Papa-Nnukwu scratched at the stubborn white tufts that clung to his bald head. “Ehye, I expect them tomorrow.”
“They did not come last year,” Jaja said.
“Ifeoma could not afford it.” Papa-Nnukwu shook his head. “Since the father of her children died, she has seen hard times. But she will bring them this year. You will see them. It is not right that you don’t know them well, your cousins. It is not right.”
Jaja and I said nothing. We did not know Aunty Ifeoma or her children very well because she and Papa had quarreled about Papa-Nnukwu. Mama had told us. Aunty Ifeoma stopped speaking to Papa after he barred Papa-Nnukwu from coming to his house, and a few years passed before they finally started speaking to each other.
“If I had meat in my soup,” Papa Nnukwu said, “I would offer it to you.”
“It’s all right, Papa-Nnukwu,” Jaja said.
Papa-Nnukwu took his time swallowing his food. I watched the food slide down his throat, struggling to get past his sagging Adam’s apple, which pushed out of his neck like a wrinkled nut. There was no drink beside him, not even water. “That child that helps me, Chinyelu, will come in soon. I will send her to go and buy soft drinks for you two, from Ichie’s shop,” he said.
“No, Papa-Nnukwu. Thank sir,” Jaja said.
“Ezi okwu? I know your father will not let you eat here because I offer my food to our ancestors, but soft drinks also? Do I not buy that from the store as everyone else does?”
“Papa-Nnukwu, we just ate before we came here,” Jaja said. “If we’re thirsty, we will drink in your house.”
Papa-Nnukwu smiled. His teeth were yellowed and widely spaced because of the many he had lost. “You have spoken well, my son. You are my father, Ogbuefi Olioke, come back. He spoke with wisdom.”
I stared at the fufu on the enamel plate, which was chipped of its leaf-green color at the edges. I imagined the fufu, dried to crusts by the harmattan winds, scratching the inside of Papa-Nnukwu’s throat as he swallowed. Jaja nudged me. But I did not want to leave; I wanted to stay so that if the fufu clung to Papa-Nnukwu’s throat and choked him, I could run and get him water. I did not know where the water was, though. Jaja nudged me again and I still could not get up. The bench held me back, sucked me in. I watched a gray rooster walk into the shrine at the corner of the yard, where Papa-Nnukwu’s god was, where Papa said Jaja and I were never to go near. The shrine was a low, open shed, its mud roof and walls covered with dried palm fronds. It looked like the grotto behind St. Agnes, the one dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.
“Let us go, Papa-Nnukwu,” Jaja said, finally, rising.
“All right, my son,” Papa-Nnukwu said. He did not say “What, so soon?” or “Does my house chase you away?” He was used to our leaving moments after we arrived. When he walked us to the car, balancing on his crooked walking stick made from a tree branch, Kevin came out of the car and greeted him, then handed him a slim wad of cash.
“Oh? Thank Eugene for me,” Papa-Nnukwu said, smiling. “Thank him.”
He waved as we drove off. I waved back and kept my eyes on him while he shuffled back into his compound. If Papa-Nnukwu minded that his son sent him impersonal, paltry amounts of money through a driver, he didn’t show it. He hadn’t shown it last Christmas, or the Christmas before. He had never shown it. It was so different from the way Papa had treated my maternal grandfather until he died five years ago. When we arrived at Abba every Christmas, Papa would stop by Grandfather’s house at our ikwu nne, Mother’s maiden home, before we even drove to our own compound. Grandfather was very light-skinned, almost albino, and it was said to be one of the reasons the missionaries had liked him. He determinedly spoke English, always, in a heavy Igbo accent. He knew Latin, too, often quoted the articles of Vatican I, and spent most of his time at St. Paul’s, where he had been the first catechist. He had insisted that we call him Grandfather, in English, rather than Papa-Nnukwu or Nna-Ochie. Papa still talked about him often, his eyes proud, as if Grandfather were his own father. He opened his eyes before many of our people did, Papa would say; he was one of the few who welcomed the missionaries. Do you know how quickly he learned English? When he became an interpreter, do you know how many converts he helped win? Why, he converted most of Abba himself! He did things the right way, the way the white people did, not what our people do now! Papa had a photo of Grandfather, in the full regalia of the Knights of St. John, framed in deep mahogany and hung on our wall back in Enugu. I did not need that photo to remember Grandfather, though. I was only ten when he died, but I remembered his almost-green albino eyes, the way he seemed to use the word sinner in every sentence.
