𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔⁶

『••✎••』

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
reproduced 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, get 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, 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 thatexposing 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 emfloyer 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 themessenger 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, coffin-
like 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 revvingcar 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, for 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.”“Did you eat any of the native foods sacrificed to idols?”
“No, Father.”
“Did you participate in any pagan rituals?”
“No, Father.” I paused. “But we looked at mmuo. Masquerades.”
“Did you enjoy that?”
I looked up at the photo on the wall and wondered if the Pope himself
had actually signed it. “Yes, Father.”
“You understand that it is wrong to take joy in pagan rituals, because it
breaks the first commandment. Pagan rituals are misinformed superstition,
and they are the gateway to Hell. Do you understand that, then?”
“Yes, Father.”
“For your penance say the Our Father ten times, Hail Mary six times,
and the Apostles’ Creed once. And you must make a conscious effort to
convert everyone who enjoys the ways of heathens.”
“Yes, Father.”
“All right, then, make the Act of Contrition.”
While I recited the Act of Contrition, Father Benedict murmured
blessings and made the sign of the cross.
Papa and Mama were still sitting on the sofa, heads bent, when I came
out. I sat next to Jaja, bent my head, and made my penance.
As we drove home, Papa talked loudly, above the “Ave Maria.” “I am
spotless now, we are all spotless. If God calls us right now, we are going
straight to Heaven. Straight to Heaven. We will not require the cleansing of
Purgatory.” He was smiling, his eyes bright, his hand gently drumming the
steering wheel. And he was still smiling when he called Aunty Ifeoma soon
after we got back home, before he had his tea.
“I discussed it with Father Benedict, and he says the children can go on
pilgrimage to Aokpe but you must make it clear that what is happening there
has not been verified by the church.” A pause. “My driver, Kevin, will take
them.” A pause. “Tomorrow is too soon. The day after.” A long pause. “Oh,
all right. God bless you and the children. Bye.”
Papa put the phone down and turned to us. “You will leave tomorrow, so
go up and pack your things. Pack for five days.”“Yes, Papa,” Jaja and I said together.
“Maybe, anam asi,” Mama said, “they should not visit Ifeoma’s house
empty-handed.”
Papa stared at her as if surprised that she had spoken. “We will put some
food in the car, of course, yams and rice,” he said.
“Ifeoma mentioned that gas cylinders were scarce in Nsukka.”
“Gas cylinders?”
“Yes, cooking gas. She said she uses her old kerosene stove now. You
remember the story of adulterated kerosene that was blowing up stoves and
killing people? I thought maybe you might send one or two gas cylinders to
her from the factory.”
“Is that what you and Ifeoma planned?”
“Kpa, I am just making a suggestion. It is up to you to decide.”
Papa examined Mama’s face for a while. “Okay,” he said. He turned
back to Jaja and me. “Go up and pack your things. You can take twenty
minutes from your study time.”
We climbed the curving stairs slowly. I wondered if Jaja’s stomach
rumbled at the lower part like mine did. It was the first time in our lives that
we would be sleeping outside home without Papa.
“Do you want to go to Nsukka?” I asked when we got to the landing.
“Yes,” he said, and his eyes said that he knew I did, too. And I could not
find the words in our eye language to tell him how my throat tightened at the
thought of five days without Papa’s voice, without his footsteps on the stairs.
THE NEXT MORNING, Kevin brought two full gas cylinders from Papa’s
factory and put them into the boot of the Volvo alongside bags of rice and
beans, a few yams, bunches of green plantains, and pineapples. Jaja and I
stood by the hibiscus bushes, waiting. The gardener was clipping away at the
bougainvillea, taming the flowers that defiantly stuck out of the leveled top.
He had raked underneath the frangipani trees, and dead leaves and pink
flowers lay in piles, ready for the wheelbarrow.
“Here are your schedules for the week you will stay in Nsukka,” Papa
said. The sheet of paper he thrust into my hand was similar to the schedule
pasted above my study desk upstairs, except he had penciled in two hours of“time with your cousins” each day.
“The only day you are excused from that schedule is when you go to
Aokpe with your aunt,” Papa said. When he hugged Jaja and then me, his
hands were shaking. “I have never been without you two for more than a
day.”
I did not know what to say, but Jaja nodded and said, “We will see you in
a week.”
“Kevin, drive carefully. Do you understand?” Papa asked, as we got in
the car.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get petrol on your way back, at Ninth Mile, and don’t forget to bring
me the receipt.”
“Yes, sir.”
Papa asked us to get out of the car. He hugged us both again, smoothed
the back of our necks, and asked us not to forget to say the full fifteen decades
of the rosary during the drive. Mama hugged us one more time before we got
back in the car.
“Papa is still waving,” Jaja said, as Kevin nosed the car up the driveway.
He was looking in the mirror above his head.
“He’s crying,” I said.
“The gardener is waving, too,” Jaja said, and I wondered if he had really
not heard me. I pulled my rosary from my pocket, kissed the crucifix, and
started the prayer.I looked out the window as we drove, counting the blackened hulks
of cars on the roadside, some left for so long they were covered with reddish
