𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔⁹

『••✎••』

“Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“Defiance is like marijuana—it is not a bad thing when it is used right.”
The solemn tone, more than the sacrilege of what she said, made me look
up. Her conversation was with Chima and Obiora, but she was looking at Jaja.
Obiora smiled and pushed his glasses up. “Jaja of Opobo was no saint,
anyway. He sold his people into slavery, and besides, the British won in the
end. So much for the defiance.”
“The British won the war, but they lost many battles,” Jaja said, and my
eyes skipped over the rows of text on the page. How did Jaja do it? How
could he speak so easily? Didn’t he have the same bubbles of air in his throat,
keeping the words back, letting out only a stutter at best? I looked up to watch
him, to watch his dark skin covered with beads of sweat that gleamed in the
sun. I had never seen his arm move this way, never seen this piercing light in
his eyes that appeared when he was in Aunty Ifeoma’s garden.
“What happened to your little finger?” Chima asked. Jaja looked down,
too, as if he were just then noticing the gnarled finger, deformed like a dried
stick.
“Jaja had an accident,” Aunty Ifeoma said, quickly. “Chima, go and get
me the container of water. It is almost empty, so you can carry it.”
I stared at Aunty Ifeoma, and when her eyes met mine, I looked away.
She knew. She knew what had happened to Jaja’s finger.
When he was ten, he had missed two questions on his catechism test and
was not named the best in his First Holy Communion class. Papa took him
upstairs and locked the door. Jaja, in tears, came out supporting his left hand
with his right, and Papa drove him to St. Agnes hospital. Papa was crying,
too, as he carried Jaja in his arms like a baby all the way to the car. Later, Jaja
told me that Papa had avoided his right hand because it is the hand he writes
with.
“This is about to bloom,” Aunt Ifeoma said to Jaja, pointing at an ixora
bud. “Another two days and it will open its eyes to the world.”
“I probably won’t see it,” Jaja said. “We’ll be gone by then.”
Aunty Ifeoma smiled. “Don’t they say that time flies when you are
happy?”
The phone rang then, and Aunty Ifeoma asked me to pick it up, since I
was closest to the front door. It was Mama. I knew something was wrongright away, because it was Papa who always placed the call. Besides, they did
not call in the afternoon.
“Your father is not here,” Mama said. Her voice sounded nasal, as if she
needed to blow her nose. “He had to leave this morning.”
“Is he well?” I asked.
“He is well.” She paused, and I could hear her talking to Sisi. Then she
came back to the phone and said that yesterday soldiers had gone to the small,
nondescript rooms that served as the offices of the Standard. Nobody knew
how they had found out where the offices were. There were so many soldiers
that the people on that street told Papa it reminded them of pictures from the
front during the civil war. The soldiers took every copy of the entire press run,
smashed furniture and printers, locked the offices, took the keys, and boarded
up the doors and windows. Ade Coker was in custody again.
“I worry about your father,” Mama said, before I gave the phone to Jaja.
“I worry about your father.”
Aunty Ifeoma seemed worried, too, because after the phone call, she
went out and bought a copy of the Guardian although she never bought
newspapers. They cost too much; she read them at the paper stands when she
had the time. The story of soldiers closing down the Standard was tucked into
the middle page, next to advertisements for women’s shoes imported from
Italy.
“Uncle Eugene would have run it on the front page of his paper,” Amaka
said, and I wondered if the inflection in her voice was pride.
When Papa called later, he asked to talk to Aunty Ifeoma first. Afterward
he talked to Jaja and then me. He said he was fine, that everything was fine,
that he missed us and loved us very much. He did not mention the Standard or
what had happened to the editorial offices. After we hung up, Aunty Ifeoma
said, “Your father wants you to stay here a few days longer,” and Jaja smiled
so widely I saw dimples I did not even know he had.
THE PHONE RANG EARLY, before any of us had taken a morning bath. My
mouth went dry because I was sure it was about Papa, that something had
happened to him. The soldiers had gone to the house; they had shot him to
make sure he would never publish anything again. I waited for Aunty Ifeoma
to call Jaja and me, though I tightened my fist and willed her not to. She
stayed for a few moments on the phone, and when she came out, she looked
downcast. Her laughter did not ring out as often for the rest of the day, andshe snapped at Chima when he wanted to sit next to her, saying, “Leave me
alone! Nekwa anya, you are no longer a baby.” One half of her lower lip
disappeared into her mouth, and her jaw quivered as she chewed.
