𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔³

『••✎••』

“Kambili Achike?” Mother Lucy and the rest of the school had turned to
stare at me.
I cleared my throat, willed the words to come. I knew them, thought
them. But they would not come. The sweat was warm and wet under my
arms.
“Kambili?”
Finally, stuttering, I said, “I pledge to Nigeria, my country/To be faithful,
loyal, and honest…”
The rest of the school joined in, and while I mouthed along, I tried to
slow my breathing. After assembly, we filed to our classrooms. My class went
through the routine of settling down, scraping chairs, dusting desks, copying
the new term timetable written on the board.
“How was your holiday, Kambili?” Ezinne leaned over and asked.
“Fine.”
“Did you travel abroad?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say, but I wanted Ezinne to know
that I appreciated that she was always nice to me even though I was awkward
and tongue-tied. I wanted to say thank you for not laughing at me and calling
me a “backyard snob” the way the rest of the girls did, but the words that
came out were, “Did you travel?”
Ezinne laughed. “Me? O di egwu. It’s people like you and Gabriella and
Chinwe who travel, people with rich parents. I just went to the village to visit
my grandmother.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Why did your father come this morning?”
“I…I…” I stopped to take a breath because I knew I would stutter even
more if I didn’t. “He wanted to see my class.”
“You look a lot like him. I mean, you’re not big, but the features and the
complexion are the same,” Ezinne said.
“Yes.”
“I heard Chinwe took the first position from you last term. Abi?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure your parents didn’t mind. Ah! Ah! You have been coming firstsince we started class one. Chinwe said her father took her to London.”
“Oh.”
“I came fifth and it was an improvement for me because I came eighth
the term before. You know, our class is very competitive. I used to always
come first in my primary school.”
Chinwe Jideze came over to Ezinne’s table then. She had a high, birdlike
voice. “I want to remain class prefect this term, Ezi-Butterfly, so make sure
you vote for me,” Chinwe said. Her school skirt was tight at the waist,
dividing her body into two rounded halves like the number 8.
“Of course,” Ezinne said.
I was not surprised when Chinwe walked past me to the girl at the next
desk and repeated herself, only with a different nickname that she had thought
up. Chinwe had never spoken to me, not even when we were placed in the
same agricultural science group to collect weeds for an album. The girls
flocked around her desk during short break, their laughter ringing out often.
Their hairstyles were usually exact copies of hers—black, thread-covered
sticks if Chinwe wore isi owu that week, or zigzagging cornrows that ended
in a pony tail atop their heads if Chinwe wore shuku that week. Chinwe
walked as if there were a hot object underfoot, raising each leg almost as soon
as her other foot touched the floor. During long break, she bounced in front of
a group of girls as they went to the tuck shop to buy biscuits and coke.
According to Ezinne, Chinwe paid for everyone’s soft drinks. I usually spent
long break reading in the library.
“Chinwe just wants you to talk to her first,” Ezinne whispered. “You
know, she started calling you backyard snob because you don’t talk to
anybody. She said just because your father owns a newspaper and all those
factories does not mean you have to feel too big, because her father is rich,
too.”
“I don’t feel too big.”
“Like today, at assembly, she said you were feeling too big, that was why
you didn’t start the pledge the first time Mother Lucy called you.”
“I didn’t hear the first time Mother Lucy called me.”
“I’m not saying you feel too big, I am saying that is what Chinwe and
most of the girls think. Maybe you should try and talk to her. Maybe after
school you should stop running off like that and walk with us to the gate.
Why do you always run, anyway?”“I just like running,” I said, and wondered if I would count that as a lie
when I made confession next Saturday, if I would add it to the lie about not
having heard Mother Lucy the first time. Kevin always had the Peugeot 505
parked at the school gates right after the bells rang. Kevin had many other
chores to do for Papa and I was not allowed to keep him waiting, so I always
dashed out of my last class. Dashed, as though I were running the 200-meters
race at the interhouse sports competition. Once, Kevin told Papa I took a few
minutes longer, and Papa slapped my left and right cheeks at the same time,
so his huge palms left parallel marks on my face and ringing in my ears for
days.
“Why?” Ezinne asked. “If you stay and talk to people, maybe it will
make them know that you are really not a snob.”
“I just like running,” I said again.I remained a backyard snob to most of my class girls until the end
of term. But I did not worry too much about that because I carried a bigger
load—the worry of making sure I came first this term. It was like balancing a
sack of gravel on my head every day at school and not being allowed to
steady it with my hand. I still saw the print in my textbooks as a red blur, still
saw my baby brother’s spirit strung together by narrow lines of blood. I
memorized what the teachers said because I knew my textbooks would not
make sense if I tried to study later. After every test, a tough lump like poorly
made fufu formed in my throat and stayed there until our exercise books came
back.
