After Mass, we accompanied Papa to a fund-raising in the multipurpose hall next to the church building. It was for the priest’s new house. An usher with a scarf tied tight across her forehead passed out pamphlets with pictures of the priest’s old house, uncertain arrows pointing at where the roof leaked, where termites had eaten up the door frames. Papa wrote a check and handed it to the usher, telling her he did not want to make a speech. When the M.C. announced the amount, the priest got up and started to dance, jerking his behind this way and that, and the crowd rose up and cheered so loudly it was like the rumblings of thunder at the end of rainy season.
“Let’s go,” Papa said, when the M.C. finally moved on to announce a new donation. He led the way out of the hall, smiling and waving at the many hands that reached out to grasp his white tunic as if touching him would heal them of an illness.
When we got home, all the couches and sofas in the living room were full; some people were perched on the side tables. The men and women all rose when Papa came in, and chants of “Omelora!” filled the air. Papa went about shaking hands and hugging and saying “Merry Christmas” and “God bless you.” Somebody had left the door that led to the backyard open, and the blue-gray firewood smoke that hung heavy in the living room blurred the facial features of the guests. I could hear the wives of the umunna, chattering in the backyard, scooping soup and stew from the huge pots on the fire into bowls that would be taken to serve the people.
“Come and greet the wives of our umunna,” Mama said to Jaja and me.
We followed her out to the backyard. The women clapped and hooted when Jaja and I said, “Nno nu.” Welcome.
They all looked alike, in ill-fitting blouses, threadbare wrappers, and scarves tied around their heads. They all had the same wide smile, the same chalk-colored teeth, the same sundried skin the color and texture of groundnut husks.
“Nekene, see the boy that will inherit his father’s riches!” one woman said, hooting even more loudly, her mouth shaped like a narrow tunnel.
“If we did not have the same blood in our veins, I would sell you my daughter,” another said to Jaja. She was squatting near the fire, arranging the firewood underneath the tripod. The others laughed.
“The girl is a ripe agbogho! Very soon a strong young man will bring us palm wine!” another said. Her dirty wrapper was not knotted properly, and one end trailed in the dirt as she walked, carrying a tray mounded with bits of fried beef.
“Go up and change,” Mama said, holding Jaja and me around the shoulders. “Your aunty and cousins will be here soon.”
Upstairs, Sisi had set eight places at the dining table, with wide plates the color of caramel and matching napkins ironed into crisp triangles. Aunty Ifeoma and her children arrived while I was still changing out of my church clothes. I heard her loud laughter, and it echoed and went on for a while. I did not realize it was my cousins’ laughter, the sound reflecting their mother’s, until I went out to the living room. Mama, who was still in the pink, heavily sequined wrapper she had worn to church, sat next to Aunty Ifeoma on a couch. Jaja was talking to Amaka and Obiora near the étagère. I went over to join them, starting to pace my breathing so that I would not stutter.
“That’s a stereo, isn’t it? Why don’t you play some music? Or are you bored with the stereo, too?” Amaka asked, her placid eyes darting from Jaja to me.
“Yes, it’s a stereo,” Jaja said. He did not say that we never played it, that we never even thought to, that all we listened to was the news on Papa’s radio during family time. Amaka went over and pulled out the LP drawer. Obiora joined her.
“No wonder you don’t play the stereo, everything in here is so dull!” she said.
“They’re not that dull,” Obiora said, looking through the LPs. He had a habit of pushing his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose. Finally he put one on, an Irish church choir singing “O Come All Ye Faithful.” He seemed fascinated by the stereo player and, as the song played, stood watching it as if he would learn the secrets of its chrome entrails by staring hard at it.
Chima came into the room. “The toilet here is so nice, Mommy. It has big mirrors and creams in glass bottles.”
“I hope you didn’t break anything,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“I didn’t,” Chima said. “Can we put the TV on?”
“No,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Your Uncle Eugene is coming up soon so we can have lunch.”
Sisi came into the room, smelling of food and spices, to tell Mama that the Igwe had arrived, that Papa wanted us all to come down and greet him. Mama rose, tightened her wrapper, and then waited for Aunty Ifeoma to lead the way.