Father Amadi dropped by during dinner. He pulled a chair from the
living room and sat, sipping water from a glass Amaka had brought him.
“I played football at the stadium and afterward I took some of the boys
to town, for akara and fried yams,” he said, when Amaka asked what he had
done today.
“Why didn’t you tell me you would be playing today, Father?” Obiora
asked.
“I’m sorry I forgot to, but I will pick you and Jaja up next weekend so
we can play.” The music of his voice lowered in apology. I could not help
staring at him, because his voice pulled me and because I did not know a
priest could play football. It seemed so ungodly, so common. Father Amadi’s
eyes met mine across the table, and I looked away quickly.
“Perhaps Kambili will play with us also,” he said. Hearing my name in
his voice, in that melody, made me feel taut inside. I filled my mouth, as if I
might have said something but for the food I had to chew. “Amaka used to
play with us when I first came here, but now she spends her time listening to
African music and dreaming unrealistic dreams.”
My cousins laughed, Amaka the loudest, and Jaja smiled. But Aunty
Ifeoma did not laugh. She chewed her food in little bites; her eyes were
distant.
“Ifeoma, is something wrong?” Father Amadi asked.
She shook her head and sighed, as though she had just realized that she
was not alone. “I got a message from home today. Our father is sick. They
said he did not rise well three mornings in a row. I want to bring him here.”
“Ezi okwu?” Father Amadi’s brows furrowed. “Yes, you should bring
him here.”
“Papa-Nnukwu is sick?” Amaka asked shrilly. “Mom, when did you
know?”
“This morning, his neighbor called. She is a good woman, Nwamgba,
she went all the way to Ukpo to find a phone.”
“You should have told us!” Amaka shouted.
“O gini? Have I not told you now?” Aunty Ifeoma snapped.“When can we go to Abba, Mom?” Obiora asked, calmly, and at that
moment, as in many others I had observed since we came, he seemed so much
older than Jaja.
“I don’t have enough fuel in the car to reach even Ninth Mile, and I don’t
know when fuel will come. I cannot afford to charter a taxi. If I take public
transport, how will I bring back a sick old man in those buses so packed with
people your face is in the next person’s smelly armpit?” Aunty Ifeoma shook
her head. “I am tired. I am so tired…”
“We have some emergency fuel reserves in the chaplaincy,” Father
Amadi said quietly. “I am sure I could get you a gallon. Ekwuzina, don’t
sound that way.”
Aunty Ifeoma nodded and thanked Father Amadi. But her face did not
brighten, and later, when we said the rosary, her voice did not rise when she
sang. I struggled to meditate on the joyful Mysteries, all the time wondering
where Papa-Nnukwu would sleep when he came. There were few choices in
the small flat—the living room was already full with the boys, and Aunt
Ifeoma’s room was so busy, serving as food store and library and bedroom for
her and Chima. It would have to be the other bedroom, Amaka’s—and mine. I
wondered if I would have to confess that I had shared a room with a heathen.
I paused then, in my meditation, to pray that Papa would never find out that
Papa-Nnukwu had visited and that I had shared a room with him.
At the end of the five decades, before we said the Hail Holy Queen,
Aunty Ifeoma prayed for Papa-Nnukwu. She asked God to stretch a healing
hand over him as he had stretched over the apostle Peter’s mother-in-law. She
asked the Blessed Virgin to pray for him. She asked the angels to take charge
of him.
My “Amen” was a little delayed, a little surprised. When Papa prayed for
Papa-Nnukwu, he asked only that God convert him and save him from the
raging fires of hell.
FATHER AMADI CAME EARLY the next morning, looking even more
unpriestly than before, in khaki shorts that stopped just below his knees. He
had not shaved, and in the clear morning sunlight, his stubble looked like tiny
dots drawn on his jaw. He parked his car next to Aunty Ifeoma’s station
wagon and took out a can of petrol and a garden hose that had been cut to a
quarter of its length.
“Let me do the sucking, Father,” Obiora said.“Papa-Nnukwu, nno,” I said.
“Kambili,” he said, weakly.
