𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔⁸

『••✎••』

Aunty Ifeoma laughed and touched the flower, colored a deep shade of
purple that was almost blue. “Everybody has that reaction the first time. My
good friend Phillipa is a lecturer in botany. She did a lot of experimental work
while she was here. Look, here’s white ixora, but it doesn’t bloom as fully as
the red.”
Jaja joined Aunty Ifeoma, while we stood watching them.
“O maka, so beautiful,” Jaja said. He was running a finger over a flower
petal. Aunty Ifeoma’s laughter lengthened to a few more syllables.
“Yes, it is. I had to fence my garden because the neighborhood children
came in and plucked many of the more unusual flowers. Now I only let in the
altar girls from our church or the Protestant church.”
“Mom, o zugo. Let’s go,” Amaka said. But Aunty Ifeoma spent a little
longer showing Jaja her flowers before we piled into the station wagon and
she drove off. The street she turned into was steep and she switched the
ignition off and let the car roll, loose bolts rattling. “To save fuel,” she said,
turning briefly to Jaja and me.
The houses we drove past had sunflower hedges, and the palm-size
flowers brightened the foliage in big yellow polka dots. The hedges had many
gaping holes, so I could see the backyards of the houses—the metal water
tanks balanced on unpainted cement blocks, the old tire swings hanging from
guava trees, the clothes spread out on lines tied tree to tree. At the end of the
street, Aunty Ifeoma turned the ignition on because the road had become
level.
“That’s the university primary school,” she said. “That’s where Chima
goes. It used to be so much better, but now look at all the missing louvers in
the windows, look at the dirty buildings.”
The wide schoolyard, enclosed by a trimmed whistling pine hedge, was
cluttered with long buildings as if they had all sprung up at will, unplanned.
Aunty Ifeoma pointed at a building next to the school, the Institute of African
Studies, where her office was and where she taught most of her classes. The
building was old; I could tell from the color and from the windows, coated
with the dust of so many harmattans that they would never shine again. Aunty
Ifeoma drove through a roundabout planted with pink periwinkle flowers and
lined with bricks painted alternating black and white. On the side of the road,
a field stretched out like green bed linen, dotted by mango trees with faded
leaves struggling to retain their color against the drying wind.
“That’s the field where we have our bazaars,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Andover there are female hostels. There’s Mary Slessor Hall. Over there is
Okpara Hall, and this is Bello Hall, the most famous hostel, where Amaka has
sworn she will live when she enters the university and launches her activist
movements.”
Amaka laughed but did not dispute Aunty Ifeoma.
“Maybe you two will be together, Kambili.”
I nodded stiffly, although Aunty Ifeoma could not see me. I had never
thought about the university, where I would go or what I would study. When
the time came, Papa would decide.
Aunty Ifeoma horned and waved at two balding men in tie-dye shirts
standing at a corner as she turned. She switched the ignition off again, and the
car hurtled down the street. Gmelina and dogonyaro trees stood firmly on
either side. The sharp, astringent scent of the dogonyaro leaves filled the car,
and Amaka breathed deeply and said they cured malaria. We were in a
residential area, driving past bungalows in wide compounds with rose bushes
and faded lawns and fruit trees. The street gradually lost its tarred smoothness
and its cultivated hedges, and the houses became low and narrow, their front
doors so close together that you could stand at one, stretch out, and touch the
next door. There was no pretense at hedges here, no pretense at separation or
privacy, just low buildings side by side amid a scattering of stunted shrubs
and cashew trees. These were the junior-staff quarters, where the secretaries
and drivers lived, Aunty Ifeoma explained, and Amaka added, “If they are
lucky enough to get it.”
We had just driven past the buildings when Aunty Ifeoma pointed to the
right and said, “There is Odim hill. The view from the top is breathtaking,
when you stand there, you see just how God laid out the hills and valleys, ezi
okwu.”
When she made a U-turn and went back the way we had come, I let my
mind drift, imagining God laying out the hills of Nsukka with his wide white
hands, crescent-moon shadows underneath his nails just like Father
Benedict’s. We drove past the sturdy trees around the faculty of engineering,
past the vast mango-filled fields around the female hostels. Aunty Ifeoma
turned the opposite way when she got close to her street. She wanted to show
us the other side of Marguerite Cartwright Avenue, where the seasoned
professors lived, with the duplexes hemmed in by gravely driveways.
“I hear that when they first built these houses, some of the white
professors—all the professors were white back then—wanted chimneys andfireplaces,” Aunty Ifeoma said, with the same kind of indulgent laugh that
Mama let out when she talked about people who went to witch doctors. She
then pointed to the vice chancellor’s lodge, to the high walls surrounding it,
and said it used to have well-tended hedges of cherry and ixora until rioting
students jumped over the hedges and burned a car in the compound.
