𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔⁵

『••✎••』

M

ama shifted on the sofa. “Why don’t you tell Eugene? There are gas
cylinders in the factory…”
Aunty Ifeoma laughed, patted Mama’s shoulder fondly “Nwunye m,
things are tough, but we are not dying yet. I tell you all these things because it
is you. With someone else, I would rub Vaseline on my hungry face until it
shone.”
Papa came in then, on his way to his bedroom. I was sure it was to get
more stacks of naira notes that he would give to visitors for igba krismas, and
then tell them “It is from God, not me” when they started to sing their thanks.
“Eugene,” Aunty Ifeoma called out. “I was saying that Jaja and Kambili
should spend some time with me and the children tomorrow.”
Papa grunted and kept walking to the door.
“Eugene!”
Every time Aunty Ifeoma spoke to Papa, my heart stopped, then started
again in a hurry. It was the flippant tone; she did not seem to recognize that it
was Papa, that he was different, special. I wanted to reach out and press her
lips shut and get some of that shiny bronze lipstick on my fingers.
“Where do you want to take them?” Papa asked, standing by the door.
“Just to look around.”
“Sightseeing?” Papa asked. He spoke English, while Aunty Ifeoma
spoke Igbo.
“Eugene, let the children come out with us!” Aunty Ifeoma sounded
irritated; her voice was slightly raised. “Is it not Christmas that we are
celebrating, eh? The children have never really spent time with one another.
Imakwa, my little one, Chima, does not even know Kambili’s name.”
Papa looked at me and then at Mama, searched our faces as if looking for
letters beneath our noses, above our foreheads, on our lips, that would spell
something he would not like. “Okay. They can go with you, but you know I
do not want my children near anything ungodly. If you drive past mmuo, keep
your windows up.”
“I have heard you, Eugene,” Aunty Ifeoma said, with an exaggerated
formality.
“Why don’t we all have lunch on Christmas day?” Papa asked. “The
children can spend time together then.”“You know that the children and I spend Christmas day with their Papa-
Nnukwu.”
“What do idol worshipers know about Christmas?”
“Eugene…” Aunty Ifeoma took a deep breath. “Okay, the children and I
will come on Christmas day.”
Papa had gone back downstairs, and I was still sitting on the sofa,
watching Aunty Ifeoma talk to Mama, when my cousins arrived. Amaka was
a thinner, teenage copy of her mother. She walked and talked even faster and
with more purpose than Aunty Ifeoma did. Only her eyes were different; they
did not have the unconditional warmth of Aunty Ifeoma’s. They were
quizzical eyes, eyes that asked many questions and did not accept many
answers. Obiora was a year younger, very lightskinned, with honey-colored
eyes behind thick glasses, and his mouth turned up at the sides in a perpetual
smile. Chima had skin as dark as the bottom of a burnt pot of rice, and was
tall for a boy of seven. They all laughed alike: throaty, cackling sounds
pushed out with enthusiasm.
They greeted Papa, and when he gave them money for igba krismas,
Amaka and Obiora thanked him, holding out the two thick wads of naira
notes. Their eyes were politely surprised, to show that they were not
presumptuous, that they had not expected money.
“You have satellite here, don’t you?” Amaka asked me. It was the first
thing she said after we greeted each other. Her hair was cut short, higher at the
front and gradually reducing in an arch until it got to the back of her head,
where there was little hair.
“Yes.”
“Can we watch CNN?”
I forced a cough out of my throat; I hoped I would not stutter.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Amaka continued, “because right now I think we’re
going to visit my dad’s family in Ukpo.”
“We don’t watch a lot of TV,” I said.
“Why?” Amaka asked. It was so unlikely that we were the same age,
fifteen. She seemed so much older, or maybe it was her striking resemblance
to Aunty Ifeoma or the way she stared me right in the eyes. “Because you’re
bored with it? If only we all had satellite so everybody could be bored with
it.”I wanted to say I was sorry, that I did not want her to dislike us for not
watching satellite. I wanted to tell her that although huge satellite dishes
lounged on top of the houses in Enugu and here, we did not watch TV. Papa
did not pencil in TV time on our schedules.
But Amaka had turned to her mother, who was sitting hunched with
Mama. “Mom, if we are going to Ukpo, we should leave soon so we can get
back before Papa-Nnukwu falls asleep.”