Aunty Ifeoma wanted Papa-Nnukwu to lie down on Amaka’s bed, but he
said he preferred the floor. The bed was too springy. Obiora and Jaja dressed
the spare mattress and placed it on the floor, and Aunty Ifeoma helped Papa-
Nnukwu lower himself onto it. His eyes closed almost at once, although the
lid of his going-blind eye remained slightly open, as if he were stealing a peek
at all of us from the land of tired, ill sleep. He seemed taller lying down,
occupying the length of the mattress, and I remembered what he had said
about simply reaching out to pluck icheku from the tree, in his youth. The
only icheku tree I had seen was huge, with branches grazing the roof of a
duplex. Still, I believed Papa-Nnukwu, that he had simply raised his hands to
pluck the black icheku pods from the branches.
“I’ll make ofe nsala for dinner. Papa-Nnukwu likes that,” Amaka said.
“I hope he will eat. Chinyelu said even water has been hard for him to
take in the last two days.” Aunty Ifeoma was watching Papa-Nnukwu. She
bent and flicked gently at the rough white calluses on his feet. Narrow lines
ran across his soles, like cracks in a wall.
“Will you take him to the medical center today or tomorrow morning,
Mom?” Amaka asked.
“Have you forgotten, imarozi, that the doctors went on strike just before
Christmas? I called Doctor Nduoma before I left, though, and he said he will
come by this evening.”
Doctor Nduoma lived on Marguerite Cartwright Avenue, too, down the
street, in one of the duplexes with BEWARE OF DOGS signs and wide lawns. He
was director of the medical center, Amaka told Jaja and me, as we watched
him get out of his red Peugeot 504 a few hours later. But since the doctors’
strike had started, he had run a small clinic in town. The clinic was cramped,
Amaka said. She had gotten her chloroquine injections there the last time she
had malaria, and the nurse had boiled water on a smoky kerosene stove.
Amaka was pleased that Doctor Nduoma had come to the house; the fumes
alone in the stuffy clinic could choke Papa-Nnukwu, she said.
Doctor Nduoma had a permanent smile plastered on his face, as though
he would break bad news to a patient with a smile. He hugged Amaka, and
then shook hands with Jaja and me. Amaka followed him into her bedroom to
look at Papa-Nnukwu.“Papa-Nnukwu is so skinny now,” Jaja said. We were sitting side by side
on the verandah. The sun had fallen and there was a light breeze. Many of the
children from the flats were playing football in the compound. From a flat
upstairs, an adult yelled, “Nee anya, if you children make patches on the
garage walls with that ball, I will cut off your ears!” The children laughed as
the football hit the garage walls; the dust-covered ball left the walls polka-
dotted brown.
“Do you think Papa will find out?” I asked.
“What?”
I laced my fingers together. How could Jaja not know what I meant?
“That Papa-Nnukwu is here with us. In the same house.”
“I don’t know.”
Jaja’s tone made me turn and stare at him. His brows were not knotted in
worry, as I was sure mine were. “Did you tell Aunty Ifeoma about your
finger?” I asked. I should not have asked. I should have let it be. But there, it
was out. It was only when I was alone with Jaja that the bubbles in my throat
let my words come out.
“She asked me, and I told her.” He was tapping his foot on the verandah
floor in an energetic rhythm.
I stared at my hands, at the short nails that Papa used to cut to a chafing
shortness, when I would sit between his legs and his cheek would brush mine
gently, until I was old enough to do it myself—and I always cut them to a
chafing shortness, too. Had Jaja forgotten that we never told, that there was so
much that we never told? When people asked, he always said his finger was
“something” that had happened at home. That way, it was not a lie and it let
them imagine some accident, perhaps involving a heavy door. I wanted to ask
Jaja why he had told Aunty Ifeoma, but I knew there was no need to, that this
was one question he did not know the answer to.
“I am going to wipe down Aunty Ifeoma’s car,” Jaja said, getting up. “I
wish the water ran so I could wash it. It is so dusty.”
I watched him walk into the flat. He had never washed a car at home. His
shoulders seemed broader, and I wondered if it was possible for a teenager’s
shoulders to broaden in a week. The mild breeze was heavy with the smell of
dust and the bruised leaves Jaja had cut. From the kitchen, the spices in
Amaka’s ofe nsala tickled my nose. I realized then that Jaja had been tapping
his feet to the beat of an Igbo song that Aunty Ifeoma and my cousins sang atevening rosary.
I was still sitting on the verandah, reading, when Doctor Nduoma left.
He talked and laughed as Aunty Ifeoma walked him to his car, telling her how
tempted he was to ignore the patients waiting in his clinic so he could take her
up on her offer of dinner. “That soup smells like something Amaka washed
her hands well to cook,” he said.
Aunty Ifeoma came to the verandah and watched him drive off.