School closed for Christmas break in early December. I peered into my
report card while Kevin was driving me home and saw 1/25, written in a hand
so slanted I had to study it to make sure it was not 7/25. That night, I fell
asleep hugging close the image of Papa’s face lit up, the sound of Papa’s
voice telling me how proud of me he was, how I had fulfilled God’s purpose
for me.
DUST-LADEN WINDS of harmattan came with December. They brought the
scent of the Sahara and Christmas, and yanked the slender, ovate leaves down
from the frangipani and the needlelike leaves from the whistling pines,
covering everything in a film of brown. We spent every Christmas in our
hometown. Sister Veronica called it the yearly migration of the Igbo. She did
not understand, she said in that Irish accent that rolled her words across her
tongue, why many Igbo people built huge houses in their hometowns, where
they spent only a week or two in December, yet were content to live in
cramped quarters in the city the rest of the year. I often wondered why Sister
Veronica needed to understand it, when it was simply the way things were
done.
The morning winds were swift on the day we left, pulling and pushing
the whistling pine trees so that they bent and twisted, as if bowing to a dusty
god, their leaves and branches making the same sound as a football referee’s
whistle. The cars were parked in the driveway, doors and boots open, waiting
to be loaded. Papa would drive the Mercedes, with Mama in the front seat and
Jaja and me in the back. Kevin would drive the factory car with Sisi, and the
factory driver, Sunday, who usually stood in when Kevin took his yearly one-
week leave, would drive the Volvo.
Papa stood by the hibiscuses, giving directions, one hand sunk in thepocket of his white tunic while the other pointed from item to car. “The
suitcases go in the Mercedes, and those vegetables also. The yams will go in
the Peugeot 505, with the cases of Remy Martin and cartons of juice. See if
the stacks of okporoko will fit in, too. The bags of rice and garri and beans
and the plantains go in the Volvo.”
There was a lot to pack, and Adamu came over from the gate to help
Sunday and Kevin. The yams alone, wide tubers the size of young puppies,
filled the boot of the Peugeot 505, and even the front seat of the Volvo had a
bag of beans slanting across it, like a passenger who had fallen asleep. Kevin
and Sunday drove off first, and we followed, so that if the soldiers at the
roadblocks stopped them, he would see and stop, too.
Papa started the rosary before we drove out of our gated street. He
stopped at the end of the first decade so Mama could continue with the next
set of ten Hail Marys. Jaja led the next decade; then it was my turn. Papa took
his time driving. The expressway was a single lane, and when we got behind a
lorry he stayed put, muttering that the roads were unsafe, that the people in
Abuja had stolen all the money meant for making the expressways dual-
carriage. Many cars horned and overtook us; some were so full of Christmas
yams and bags of rice and crates of soft drinks that their boots almost grazed
the road.
At Ninth Mile, Papa stopped to buy bread and okpa. Hawkers descended
on our car, pushing boiled eggs, roasted cashew nuts, bottled water, bread,
okpa, agidi into every window of the car, chanting: “Buy from me, oh, I will
sell well to you.” Or “Look at me, I am the one you are looking for.”
Although Papa bought only bread and okpa wrapped in hot banana
leaves, he gave a twenty-naira note to each of the other hawkers, and their
“Thank sir, God bless you” chants echoed in my ear as we drove off and
approached Abba.
The green WELCOME TO ABBA TOWN sign that led off the expressway
would have been easy to miss because it was so small. Papa turned onto the
dirt road, and soon I heard the screech-screech-screech of the low underbelly
of the Mercedes scraping the bumpy, sun-baked dirt road. As we drove past,
people waved and called out Papa’s title: “Omelora!” Mudand-thatch huts
stood close to three-story houses that nestled behind ornate metal gates.
Naked and seminaked children played with limp footballs. Men sat on
benches beneath trees, drinking palm wine from cow horns and cloudy glass
mugs. The car was coated in dust by the time we got to the wide black gates
of our country home. Three elderly men standing under the lone ukwa treenear our gates waved and shouted, “Nno nu! Nno nu! Have you come back?
We will come in soon to say welcome!” Our gateman threw the gates open.
“Thank you, Lord, for journey mercies,” Papa said as he drove into the
compound, crossing himself.
“Amen,” we said.
Our house still took my breath away, the four-story white majesty of it,
with the spurting fountain in front and the coconut trees flanking it on both
sides and the orange trees dotting the front yard. Three little boys rushed into
the compound to greet Papa. They had been chasing our cars down the dirt
road.
“Omelora! Good afun, sah!” they chorused. They wore only shorts, and
each one’s belly button was the size of a small balloon.
“Kedu nu?” Papa gave them each ten naira from a wad of notes he
pulled out of his hold-all. “Greet your parents, make sure you show them this
money.”