“Papa-Nnukwu does not look as healthy as last year,” I whispered close to Jaja’s ear as we drove off. I did not want Kevin to hear.
“He is an old man,” Jaja said.
When we got home, Sisi brought up our lunch, rice and fried beef, on fawn-colored elegant plates, and Jaja and I ate alone. The church council meeting had started, and we heard the male voices rise sometimes in argument, just as we heard the up-down cadence of the female voices in the backyard, the wives of our umunna who were oiling pots to make them easier to wash later and grinding spices in wooden mortars and starting fires underneath the tripods.
“Will you confess it?” I asked Jaja, as we ate.
“What?”
“What you said today, that if we were thirsty, we would drink in Papa-Nnukwu’s house. You know we can’t drink in Papa-Nnukwu’s house,” I said.
“I just wanted to say something to make him feel better.”
“He takes it well.”
“He hides it well,” Jaja said.
Papa opened the door then and came in. I had not heard him come up the stairs, and besides, I did not think he would come up because the church council meeting was still going on downstairs.
“Good afternoon, Papa,” Jaja and I said.
“Kevin said you stayed up to twenty-five minutes with your grandfather. Is that what I told you?” Papa’s voice was low.
“I wasted time, it was my fault,” Jaja said.
“What did you do there? Did you eat food sacrificed to idols? Did you desecrate your Christian tongue?”
I sat frozen; I did not know that tongues could be Christian, too.
“No,” Jaja said.
Papa was walking toward Jaja. He spoke entirely in Igbo now. I thought he would pull at Jaja’s ears, that he would tug and yank at the same pace as he spoke, that he would slap Jaja’s face and his palm would make that sound, like a heavy book falling from a library shelf in school. And then he would reach across and slap me on the face with the casualness of reaching for the pepper shaker. But he said, “I want you to finish that food and go to your rooms and pray for forgiveness,” before turning to go back downstairs. The silence he left was heavy but comfortable, like a well-worn, prickly cardigan on a bitter morning.
“You still have rice on your plate,” Jaja said, finally.
I nodded and picked up my fork. Then I heard Papa’s raised voice just outside the window and put the fork down.
“What is he doing in my house? What is Anikwenwa doing in my house?” The enraged timber in Papa’s voice made my fingers cold at the tips. Jaja and I dashed to the window, and because we could see nothing, we dashed out to the verandah and stood by the pillars.
Papa was standing in the front yard, near an orange tree, screaming at a wrinkled old man in a torn white singlet and a wrapper wound round his waist. A few other men stood around Papa.
“What is Anikwenwa doing in my house? What is a worshiper of idols doing in my house? Leave my house!”
“Do you know that I am in your father’s age group, gbo?” the old man asked. The finger he waved in the air was meant for Papa’s face, but it only hovered around his chest. “Do you know that I sucked my mother’s breast when your father sucked his mother’s?”
“Leave my house!” Papa pointed at the gate.
Two men slowly ushered Anikwenwa ou
t of the compound. He did not resist; he was too old to, anyway. But he kept looking back and throwing words at Papa. “Ifukwa gi! You are like a fly blindly following a corpse into the grave!”
I followed the old man’s unsteady gait until he walked out through the gates.
Aunty Ifeoma came the next day, in the evening, when the orange trees started to cast long, wavy shadows across the water fountain in the front yard. Her laughter floated upstairs into the living room, where I sat reading. I had not heard it in two years, but I would know that cackling, hearty sound anywhere. Aunty Ifeoma was as tall as Papa, with a well-proportioned body. She walked fast, like one who knew just where she was going and what she was going to do there. And she spoke the way she walked, as if to get as many words out of her mouth as she could in the shortest time.