“What was the riot about?” Jaja asked.
“Light and water,” Obiora said, and I looked at him.
“There was no light and no water for a month,” Aunty Ifeoma added.
“The students said they could not study and asked if the exams could be
rescheduled, but they were refused.”
“The walls are hideous,” Amaka said, in English, and I wondered what
she would think of our compound walls back home, if she ever visited us. The
V.C.’s walls were not very high; I could see the big duplex that nestled behind
a canopy of trees with greenish-yellow leaves. “Putting up walls is a
superficial fix, anyway,” she continued. “If I were the V.C., the students
would not riot. They would have water and light.”
“If some Big Man in Abuja has stolen the money, is the V.C. supposed to
vomit money for Nsukka?” Obiora asked. I turned to watch him, imagining
myself at fourteen, imagining myself now.
“I wouldn’t mind somebody vomiting some money for me right now,”
Aunty Ifeoma said, laughing in that proud-coachwatching-the-team way.
“We’ll go into town to see if there is any decently priced ube in the market. I
know Father Amadi likes ube, and we have some corn at home to go with it.”
“Will the fuel make it, Mom?” Obiora asked.
“Amarom, we can try.”
Aunty Ifeoma rolled the car down the road that led to the university
entrance gates. Jaja turned to the statue of the preening lion as we drove past
it, his lips moving soundlessly. To restore the dignity of man. Obiora was
reading the plaque, too. He let out a short cackle and asked, “But when did
man lose his dignity?”
Outside the gate, Aunty Ifeoma started the ignition again. When the car
shuddered without starting, she muttered, “Blessed Mother, please not now,”
and tried again. The car only whined. Somebody horned behind us, and I
turned to look at the woman in the yellow Peugeot 504. She came out and
walked toward us; she wore a pair of culottes that flapped around her calves,
which were lumpy like sweet potatoes.“My own car stopped near Eastern Shop yesterday.” The woman stood at
Aunty Ifeoma’s window, her hair in a riotous curly perm swaying in the wind.
“My son sucked one liter from my husband’s car this morning, just so I can
get to the market. O di egwu. I hope fuel comes soon.”
“Let us wait and see, my sister. How is the family?” Aunty Ifeoma
asked.
“We are well. Go well.”
“Let’s push it,” Obiora suggested, already opening the car door.
“Wait.” Aunty Ifeoma turned the key again, and the car shook and then
started. She drove off, with a screech, as if she did not want to slow down and
give the car another chance to stop.
We stopped beside an ube hawker by the roadside, her bluish fruits
displayed in pyramids on an enamel tray. Aunty Ifeoma gave Amaka some
crumpled notes from her purse. Amaka bargained with the trader for a while,
and then she smiled and pointed at the pyramids she wanted. I wondered what
it felt like to do that.
BACK IN THE FLAT, I joined Aunty Ifeoma and Amaka in the kitchen while
Jaja went off with Obiora to play football with the children from the flats
upstairs. Aunty Ifeoma got one of the huge yams we had brought from home.
Amaka spread newspaper sheets on the floor to slice the tuber; it was easier
than picking it up and placing it on the counter. When Amaka put the yam
slices in a plastic bowl, I offered to help peel them and she silently handed me
a knife.
“You will like Father Amadi, Kambili,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “He’s new at
our chaplaincy, but he is so popular with everybody on campus already. He
has invitations to eat in everybody’s house.”
“I think he connects with our family the most,” Amaka said.
Aunty Ifeoma laughed. “Amaka is so protective of him.”
“You are wasting yam, Kambili,” Amaka snapped. “Ah! Ah! Is that how
you peel yam in your house?”
I jumped and dropped the knife. It fell an inch away from my foot.
“Sorry,” I said, and I was not sure if it was for dropping the knife or for letting
too much creamy white yam go with the brown peel.
Aunty Ifeoma was watching us. “Amaka, ngwa, show Kambili how topeel it.”
Amaka looked at her mother with her lips turned down and her eyebrows
raised, as if she could not believe that anybody had to be told how to peel yam
slices properly. She picked up the knife and started to peel a slice, letting only
the brown skin go. I watched the measured movement of her hand and the
increasing length of the peel, wishing I could apologize, wishing I knew how
to do it right. She did it so well that the peel did not break, a continuous
twirling soil-studded ribbon.
“Maybe I should enter it in your schedule, how to peel a yam,” Amaka
muttered.