“I thought the Igwe was supposed to stay at his palace and receive guests. I didn’t know he visits people’s homes,” Amaka said, as we went downstairs. “I guess that’s because your father is a Big Man.”
I wished she had said “Uncle Eugene” instead of “your father.” She did not even look at me as she spoke. I felt, looking at her, that I was helplessly watching precious flaxen sand slip away between my fingers.
The Igwe’s palace was a few minutes from our house. We had visited him once, some years back. We never visited him again, though, because Papa said that although the Igwe had converted, he still let his pagan relatives carry out sacrifices in his palace. Mama had greeted him the traditional way that women were supposed to, bending low and offering him her back so that he would pat it with his fan made of the soft, straw-colored tail of an animal. Back home that night, Papa told Mama that it was sinful. You did not bow to another human being. It was an ungodly tradition, bowing to an Igwe. So, a few days later, when we went to see the bishop at Awka, I did not kneel to kiss his ring. I wanted to make Papa proud. But Papa yanked my ear in the car and said I did not have the spirit of discernment: the bishop was a man of God; the Igwe was merely a traditional ruler.
“Good afternoon, sir, nno,” I said to the Igwe when I got downstairs. The hairs that peeked out of his wide nose quivered as he smiled at me and said, “Our daughter, kedu?”
One of the smaller sitting rooms had been cleared for him and his wife and four assistants, one of whom was fanning him with a gilded fan although the air conditioner was on. Another was fanning his wife, a woman with yellow skin and rows and rows of jewelry hanging round her neck, gold pendants and beads and corals. The scarf wound around her head flared out in front, wide like a banana leaf and so high that I imagined the person sitting behind her in church having to stand up to see the altar.
I watched Aunty Ifeoma sink to one knee and say, “Igwe!” in the raised voice of a respectful salute, watched him pat her back. The gold sequins that covered his tunic glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Amaka bowed deeply before him. Mama, Jaja, and Obiora shook hands with him, respectfully enclosing his hand in both of theirs. I stood at the door a little longer, to make sure that Papa saw that I did not go close enough to the Igwe to bow to him.
Back upstairs, Mama and Aunty Ifeoma went into Mama’s room. Chima and Obiora stretched out on the rug, playing with the whot cards that Obiora had discovered in his pockets. Amaka wanted to see a book Jaja told her he had brought, and they went into Jaja’s room. I sat on the sofa, watching my cousins play with the cards. I did not understand the game, nor why at intervals one of them yelled “Donkey!” amid laughter. The stereo had stopped. I got up and went into the hallway, standing by Mama’s bedroom door. I wanted to go in and sit with Mama and Aunty Ifeoma, but instead I just stood still, listening. Mama was whispering; I could barely make out the words “there are many full gas cylinders lying around in the factory.” She was trying to persuade Aunty Ifeoma to ask Papa for them.
Aunty Ifeoma was whispering, too, but I heard her well. Her whisper was like her—tall, exuberant, fearless, loud, larger than life. “Have you forgotten that Eugene offered to buy me a car, even before Ifediora died? But first he wanted us to join the Knights of St. John. He wanted us to send Amaka to convent school. He even wanted me to stop wearing makeup! I want
a new car, nwunye m, and I want to use my gas cooker again and I want a new freezer and I want money so that I will not have to unravel the seams of Chima’s trousers when he outgrows them. But I will not ask my brother to bend over so that I can lick his buttocks to get these things.”
“Ifeoma, if you…” Mama’s soft voice trailed off again.
“You know why Eugene did not get along with Ifediora?” Aunty Ifeoma’s whisper was back, fiercer, louder. “Because Ifediora told him to his face what he felt. Ifediora was not afraid to tell the truth. But you know Eugene quarrels with the truths that he does not like. Our father is dying, do you hear me? Dying. He is an old man, how much longer does he have, gbo? Yet Eugene will not let him into this house, will not even greet him. O joka! Eugene has to stop doing God’s job. God is big enough to do his own job. If God will judge our father for choosing to follow the way of our ancestors, then let God do the judging, not Eugene.”