“Thank you, nna m,” she called out to Jaja, who was cleaning her car
parked in front of the flat. I had never heard her call Jaja “nna m,” “my
father”—it was what she sometimes called her sons.
Jaja came up to the verandah. “It’s nothing, Aunty.” He lifted his
shoulders as he stood there, like someone proudly wearing clothes that were
not his size. “What did the doctor say?”
“He wants us to get some tests done. I will take your Papa-Nnukwu to
the medical center tomorrow, at least the labs there are still open.”
AUNTY IFEOMA TOOK Papa-Nnukwu to the University Medical Center in
the morning and came back shortly afterward, her mouth set in a full pout.
The lab staff was on strike, too, so Papa-Nnukwu could not have the tests
done. Aunty Ifeoma stared at the middle distance and said she would have to
find a private lab in town and, in a lower voice, said the private labs jacked up
their fees so much that a simple typhoid fever test cost more than the
medicine for the fever. She would have to ask Dr. Nduoma if she really had to
have all the tests done. She would not have paid a kobo at the medical center;
at least there was still that benefit to being a lecturer. She left Papa-Nnukwu
to rest and went out to buy the medicine that Doctor Nduoma had prescribed,
worry lines etched in her forehead.
That evening, though, Papa-Nnukwu felt well enough to get up for
dinner, and the knots on Aunty Ifeoma’s face loosened a little. We had
leftover ofe nsala and garri, pounded to a sticky softness by Obiora.
“Eating garri at night is not right,” Amaka said. But she was not
scowling as she usually did when she complained; instead, she had that fresh
smile that showed the gap in her teeth, the smile she seemed to always have
when Papa-Nnukwu was around. “It rests heavy in your stomach when you
eat it at night.”
Papa-Nnukwu clucked. “What did our fathers eat at night in their time,gbo? They ate pure cassava. Garri is for you modern ones. It does not even
have the flavor of pure cassava.”
“But you have to eat all of yours, anyway, nna anyi.” Aunty Ifeoma
reached over and plucked a morsel from Papa-Nnukwu’s garri; she dug a hole
in it with one finger, inserted a white medicine tablet, and then molded the
morsel into a smooth ball. She placed it on Papa-Nnukwu’s plate. She did the
same with four other tablets. “He will not take the medicine unless I do this,”
she said in English. “He says tablets are bitter, but you should taste the kola
nuts he chews happily—they taste like bile.”
My cousins laughed.
“Morality, as well as the sense of taste, is relative,” Obiora said.
“Eh? What are you saying about me, gbo?” Papa-Nnukwu asked.
“Nna anyi, I want to see you swallow them,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
Papa-Nnukwu dutifully picked up each molded morsel, dunked it in
soup, and swallowed. When the five were gone, Aunty Ifeoma asked him to
drink some water so the tablets could break down and start to help his body
heal. He took a gulp of water and set the glass down. “When you become old,
they treat you like a child,” he muttered.
Just then the TV made a scratchy sound like pouring dry sand on paper
and the lights went off. A blanket of darkness covered the room.
“Hei,” Amaka groaned. “This is not a good time for NEPA to take light. I
wanted to watch something on TV.”
Obiora moved through the darkness to the two kerosene lamps that stood
at the corner of the room and lit them. I smelled the kerosene fumes almost
immediately; they made my eyes water and my throat itch.
“Papa-Nnukwu, tell us a folk story, then, just like we do in Abba,”
Obiora said. “It is better than TV anyway.”
“O di mma. But first, you have not told me how those people in the TV
climb into it.”
My cousins laughed. It was something Papa-Nnukwu said often to make
them laugh. I could tell from the way they started to laugh even before he
finished speaking.
“Tell us the story of why the tortoise has a cracked shell!” Chima piped
up.“I would like to know why the tortoise features so much in our people’s
stories,” Obiora said in English.
“Tell us the story of why the tortoise has a cracked shell!” Chima
repeated.
Papa-Nnukwu cleared his throat. “Long ago, when animals talked and
lizards were few, there was a big famine in the land of the animals. Farms
dried up and the soil cracked. Hunger killed many of the animals and the ones
left behind did not even have the strength to dance the mourning dance at
funerals. One day all the male animals had a meeting to decide what could be
done, before hunger wiped out the whole village.