Aunty Ifeoma rose. “Yes, nne, we should leave.”
She held Chima’s hand as they all walked downstairs. Amaka said
something, pointing at our banister, with its heavy handcarved detail, and
Obiora laughed. She did not turn to say good-bye to me, although the boys
did and Aunty Ifeoma waved and said, “I’ll see you and Jaja tomorrow.”
AUNTY IFEOMA DROVE into the compound just as we finished breakfast.
When she barged into the dining room upstairs, I imagined a proud ancient
forebear, walking miles to fetch water in homemade clay pots, nursing babies
until they walked and talked, fighting wars with machetes sharpened on sun-
warmed stone. She filled a room. “Are you ready, Jaja and Kambili?” she
asked. “Nwunye m, will you not come with us?”
Mama shook her head. “You know Eugene likes me to stay around.”
“Kambili, I think you will be more comfortable in trousers,” Aunty
Ifeoma said as we walked to the car.
“I’m fine, Aunty,” I said. I wondered why I did not tell her that all my
skirts stopped well past my knees, that I did not own any trousers because it
was sinful for a woman to wear trousers.
Her Peugeot 504 station wagon was white and rusted to an unpleasant
brown at the fenders. Amaka was seated in the front; Obiora and Chima were
in the back seat. Jaja and I climbed into the middle seats. Mama stood
watching until the car disappeared from her sight. I knew because I felt her
eyes, felt her presence. The car made rattling sounds as if some bolts had
come loose and were shaking with every rise and fall of the bumpy road.
There were gaping rectangular spaces on the dashboard instead of air-
conditioner vents, so the windows were kept down. Dust sailed across my
mouth, into my eyes and nose.
“We’re going to pick up Papa-Nnukwu, he will come with us,” Aunty
Ifeoma said.I felt a lurch in my stomach and I glanced at Jaja. His eyes met mine.
What would we tell Papa? Jaja looked away; he did not have an answer.
Before Aunty Ifeoma stopped the engine in front of the mud-and-thatch-
enclosed compound, Amaka had opened the front door and bounded out. “I’ll
fetch Papa-Nnukwu!”
The boys climbed out of the car and followed Amaka past the small
wooden gate.
“Don’t you want to come out?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, turning to Jaja and
me.
I looked away. Jaja was sitting as still as I was.
“You don’t want to come into your Papa-Nnukwu’s compound? But
didn’t you come to greet him two days ago?” Aunty Ifeoma widened her eyes
to stare at us.
“We are not allowed to come here after we’ve greeted him,” Jaja said
“What kind of nonsense is that, eh?” Aunty Ifeoma stopped then,
perhaps remembering that the rules were not ours. “Tell me, why do you think
your father doesn’t want you here?”
“I don’t know,” Jaja said.
I sucked my tongue to unfreeze it, tasting the gritty dust. “Because Papa-
Nnukwu is a pagan.” Papa would be proud that I had said that.
“Your Papa-Nnukwu is not a pagan, Kambili, he is a traditionalist,”
Aunty Ifeoma said.
I stared at her. Pagan, traditionalist, what did it matter? He was not
Catholic, that was all; he was not of the faith. He was one of the people whose
conversion we prayed for so that they did not end in the everlasting torment
of hellfire.
We sat silently until the gate swung open and Amaka came out, walking
close enough to Papa-Nnukwu to support him if he needed it. The boys
walked behind them. Papa-Nnukwu wore a loose print shirt and a pair of
knee-length khaki shorts. I had never seen him in anything but the threadbare
wrappers that were wound around his body when we visited him.
“I got him those shorts,” Aunty Ifeoma said, with a laugh. “See how he
looks so youthful, who would believe he is eighty?”
Amaka helped Papa-Nnukwu get into the front seat, and then she got inthe middle with us.
“Papa-Nnukwu, good afternoon sir,” Jaja and I greeted.
“Kambili, Jaja, I see you again before you go back to the city? Ehye, it is
a sign that I am going soon to meet the ancestors.”
“Nna anyi, are you not tired of predicting your death?” Aunty Ifeoma
said, starting the engine. “Let us hear something new!” She called him nna
anyi, our father. I wondered if Papa used to call him that and what Papa would
call him now if they spoke to each other.
