Purple hibiscus

by Чимаманда Нгози Адичи

  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 Me room. Chima and Obiora stretched out on the rug, playing ^ the what cards that Obiora had discovered in his pocket. Amaka wanted to see a book Jaja told her he had brought, 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, numnye 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, goo? Yet Eugene will not let him into this house, will not even greet him. Ojoka! 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 curtain 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 ridi 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 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 the glory of God." We repeated after 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 ever 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 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 rep
roduced 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, go 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, Papa had hugged me proudly and 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.

  "What are you doing, Kambili?"

  I swallowed hard. "I… I…"

  "You are eating ten minutes before Mass? Ten minutes before Mass?"

  "Her period started and she has cramps-" Mama said.

  Jaja cut her short. "I told her to eat corn flakes before she took Panadol, Papa. I made it for her."

  "Has the devil asked you all to go on errands for him?" The Igbo words burst out of Papa's mouth. "Has the devil built a tent in my house?" He turned to Mama. "You sit there and watch her desecrate the Eucharistic fast, maka nnidi?"

  He unbuckled his belt slowly. It was a heavy belt made of layers of brown leather with a sedate leather-covered buckle. It landed on Jaja first, across his shoulder. Then Mama raised her hands as it landed on her upper arm, which was covered by the puffy sequined sleeve of her church blouse. I put the bowl down just as the belt landed on my back.

  Sometimes I watched the Fulani nomads, white jellabas flapping against their legs in the wind, making clucking sounds as they herded their cows across the roads in Enugu with a switch, each smack of the switch swift and precise. Papa was like a Fulani nomad-although he did not have their spare, tall body-as he swung his belt at Mama, Jaja, and me, muttering that the devil would not win. We did not move more than two steps away from the leather belt that swished through the air.

  Then the belt stopped, and Papa stared at the leather in his hand. His face crumpled; his eyelids sagged. "Why do you walk into sin?" he asked. "Why do you like sin?"

  Mama took the belt from him and laid it on the table. Papa crushed Jaja and me to his body. "Did the belt hurt you? Did it break your skin?" he asked, examining our faces. I felt a throbbing on my back, but I said no, that I was not hurt. It was the way Papa shook his head when he talked about liking sin, as if something weighed him down, something he could not throw off.

  We went to the later Mass. But first we changed our clothes, even Papa, and washed our faces.

  We left Abba right after New Year's. The wives of the umunna took the leftover food, even the cooked rice and beans that Mama said were spoiled, and they knelt in the backyard dirt to thank Papa and Mama. The gate man waved with both hands over his head as we drove off. His name was Haruna, he had told Jaja and me a few days before, and in his Hausa-accented English that reversed P and F, he told us that our pather was the best Big Man he had ever seen, the best employer he had ever had. Did we know our pather faid his children's school pees? Did we know our pather had helfed his wipe get the messenger job at the Local Government oppice? We were lucky to have such a pather.

  Papa started the rosary as we drove onto the expressway. We had driven for less than half an hour when we came to a checkpoint; there was a traffic jam, and policemen, many more than was usual, were waving their guns and diverting traffic. We didn't see the cars involved in the accident until we were in the thick of the jam. One car had stopped at the checkpoint, and another had rammed into it from behind. The second car was crushed to half of its size. A bloodied corpse, a man in blue jeans, lay on the roadside. "May his soul rest in peace," Papa said, crossing himself.

  "Look away," Mama said, turning back to us. But Jaja and I were already looking at the corpse. Papa was talking about the policemen, about how they set up the roadblocks in wooded parts, even if it was dangerous for motorists, just so that they could use the bushes to hide the money they extorted from travelers. But I was not really listening to Papa. I was thinking of the man in the blue jeans, the dead man. I was wondering where he was going and what he had planned to do there.

  Papa called Aunty Ifeoma two days later. Perhaps he would not have called her if we had not gone to confession that day. And perhaps then we would never have gone to Nsukka and everything would have remained the same. It was the feast of the Epiphany, a holy day of obligation, so Papa did not go to work. We went to morning Mass, and although we did not usually visit Father Benedict on holy days of obligation, we went to his house afterward.

  Papa wanted Father Benedict to hear our confession. We had not gone in Abba because Papa did not like to make his confession in Igbo, and besides, Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and mighty statues. You would never see white people doing that.

  In Father Benedict's house, Mama and Jaja and I sat in the living room, reading the newspapers and magazines that were spread on the low, coffinlike table as if they were for sale, while Papa talked with Father Benedict in the adjoining study room. Papa emerged and asked us to prepare for confession; he would go first. Even though Papa shut the door firmly, I heard his voice, words flowing into each other in an endless rumble like a revving car engine. Mama went next, and the door remained open a crack, but I could not hear her. Jaja took the shortest time. When he came out, still crossing himself as if he had been in too much of a hurry to leave the room, I asked him with my eyes if he had remembered the lie to Papa-Nnukwu, and he nodded.

  I went into the room, barely big enough to hold a desk and two chairs, and pushed the door to make sure it shut properly. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," I said, sitting on the very edge of the chair. I longed for a confessional, f
or the safety of the wood cubicle and the green curtain that separated priest and penitent. I wished I could kneel, and then I wished I could shield my face with a file from Father Benedict's desk. Face-to-face confessions made me think of Judgment Day come early, made me feel unprepared.

  "Yes, Kambili," Father Benedict said. He sat upright on his chair, fingering the purple stole across his shoulders.

  "It has been three weeks since my last confession," I said. I was staring fixedly at the wall, right below the framed photo of the Pope, which had a signature scrawled underneath. "Here are my sins. I lied two times. I broke the Eucharistic fast once. I lost concentration during the rosary three times. For all I have said and for all I have forgotten to say, I beg pardon from your hands and the hands of God."

  Father Benedict shifted on his chair. "Go on, then. You know it's a sin against the Holy Spirit to willfully keep something back at confession."

  "Yes, Father."

  "Go on, then."

  I looked away from the wall to glance at him. His eyes were the same green shade of a snake I had seen once, slithering across the yard near the hibiscus bushes. The gardener had said it was a harmless garden snake.

  "Kambili, you must confess all your sins."

  "Yes, Father. I have."

  "It is wrong to hide from the Lord. I will give you a moment to think."

  I nodded and stared back at the wall. Was there something I had done that Father Benedict knew about that I did not know? Had Papa told him something? "I spent more than fifteen minutes at my grandfather's house!" I said finally. "My grandfather is a pagan."