𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔¹²

『••✎••』

“The key to my room. I would like to have it. Makana, because I would
like some privacy.”
Papa’s pupils seemed to dart around in the whites of his eyes. “What?
What do you want privacy for? To commit a sin against your own body? Is
that what you want to do, masturbate?”
“No,” Jaja said. He moved his hand and knocked his glass of water over.
“See what has happened to my children?” Papa asked the ceiling. “See
how being with a heathen has changed them, has taught them evil?”
We finished dinner in silence. Afterward, Jaja followed Papa upstairs. I
sat with Mama in the living room, wondering why Jaja had asked for the key.
Of course Papa would never give it to him, he knew that, knew that Papa
would never let us lock our doors. For a moment, I wondered if Papa was
right, if being with Papa-Nnukwu had made Jaja evil, had made us evil.
“It feels different to be back, okwia?” Mama asked. She was looking
through samples of fabric, to pick out a shade for the new curtains. We
replaced the curtains every year, toward the end of harmattan. Kevin brought
samples for Mama to look at, and she picked some and showed Papa, so he
could make the final decision. Papa usually chose her favorite. Dark beige last
year. Sand beige the year before.
I wanted to tell Mama that it did feel different to be back, that our living
room had too much empty space, too much wasted marble floor that gleamed
from Sisi’s polishing and housed nothing. Our ceilings were too high. Our
furniture was lifeless: the glass tables did not shed twisted skin in the
harmattan, the leather sofas’ greeting was a clammy coldness, the Persian rugs
were too lush to have any feeling. But I said, “You polished the étagère.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
I stared at her eye. It appeared to be opening now; it must have been
swollen completely shut yesterday.
“Kambili!” Papa’s voice carried clearly from upstairs. I held my breath
and sat still. “Kambili!”
“Nne, go,” Mama said.
I went upstairs slowly. Papa was in the bathroom, with the door ajar. I
knocked on the open door and stood by, wondering why he had called mewhen he was in the bathroom. “Come in,” he said. He was standing by the
tub. “Climb into the tub.”
I stared at Papa. Why was he asking me to climb into the tub? I looked
around the bathroom floor; there was no stick anywhere. Maybe he would
keep me in the bathroom and then go downstairs, out through the kitchen, to
break a stick off one of the trees in the backyard. When Jaja and I were
younger, from elementary two until about elementary five, he asked us to get
the stick ourselves. We always chose whistling pine because the branches
were malleable, not as painful as the stiffer branches from the gmelina or the
avocado. And Jaja soaked the sticks in cold water because he said that made
them less painful when they landed on your body. The older we got, though,
the smaller the branches we brought, until Papa started to go out himself to
get the stick.
“Climb into the tub,” Papa said again.
I stepped into the tub and stood looking at him. It didn’t seem that he
was going to get a stick, and I felt fear, stinging and raw, fill my bladder and
my ears. I did not know what he was going to do to me. It was easier when I
saw a stick, because I could rub my palms together and tighten the muscles of
my calves in preparation. He had never asked me to stand inside a tub. Then I
noticed the kettle on the floor, close to Papa’s feet, the green kettle Sisi used
to boil hot water for tea and garri, the one that whistled when the water started
to boil. Papa picked it up. “You knew your grandfather was coming to
Nsukka, did you not?” he asked in Igbo.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Did you pick up the phone and inform me of this, gbo?”
“No.”
“You knew you would be sleeping in the same house as a heathen?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“So you saw the sin clearly and you walked right into it?”
I nodded. “Yes, Papa.”
“Kambili, you are precious.” His voice quavered now, like someone
speaking at a funeral, choked with emotion. “You should strive for perfection.
You should not see sin and walk right into it.” He lowered the kettle into the
tub, tilted it toward my feet. He poured the hot water on my feet, slowly, as if
he were conducting an experiment and wanted to see what would happen. Hewas crying now, tears streaming down his face. I saw the moist steam before I
saw the water. I watched the water leave the kettle, flowing almost in slow
motion in an arc to my feet. The pain of contact was so pure, so scalding, I
felt nothing for a second. And then I screamed.
“That is what you do to yourself when you walk into sin. You burn your
feet,” he said.