“They all staggered to the meeting, bony and weak. Even Lion’s roar
was now like the whine of a mouse. Tortoise could hardly carry his shell. It
was only Dog that looked well. His fur shone with good health and you could
not see the bones under his skin because they were padded with flesh. The
animals all asked Dog how he remained so well in the midst of famine. ‘I
have been eating feces like I always do,’ Dog answered.
“The other animals used to laugh at Dog because he and his family were
known to eat feces. None of the other animals could imagine themselves
eating feces. Lion took control of the meeting and said, ‘Since we cannot eat
feces like Dog, we must think of a way to feed ourselves.’
“The animals thought long and hard until Rabbit suggested that all the
animals kill their mothers and eat them. Many of the animals disagreed with
this, they still remembered the sweetness of their mothers’ breast milk. But
finally they all agreed that it was the best alternative, since they would all die
anyway if nothing was done.”
“I could never eat Mommy,” Chima said, giggling.
“It might not be a good idea, that tough skin,” Obiora said.
“The mothers did not mind being sacrificed,” Papa-Nnukwu continued.
“And so each week a mother was killed and the animals shared the meat.
Soon they were all looking well again. Then, a few days before it was time for
Dog’s mother to be killed, Dog ran out wailing the mourning song for his
mother. She had died of the disease. The other animals sympathized with Dog
and offered to help bury her. Since she had died of the disease, they could not
eat her. Dog refused any help and said he would bury her himself. He was
distraught that she would not have the honor of dying like the other mothers
who were sacrificed for the village.“Only a few days later, Tortoise was on his way to his parched farm to
see if there were any dried vegetables to be harvested. He stopped to ease
himself near a bush, but because the bush was wilted it did not give good
cover. He was able to see across the bush and he saw Dog, looking up and
singing. Tortoise wondered if perhaps Dog’s grief had made him go mad.
Why was Dog singing to the sky? Tortoise listened and heard what Dog was
singing: ‘Nne, Nne, Mother, Mother.’”
“Njemanze!” my cousins chorused.
“‘Nne, Nne, I have come.’”
“Njemanze!”
“‘Nne, Nne, let down the rope. I have come.’”
“Njemanze!”
“Tortoise came out then and challenged Dog. Dog admitted that his
mother had not really died, that she had gone to the sky where she lived with
wealthy friends. It was because she fed him daily from the sky that he looked
so well. ‘Abomination!’ Tortoise bellowed. ‘So much for eating feces! Wait
until the rest of the village hears what you have done.’
“Of course, Tortoise was as cunning as always. He had no intention of
telling the village. He knew that Dog would offer to take him to the sky, too.
When Dog did, Tortoise pretended to think about it before accepting. But
saliva had already started to run down his cheeks. Dog sang the song again
and a rope descended from the sky and the two animals went up.
“Dog’s mother was not pleased that her son had brought a friend but she
served them well anyway. Tortoise ate like an animal with no home training.
He ate almost all of the fufu and onugbu soup and poured a full horn of palm
wine down his throat when his mouth was full of food. After the meal they
descended the rope. Tortoise told Dog he would tell no one as long as Dog
took him to the sky every day until the rains came and the famine ended. Dog
agreed—what else could he do? The more Tortoise ate in the sky, the more he
wanted, until one day he decided that he would go to the sky by himself so
that he would get to eat Dog’s portion as well as his. He went to the spot by
the dry bush and started singing, mimicking Dog’s voice. The rope started to
fall. Just then, Dog came by and saw what was happening. Furious, Dog
started to sing loudly. ‘Nne, Nne, Mother, Mother.’”
“Njemanze!” my cousins chorused.
“‘Nne, Nne, it is not your son coming up.’”“Njemanze!”
“‘Nne, Nne, cut the rope. It is not your son coming up. It is the cunning
Tortoise.’”
“Njemanze!”
“Right away, Dog’s mother cut the rope and Tortoise, already halfway to
the sky, came hurtling down. Tortoise fell on a pile of stones and cracked his
shell. To this day, the Tortoise has a cracked shell.”
Chima chortled. “The tortoise has a cracked shell!”
“Don’t you wonder how only Dog’s mother got up to the sky in the first
place?” Obiora asked in English.
“Or who the wealthy friends in the sky were,” Amaka said.
“Probably Dog’s ancestors,” Obiora said.
My cousins and Jaja laughed, and Papa-Nnukwu laughed, too, a gentle
chuckle, as if he had understood the English, then leaned back and closed his
eyes. I watched them and wished that I had joined in chanting the Njemanze!
response.

『••✎••』