𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔⁷

『••✎••』

with two beds along one wall. They were pushed together to create space for
more than two people. Two dressers, a mirror, and a study desk and chair
managed to fit in also. I wondered where Jaja and I would be sleeping, and as
if Aunty Ifeoma had read my thoughts, she said, “You and Amaka will sleep
here, nne. Obiora sleeps in the living room, so Jaja will stay with him.”
I heard Kevin and Jaja come into the flat.
“We have finished bringing the things in, Mah. I’m leaving now,” Kevin
said. He spoke from the living room, but the flat was so small he did not have
to raise his voice.
“Tell Eugene I said thank you. Tell him we are well. Drive carefully.”
“Yes, Mah.”
I watched Kevin leave, and suddenly my chest felt tight. I wanted to run
after him, to tell him to wait while I got my bag and got back in the car.
“Nne, Jaja, come and join me in the kitchen until your cousins come
back.” Aunty Ifeoma sounded so casual, as if it were completely normal to
have us visit, as if we had visited so many times in the past. Jaja led the way
into the kitchen and sat down on a low wooden stool. I stood by the door
because there was hardly enough room in the kitchen not to get in her way, as
she drained rice at the sink, checked on the cooking meat, blended tomatoes
in a mortar. The light blue kitchen tiles were worn and chipped at the corners,
but they looked scrubbed clean, as did the pots, whose lids did not fit, one
side slipping crookedly into the pot. The kerosene stove was on a wooden
table by the window. The walls near the window and the threadbare curtains
had turned black-gray from the kerosene smoke. Aunty Ifeoma chattered as
she put the rice back on the stove and chopped two purple onions, her stream
of sentences punctuated by her cackling laughter. She seemed to be laughing
and crying at the same time because she reached up often to brush away the
onion tears with the back of her hand.
Her children came in a few minutes later. They looked different, maybe
because I was seeing them for the first time in their own home rather than in
Abba, where they were visitors in Papa-Nnukwu’s house. Obiora took off a
dark pair of sunglasses and slipped them in the pockets of his shorts as they
came in. He laughed when he saw me.
“Jaja and Kambili are here!” Chima piped.
We all hugged in greeting, brief clasps of our bodies. Amaka barely let
her sides meet mine before she backed away. She was wearing lipstick, adifferent shade that was more red than brown, and her dress was molded to
her lean body.
“How was the drive down here?” she asked, looking at Jaja.
“Fine,” Jaja said. “I thought it would be longer than it was.”
“Oh, Enugu really isn’t that far from here,” Amaka said.
“We still haven’t bought the soft drinks, Mom,” Obiora said.
“Did I not tell you to buy them before you left, gbo?” Aunty Ifeoma slid
the onion slices into hot oil and stepped back.
“I’ll go now. Jaja, do you want to come with me? We’re just going to a
kiosk in the next compound.”
“Don’t forget to take empty bottles,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
I watched Jaja leave with Obiora. I could not see his face, could not tell
if he felt as bewildered as I did.
“Let me go and change, Mom, and I’ll fry the plantains,” Amaka said,
turning to leave.
“Nne, go with your cousin,” Aunty Ifeoma said to me.
I followed Amaka to her room, placing one frightened foot after the next.
The cement floors were rough, did not let my feet glide over them the way the
smooth marble floors back home did. Amaka took her earrings off, placed
them on top of the dresser, and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. I sat
on the edge of the bed, watching her, wondering if she knew that I had
followed her into the room.
“I’m sure you think Nsukka is uncivilized compared to Enugu,” she said,
still looking in the mirror. “I told Mom to stop forcing you both to come.”
“I…we…wanted to come.”
Amaka smiled into the mirror, a thin, patronizing smile that seemed to
say I should not have bothered lying to her. “There’s no happening place in
Nsukka, in case you haven’t realized that already. Nsukka has no Genesis or
Nike Lake.”
“What?”
“Genesis and Nike Lake, the happening places in Enugu. You go there
all the time, don’t you?”
“No.”Amaka gave me an odd look. “But you go once in a while?”