“Amaka!” Aunty Ifeoma shouted. “Kambili, get me some water from the
tank outside.”
I picked up the bucket, grateful for Aunty Ifeoma, for the chance to leave
the kitchen and Amaka’s scowling face. Amaka did not talk much the rest of
the afternoon, until Father Amadi arrived, in a whiff of an earthy cologne.
Chima jumped on him and held on. He shook Obiora’s hand. Aunty Ifeoma
and Amaka gave him brief hugs, and then Aunty Ifeoma introduced Jaja and
me.
“Good evening,” I said and then added, “Father.” It felt almost
sacrilegious addressing this boyish man—in an openneck T-shirt and jeans
faded so much I could not tell if they had been black or dark blue—as Father.
“Kambili and Jaja,” he said, as if he had met us before. “How are you
enjoying your first visit to Nsukka?”
“They hate it,” Amaka said, and I immediately wished she hadn’t.
“Nsukka has its charms,” Father Amadi said, smiling. He had a singer’s
voice, a voice that had the same effect on my ears that Mama working Pears
baby oil into my hair had on my scalp. I did not fully comprehend his
English-laced Igbo sentences at dinner because my ears followed the sound
and not the sense of his speech. He nodded as he chewed his yam and greens,
and he did not speak until he had swallowed a mouthful and sipped some
water. He was at home in Aunty Ifeoma’s house; he knew which chair had a
protruding nail and could pull a thread off your clothes. “I thought I knocked
that nail in,” he said, then talked about football with Obiora, the journalist the
government had just arrested with Amaka, the Catholic women’s organization
with Aunty Ifeoma, and the neighborhood video game with Chima.
My cousins chattered as much as before, but they waited until FatherAmadi said something first and then pounced on it in response. I thought of
the fattened chickens Papa sometimes bought for our offertory procession, the
ones we took to the altar in addition to communion wine and yams and
sometimes goats, the ones we let stroll around the backyard until Sunday
morning. The chickens rushed at the pieces of bread Sisi threw to them,
disorderly and enthusiastic. My cousins rushed at Father Amadi’s words in
the same way.
Father Amadi included Jaja and me in the conversation, asking us
questions. I knew the questions were meant for both of us because he used the
plural “you,” unu, rather than the singular, gi, yet I remained silent, grateful
for Jaja’s answers. He asked where we went to school, what subjects we liked,
if we played any sports. When he asked what church we went to in Enugu,
Jaja told him.
“St. Agnes? I visited there once to say Mass,” Father Amadi said.
I remembered then, the young visiting priest who had broken into song
in the middle of his sermon, whom Papa had said we had to pray for because
people like him were trouble for the church. There had been many other
visiting priests through the months, but I knew it was him. I just knew. And I
remembered the song he had sung.
“Did you?” Aunty Ifeoma asked. “My brother, Eugene, almost single-
handedly finances that church. Lovely church.”
“Chelukwa. Wait a minute. Your brother is Eugene Achike? The
publisher of the Standard?”
“Yes, Eugene is my elder brother. I thought I’d mentioned it before.”
Aunty Ifeoma’s smile did not quite brighten her face.
“Ezi okwu? I didn’t know.” Father Amadi shook his head. “I hear he’s
very involved in the editorial decisions. The Standard is the only paper that
dares to tell the truth these days.”
“Yes,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “And he has a brilliant editor, Ade Coker,
although I wonder how much longer before they lock him up for good. Even
Eugene’s money will not buy everything.”
“I was reading somewhere that Amnesty World is giving your brother an
award,” Father Amadi said. He was nodding slowly, admiringly, and I felt
myself go warm all over, with pride, with a desire to be associated with Papa.
I wanted to say something, to remind this handsome priest that Papa wasn’t
just Aunty Ifeoma’s brother or the Standard’s publisher, that he was my father.I wanted some of the cloudlike warmth in Father Amadi’s eyes to rub off on
me, settle on me.
“An award?” Amaka asked, bright-eyed. “Mom, we should at least buy
the Standard once in a while so we’ll know what is going on.”
“Or we could ask for free copies to be sent to us, if prides were
swallowed,” Obiora said.
“I didn’t even know about the award,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Not that
Eugene would tell me anyway, igasikwa. We can’t even have a conversation.
After all, I had to use a pilgrimage to Aokpe to get him to say yes to the
children’s visiting us.”
“So you plan to go to Aokpe?” Father Amadi asked.
“I was not really planning to. But I suppose we will have to go now, I
will find out the next apparition date.”
“People are making this whole apparition thing up. Didn’t they say Our
Lady was appearing at Bishop Shanahan Hospital the other time? And then
that she was appearing in Transekulu?” Obiora asked.