I heard the word umunna. Aunty Ifeoma laughed her throaty laugh before she replied. “You know that the members of our umunna, in fact everybody in Abba, will tell Eugene only what he wants to hear. Do our people not have sense? Will you pinch the finger of the hand that feeds you?”
I did not hear Amaka come out of Jaja’s room and walk toward me, perhaps because the hallway was so wide, until she said, so close that her breath fanned my neck, “What are you doing?”
I jumped. “Nothing.”
She was looking at me oddly, right in the eye. “Your father has come upstairs for lunch,” she finally said.
Papa watched as we all sat down at the table, and then started grace. It was a little longer than usual, more than twenty minutes, and when he finally said, “Through Christ our Lord,” Aunty Ifeoma raised her voice so that her “Amen” stood out from the rest of ours.
“Did you want the rice to get cold, Eugene?” she muttered. Papa continued to unfold his napkin, as though he had not heard her.
The sounds of forks meeting plates, of serving spoons meeting platters, filled the dining room. Sisi had drawn the curtains and turned the chandelier on, even though it was afternoon. The yellow light made Obiora’s eyes seem a deeper golden, like extra-sweet honey. The air conditioner was on, but I was hot.
Amaka piled almost everything on her dish—jollof rice, fufu and two different soups, fried chicken and beef, salad and cream—like someone who would not have an opportunity to eat again soon. Strips of lettuce reached across from the edge of her plate to touch the dining table.
“Do you always eat rice with a fork and a knife and napkins?” she asked, turning to watch me.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on my jollof rice. I wished Amaka would keep her voice low. I was not used to this kind of conversation at table.
“Eugene, you must let the children come and visit us in Nsukka,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “We don’t have a mansion, but at least they can get to know their cousins.”
“The children don’t like to be away from home,” Papa said.
“That’s because they have never been away from home. I’m sure they will like to see Nsukka. Jaja and Kambili, won’t you?”
I mumbled to my plate, then started to cough as if real, sensible words would have come out of my mouth but for the coughing.
“If Papa says it is all right,” Jaja said. Papa smiled at Jaja, and I wished I had said that.
“Maybe the next time they are on holiday,” Papa said, firmly. He expected Aunty Ifeoma to let it go.
“Eugene, biko, let the children come and spend one week with us. They do not resume school until late January. Let your driver bring them to Nsukka.”
“Ngwanu, we will see,” Papa said. He spoke Igbo for the first time, his brows almost meeting in a quick frown.
“Ifeoma was saying that they just called off a strike,” Mama said.
“Are things getting any better in Nsukka?” Papa asked, reverting to English. “The university is living on past glory nowadays.”
Aunty Ifeoma narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever picked up the phone and called me to ask me that question, eh, Eugene? Will your hands wither away if you pick up the phone one day and call your sister, gbo?” Her Igbo words had a teasing lilt, but the steeliness in her tone created a knot in my throat.
“I did call you, Ifeoma.”
“How long ago was that? I ask you—how long ago was that?” Aunty Ifeoma put her fork down. She sat still for a long, tense moment, as still as Papa was, as still as we all were. Finally Mama cleared her throat and asked Papa if the bottle of juice was empty.
“Yes,” Papa said. “Ask that girl to bring more bottled juice.”
Mama got up to call Sisi. The long bottles Sisi brought looked as though they contained an elegant liquid, the way they tapered like a slender, shapely woman. Papa poured for everyone and proposed a toast. “To the spirit of Christmas and to the glory of God.”
We repeated him in a chorus. Obiora’s sentence had a lift at the end, and it came out sounding like a question: “to the glory of God?”
“And to us, and to the spirit of family,” Aunty Ifeoma added, before she drank.
“Does your factory make this, Uncle Eugene?” Amaka asked, squinting to see what was written on the bottles.
“Yes,” Papa answered.