“I…yes.” I had never been to the restaurant Genesis and had only been
to the hotel Nike Lake when Papa’s business partner had a wedding reception
there. We had stayed only long enough for Papa to take pictures with the
couple and give them a present.
Amaka picked up a comb and ran it through the ends of her short hair.
Then she turned to me and asked, “Why do you lower your voice?”
“What?”
“You lower your voice when you speak. You talk in whispers.”
“Oh.” I said, my eyes focused on the desk, which was full of things—
books, a cracked mirror, felt-tipped pens.
Amaka put the comb down and pulled her dress over her head. In her
white lacy bra and light blue underwear, she looked like a Hausa goat: brown,
long and lean. I quickly averted my gaze. I had never seen anyone undress; it
was sinful to look upon another person’s nakedness.
“I’m sure this is nothing close to the sound system in your room in
Enugu,” Amaka said. She pointed at the small cassette player at the foot of
the dresser. I wanted to tell her that I did not have any kind of music system in
my room back home, but I was not sure she would be pleased to hear that, just
as she would not be pleased to hear it if I did have one.
She turned the cassette player on, nodding to the polyphonic beat of
drums. “I listen mostly to indigenous musicians. They’re culturally conscious;
they have something real to say. Fela and Osadebe and Onyeka are my
favorites. Oh, I’m sure you probably don’t know who they are, I’m sure
you’re into American pop like other teenagers.” She said “teenagers” as if she
were not one, as if teenagers were a brand of people who, by not listening to
culturally conscious music, were a step beneath her. And she said “culturally
conscious” in the proud way that people say a word they never knew they
would learn until they do.
I sat still on the edge of the bed, hands clasped, wanting to tell Amaka
that I did not own a cassette player, that I could hardly tell any kinds of pop
music apart.
“Did you paint this?” I asked, instead. The watercolor painting of a
woman with a child was much like a copy of the Virgin and Child oil painting
that hung in Papa’s bedroom, except the woman and child in Amaka’s
painting were dark-skinned.“Yes, I paint sometimes.”
“It’s nice.” I wished that I had known that my cousin painted realistic
watercolors. I wished that she would not keep looking at me as if I were a
strange laboratory animal to be explained and catalogued.
“Did something hold you girls in there?” Aunty Ifeoma called from the
kitchen.
I followed Amaka back to the kitchen and watched her slice and fry the
plantains. Jaja soon came back with the boys, the bottles of soft drinks in a
black plastic bag. Aunty Ifeoma asked Obiora to set the table. “Today we’ll
treat Kambili and Jaja as guests, but from tomorrow they will be family and
join in the work,” she said.
The dining table was made of wood that cracked in dry weather. The
outermost layer was shedding, like a molting cricket, brown slices curling up
from the surface. The dining chairs were mismatched. Four were made of
plain wood, the kind of chairs in my classroom, and the other two were black
and padded. Jaja and I sat side by side. Aunty Ifeoma said the grace, and after
my cousins said “Amen,” I still had my eyes closed.
“Nne, we have finished praying. We do not say Mass in the name of
grace like your father does,” Aunty Ifeoma said with a chuckle.
I opened my eyes, just in time to catch Amaka watching me.
“I hope Kambili and Jaja come every day so we can eat like this.
Chicken and soft drinks!” Obiora pushed at his glasses as he spoke.
“Mommy! I want the chicken leg,” Chima said.
“I think these people have started to put less Coke in the bottles,” Amaka
said, holding her Coke bottle back to examine it.
I looked down at the jollof rice, fried plantains, and half of a drumstick
on my plate and tried to concentrate, tried to get the food down. The plates,
too, were mismatched. Chima and Obiora used plastic ones while the rest of
us had plain glass plates, bereft of dainty flowers or silver lines. Laughter
floated over my head. Words spurted from everyone, often not seeking and
not getting any response. We always spoke with a purpose back home,
especially at the table, but my cousins seemed to simply speak and speak and
speak.
“Mom, biko, give me the neck,” Amaka said.
