𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔⁴

『••✎••』

I watched Mama walk toward the kitchen, in her limping gait. Her
braided hair was piled into a net that tapered to a golf-ball-like lump at the
end, like a Father Christmas hat. She looked tired.
“Papa-Nnukwu lives close by, we can walk there in five minutes, we
don’t need Kevin to take us,” Jaja said, as we went back upstairs. He said that
every year, but we always climbed into the car so that Kevin could take us, so
that he could watch us.
As Kevin drove us out of the compound later that morning, I turned to
allow my eyes to stroke, once again, the gleaming white walls and pillars of
our house, the perfect silver-colored water arch the fountain made. Papa-
Nnukwu had never set foot in it, because when Papa had decreed that
heathens were not allowed in his compound, he had not made an exception
for his father.
“Your father said you are to stay fifteen minutes,” Kevin said, as he
parked on the roadside, near Papa-Nnukwu’s thatchenclosed compound. I
stared at the scar on Kevin’s neck before I got out of the car. He had fallen
from a palm tree in his hometown in the Niger Delta area, a few years ago
while on vacation. The scar ran from the center of his head to the nape of his
neck. It was shaped like a dagger.
“We know,” Jaja said.
Jaja swung open Papa-Nnukwu’s creaking wooden gate, which was so
narrow that Papa might have to enter sideways if he ever were to visit. The
compound was barely a quarter of the size of our backyard in Enugu. Two
goats and a few chickens sauntered around, nibbling and pecking at drying
stems of grass. The house that stood in the middle of the compound was
small, compact like dice, and it was hard to imagine Papa and Aunty Ifeoma
growing up here. It looked just like the pictures of houses I used to draw in
kindergarten: a square house with a square door at the center and two square
windows on each side. The only difference was that Papa-Nnukwu’s house
had a verandah, which was bounded by rusty metal bars. The first time Jaja
and I visited, I had walked in looking for the bathroom, and Papa-Nnukwu
had laughed and pointed at the outhouse, a closet-size building of unpainted
cement blocks with a mat of entwined palm fronds pulled across the gaping
entrance. I had examined him that day, too, looking away when his eyes met
mine, for signs of difference, of Godlessness. I didn’t see any, but I was sure
they were there somewhere. They had to be.
Papa-Nnukwu was sitting on a low stool on the verandah, bowls of foodon a raffia mat before him. He rose as we came in. A wrapper was slung
across his body and tied behind his neck, over a once white singlet now
browned by age and yellowed at the armpits.
“Neke! Neke! Neke! Kambili and Jaja have come to greet their old
father!” he said. Although he was stooped with age, it was easy to see how
tall he once had been. He shook Jaja’s hand and hugged me. I pressed myself
to him just a moment longer, gently, holding my breath because of the strong,
unpleasant smell of cassava that clung to him.
“Come and eat,” he said, gesturing to the raffia mat. The enamel bowls
contained flaky fufu and watery soup bereft of chunks of fish or meat. It was
custom to ask, but Papa-Nnukwu expected us to say no—his eyes twinkled
with mischief.
“No, thank sir,” we said. We sat on the wood bench next to him. I leaned
back and rested my head on the wooden window shutters, which had parallel
openings running across them.
“I hear that you came in yesterday,” he said. His lower lip quivered, as
did his voice, and sometimes I understood him a moment or two after he
spoke because his dialect was ancient; his speech had none of the anglicized
inflections that ours had.
“Yes,” Jaja said.
“Kambili, you are so grown up now, a ripe agbogho. Soon the suitors
will start to come,” he said, teasing. His left eye was going blind and was
covered by a film the color and consistency of diluted milk. I smiled as he
stretched out to pat my shoulder; the age spots that dotted his hand stood out
because they were so much lighter than his soil-colored complexion.
“Papa-Nnukwu, are you well? How is your body?” Jaja asked.
Papa-Nnukwu shrugged as if to say there was a lot that was wrong but he
had no choice. “I am well, my son. What can an old man do but be well until
he joins his ancestors?” He paused to mold a lump of fufu with his fingers. I
watched him, the smile on his face, the easy way he threw the molded morsel
out toward the garden, where parched herbs swayed in the light breeze, asking
Ani, the god of the land, to eat with him. “My legs ache often. Your Aunty
Ifeoma brings me medicine when she can put the money together. But I am an
old man; if it is not my legs that ache, it will be my hands.”
“Will Aunty Ifeoma and her children come back this year?” I asked.
Papa-Nnukwu scratched at the stubborn white tufts that clung to his baldhead. “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 PapaNnukwu’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 cardiganon 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 out 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 maltdrinks 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 just 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!”

『••✎••』