“Yes sah! Tank sah!” They dashed out of the compound, laughing loudly.
Kevin and Sunday unpacked the foodstuffs while Jaja and I unpacked the
suitcases from the Mercedes. Mama went to the backyard with Sisi to put
away the cast iron cooking tripods. Our food would be cooked on the gas
cooker inside the kitchen, but the metal tripods would balance the big pots
that would cook rice and stews and soups for visitors. Some of the pots were
big enough to fit a whole goat. Mama and Sisi hardly did any of that cooking;
they simply stayed around and provided more salt, more Maggi cubes, more
utensils, because the wives of the members of our umunna came over to do
the cooking. They wanted Mama to rest, they said, after the stress of the city.
And every year they took the leftovers—the fat pieces of meat, the rice and
beans, the bottles of soft drink and maltina and beer—home with them
afterward. We were always prepared to feed the whole village at Christmas,
always prepared so that none of the people who came in would leave without
eating and drinking to what Papa called a reasonable level of satisfaction.
Papa’s title was omelora, after all, The One Who Does for the Community.
But it was not only Papa who received visitors; the villagers trooped to every
big house with a big gate, and sometimes they took plastic bowls with firm
covers. It was Christmas.
Jaja and I were upstairs unpacking when Mama came in and said, “Ade
Coker came by with his family to wish us a merry Christmas. They are on
their way to Lagos. Come downstairs and greet them.”Ade Coker was a small, round, laughing man. Every time I saw him, I
tried to imagine him writing those editorials in the Standard; I tried to
imagine him defying the soldiers. And I could not. He looked like a stuffed
doll, and because he was always smiling, the deep dimples in his pillowy
cheeks looked like permanent fixtures, as though someone had sunk a stick
into his cheeks. Even his glasses looked dollish: they were thicker than
window louvers, tinted a strange bluish shade, and framed in white plastic. He
was throwing his baby, a perfectly round copy of himself, in the air when we
came in. His little daughter was standing close to him, asking him to throw
her in the air, too.
“Jaja, Kambili, how are you?” he said, and before we could reply, he
laughed his tinkling laugh and, gesturing to the baby, said, “You know they
say the higher you throw them when they’re young, the more likely they are
to learn how to fly!” The baby gurgled, showing pink gums, and reached out
for his father’s glasses. Ade Coker tilted his head back, threw the baby up
again.
His wife, Yewande, hugged us, asked how we were, then slapped Ade
Coker’s shoulder playfully and took the baby from him. I watched her and
remembered her loud, choking cries to Papa.
“Do you like coming to the village?” Ade Coker asked us.
We looked at Papa at the same time; he was on the sofa, reading a
Christmas card and smiling. “Yes,” we said.
“Eh? You like coming to this bush place?” His eyes widened theatrically.
“Do you have friends here?”
“No,” we said.
“So what do you do in this back of beyond, then?” he teased. Jaja and I
smiled and said nothing.
“They are always so quiet,” he said, turning to Papa. “So quiet.”
“They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with
no home training and no fear of God,” Papa said, and I was certain that it was
pride that stretched Papa’s lips and lightened his eyes.
“Imagine what the Standard would be if we were all quiet.” It was a
joke. Ade Coker was laughing; so was his wife, Yewanda. But Papa did not
laugh. Jaja and I turned and went back upstairs, silently.THE RUSTLING OF THE coconut fronds woke me up. Outside our high gates,
I could hear goats bleating and cocks crowing and people yelling greetings
across mud compound walls.
“Gudu morni. Have you woken up, eh? Did you rise well?”
“Gudu morni. Did the people of your house rise well, oh?”
I reached out to slide open my bedroom window, to hear the sounds
better and to let in the clean air tinged with goat droppings and ripening
oranges. Jaja tapped on my door before he came into my room. Our rooms
adjoined; back in Enugu, they were far apart.
“Are you up?” he asked. “Let’s go down for prayers before Papa calls
us.”
I tied my wrapper, which I had used as a light cover in the warm night,
over my nightdress, knotted it under my arm, and followed Jaja downstairs.
The wide passages made our house feel like a hotel, as did the
impersonal smell of doors kept locked most of the year, of unused bathrooms
and kitchens and toilets, of uninhabited rooms. We used only the ground floor
and first floor; the other two were last used years ago, when Papa was made a
chief and took his omelora title. The members of our umunna had urged him
for so long, even when he was still a manager at Leventis and had not bought
the first factory, to take a title. He was wealthy enough, they insisted; besides,
nobody among our umunna had ever taken a title. So when Papa finally
decided to, after extensive talks with the parish priest and insisting that all
pagan undertones be removed from his title-taking ceremony, it was like a
mini New Yam festival. Cars had taken up every inch of the dirt road running
through Abba. The third and fourth floors had swarmed with people. Now I
went up there only when I wanted to see farther than the road just outside our
compound walls.