“Didn’t you talk me out of the neck the last time, gbo?” Aunty Ifeomaasked, and then she picked up the chicken neck on her plate and reached
across to place it on Amaka’s plate.
“When was the last time we ate chicken?” Obiora asked.
“Stop chewing like a goat, Obiora!” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Goats chew differently when they ruminate and when they eat, Mom.
Which do you mean?”
I looked up to watch Obiora chewing.
“Kambili, is something wrong with the food?” Aunty Ifeoma asked,
startling me. I had felt as if I were not there, that I was just observing a table
where you could say anything at any time to anyone, where the air was free
for you to breathe as you wished.
“I like the rice, Aunty, thank you.”
“If you like the rice, eat the rice,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Maybe it is not as good as the fancy rice she eats at home,” Amaka said.
“Amaka, leave your cousin alone,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
I did not say anything else until lunch was over, but I listened to every
word spoken, followed every cackle of laughter and line of banter. Mostly, my
cousins did the talking and Aunty Ifeoma sat back and watched them, eating
slowly. She looked like a football coach who had done a good job with her
team and was satisfied to stand next to the eighteen-yard box and watch.
After lunch, I asked Amaka where I could ease myself, although I knew
that the toilet was the door opposite the bedroom. She seemed irritated by my
question and gestured vaguely toward the hall, asking, “Where else do you
think?”
The room was so narrow I could touch both walls if I stretched out my
hands. There were no soft rugs, no furry cover for the toilet seat and lid like
we had back home. An empty plastic bucket was near the toilet. After I
urinated, I wanted to flush but the cistern was empty; the lever went limply up
and down. I stood in the narrow room for a few minutes before leaving to
look for Aunty Ifeoma. She was in the kitchen, scrubbing the sides of the
kerosene stove with a soapy sponge.
“I will be very miserly with my new gas cylinders,” Aunty Ifeoma said,
smiling, when she saw me. “I’ll use them only for special meals, so they will
last long. I’m not packing away this kerosene stove just yet.”I paused because what I wanted to say was so far removed from gas
cookers and kerosene stoves. I could hear Obiora’s laughter from the
verandah.
“Aunty, there’s no water to flush the toilet.”
“You urinated?”
“Yes.”
“Our water only runs in the morning, o di egwu. So we don’t flush when
we urinate, only when there is actually something to flush. Or sometimes,
when the water does not run for a few days, we just close the lid until
everybody has gone and then we flush with one bucket. It saves water.” Aunty
Ifeoma was smiling ruefully.
“Oh,” I said.
Amaka had come in as Aunty Ifeoma spoke. I watched her walk to the
refrigerator. “I’m sure that back home you flush every hour, just to keep the
water fresh, but we don’t do that here,” she said.
“Amaka, o gini? I don’t like that tone!” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Sorry,” Amaka muttered, pouring cold water from a plastic bottle into a
glass.
I moved closer to the wall darkened by kerosene smoke, wishing I could
blend into it and disappear. I wanted to apologize to Amaka, but I was not
sure what for.
“Tomorrow, we will take Kambili and Jaja around to show them the
campus,” Aunty Ifeoma said, sounding so normal that I wondered if I had just
imagined the raised voice.
“There’s nothing to see. They will be bored.”
The phone rang then, loud and jarring, unlike the muted purr of ours
back home. Aunty Ifeoma hurried to her bedroom to pick it up. “Kambili!
Jaja!” she called out a moment later. I knew it was Papa. I waited for Jaja to
come in from the verandah so we could go in together. When we got to the
phone, Jaja stood back and gestured that I speak first.
“Hello, Papa. Good evening,” I said, and then I wondered if he could tell
that I had eaten after saying a too short prayer.
“How are you?”
“Fine, Papa.”“The house is empty without you.”
“Oh.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No, Papa.”
“Call at once if you need anything, and I will send Kevin. I’ll call every
day. Remember to study and pray.”
“Yes, Papa.”
When Mama came on the line, her voice sounded louder than her usual
whisper, or perhaps it was just the phone. She told me Sisi had forgotten we
were away and cooked lunch for four.