I wanted to say “Yes, Papa,” because he was right, but the burning on my
feet was climbing up, in swift courses of excruciating pain, to my head and
lips and eyes. Papa was holding me with one wide hand, pouring the water
carefully with the other. I did not know that the sobbing voice—“I’m sorry!
I’m sorry!”—was mine until the water stopped and I realized my mouth was
moving and the words were still coming out. Papa put the kettle down, wiped
at his eyes. I stood in the scalding tub; I was too scared to move—the skin of
my feet would peel off if I tried to step out of the tub.
Papa put his hands under my arms to carry me out, but I heard Mama
say, “Let me, please.” I did not realize that Mama had come into the
bathroom. Tears were running down her face. Her nose was running, too, and
I wondered if she would wipe it before it got to her mouth, before she would
have to taste it. She mixed salt with cold water and gently plastered the gritty
mixture onto my feet. She helped me out of the tub, made to carry me on her
back to my room, but I shook my head. She was too small. We might both
fall. Mama did not speak until we were in my room. “You should take
Panadol,” she said.
I nodded and let her give me the tablets, although I knew they would do
little for my feet, now throbbing to a steady, searing pulse. “Did you go to
Jaja’s room?” I asked, and Mama nodded. She did not tell me about him, and
I did not ask.
“The skin of my feet will be bloated tomorrow,” I said.
“Your feet will be healed in time for school,” Mama said.
After Mama left, I stared at the closed door, at the smooth surface, and
thought about the doors in Nsukka and their peeling blue paint. I thought
about Father Amadi’s musical voice, about the wide gap that showed between
Amaka’s teeth when she laughed, about Aunty Ifeoma stirring stew at her
kerosene stove. I thought about Obiora pushing his glasses up his nose and
Chima curled up on the sofa, fast asleep. I got up and hobbled over to get the
painting of Papa-Nnukwu from my bag. It was still in the black wrapping.
Even though it was in an obscure side pocket of my bag, I was too scared tounwrap it. Papa would know, somehow. He would smell the painting in his
house. I ran my finger along the plastic wrapping, over the slight ridges of
paint that melded into the lean form of Papa-Nnukwu, the relaxed fold of
arms, the long legs stretched out in front of him.
I had just hobbled back to my bed when Papa opened the door and came
in. He knew. I wanted to shift and rearrange myself on the bed, as if that
would hide what I had just done. I wanted to search his eyes to know what he
knew, how he had found out about the painting. But I did not, could not. Fear.
I was familiar with fear, yet each time I felt it, it was never the same as the
other times, as though it came in different flavors and colors.
“Everything I do for you, I do for your own good,” Papa said. “You
know that?”
“Yes, Papa.” I still was not sure if he knew about the painting.
He sat on my bed and held my hand. “I committed a sin against my own
body once,” he said. “And the good father, the one I lived with while I went
to St. Gregory’s, came in and saw me. He asked me to boil water for tea. He
poured the water in a bowl and soaked my hands in it.” Papa was looking
right into my eyes. I did not know he had committed any sins, that he could
commit any sins. “I never sinned against my own body again. The good father
did that for my own good.” he said.
After Papa left, I did not think about his hands soaked in hot water for
tea, the skin peeling off, his face set in tight lines of pain. Instead I thought
about the painting of Papa-Nnukwu in my bag.
I DID NOT GET a chance to tell Jaja about the painting until the next day, a
Saturday, when he came into my room during study time. He wore thick socks
and placed his feet gingerly one after the other, as I did. But we did not talk
about our padded feet. After he felt the painting with his finger, he said he had
something to show me, too. We went downstairs to the kitchen. It was
wrapped in black cellophane paper, as well, and he had lodged it in the
refrigerator, beneath bottles of Fanta. When he saw my puzzled look, he said
they weren’t just sticks; they were stalks of purple hibiscus. He would give
them to the gardener. It was still harmattan and the earth was thirsty, but
Aunty Ifeoma said the stalks might take root and grow if they were watered
regularly, that hibiscuses didn’t like too much water, but they didn’t like to be
too dry, either.