“Aokpe is different. It has all the signs of Lourdes,” Amaka said.
“Besides, it’s about time Our Lady came to Africa. Don’t you wonder how
come she always appears in Europe? She was from the Middle East, after all.”
“What is she now, the Political Virgin?” Obiora asked, and I looked at
him again. He was a bold, male version of what I could never have been at
fourteen, what I still was not.
Father Amadi laughed. “But she’s appeared in Egypt, Amaka. At least
people flocked there, like they are flocking to Aokpe now. O bugodi, like
migrating locusts.”
“You don’t sound like you believe, Father.” Amaka was watching him.
“I don’t believe we have to go to Aokpe or anywhere else to find her.
She is here, she is within us, leading us to her Son.” He spoke so effortlessly,
as if his mouth were a musical instrument that just let sound out when
touched, when opened.
“But what about the Thomas inside us, Father? The part that needs to see
to believe?” Amaka asked. She had that expression that made me wonder if
she was serious or not.
Father Amadi did not respond; instead he made a face, and Amaka
laughed, the gap between her teeth wider, more angular, than Aunty Ifeoma’s,as if someone had pried her two front teeth apart with a metal instrument.
After dinner, we all retired to the living room, and Aunty Ifeoma asked
Obiora to turn the TV off so we could pray while Father Amadi was here.
Chima had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Obiora leaned against him
throughout the rosary. Father Amadi led the first decade, and at the end, he
started an Igbo praise song. While they sang, I opened my eyes and stared at
the wall, at the picture of the family at Chima’s baptism. Next to it was a
grainy copy of the pietà, the wooden frame cracked at the corners. I pressed
my lips together, biting my lower lip, so my mouth would not join in the
singing on its own, so my mouth would not betray me.
We put our rosaries away and sat in the living room eating corn and ube
and watching Newsline on television. I looked up to find Father Amadi’s eyes
on me, and suddenly I could not lick the ube flesh from the seed. I could not
move my tongue, could not swallow. I was too aware of his eyes, too aware
that he was looking at me, watching me. “I haven’t seen you laugh or smile
today, Kambili,” he said, finally.
I looked down at my corn. I wanted to say I was sorry that I did not
smile or laugh, but my words would not come, and for a while even my ears
could hear nothing.
“She is shy,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
I muttered a word I knew was nonsense and stood up and walked into the
bedroom, making sure to close the door that led to the hallway. Father
Amadi’s musical voice echoed in my ears until I fell asleep.Laughter always rang out in Aunty Ifeoma’s house, and no matter
where the laughter came from, it bounced around all the walls, all the rooms.
Arguments rose quickly and fell just as quickly. Morning and night prayers
were always peppered with songs, Igbo praise songs that usually called for
hand clapping. Food had little meat, each person’s piece the width of two
fingers pressed close together and the length of half a finger. The flat always
sparkled—Amaka scrubbed the floors with a stiff brush, Obiora did the
sweeping, Chima plumped up the cushions on the chairs. Everybody took
turns washing plates. Aunty Ifeoma included Jaja and me in the plate-washing
schedule, and after I washed the garri-encrusted lunch plates, Amaka picked
them off the tray where I had placed them to dry and soaked them in water.
“Is this how you wash plates in your house?” she asked. “Or is plate washing
not included in your fancy schedule?”
I stood there, staring at her, wishing Aunty Ifeoma were there to speak
for me. Amaka glared at me for a moment longer and then walked away. She
said nothing else to me until her friends came over that afternoon, when
Aunty Ifeoma and Jaja were in the garden and the boys were playing football
out front. “Kambili, these are my friends from school,” she said, casually.
The two girls said hello, and I smiled. They had hair as short as
Amaka’s, wore shiny lipstick and trousers so tight I knew they would walk
differently if they were wearing something more comfortable. I watched them
examine themselves in the mirror, pore over an American magazine with a
brown-skinned, honey-haired woman on the cover, and talk about a math
teacher who didn’t know the answers to his own tests, a girl who wore a
miniskirt to evening lesson even though she had fat yams on her legs, and a
boy who was fine. “Fine, sha, not attractive,” one of them stressed. She wore
a dangling earring on one ear and a shiny, false gold stud on the other.
“Is it all your hair?” the other one asked, and I did not realize she was
referring to me, until Amaka said, “Kambili!”
I wanted to tell the girl that it was all my hair, that there were no
attachments, but the words would not come. I knew they were still talking
about hair, how long and thick mine looked. I wanted to talk with them, to
laugh with them so much that I would start to jump up and down in one place
the way they did, but my lips held stubbornly together. I did not want to
stutter, so I started to cough and then ran out and into the toilet.
