “I will write you first,” he said.

  I did not know that tears slipped down my cheeks until Father Amadi reached out and wiped them away, running his open palm over my face. Then he enclosed me in his arms and held me.

  AUNTY IFEOMA COOKED DINNER for Father Amadi, and we all ate the rice and beans at the dining table. I knew that there was much laughter, much talk about the stadium and about remembering, but I did not feel that I was involved. I was busy locking little parts of me up, because I would not need them if Father Amadi was not here.

  I did not sleep well that night; I tossed around so often that I woke Amaka up. I wanted to tell her about my dream where a man chased me down a rocky path littered with bruised allamanda leaves. First the man was Father Amadi, his soutane flying behind him, then it was Papa, in the floor-length gray sack he wore when he distributed ash on Ash Wednesday. But I didn’t tell her. I let her hold and soothe me like a little child, until I fell asleep. I was glad to wake up, glad to see morning stream in through the window in shimmering strips the color of a ripe orange.

  THE PACKING WAS DONE; the hallway looked oddly big now that the bookshelves were gone. In Aunty Ifeoma’s room, only a few things remained on the floor, the things we would use until we all left for Enugu: a bag of rice, a tin of milk, a tin of Boumvita. The other cartons and boxes and books had been cleared up or given away. When Aunty Ifeoma gave some clothes to the neighbors, the woman from the flat upstairs told her, “Mh, why won’t you give me that blue dress you wear to church? After all, you will get more in America!”

  Aunty Ifeoma had narrowed her eyes, annoyed. I was not sure if it was because the woman was asking for the dress or because she had brought up America. But she did not give her the blue dress.

  There was restlessness in the air now, as if we had all packed everything too quickly and too well and we needed something else to do.

  “We have fuel, let’s go for a drive,” Aunty Ifeoma suggested.

  “A good-bye tour of Nsukka,” Amaka said, with a wry smile.

  We piled into the car. It swerved as Aunty Ifeoma turned onto the stretch of road bordered by the faculty of engineering, and I wondered if it would crash into the gutter and then Aunty Ifeoma would not get the fair rate she said a man in town had offered for it. She had also said that the money she would get for the car would pay only for Chima’s ticket, which was half the full price of a ticket.

  Since my dream, the night before, I had had a feeling that something big would happen. Father Amadi would come back; it had to be what would happen. Maybe there was a mistake in his departure date; maybe he had postponed his trip. So as Aunty Ifeoma drove, I looked at the cars on the road, seeking Father Amadi, looking for that pastel-colored small Toyota.

  Aunty Ifeoma stopped at the foot of Odim hill and said, “Let’s climb to the top.”

  I was surprised. I was not sure Aunty Ifeoma had planned to have us climb up the hill; it sounded like something she had said on impulse. Obiora suggested we have a picnic up the hill, and Aunty Ifeoma said it was a good idea. We drove to town and bought moi-moi and bottles of Ribena from Eastern Shop and then came back to the hill. The climb was easy because there were many zigzagging paths. There was a fresh smell in the air and, once in a while, a crackling in the long grass that bordered the paths.

  “The grasshoppers make that sound with their wings,” Obiora said. He stopped by a mighty anthill, with ridges running across the red mud as if they were deliberate designs. “Amaka, you should paint something like this,” he said. But Amaka did not respond; instead, she started to run up the hill. Chima ran after her. Jaja joined them. Aunty Ifeoma looked at me. “What are you waiting for?” she asked, and she raised her wrapper, almost above her knees, and ran after Jaja. I took off, too, feeling the wind rush past my ears. Running made me think of Father Amadi, made me remember the way his eyes had lingered on my bare legs. I ran past Aunty Ifeoma, past Jaja and Chima, and I got to the top of the hill at about the same time as Amaka.

  “Hei!” Amaka said, looking at me. “You should be a sprinter.” She flopped down on the grass, breathing hard. I sat next to her and brushed away a tiny spider on my leg. Aunty Ifeoma had stopped running before she got to the top of the hill. “Nne,” she said to me. “I will find you a trainer, eh, there is big money in athletics.”

  I laughed. It seemed so easy now, laughter. So many things seemed easy now. Jaja was laughing, too, as was Amaka, and we were all sitting on the grass, waiting for Obiora to come up to the top. He walked up slowly, holding something that turned out to be a grasshopper. “It’s so strong,” he s
aid. “I can feel the pressure of its wings.” He spread his palm and watched the grasshopper fly off.

  We took our food into the damaged building tucked into the other side of the hill. It may have once been a storeroom, but its roof and doors had been blown off during the civil war years ago, and it had remained that way. It looked ghostly, and I did not want to eat there, although Obiora said people spread mats on the charred floors to have picnics all the time. He was examining the writings on the walls of the building, and he read some of them aloud. “Obinna loves Nnenna forever.” “Emeka and Unoma did it here.” “One love Chimsimdi and Obi.”

  I was relieved when Aunty Ifeoma said we would eat outside on the grass, since we did not have a mat. As we ate the moi-moi and drank the Ribena, I watched a small car crawl around the base of the hill. I tried to focus, to see who was inside, even though it was too far away. The shape of the head looked very much like Father Amadi’s. I ate quickly and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, smoothed my hair. I didn’t want to look untidy when he appeared.

  Chima wanted to race down the other side of the hill, the side that didn’t have many paths, but Aunty Ifeoma said it was too steep. So he sat down and slithered on his behind down the hill. Aunty Ifeoma called out, “You will use your own hands to wash your shorts, do you hear me?”

  I knew that, before, she would have scolded him some more and probably made him stop. We all sat and watched him slide down the hill, the brisk wind making our eyes water.