Jaja’s eyes shone as he talked about the hibiscuses, as he held them outso I could touch the cold, moist sticks. He had told Papa about them, yet he
quickly put them back into the fridge when we heard Papa coming.
LUNCH WAS YAM PORRIDGE, the smell wafting around the house even
before we went to the dining table. It smelled good—pieces of dried fish
drifting in yellow sauce alongside the greens and cubed yams. After prayers,
as Mama dished out the food, Papa said, “These pagan funerals are expensive.
One fetish group will ask for a cow, then a witch doctor will demand a goat
for some god of stone, then another cow for the hamlet and another for the
umuada. Nobody ever asks why the so-called gods don’t ever eat the animals
and instead greedy men share the meat among themselves. The death of a
person is just an excuse for heathens to feast.”
I wondered why Papa was saying this, what had prompted him. The rest
of us remained silent while Mama finished dishing out the food.
“I sent Ifeoma money for the funeral. I gave her all she needed,” Papa
said. After a pause, he added, “For nna anyi’s funeral.”
“Thanks be to God,” Mama said, and Jaja and I repeated her.
Sisi came in before we finished lunch to tell Papa that Ade Coker was at
the gate with another man. Adamu had asked them to wait at the gate; he
always did that when people visited during weekend meal times. I expected
Papa to ask them to wait on the patio until we finished lunch, but he told Sisi
to have Adamu let them in and to open the front door. He said the prayer after
meals while we still had food on our plates and then asked us to keep eating,
he would be right back.
The guests came in and sat down in the living room. I could not see them
from the dining table, but while I ate, I tried hard to make out what they were
saying. I knew Jaja was listening, too. I saw the way his head was slightly
tilted, his eyes focused on the empty space in front of him. They were talking
in low tones, but it was easy to make out the name Nwankiti Ogechi,
especially when Ade Coker spoke, because he did not lower his voice as
much as Papa and the other man did.
He was saying that Big Oga’s assistant—Ade Coker referred to the head
of state as Big Oga even in his editorials—had called to say that Big Oga was
willing to give him an exclusive interview. “But they want me to cancel the
Nwankiti Ogechi story. Imagine the stupid man, he said they knew some
useless people had told me stories that I planned to use in my piece and that
the stories were lies…”I heard Papa interrupt in a low voice, and the other man added something
afterward, something about the Big People in Abuja not wanting such a story
out now that the Commonwealth Nations were meeting.
“You know what this means? My sources were right. They have really
wasted Nwankiti Ogechi,” Ade Coker said. “Why didn’t they care when I did
the last story about him? Why do they care now?”
I knew what story Ade was referring to, since it was in the Standard
about six weeks ago, right around the time Nwankiti Ogechi first disappeared
without a trace. I remembered the huge black question mark above the caption
“Where is Nwankiti?” And I remembered that the article was full of worried
quotes from his family and colleagues. It was nothing like the first Standard
feature I’d read about him, titled “A Saint among Us,” which had focused on
his activism, on his pro-democracy rallies that filled the stadium at Surulere.
“I am telling Ade we should wait, sir,” the other guest was saying. “Let
him do the interview with Big Oga. We can do the Nwankiti Ogechi story
later.”
“No way!” Ade burst out, and if I had not known that slightly shrill
voice, it would have been hard for me to imagine the round, laughing Ade
sounding that way, so angry. “They don’t want Nwankiti Ogechi to become an
issue now. Simple! And you know what it means, it means they have wasted
him! Which one is for Big Oga to try and bribe me with an interview? I ask
you, eh, which one is that?”
Papa cut him short then, but I could not hear much of what he said,
because he spoke in low, soothing tones, as though he were calming Ade
down. The next thing I heard him say was, “Come, let us go to my study. My
children are eating.”
They walked past us on their way upstairs. Ade smiled as he greeted us,
but it was a strained smile. “Can I come and finish the food for you?” he
teased me, making a mock attempt to swoop down on my food.
After lunch, as I sat in my room, studying, I tried hard to hear what Papa
and Ade Coker were saying in the study. But I couldn’t. Jaja walked past the
study a few times, but when I looked at him, he shook his head—he could
hear nothing through the closed door, either.
