“Let me see if my jollof rice is burning!” Aunty Ifeoma dashed into the kitchen.
I sat down on the brown sofa. The seams of the cushions were frayed and slipping apart. It was the only sofa in the living room; next to it were cane chairs, softened with brown cushions. The center table was cane, too, supporting an oriental vase with pictures of kimono-clad dancing women. Three long-stemmed roses, so piercingly red I wondered if they were plastic, were in the vase.
“Nne, don’t behave like a guest. Come in, come in,” Aunty Ifeoma said, coming out from the kitchen.
I followed her down a short hallway lined with crammed bookshelves. The gray wood looked as though it would collapse if just one more book were added. Each book looked clean; they were all either read often or dusted often.
“This is my room. I sleep here with Chima,” Aunty Ifeoma said, opening the first door. Cartons and bags of rice were stacked against the wall near the door. A tray held giant tins of dried milk and Bournvita, near a study table with a reading lamp, bottles of medicine, books. At another corner, suitcases were piled on top of one another. Aunty Ifeoma led the way to another room, with two beds along one wall. They were pushed together to create space for more than two people. Two dressers, a mirror, and a study desk and chair managed to fit in also. I wondered where Jaja and I would be sleeping, and as if Aunty Ifeoma had read my thoughts, she said, “You and Amaka will sleep here, nne. Obiora sleeps in the living room, so Jaja will stay with him.”
I heard Kevin and Jaja come into the flat.
“We have finished bringing the things in, Mah. I’m leaving now,” Kevin said. He spoke from the living room, but the flat was so small he did not have to raise his voice.
“Tell Eugene I said thank you. Tell him we are well. Drive carefully.”
“Yes, Mah.”
I watched Kevin leave, and suddenly my chest felt tight. I wanted to run after him, to tell him to wait while I got my bag and got back in the car.
“Nne, Jaja, come and join me in the kitchen until your cousins come back.” Aunty Ifeoma sounded so casual, as if it were completely normal to have us visit, as if we had visited so many times in the past. Jaja led the way into the kitchen and sat down on a low wooden stool. I stood by the door because there was hardly enough room in the kitchen not to get in her way, as she drained rice at the sink, checked on the cooking meat, blended tomatoes in a mortar. The light blue kitchen tiles were worn and chipped at the corners, but they looked scrubbed clean, as did the pots, whose lids did not fit, one side slipping crookedly into the pot. The kerosene stove was on a wooden table by the window. The walls near the window and the threadbare curtains had turned black-gray from the kerosene smoke. Aunty Ifeoma chattered as she put the rice back on the stove and chopped two purple onions, her stream of sentences punctuated by her cackling laughter. She seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time because she reached up often to brush away the onion tears with the back of her hand.
Her children came in a few minutes later. They looked different, maybe because I was seeing them for the first time in their own home rather than in Abba, where they were visitors in Papa-Nnukwu’s house. Obiora took off a dark pair of sunglasses and slipped them in the pockets of his shorts as they came in. He laughed when he saw me.
“Jaja and Kambili are here!” Chima piped.
We all hugged in greeting, brief clasps of our bodies. Amaka barely let her sides meet mine before she backed away. She was wearing lipstick, a different shade that was more red than brown, and her dress was molded to her lean body.
“How was the drive down here?” she asked, looking at Jaja.
“Fine,” Jaja said. “I thought it would be longer than it was.”
“Oh, Enugu really isn’t that far from here,” Amaka said.
“We still haven’t bought the soft drinks, Mom,” Obiora said.
“Did I not tell you to buy them before you left, gbo?” Aunty Ifeoma slid the onion slices into hot oil and stepped back.
“I’ll go now. Jaja, do you want to come with me? We’re just going to a kiosk in the next compound.”
“Don’t forget to take empty bottles,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
I watched Jaja leave with Obiora. I could not see his face, could not tell if he felt as bewildered as I did.
“Let me go and change, Mom, and I’ll fry the plantains,” Amaka said, turning to leave.
“Nne, go with your cousin,” Aunty Ifeoma said to me.