“He likes to talk about dying soon,” Amaka said, in amused English. “He
thinks that will get us to do things for him,”
“Dying soon indeed. He’ll be here when we are as old as he is now,”
Obiora said, in equally amused English.
“What are those children saying, gbo, Ifeoma?” Papa-Nnukwu asked.
“Are they conspiring to share my gold and many lands? Will they not wait for
me to go first?”
“If you had gold and lands, we would have killed you ourselves years
ago,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
My cousins laughed, and Amaka glanced at Jaja and me, perhaps
wondering why we did not laugh, too. I wanted to smile, but we were driving
past our house just then, and the sight of the looming black gates and white
walls stiffened my lips.
“This is what our people say to the High God, the Chukwu,” Papa-
Nnukwu said. “Give me both wealth and a child, but if I must choose one,
give me a child because when my child grows, so will my wealth.” Papa-
Nnukwu stopped, turned to look back toward our house. “Nekenem, look at
me. My son owns that house that can fit in every man in Abba, and yet many
times I have nothing to put on my plate. I should not have let him follow
those missionaries.”
“Nna anyi,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “It was not the missionaries. Did I not
go to the missionary school, too?”
“But you are a woman. You do not count.”
“Eh? So I don’t count? Has Eugene ever asked about your aching leg? If
I do not count, then I will stop asking if you rose well in the morning.”
Papa-Nnukwu chuckled. “Then my spirit will haunt you when I join the
ancestors.”“It will haunt Eugene first.”
“I joke with you, nwa m. Where would I be today if my chi had not
given me a daughter?” Papa Nnukwu paused. “My spirit will intercede for
you, so that Chukwu will send a good man to take care of you and the
children.”
“Let your spirit ask Chukwu to hasten my promotion to senior lecturer,
that is all I ask,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
Papa-Nnukwu did not reply for a while, and I wondered if the mix of
high life music from the car radio and the rattling of the loose screws and the
harmattan haze had eased him into sleep.
“Still, I say it was the missionaries that misled my son,” he said, startling
me.
“We have heard this many times. Tell us something else,” Aunty Ifeoma
said. But Papa-Nnukwu kept talking as though he had not heard her.
“I remember the first one that came to Abba, the one they called Fada
John. His face was red like palm oil; they say our type of sun does not shine
in the white man’s land. He had a helper, a man from Nimo called Jude. In the
afternoon they gathered the children under the ukwa tree in the mission and
taught them their religion. I did not join them, kpa, but I went sometimes to
see what they were doing. One day I said to them, Where is this god you
worship? They said he was like Chukwu, that he was in the sky. I asked then,
Who is the person that was killed, the person that hangs on the wood outside
the mission? They said he was the son, but that the son and the father are
equal. It was then that I knew that the white man was mad. The father and the
son are equal? Tufia! Do you not see? That is why Eugene can disregard me,
because he thinks we are equal.”
My cousins chuckled. So did Aunty Ifeoma, who soon stopped and said
to Papa-Nnukwu, “It is enough, close your mouth and rest. We are almost
there and you will need your energy to tell the children about the mmuo.”
“Papa-Nnukwu, are you comfortable?” Amaka asked, leaning across
toward the front seat. “Do you want me to adjust your seat, to make more
room for you?”
“No, I am fine. I am an old man now and my height is gone. I would not
have fit in this car in my prime. In those days, I plucked icheku from the trees
by just reaching out high; I did not need to climb.”
“Of course,” Aunty Ifeoma said, laughing again. “And could you notreach out and touch the sky, too?”
She laughed so easily, so often. They all did, even little Chima.
When we got to Ezi Icheke, cars lined the road almost bumper to
bumper. The crowds that pressed around the cars were so dense there was no
space between people and they blended into one another, wrappers blended
into T-shirts, trousers into skirts, dresses into shirts. Aunty Ifeoma finally
found a spot and eased the station wagon in. The mmuo had started to walk
past, and often a long line of cars waited for an mmuo to walk past so they
could drive on. Hawkers were at every corner, with glass-enclosed cases of
akara and suya and browned chicken drumsticks, with trays of peeled
oranges, with coolers the size of bathtubs full of Walls banana ice cream. It
was like a vibrant painting that had come alive. I had never been to see
mmuo, to sit in a stationary car alongside thousands of people who had all
come to watch. Papa had driven us past the crowds at Ezi Icheke once, some
years ago, and he muttered about ignorant people participating in the ritual of
pagan masquerades. He said that the stories about mmuo, that they were
spirits who had climbed out of ant holes, that they could make chairs run and
baskets hold water, were all devilish folklore. Devilish Folklore. It sounded
dangerous the way Papa said it.