When Jaja and I sat down to have dinner that evening, I thought about
Papa and Mama, sitting alone at our wide dining table. We had the leftover
rice and chicken. We drank water because the soft drinks bought in the
afternoon were finished. I thought about the always full crates of Coke and
Fanta and Sprite in the kitchen store back home and then quickly gulped my
water down as if I could wash away the thoughts. I knew that if Amaka could
read thoughts, mine would not please her. There was less talk and laughter at
dinner because the TV was on and my cousins took their plates to the living
room. The older two ignored the sofa and chairs to settle on the floor while
Chima curled up on the sofa, balancing his plastic plate on his lap. Aunty
Ifeoma asked Jaja and me to go and sit in the living room, too, so we could
see the TV clearly. I waited to hear Jaja say no, that we did not mind sitting at
the dining table, before I nodded in agreement.
Aunty Ifeoma sat with us, glancing often at the TV as she ate.
“I don’t understand why they fill our television with secondrate Mexican
shows and ignore all the potential our people have,” she muttered.
“Mom, please don’t lecture now,” Amaka said.
“It’s cheaper to import soap operas from Mexico,” Obiora said, his eyes
still glued to the television.
Aunty Ifeoma stood up. “Jaja and Kambili, we usually say the rosary
every night before bed. Of course, you can stay up as long as you want
afterward to watch TV or whatever else.”
Jaja shifted on his chair before pulling his schedule out of his pocket.
“Aunty, Papa’s schedule says we should study in the evenings; we brought
our books.”Aunty Ifeoma stared at the paper in Jaja’s hand. Then she started to
laugh so hard that she staggered, her tall body bending like a whistling pine
tree on a windy day. “Eugene gave you a schedule to follow when you’re
here? Nekwanu anya, what does that mean?” Aunty Ifeoma laughed some
more before she held out her hand and asked for the sheet of paper. When she
turned to me, I brought mine, folded in crisp quarters, out of my skirt pocket.
“I will keep them for you until you leave.”
“Aunty…,” Jaja started.
“If you do not tell Eugene, eh, then how will he know that you did not
follow the schedule, gbo? You are on holiday here and it is my house, so you
will follow my own rules.”
I watched Aunty Ifeoma walk into her room with our schedules. My
mouth felt dry, my tongue clinging to the roof.
“Do you have a schedule at home that you follow every day?” Amaka
asked. She lay face up on the floor, her head resting on one of the cushions
from a chair.
“Yes,” Jaja said.
“Interesting. So now rich people can’t decide what to do day by day, they
need a schedule to tell them.”
“Amaka!” Obiora shouted.
Aunty Ifeoma came out holding a huge rosary with blue beads and a
metal crucifix. Obiora turned off the TV as the credits started to slide down
the screen. Obiora and Amaka went to get their rosaries from the bedroom
while Jaja and I slipped ours out of our pockets. We knelt next to the cane
chairs and Aunty Ifeoma started the first decade. After we said the last Hail
Mary, my head snapped back when I heard the raised, melodious voice.
Amaka was singing!
“Ka m bunie afa gi enu…”
Aunty Ifeoma and Obiora joined her, their voices melding. My eyes met
Jaja’s. His eyes were watery, full of suggestions. No! I told him, with a tight
blink. It was not right. You did not break into song in the middle of the rosary.
I did not join in the singing, and neither did Jaja. Amaka broke into song at
the end of each decade, uplifting Igbo songs that made Aunty Ifeoma sing in
echoes, like an opera singer drawing the words from the pit of her stomach.
After the rosary, Aunty Ifeoma asked if we knew any of the songs.“We don’t sing at home,” Jaja answered.
“We do here,” Aunty Ifeoma said, and I wondered if it was irritation that
made her lower her eyebrows.