I followed Amaka to her room, placing one frightened foot after the next. The cement floors were rough, did not let my feet glide over them the way the smooth marble floors back home did. Amaka took her earrings off, placed them on top of the dresser, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching her, wondering if she knew that I had followed her into the room.
“I’m sure you think Nsukka is uncivilized compared to Enugu,” she said, still looking in the mirror. “I told Mom to stop forcing you both to come.”
“I…we…wanted to come.”
Amaka smiled into the mirror, a thin, patronizing smile that seemed to say I should not have bothered lying to her. “There’s no happening place in Nsukka, in case you haven’t realized that already. Nsukka has no Genesis or Nike Lake.”
“What?”
“Genesis and Nike Lake, the happening places in Enugu. You go there all the time, don’t you?”
“No.”
Amaka gave me an odd look. “But you go once in a while?”
“I…yes.” I had never been to the restaurant Genesis and had only been to the hotel Nike Lake when Papa’s business partner had a wedding reception there. We had stayed only long enough for Papa to take pictures with the couple and give them a present.
Amaka picked up a comb and ran it through the ends of her short hair. Then she turned to me and asked, “Why do you lower your voice?”
“What?”
“You lower your voice when you speak. You talk in whispers.”
“Oh.” I said, my eyes focused on the desk, which was full of things—books, a cracked mirror, felt-tipped pens.
Amaka put the comb down and pulled her dress over her head. In her white lacy bra and light blue underwear, she looked like a Hausa goat: brown, long and lean. I quickly averted my gaze. I had never seen anyone undress; it was sinful to look upon another person’s nakedness.
“I’m sure this is nothing close to the sound system in your room in Enugu,” Amaka said. She pointed at the small cassette player at the foot of the dresser. I wanted to tell her that I did not have any kind of music system in my room back home, but I was not sure she would be pleased to hear that, just as she would not be pleased to hear it if I did have one.
She turned the cassette player on, nodding to the polyphonic beat of drums. “I listen mostly to indigenous musicians. They’re culturally conscious; they have something real to say. Fela and Osadebe and Onyeka are my favorites. Oh, I’m sure you probably don’t know who they are, I’m sure you’re into American pop like other teenagers.” She said “teenagers” as if she were not one, as if teenagers were a brand of people who, by not listening to culturally conscious music, were a step beneath her. And she said “culturally conscious” in the proud way that people say a word they never knew they would learn until they do.
I sat still on the edge of the bed, hands clasped, wanting to tell Amaka that I did not own a cassette player, that I could hardly tell any kinds of pop music apart.
“Did you paint this?” I asked, instead. The watercolor painting of a woman with a child was much like a copy of the Virgin and Child oil painting that hung in Papa’s bedroom, except the woman and child in Amaka’s painting were dark-skinned.
“Yes, I paint sometimes.”
“It’s nice.” I wished that I had known that my cousin painted realistic watercolors. I wished that she would not keep looking at me as if I were a strange laboratory animal to be explained and catalogued.
“Did something hold you gi
rls in there?” Aunty Ifeoma called from the kitchen.
I followed Amaka back to the kitchen and watched her slice and fry the plantains. Jaja soon came back with the boys, the bottles of soft drinks in a black plastic bag. Aunty Ifeoma asked Obiora to set the table. “Today we’ll treat Kambili and Jaja as guests, but from tomorrow they will be family and join in the work,” she said.
The dining table was made of wood that cracked in dry weather. The outermost layer was shedding, like a molting cricket, brown slices curling up from the surface. The dining chairs were mismatched. Four were made of plain wood, the kind of chairs in my classroom, and the other two were black and padded. Jaja and I sat side by side. Aunty Ifeoma said the grace, and after my cousins said “Amen,” I still had my eyes closed.
“Nne, we have finished praying. We do not say Mass in the name of grace like your father does,” Aunty Ifeoma said with a chuckle.
I opened my eyes, just in time to catch Amaka watching me.
“I hope Kambili and Jaja come every day so we can eat like this. Chicken and soft drinks!” Obiora pushed at his glasses as he spoke.