“Look at this,” Papa-Nnukwu said. “This is a woman spirit, and the
women mmuo are harmless. They do not even go near the big ones at the
festival.” The mmuo he pointed to was small; its carved wooden face had
angular, pretty features and rouged lips. It stopped often to dance, wiggling
this way and that, so that the string of beads around its waist swayed and
rippled. The crowds nearby cheered, and some people threw money toward it.
Little boys—the followers of the mmuo who were playing music with metal
ogenes and wooden ichakas—picked up the crumpled naira notes. They had
hardly passed us when Papa Nnukwu shouted, “Look away! Women cannot
look at this one!”
The mmuo making its way down the road was surrounded by a few
elderly men who rang a shrill bell as the mmuo walked. Its mask was a real,
grimacing human skull with sunken eye sockets. A squirming tortoise was
tied to its forehead. A snake and three dead chickens hung from its grass-
covered body, swinging as the mmuo walked. The crowds near the road
moved back quickly, fearfully. A few women turned and dashed into nearby
compounds.
Aunty Ifeoma looked amused, but she turned her head away. “Don’t
look, girls. Let’s humor your grandfather,” she said in English. Amaka hadalready looked away. I looked away, too, toward the crowd of people that
pressed around the car. It was sinful, deferring to a heathen masquerade. But
at least I had looked at it very briefly, so maybe it would technically not be
deferring to a heathen masquerade.
“That is our agwonatumbe,” Papa-Nnukwu said, proudly, after the mmuo
had walked past. “It is the most powerful mmuo in our parts, and all the
neighboring villages fear Abba because of it. At last year’s Aro festival,
agwonatumbe raised a staff and all the other mmuo turned and ran! They
didn’t even wait to see what would happen!”
“Look!” Obiora pointed at another mmuo moving down the road. It was
like a floating white cloth, flat, taller than the huge avocado tree in our yard in
Enugu. Papa-Nnukwu grunted as the mmuo went by. It was eerie, watching it,
and I thought then of chairs running, their four legs knocking together, of
water being held in a basket, of human forms climbing out of ant holes.
“How do they do that, Papa-Nnukwu? How do people get inside that
one?” Jaja asked.
“Shh! These are mmuo, spirits! Don’t speak like a woman!” Papa-
Nnukwu snapped, turning to glare at Jaja.
Aunty Ifeoma laughed and spoke in English. “Jaja, you’re not supposed
to say there are people in there. Didn’t you know that?”
“No,” Jaja said.
She was watching Jaja. “You didn’t do the ima mmuo, did you? Obiora
did it two years ago in his father’s hometown.”
“No, I didn’t,” Jaja mumbled.
I looked at Jaja and wondered if the dimness in his eyes was shame. I
suddenly wished, for him, that he had done the ima mmuo, the initiation into
the spirit world. I knew very little about it; women were not supposed to
know anything at all, since it was the first step toward the initiation to
manhood. But Jaja once told me that he heard that boys were flogged and
made to bathe in the presence of a taunting crowd. The only time Papa had
talked about ima mmuo was to say that the Christians who let their sons do it
were confused, that they would end up in hellfire.
We left Ezi Icheke soon afterward. Aunty Ifeoma dropped off a sleepy
Papa-Nnukwu first; his good eye was half closed while his going-blind eye
stayed open, the film covering it looked thicker now, like concentrated milk.
When Aunty Ifeoma stopped inside our compound, she asked her children ifthey wanted to come into the house, and Amaka said no, in a loud voice that
seemed to prompt her brothers to say the same. Aunty Ifeoma took us in,
waved to Papa, who was in the middle of a meeting, and hugged Jaja and me
in her tight way before leaving.
That night, I dreamed that I was laughing, but it did not sound like my
laughter, although I was not sure what my laughter sounded like. It was
cackling and throaty and enthusiastic, like Aunty Ifeoma’s.