It was that evening, before dinner, that the government agents came, the
men in black who yanked hibiscuses off as they left, the men Jaja said had
come to bribe Papa with a truckful of dollars, the men Papa asked to get out
of our house.WHEN WE GOT the next edition of the Standard, I knew it would have
Nwankiti Ogechi on its cover. The story was detailed, angry, full of quotes
from someone called The Source. Soldiers shot Nwankiti Ogechi in a bush in
Minna. And then they poured acid on his body to melt his flesh off his bones,
to kill him even when he was already dead.
During family time, while Papa and I played chess, Papa winning, we
heard on the radio that Nigeria had been suspended from the Commonwealth
because of the murder, that Canada and Holland were recalling their
ambassadors in protest. The newscaster read a small portion of the press
release from the Canadian government, which referred to Nwankiti Ogechi as
“a man of honor.”
Papa looked up from the board and said, “It was coming to this. I knew it
would come to this.”
Some men arrived just after we had dinner, and I heard Sisi tell Papa that
they said they were from the Democratic Coalition. They stayed on the patio
with Papa, and even though I tried to, I could not hear their conversation. The
next day, more guests came during dinner. And even more the day after. They
all told Papa to be careful. Stop going to work in your official car. Don’t go to
public places. Remember the bomb blast at the airport when a civil rights
lawyer was traveling. Remember the one at the stadium during the pro-
democracy meeting. Lock your doors. Remember the man shot in his
bedroom by men wearing black masks.
Mama told me and Jaja. She looked scared when she talked, and I
wanted to pat her shoulder and tell her Papa would be fine. I knew he and Ade
Coker worked with truth, and I knew he would be fine.
“Do you think Godless men have any sense?” Papa asked every night at
dinner, often after a long stretch of silence. He seemed to drink a lot of water
at dinner, and I would watch him, wondering if his hands were really shaking
or if I was imagining it.
Jaja and I did not talk about the many people who came to the house. I
wanted to talk about it, but Jaja looked away when I brought it up with my
eyes, and he changed the subject when I spoke of it. The only time I heard
him say anything about it was when Aunty Ifeoma called to find out how
Papa was doing, because she had heard about the furor the Standard story had
caused. Papa was not home, and so she spoke to Mama. Afterward, Mama
gave the phone to Jaja.“Aunty, they won’t touch Papa,” I heard Jaja say. “They know he has
many foreign connections.”
As I listened to Jaja go on to tell Aunty Ifeoma that the gardener had
planted the hibiscus stalks, but that it was still too early to tell if they would
live, I wondered why he had never said that to me about Papa.
When I took the phone, Aunty Ifeoma sounded close by and loud. After
our greetings, I took a deep breath and said, “Greet Father Amadi.”
“He asks about you and Jaja all the time,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Hold on,
nne, Amaka is here.”
“Kambili, ke kwanu?” Amaka sounded different on the phone. Breezy.
Less likely to start an argument. Less likely to sneer—or maybe that was
simply because I would not see the sneer.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you for the painting.”
“I thought you might want to keep it.” Amaka’s voice was still hoarse
when she spoke of Papa-Nnukwu.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I had not known that Amaka even thought of
me, even knew what I wanted, even knew that I wanted.
“You know Papa-Nnukwu’s akwam ozu is next week?”
“Yes.”
“We will wear white. Black is too depressing, especially that shade
people wear to mourn, like burnt wood. I will lead the dance of the
grandchildren.” She sounded proud.
“He will rest in peace,” I said. I wondered if she could tell that I, too,
wanted to wear white, to join the funeral dance of the grandchildren.
“Yes, he will.” There was a pause. “Thanks to Uncle Eugene.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt as if I were standing on a floor where a
child had spilled talcum powder and I would have to walk carefully so as not
to slip and fall.
“Papa-Nnukwu really worried about having a proper funeral,” Amaka
said. “Now I know he’ll rest in peace. Uncle Eugene gave Mom so much
money she’s buying seven cows for the funeral!”
“That’s nice.” A mumble.
“I hope you and Jaja can come for Easter. The apparitions are still goingon, so maybe we can go on pilgrimage to Aokpe this time, if that will make
Uncle Eugene say yes. And I am doing my confirmation on Easter Sunday
and I want you and Jaja to be there.”