“Mommy! I want the chicken leg,” Chima said.
“I think these people have started to put less Coke in the bottles,” Amaka said, holding her Coke bottle back to examine it.
I looked down at the jollof rice, fried plantains, and half of a drumstick on my plate and tried to concentrate, tried to get the food down. The plates, too, were mismatched. Chima and Obiora used plastic ones while the rest of us had plain glass plates, bereft of dainty flowers or silver lines. Laughter floated over my head. Words spurted from everyone, often not seeking and not getting any response. We always spoke with a purpose back home, especially at the table, but my cousins seemed to simply speak and speak and speak.
“Mom, biko, give me the neck,” Amaka said.
“Didn’t you talk me out of the neck the last time, gbo?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, and then she picked up the chicken neck on her plate and reached across to place it on Amaka’s plate.
“When was the last time we ate chicken?” Obiora asked.
“Stop chewing like a goat, Obiora!” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Goats chew differently when they ruminate and when they eat, Mom. Which do you mean?”
I looked up to watch Obiora chewing.
“Kambili, is something wrong with the food?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, startling me. I had felt as if I were not there, that I was just observing a table where you could say anything at any time to anyone, where the air was free for you to breathe as you wished.
“I like the rice, Aunty, thank you.”
“If you like the rice, eat the rice,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Maybe it is not as good as the fancy rice she eats at home,” Amaka said.
“Amaka, leave your cousin alone,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
I did not say anything else until lunch was over, but I listened to every word spoken, followed every cackle of laughter and line of banter. Mostly, my cousins did the talking and Aunty Ifeoma sat back and watched them, eating slowly. She looked like a football coach who had done a good job with her team and was satisfied to stand next to the eighteen-yard box and watch.
After lunch, I asked Amaka where I could ease myself, although I knew that the toilet was the door opposite the bedroom. She seemed irritated by my question and gestured vaguely toward the hall, asking, “Where else do you think?”
The room was so narrow I could touch both walls if I stretched out my hands. There were no soft rugs, no furry cover for the toilet seat and lid like we had back home. An empty plastic bucket was near the toilet. After I urinated, I wanted to flush but the cistern was empty; the lever went limply up and down. I stood in the narrow room for a few minutes before leaving to look for Aunty Ifeoma. She was in the kitchen, scrubbing the sides of the kerosene stove with a soapy sponge.
“I will be very miserly with my new gas cylinders,” Aunty Ifeoma said, smiling, when she saw me. “I’ll use them only for special meals, so they will last long. I’m not packing away this kerosene stove just yet.”
I paused because what I wanted to say was so far removed from gas cookers and kerosene stoves. I could hear Obiora’s laughter from the verandah.
“Aunty, there’s no water to flush the toilet.”
“You urinated?”
“Yes.”
“Our water only runs in the morning, o di egwu. So we don’t flush when we urinate, only when there is actually something to flush. Or sometimes, when the water does not run for a few days, we just close the lid until everybody has gone and then we flush with one bucket. It saves water.” Aunty Ifeoma was smiling ruefully.
“Oh,” I said.
Amaka had come in as Aunty Ifeoma spoke. I watched her walk to the refrigerator. “I’m sure that back home you flush every hour, just to keep the water fresh, but we don’t do that here,” she said.
“Amaka, o gini? I don’t like that tone!” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Sorry,” Amaka muttered, pouring cold water from a plastic bottle into a glass.
I moved closer to the wall darkened by kerosene smoke, wishing I could blend into it and disappear. I wanted to apologize to Amaka, but I was not sure what for.
“Tomorrow, we will take Kambili and Jaja around to show them the campus,” Aunty Ifeoma said, sounding so normal that I wondered if I had just imagined the raised voice.
“There’s nothing to see. They will be bored.”
The phone rang then, loud and jarring, unlike the muted purr of ours back home. Aunty Ifeoma hurried to her bedroom to pick it up. “Kambili! Jaja!” she called out a moment later. I knew it was Papa. I waited for Jaja to come in from the verandah so we could go in together. When we got to the phone, Jaja stood back and gestured that I speak first.