“Papa is hosting a church council meeting today,” Jaja said. “I heard him
telling Mama.”
“What time is the meeting?”
“Before noon.” And with his eyes he said, We can spend time together
then.
In Abba, Jaja and I had no schedules. We talked more and sat alone in
our rooms less, because Papa was too busy entertaining the endless stream of
visitors and attending church council meetings at five in the morning and
town council meetings until midnight. Or maybe it was because Abba wasdifferent, because people strolled into our compound at will, because the very
air we breathed moved more slowly.
Papa and Mama were in one of the small living rooms that led off the
main living room downstairs.
“Good morning, Papa. Good morning, Mama,” Jaja and I said.
“How are you both?” Papa asked.
“Fine,” we said.
Papa looked bright-eyed; he must have been awake for hours. He was
flipping through his Bible, the Catholic version with the deuterocanonical
books, bound in shiny black leather. Mama looked sleepy. She rubbed her
crusty eyes as she asked if we had slept well. I could hear voices from the
main living room. Guests arrived with dawn here. When we had made the
sign of the cross and gotten down on our knees, around the table, someone
knocked on the door. A middle-aged man in a threadbare T-shirt peeked in.
“Omelora!” the man said in the forceful tone people used when they
called others by their titles. “I am leaving now. I want to see if I can buy a few
Christmas things for my children at Oye Abagana.” He spoke English with an
Igbo accent so strong it decorated even the shortest words with extra vowels.
Papa liked it when the villagers made an effort to speak English around him.
He said it showed they had good sense.
“Ogbunambala!” Papa said. “Wait for me, I am praying with my family.
I want to give you a little something for the children. You will also share my
tea and bread with me.”
“Hei! Omelora! Thank sir. I have not drank milk this year.” The man still
hovered at the door. Perhaps he imagined that leaving would make Papa’s
promise of tea with milk disappear.
“Ogbunambala! Go and sit down and wait for me.”
The man retreated. Papa read from the psalms before saying the Our
Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Apostles Creed. Although we
spoke aloud after Papa said the first few words alone, an outer silence
enveloped us all, shrouding us. But when he said, “We will now pray to the
spirit in our own words, for the spirit intercedes for us in accordance with His
will,” the silence was broken. Our voices sounded loud, discordant. Mama
started with a prayer for peace and for the rulers of our country. Jaja prayed
for priests and for the religious. I prayed for the Pope. Finally, for twenty
minutes, Papa prayed for our protection from ungodly people and forces, for Nigeria and the Godless men ruling it, and for us to continue to grow in
righteousness. Finally, he prayed for the conversion of our Papa-Nnukwu, so
that Papa-Nnukwu would be saved from hell. Papa spent some time
describing hell, as if God did not know that the flames were eternal and
raging and fierce. At the end we raised our voices and said, “Amen!”
Papa closed the Bible. “Kambili and Jaja, you will go this afternoon to
your grandfather’s house and greet him. Kevin will take you. Remember,
don’t touch any food, don’t drink anything. And, as usual, you will stay not
longer than fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, Papa.” We had heard this every Christmas for the past few years,
ever since we had started to visit Papa-Nnukwu. Papa-Nnukwu had called an
umunna meeting to complain to the extended family that he did not know his
grandchildren and that we did not know him. Papa-Nnukwu had told Jaja and
me this, as Papa did not tell us such things. Papa-Nnukwu had told the
umunna how Papa had offered to build him a house, buy him a car, and hire
him a driver, as long as he converted and threw away the chi in the thatch
shrine in his yard. Papa-Nnukwu laughed and said he simply wanted to see
his grandchildren when he could. He would not throw away his chi; he had
already told Papa this many times. The members of our umunna sided with
Papa, they always did, but they urged him to let us visit Papa-Nnukwu, to
greet him, because every man who was old enough to be called grandfather
deserved to be greeted by his grandchildren. Papa himself never greeted Papa-
Nnukwu, never visited him, but he sent slim wads of naira through Kevin or
through one of our umunna members, slimmer wads than he gave Kevin as a
Christmas bonus.
“I don’t like to send you to the home of a heathen, but God will protect
you,” Papa said. He put the Bible in a drawer and then pulled Jaja and me to
his side, gently rubbed the sides of our arms.
“Yes, Papa.”
He went into the large living room. I could hear more voices, more
people coming in to say “Nno nu” and complain about how hard life was,
how they could not buy new clothes for their children this Christmas.
“You and Jaja can have breakfast upstairs. I will bring the things up.
Your father will eat with the guests,” Mama said.
“Let me help you,” I offered.
“No, nne, go upstairs. Stay with your brother.”

『••✎••』