Obiora turned on the TV after Aunty Ifeoma said good night and went
into her bedroom. I sat on the sofa, next to Jaja, watching the images on TV,
but I couldn’t tell the olive-skinned characters apart. I felt as if my shadow
were visiting Aunty Ifeoma and her family, while the real me was studying in
my room in Enugu, my schedule posted above me. I stood up shortly and
went into the bedroom to get ready for bed. Even though I did not have the
schedule, I knew what time Papa had penciled in for bed. I fell off to sleep
wondering when Amaka would come in, if her lips would turn down at the
corners in a sneer when she looked at me sleeping.
I DREAMED THAT A MAKA submerged me in a toilet bowl full of greenish-
brown lumps. First my head went in, and then the bowl expanded so that my
whole body went in, too. Amaka chanted, “Flush, flush, flush,” while I
struggled to break free. I was still struggling when I woke up. Amaka had
rolled out of bed and was knotting her wrapper over her nightdress.
“We’re going to fetch water at the tap,” she said. She did not ask me to
come, but I got up, tightened my wrapper, and followed her.
Jaja and Obiora were already at the tap in the tiny backyard; old car tires
and bicycle parts and broken trunks were piled in a corner. Obiora placed the
containers under the tap, aligning the open mouths with the rushing water.
Jaja offered to take the first filled container back to the kitchen, but Obiora
said not to worry and took it in. While Amaka took the next, Jaja placed a
smaller container under the tap and filled it. He had slept in the living room,
he told me, on a mattress that Obiora unrolled from behind the bedroom door
and covered with a wrapper. I listened to him and marveled at the wonder in
his voice, at how much lighter the brown of his pupils was. I offered to carry
the next container, but Amaka laughed and said I had soft bones and could not
carry it.
When we finished, we said morning prayers in the living room, a string
of short prayers punctuated by songs. Aunty Ifeoma prayed for the university,
for the lecturers and administration, for Nigeria, and finally, she prayed that
we might find peace and laughter today. As we made the sign of the cross, I
looked up to seek out Jaja’s face, to see if he, too, was bewildered that Aunty
Ifeoma and her family prayed for, of all things, laughter.We took turns bathing in the narrow bathroom, with half-full buckets of
water, warmed for a while with a heating coil plunged into them. The spotless
tub had a triangular hole at one corner, and the water groaned like a man in
pain as it drained. I lathered over with my own sponge and soap—Mama had
carefully packed my toiletries—and although I scooped the water with a
shallow cup and poured it slowly over my body, I still felt slippery as I
stepped on the old towel placed on the floor.
Aunty Ifeoma was at the dining table when I came out, dissolving a few
spoonfuls of dried milk in a jug of cold water. “If I let these children take the
milk themselves, it will not last a week,” she said, before taking the tin of
Carnation dried milk back to the safety of her room. I hoped that Amaka
would not ask me if my mother did that, too, because I would stutter if I had
to tell her that we took as much creamy Peak milk as we wanted back home.
Breakfast was okpa that Obiora had dashed out to buy from somewhere
nearby. I had never had okpa for a meal, only for a snack when we sometimes
bought the steam-cooked cowpea-and-palm-oil cakes on the drive to Abba. I
watched Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma cut up the moist yellow cake and did the
same. Aunty Ifeoma asked us to hurry up. She wanted to show Jaja and me
the campus and get back in time to cook. She had invited Father Amadi to
dinner.
“Are you sure there’s enough fuel in the car, Mom?” Obiora asked.
“Enough to take us around campus, at least. I really hope fuel comes in
the next week, otherwise when we resume, I will have to walk to my
lectures.”
“Or take okada,” Amaka said, laughing.
“I will try that soon at this rate.”
“What are okada?” Jaja asked. I turned to stare at him, surprised. I did
not think he would ask that question or any other question.
“Motorcycles,” Obiora said. “They have become more popular than
taxis.”
Aunty Ifeoma stopped to pluck at some browned leaves in the garden as
we walked to the car, muttering that the harmattan was killing her plants.
Amaka and Obiora groaned and said, “Not the garden now, Mom.”
“That’s a hibiscus, isn’t it, Aunty?” Jaja asked, staring at a plant close to
the barbed wire fencing. “I didn’t know there were purple hibiscuses.”

『••✎••』