“Welcome, Aunty, nno,” I said, rising to hug her.
She did not give me the usual brief side hug. She clasped me in her arms and held me tightly against the softness of her body. The wide lapels of her blue, A-line dress smelled of lavender.
“Kambili, kedu?” A wide smile stretched her dark-complected face, revealing a gap between her front teeth.
“I’m fine, Aunty.”
“You have grown so much. Look at you, look at you.” She reached out and pulled my left breast. “Look how fast these are growing!”
I looked away and inhaled deeply so that I would not start to stutter. I did not know how to handle that kind of playfulness.
“Where is Jaja?” she asked.
“He’s asleep. He has a headache.”
“A headache three days to Christmas? No way. I will wake him up and cure that headache.” Aunty Ifeoma laughed. “We got here before noon; we left Nsukka really early and would have gotten here sooner if the car didn’t break down on the road, but it was near Ninth Mile, thank God, so it was easy finding a mechanic.”
“Thanks be to God,” I said. Then, after a pause I asked, “How are my cousins?” It was the polite thing to say; still, I felt strange asking about the cousins I hardly knew.
“They’re coming soon. They’re with your Papa-Nnukwu, and he had just started one of his stories. You know how he likes to go on and on.”
“Oh,” I said. I did not know that Papa-Nnukwu liked to go on and on. I did not even know that he told stories.
Mama came in holding a tray piled high with bottles of soft and malt drinks lying on their sides. A plate of chin-chin was balanced on top of the drinks.
“Nwunye m, who are those for?” Aunty Ifeoma asked.
“You and the children,” Mama said. “Did you not say the children were coming soon, okwia?”
“You should not have bothered, really. We bought okpa on our way and just ate it.”
“Then I will put the chin-chin in a bag for you,” Mama said. She turned to leave the room. Her wrapper was dressy, with yellow print designs, and her matching blouse had yellow lace sewn onto the puffy, short sleeves.
“Nwunye m,” Aunty Ifeoma called, and Mama turned back.
The first time I heard Aunty Ifeoma call Mama “nwunye m,” years ago, I was aghast that a woman called another woman “my wife.” When I asked, Papa said it was the remnants of ungodly traditions, the idea that it was the family and not the man alone that married a wife, and later Mama whispered, although we were alone in my room, “I am her wife, too, because I am your father’s wife. It shows that she accepts me.”
“Nwunye m, come and sit down. You look tired. Are you well?” Aunty Ifeoma asked.
A tight smile appeared on Mama’s face. “I am well, very well. I have been helping the wives of our umunna with the cooking.”
“Come and sit down,” Aunty Ifeoma said again. “Come and sit down and rest. The wives of our umunna can look for the salt themselves and find it. After all, they are all here to take from you, to wrap meat in banana leaves when nobody is looking and then sneak it home.” Aunty Ifeoma laughed.
Mama sat down next to me. “Eugene is arranging for extra chairs to be put outside, especially on Christmas day. So many people have come already.”
“You know our people have no other work at Christmas than to go from house to house,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “But you can’t stay here serving them all day. We should take the children to Abagana for the Aro festival tomorrow, to look at the mmuo.”
“Eugene will not let the children go to a heathen festival,” Mama said.
“Heathen festival, kwa? Everybody goes to Aro to look at the mmuo.”
“I know, but you know Eugene.”
Aunty Ifeoma shook her head slowly. “I will tell him we are going for a drive, so we can all spend time together, especially the children.”
Mama fiddled with her fingers and said nothing for a while. Then she asked, “When will you take the children to their father’s hometown?”
“Perhaps today, although I don’t have the strength for Ifediora’s family right now. They eat more and more shit every year. The people in his umunna said he left money somewhere and I have been hiding it. Last Christmas, one of the women from their compound even told me I had killed him. I wanted to stuff sand in her mouth. Then I thought that I should sit her down, eh, and explain that you do not kill a husband you love, that you do not orchestrate a car accident in which a trailer rams into your husband’s car, but again, why waste my time? They all have the brains of guinea fowls.” Aunty Ifeoma made a loud hissing sound. “I don’t know how much longer I will take my children there.”