“I want to go, too,” I said, smiling, because the words I had just said, the
whole conversation with Amaka, were dreamlike. I thought about my own
confirmation, last year at St. Agnes. Papa had bought my white lace dress and
a soft, layered veil, which the women in Mama’s prayer group touched,
crowding around me after Mass. The bishop had trouble lifting the veil from
my face to make the sign of the cross on my forehead and say, “Ruth, be
sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Ruth. Papa had chosen my
confirmation name.
“Have you picked a confirmation name?” I asked.
“No,” Amaka said. “Ngwanu, Mom wants to remind Aunty Beatrice of
something.”
“Greet Chima and Obiora,” I said, before I handed the phone to Mama.
Back in my room, I stared at my textbook and wondered if Father Amadi
had really asked about us or if Aunty Ifeoma had said so out of courtesy, so it
would be that he remembered us, just as we remembered him. But Aunty
Ifeoma was not like that. She would not say it if he had not asked. I wondered
if he had asked about us, Jaja and me at the same time, like asking about two
things that went together. Corn and ube. Rice and stew. Yam and oil. Or if he
had separated us, asked about me and then about Jaja. When I heard Papa
come home from work, I roused myself and looked at my book. I had been
doodling on a sheet of paper, stick figures, and “Father Amadi” written over
and over again. I tore up the piece of paper.
I tore up many more in the following weeks. They all had “Father
Amadi” written over and over again. On some I tried to capture his voice,
using the symbols of music. On others I formed the letters of his name using
Roman numerals. I did not need to write his name down to see him, though. I
recognized a flash of his gait, that loping, confident stride, in the gardener’s. I
saw his lean, muscular build in Kevin and, when school resumed, even a flash
of his smile in Mother Lucy. I joined the group of girls on the volleyball field
on the second day of school. I did not hear the whispers of “backyard snob”
or the ridiculing laughter. I did not notice the amused pinches they gave one
another. I stood waiting with my hands clasped until I was picked. I saw only
Father Amadi’s clay-colored face and heard only “You have good legs for
running.”It rained heavily the day Ade Coker died, a strange, furious rain in
the middle of the parched harmattan. Ade Coker was at breakfast with his
family when a courier delivered a package to him. His daughter, in her
primary school uniform, was sitting across the table from him. The baby was
nearby, in a high chair. His wife was spooning Cerelac into the baby’s mouth.
Ade Coker was blown up when he opened the package—a package everybody
would have known was from the Head of State even if his wife Yewande had
not said that Ade Coker looked at the envelope and said “It has the State
House seal” before he opened it.
When Jaja and I came home from school, we were almost drenched by
the walk from the car to the front door; the rain was so heavy it had formed a
small pool beside the hibiscuses. My feet itched inside my wet leather
sandals. Papa was crumpled on a sofa in the living room, sobbing. He seemed
so small. Papa who was so tall that he sometimes lowered his head to get
through doorways, that his tailor always used extra fabric to sew his trousers.
Now he seemed small; he looked like a rumpled roll of fabric.
“I should have made Ade hold that story” Papa was saying. “I should
have protected him. I should have made him stop that story.”
Mama held him close to her, cradling his face on her chest. “No,” she
said. “O zugo. Don’t.”
Jaja and I stood watching. I thought about Ade Coker’s glasses, I
imagined the thick, bluish lenses shattering, the white frames melting into
sticky goo. Later, after Mama told us what had happened, how it had
happened, Jaja said, “It was God’s will, Papa,” and Papa smiled at Jaja and
gently patted his back.
Papa organized Ade Coker’s funeral; he set up a trust for Yewande Coker
and the children, bought them a new house. He paid the Standard staff huge
bonuses and asked them all to take a long leave. Hollows appeared under his
eyes during those weeks, as if someone had suctioned the delicate flesh,
leaving his eyes sunken in.
My nightmares started then, nightmares in which I saw Ade Coker’s
charred remains spattered on his dining table, on his daughter’s school
uniform, on his baby’s cereal bowl, on his plate of eggs. In some of the
nightmares, I was the daughter and the charred remains became Papa’s.

『••✎••』