“It’s a little too sweet. It would be nicer if you reduced the sugar in it.” Amaka’s tone was as polite and normal as everyday conversation with an older person. I was not sure if Papa nodded or if his head simply moved as he chewed. Another knot formed in my throat, and I could not get a mouthful of rice down. I knocked my glass over as I reached for it, and the blood-colored juice crept over the white lace tablecloth. Mama hastily placed a napkin on the spot, and when she raised the reddened napkin, I remembered her blood on the stairs.
“Did you hear about Aokpe, Uncle Eugene?” Amaka asked. “It’s a tiny village in Benue. The Blessed Virgin is appearing there.”
I wondered how Amaka did it, how she opened her mouth and had words flow easily out.
Papa spent some time chewing and swallowing before he said, “Yes, I heard about it.”
“I plan to go on pilgrimage there with the children,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Maybe Kambili and Jaja can go with us.”
Amaka looked up quickly, surprised. She started to say something and then stopped.
“Well, the church has not verified the authenticity of the apparitions,” Papa said, staring thoughtfully at his plate.
“You know we will all be dead before the church officially speaks about Aokpe,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Even if the church says it is not authentic, what matters is why we go, and it is from faith.”
Papa looked unexpectedly pleased with what Aunty Ifeoma had said. He nodded slowly. “When do you plan to go?”
“Sometime in January, before the children resume school.”
“Okay. I will call you when we get back to Enugu to arrange for Jaja and Kambili to go for a day or two.”
“A week, Eugene, they will stay a week. I do not have monsters that eat human heads in my house!” Aunty Ifeoma laughed, and her children reproduced the throaty sounds, their teeth flashing like the insides of a cracked palm kernel. Only Amaka did not laugh.
THE NEXT DAY was a Sunday. It did not seem like a Sunday, maybe because we had just gone to church on Christmas day. Mama came into my room and shook me gently, hugged me, and I smelled her mint-scented deodorant.
“Did you sleep well? We are going to the earlier Mass today because your father has a meeting right afterward. Kunie, get into the bathroom, it’s past seven.”
I yawned and sat up. There was a red stain on my bed, wide as an open notebook.
“Your period,” Mama said. “Did you bring pads?”
“Yes.”
I barely let the water run over my body before I came out of the shower, so that I would not delay. I picked out a blue-and-white dress and tied a blue scarf around my head. I knotted it twice at the back of my neck and then tucked the ends of my cornrows underneath. Once, Pap
a had hugged me proudly, kissed my forehead, because Father Benedict told him that my hair was always properly covered for Mass, that I was not like the other young girls in church who let some of their hair show, as if they did not know that exposing your hair in church was ungodly.
Jaja and Mama were dressed and waiting in the living room upstairs when I came out. Cramps racked my belly. I imagined someone with buckteeth rhythmically biting deep into my stomach walls and letting go. “Do you have Panadol, Mama?”
“Cramps abia?”
“Yes. My stomach is so empty, too.”
Mama looked at the wall clock, a gift from a charity Papa donated to, oval shaped and embossed with his name in gold lettering. It was 7:37. The Eucharist fast mandated that the faithful not eat solid food an hour before Mass. We never broke the Eucharistic fast; the table was set for breakfast with teacups and cereal bowls side by side, but we would not eat until we came home.
“Eat a little corn flakes, quickly,” Mama said, almost in a whisper. “You need something in your stomach to hold the Panadol.”
Jaja poured the cereal from the carton on the table, scooped in powdered milk and sugar with a teaspoon, and added water. The glass bowl was transparent, and I could see the chalky clumps the milk made with the water at the bottom of the bowl.
“Papa is with visitors, we will hear him as he comes up,” he said.
I started to wolf the cereal down, standing. Mama gave me the Panadol tablets, still in the silver-colored foil, which crinkled as I opened it. Jaja had not put much cereal in the bowl, and I was almost done eating it when the door opened and Papa came in.
Papa’s white shirt, with its perfectly tailored lines, did little to minimize the mound of flesh that was his stomach. While he stared at the glass bowl of corn flakes in my hand, I looked down at the few flaccid flakes floating among the clumps of milk and wondered how he had climbed the stairs so soundlessly.
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