Mama clucked in sympathy. “People do not always talk with sense. But it is good that the children go, especially the boys. They need to know their father’s homestead and the members of their father’s umunna.”
“I honestly do not know how Ifediora came from an umunna like that.”
I watched their lips move as they spoke; Mama’s bare lips were pale compared to Aunty Ifeoma’s, covered in a shiny bronze lipstick.
“Umunna will always say hurtful things,” Mama said. “Did our own umunna not tell Eugene to take another wife because a man of his stature cannot have just two children? If people like you had not been on my side then…”
“Stop it, stop being grateful. If Eugene had done that, he would have been the loser, not you.”
“So you say. A woman with children and no husband, what is that?”
“Me.”
Mama shook her head. “You have come again, Ifeoma. You know what I mean. How can a woman live like that?” Mama’s eyes had grown round, taking up more space on her face.
“Nwunye m, sometimes life begins when marriage ends.”
“You and your university talk. Is this what you tell your students?” Mama was smiling.
“Seriously, yes. But they marry earlier and earlier these days. What is the use of a degree, they ask me, when we cannot find a job after graduation?”
“At least somebody will take care of them when they marry.”
“I don’t know who will take care of whom. Six girls in my first-year seminar class are married, their husbands visit in Mercedes and Lexus cars every weekend, their husbands buy them stereos and textbooks and refrigerators, and when they graduate, the husbands own them and their degrees. Don’t you see?”
Mama shook her head. “University talk again. A husband crowns a woman’s life, Ifeoma. It is what they want.”
“It is what they think they want. But how can I blame them? Look what this military tyrant is doing to our country.” Aunty Ifeoma closed her eyes, in the way that people do when they want to remember something unpleasant. “We have not had fuel for three months in Nsukka. I spent the night in the petrol station last week, waiting for fuel. And at the end, the fuel did not come. Some people left their cars in the station because they did not have enough fuel to drive back home. If you could see the mosquitoes that bit me that night, eh, the bumps on my skin were as big as cashew nuts.”
“Oh.” Mama shook her head sympathetically. “How are things generally at the university, though?”
“We ju
st called off yet another strike, even though no lecturer has been paid for the last two months. They tell us the Federal Government has no money.” Aunty Ifeoma chuckled with little humor. “Ifukwa, people are leaving the country. Phillipa left two months ago. You remember my friend Phillipa?”
“She came back with you for Christmas a few years ago. Dark and plump?”
“Yes. She is now teaching in America. She shares a cramped office with another adjunct professor, but she says at least teachers are paid there.” Aunty Ifeoma stopped and reached out to brush something off Mama’s blouse. I watched every movement she made; I could not tear my ears away. It was the fearlessness about her, about the way she gestured as she spoke, the way she smiled to show that wide gap.
“I have brought out my old kerosene stove,” she continued. “It is what we use now; we don’t even smell the kerosene in the kitchen anymore. Do you know how much a cooking-gas cylinder costs? It is outrageous!”
Mama shifted on the sofa. “Why don’t you tell Eugene? There are gas cylinders in the factory…”
Aunty Ifeoma laughed, patted Mama’s shoulder fondly “Nwunye m, things are tough, but we are not dying yet. I tell you all these things because it is you. With someone else, I would rub Vaseline on my hungry face until it shone.”
Papa came in then, on his way to his bedroom. I was sure it was to get more stacks of naira notes that he would give to visitors for igba krismas, and then tell them “It is from God, not me” when they started to sing their thanks.
“Eugene,” Aunty Ifeoma called out. “I was saying that Jaja and Kambili should spend some time with me and the children tomorrow.”
Papa grunted and kept walking to the door.
“Eugene!”
Every time Aunty Ifeoma spoke to Papa, my heart stopped, then started again in a hurry. It was the flippant tone; she did not seem to recognize that it was Papa, that he was different, special. I wanted to reach out and press her lips shut and get some of that shiny bronze lipstick on my fingers.
“Where do you want to take them?” Papa asked, standing by the door.