rust. I wondered about the people who had been inside, how they had felt just
before the accident, before the smashing glass and crunched metal and
leaping flames. I did not concentrate on any of the glorious Mysteries, and
knew that Jaja did not, either, because he kept forgetting when it was his turn
to start a decade of the rosary. About forty minutes into the drive, I saw a sign
on the roadside that read UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA, and I asked Kevin if
we were almost there.
“No,” he said. “A little while longer.”
Near the town of Opi—the dust-covered church and school signs read
OPI—we came to a police checkpoint. Old tires and nail-studded logs were
strewn across most of the road, leaving only a narrow space. A policeman
flagged us down as we approached. Kevin groaned. Then as he slowed, he
reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a ten-naira note and flung
it out of the window, toward the policeman. The policeman gave a mock
salute, smiled, and waved us through. Kevin would not have done that if Papa
had been in the car. When policemen or soldiers stopped Papa, he spent so
long showing them all his car papers, letting them search his car, anything but
bribe them to let him pass. We cannot be part of what we fight, he often told
us.
“We’re entering the town of Nsukka,” Kevin said, a few minutes later.
We were driving past the market. The crowded roadside stores with their
sparse shelves of goods threatened to spill over onto a thin strip of road
already full of doubleparked cars, hawkers with trays balanced on their heads,
motorcyclists, boys pushing wheelbarrows full of yams, women holding
baskets, beggars looking up from their mats and waving. Kevin drove slowly
now; potholes suddenly materialized in the middle of the road, and he
followed the swerving motion of the car ahead of us. When we came to a
point just past the market where the road had narrowed, eaten away by
erosion at the sides, he stopped for a while to let other cars go by.
“We’re at the university,” he said, finally.
A wide arch towered over us, bearing the words University of Nigeria
Nsukka in black, cut-out metal. The gates underneath the arch were flung
wide open and manned by security men in dark brown uniforms and matching
berets. Kevin stopped and rolled down the windows.“Good afternoon. Please, how can we get to Marguerite Cartwright
Avenue?” he asked.
The security man closest to us, his facial skin creased like a rumpled
dress, asked, “How are you?” before he told Kevin that Marguerite Cartwright
Avenue was very close; we had only to keep straight and then make a right at
the first junction and an almost immediate left. Kevin thanked him and we
drove off. A lawn the color of spinach splashed across the side of the road. I
turned to stare at the statue in the middle of the lawn, a black lion standing on
its hind legs, tail curved upward, chest puffed out. I didn’t realize Jaja was
looking, too, until he read aloud the words inscribed on the pedestal: “‘To
restore the dignity of man.’” Then, as though I could not tell, he added, “It’s
the university’s motto.”
Marguerite Cartwright Avenue was bordered by tall gmelina trees. I
imagined the trees bending during a rainy-season thunderstorm, reaching
across to touch each other and turning the avenue into a dark tunnel. The
duplexes with gravelcovered driveways and BEWARE OF DOGS signs in the front
yard soon gave way to bungalows with driveways the length of two cars and
then blocks of flats with wide stretches of space in front of them instead of
driveways. Kevin drove slowly, muttering Aunty Ifeoma’s house number as if
that would make us find it sooner. It was in the fourth block we came to, a
tall, bland building with peeling blue paint and with television aerials sticking
out from the verandahs. It had three flats on each side, and Aunty Ifeoma’s
was on the ground floor on the left. In front was a circular burst of bright
colors—a garden—fenced around with barbed wire. Roses and hibiscuses and
lilies and ixora and croton grew side by side like a handpainted wreath. Aunty
Ifeoma emerged from the flat in a pair of shorts, rubbing her hands over the
front of her T-shirt. The skin at her knees was very dark.
“Jaja! Kambili!” She barely waited for us to climb out of the car before
hugging us, squeezing us close together so we both fit in the stretch of her
arms.
“Good afternoon, Mah,” Kevin greeted before he went around to open
the boot.
“Ah! Ah!” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Does Eugene think we are starving?
Even a bag of rice?”
Kevin smiled. “Oga said it is to greet you, Mah.”
“Hei!” Aunty yelped, looking into the boot. “Gas cylinders? Oh, nwunye
m should not have bothered herself so much.” Then Aunty Ifeoma did a littledance, moving her arms in rowing motions, throwing each leg in front of her
and stamping down hard.
Kevin stood by and rubbed his hands together in pleasure, as if he had
orchestrated the big surprise. He hoisted a gas cylinder out of the boot, and
Jaja helped him carry it into the flat.
“Your cousins will be back soon, they went out to say happy birthday to
Father Amadi, he’s our friend and he works at our chaplaincy. I have been
cooking, I even killed a chicken for you two!” Aunty Ifeoma laughed and
pulled me to her. She smelled of nutmeg.
“Where do we place these, Mah?” Kevin asked.
“Just leave the things on the verandah. Amaka and Obiora will put them
away later.”
Aunty Ifeoma still held on to me as we entered the living room. I noticed
the ceiling first, how low it was. I felt I could reach out and touch it; it was so
unlike home, where the high ceilings gave our rooms an airy stillness. The
pungent fumes of kerosene smoke mixed with the aroma of curry and nutmeg
from the kitchen.
“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,

『••✎••』