That evening, as I set the table for dinner, I heard Amaka say, “Are you
sure they’re not abnormal, mom? Kambili just behaved like an atulu when myfriends came.” Amaka had neither raised nor lowered her voice, and it drifted
clearly in from the kitchen.
“Amaka, you are free to have your opinions, but you must treat your
cousin with respect. Do you understand that?” Aunty Ifeoma replied in
English, her voice firm.
“I was just asking a question.”
“Showing respect is not calling your cousin a sheep.”
“She behaves funny. Even Jaja is strange. Something is not right with
them.”
My hand shook as I tried to straighten a piece of the table surface that
had cracked and curled tightly around itself. A line of tiny ginger-colored ants
marched near it. Aunty Ifeoma had told me not to bother the ants, since they
hurt no one and you could never really get rid of them anyway; they were as
old as the building itself.
I looked across at the living room to see if Jaja had heard Amaka over
the sound of the television. But he was engrossed in the images on the screen,
lying on the floor next to Obiora. He looked as though he had been lying there
watching TV his whole life. It was the same way he looked in Aunty Ifeoma’s
garden the next morning, as though it were something he had been doing for a
long time rather than the few days we had been here.
Aunty Ifeoma asked me to join them in the garden, to carefully pick out
leaves that had started to wilt on the croton plants.
“Aren’t they pretty?” Aunty Ifeoma asked. “Look at that, green and pink
and yellow on the leaves. Like God playing with paint brushes.”
“Yes,” I said. Aunty Ifeoma was looking at me, and I wondered if she
was thinking that my voice lacked the enthusiasm of Jaja’s when she talked
about her garden.
Some of the children from the flats upstairs came down and stood
watching us. They were about five, all a blur of food-stained clothes and fast
words. They talked to one another and to Aunty Ifeoma, and then one of them
turned and asked me what school I went to in Enugu. I stuttered and gripped
hard at some fresh croton leaves, pulling them off, watching the viscous
liquid drip from their stalks. After that, Aunty Ifeoma said I could go inside if
I wanted to. She told me about a book she had just finished reading: it was on
the table in her room and she was sure I would like it. So I went in her room
and took a book with a faded blue cover, called Equiano’s Travels, or the Lifeof Gustavus Vassa the African.
I sat on the verandah, with the book on my lap, watching one of the
children chase a butterfly in the front yard. The butterfly dipped up and down,
and its black-spotted yellow wings flapped slowly, as if teasing the little girl.
The girl’s hair, held atop her head like a ball of wool, bounced as she ran.
Obiora was sitting on the verandah, too, but outside the shade, so he squinted
behind his thick glasses to keep the sun out of his eyes. He was watching the
girl and the butterfly while repeating the name Jaja slowly, placing the stress
on both syllables, then on the first, then on the second. “Aja means sand or
oracle, but Jaja? What kind of name is Jaja? It is not Igbo,” he finally
pronounced.
“My name is actually Chukwuka. Jaja is a childhood nickname that
stuck.” Jaja was on his knees. He wore only a pair of denim shorts, and the
muscles on his back rippled, smooth and long like the ridges he weeded.
“When he was a baby, all he could say was Ja-Ja. So everybody called
him Jaja,” Aunty Ifeoma said. She turned to Jaja and added, “I told your
mother that it was an appropriate nickname, that you would take after Jaja of
Opobo.”
“Jaja of Opobo? The stubborn king?” Obiora asked.
“Defiant,” Aunt Ifeoma said. “He was a defiant king.”
“What does defiant mean, Mommy? What did the king do?” Chima
asked. He was in the garden, doing something on his knees, too, although
Aunty Ifeoma often told him “Kwusia, don’t do that” or “If you do that again,
I will give you a knock.”
“He was king of the Opobo people,” Aunty Ifeoma said, “and when the
British came, he refused to let them control all the trade. He did not sell his
soul for a bit of gunpowder like the other kings did, so the British exiled him
to the West Indies. He never returned to Opobo.” Aunt Ifeoma continued
watering the row of tiny banana-colored flowers that clustered in bunches.
She held a metal watering can in her hand, tilting it to let the water out
through the nozzle. She had already used up the biggest container of water we
fetched in the morning.
“That’s sad. Maybe he should not have been defiant,” Chima said. He
moved closer to squat next to Jaja. I wondered if he understood what “exiled”
and “sold his soul for a bit of gunpowder” meant. Aunty Ifeoma spoke as
though she expected that he did.

『••✎••』