“Hello, Papa. Good evening,” I said, and then I wondered if he could tell that I had eaten after saying a too short prayer.
“How are you?”
“Fine, Papa.”
“The house is empty without you.”
“Oh.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No, Papa.”
“Call at once if you need anything, and I will send Kevin. I’ll call every day. Remember to study and pray.”
“Yes, Papa.”
When Mama came on the line, her voice sounded louder than her usual whisper, or perhaps it was just the phone. She told me Sisi had forgotten we were away and cooked lunch for four.
When Jaja and I sat down to have dinner that evening, I thought about Papa and Mama, sitting alone at our wide dining table. We had the leftover rice and chicken. We drank water because the soft drinks bought in the afternoon were finished. I thought about the always full crates of Coke and Fanta and Sprite in the kitchen store back home and then quickly gulped my water down as if I could wash away the thoughts. I knew that if Amaka could read thoughts, mine would not please her. There was less talk and laughter at dinner because the TV was on and my cousins took their plates to the living room. The older two ignored the sofa and chairs to settle on the floor while Chima curled up on the sofa, balancing his plastic plate on his lap. Aunty Ifeoma asked Jaja and me to go and sit in the living room, too, so we could see the TV clearly. I waited to hear Jaja say no, that we did not mind sitting at the dining table, before I nodded in agreement.
Aunty Ifeoma sat with us, glancing often at the TV as she ate.
“I don’t understand why they fill our television with secondrate Mexican shows and ignore all the potential our people have,” she muttered.
“Mom, please don’t lecture now,” Amaka said.
“It’s cheaper to import soap operas from Mexico,” Obiora said, his eyes still glued to the television.
Aunty Ifeoma stood up. “Jaja and Kambili, we usually say the rosary every night before bed. Of course, you can stay up as long as you want afterward to watch TV or whatever else.”
Jaja shifted on his chair before pulling his schedule out of his pocket. “Aunty, Papa’
s schedule says we should study in the evenings; we brought our books.”
Aunty Ifeoma stared at the paper in Jaja’s hand. Then she started to laugh so hard that she staggered, her tall body bending like a whistling pine tree on a windy day. “Eugene gave you a schedule to follow when you’re here? Nekwanu anya, what does that mean?” Aunty Ifeoma laughed some more before she held out her hand and asked for the sheet of paper. When she turned to me, I brought mine, folded in crisp quarters, out of my skirt pocket.
“I will keep them for you until you leave.”
“Aunty…,” Jaja started.
“If you do not tell Eugene, eh, then how will he know that you did not follow the schedule, gbo? You are on holiday here and it is my house, so you will follow my own rules.”
I watched Aunty Ifeoma walk into her room with our schedules. My mouth felt dry, my tongue clinging to the roof.
“Do you have a schedule at home that you follow every day?” Amaka asked. She lay face up on the floor, her head resting on one of the cushions from a chair.
“Yes,” Jaja said.
“Interesting. So now rich people can’t decide what to do day by day, they need a schedule to tell them.”
“Amaka!” Obiora shouted.
Aunty Ifeoma came out holding a huge rosary with blue beads and a metal crucifix. Obiora turned off the TV as the credits started to slide down the screen. Obiora and Amaka went to get their rosaries from the bedroom while Jaja and I slipped ours out of our pockets. We knelt next to the cane chairs and Aunty Ifeoma started the first decade. After we said the last Hail Mary, my head snapped back when I heard the raised, melodious voice. Amaka was singing!
“Ka m bunie afa gi enu…”
Aunty Ifeoma and Obiora joined her, their voices melding. My eyes met Jaja’s. His eyes were watery, full of suggestions. No! I told him, with a tight blink. It was not right. You did not break into song in the middle of the rosary. I did not join in the singing, and neither did Jaja. Amaka broke into song at the end of each decade, uplifting Igbo songs that made Aunty Ifeoma sing in echoes, like an opera singer drawing the words from the pit of her stomach.
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