𝑃𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠

𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑶𝒖𝒓 𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒔¹³

『••✎••』

WEEKS AFTER ADE COKER DIED, the hollows were still carved under Papa’s
eyes, and there was a slowness in his movements, as though his legs were too
heavy to lift, his hands too heavy to swing. He took longer to reply when
spoken to, to chew his food, even to find the right Bible passages to read. But
he prayed a lot more, and some nights when I woke up to pee, I heard him
shouting from the balcony overlooking the front yard. Even though I sat on
the toilet seat and listened, I never could make sense of what he was saying.
When I told Jaja about this, he shrugged and said that Papa must have been
speaking in tongues, although we both knew that Papa did not approve of
people speaking in tongues because it was what the fake pastors at those
mushroom Pentecostal churches did.
Mama told Jaja and me often to remember to hug Papa tighter, to let him
know we were there, because he was under so much pressure. Soldiers had
gone to one of the factories, carrying dead rats in a carton, and then closed the
factory down, saying the rats had been found there and could spread disease
through the wafers and biscuits. Papa no longer went to the other factories as
often as he used to. Some days, Father Benedict came before Jaja and I left
for school, and was still in Papa’s study when we came home. Mama said
they were saying special novenas. Papa never came out to make sure Jaja and
I were following our schedules on such days, and so Jaja came into my room
to talk, or just to sit on my bed while I studied, before going to his room.
It was on one of those days that Jaja came into my room, shut the door,
and asked, “Can I see the painting of Papa-Nnukwu?”
My eyes lingered on the door. I never looked at the painting when Papa
was at home.
“He is with Father Benedict,” Jaja said. “He will not come in.”
I took the painting out of the bag and unwrapped it. Jaja stared at it,
running his deformed finger over the paint, the finger that had very little
feeling.
“I have Papa-Nnukwu’s arms,” Jaja said. “Can you see? I have his
arms.” He sounded like someone in a trance, as if he had forgotten where he
was and who he was. As if he had forgotten that his finger had little feeling in
it.
I did not tell Jaja to stop, or point out that it was his deformed finger that
he was running over the painting. I did not put the painting right back. Instead
I moved closer to Jaja and we stared at the painting, silently, for a very long
time. A long enough time for Father Benedict to leave. I knew Papa wouldcome in to say good night, to kiss my forehead. I knew he would be wearing
his wine-red pajamas that lent a slightly red shimmer to his eyes. I knew Jaja
would not have enough time to slip the painting back in the bag, and that Papa
would take one look at it and his eyes would narrow, his cheeks would bulge
out like unripe udala fruit, his mouth would spurt Igbo words.
And that was what happened. Perhaps it was what we wanted to happen,
Jaja and I, without being aware of it. Perhaps we all changed after Nsukka—
even Papa—and things were destined to not be the same, to not be in their
original order.
“What is that? Have you all converted to heathen ways? What are you
doing with that painting? Where did you get it?” Papa asked.
“O nkem. It’s mine,” Jaja said. He wrapped the painting around his chest
with his arms.
“It’s mine,” I said.
Papa swayed slightly, from side to side, like a person about to fall at the
feet of a charismatic pastor after the laying on of hands. Papa did not sway
often. His swaying was like shaking a bottle of Coke that burst into violent
foam when you opened it.
“Who brought that painting into this house?”
“Me,” I said.
“Me,” Jaja said.
If only Jaja would look at me, I would ask him not to blame himself.
Papa snatched the painting from Jaja. His hands moved swiftly, working
together. The painting was gone. It already represented something lost,
something I had never had, would never have. Now even that reminder was
gone, and at Papa’s feet lay pieces of paper streaked with earth-tone colors.
The pieces were very small, very precise. I suddenly and maniacally imagined
Papa-Nnukwu’s body being cut in pieces that small and stored in a fridge.
“No!” I shrieked. I dashed to the pieces on the floor as if to save them, as
if saving them would mean saving Papa-Nnukwu. I sank to the floor, lay on
the pieces of paper.
“What has gotten into you?” Papa asked. “What is wrong with you?”
I lay on the floor, curled tight like the picture of a child in the uterus in
my Integrated Science for Junior Secondary Schools.
“Get up! Get away from that painting!”I lay there, did nothing.
“Get up!” Papa said again. I still did not move. He started to kick me.
The metal buckles on his slippers stung like bites from giant mosquitoes. He
talked nonstop, out of control, in a mix of Igbo and English, like soft meat
and thorny bones. Godlessness. Heathen worship. Hellfire. The kicking
increased in tempo, and I thought of Amaka’s music, her culturally conscious
music that sometimes started off with a calm saxophone and then whirled into
lusty singing. I curled around myself tighter, around the pieces of the
painting; they were soft, feathery. They still had the metallic smell of
Amaka’s paint palette. The stinging was raw now, even more like bites,
because the metal landed on open skin on my side, my back, my legs.
Kicking. Kicking. Kicking. Perhaps it was a belt now because the metal
buckle seemed too heavy. Because I could hear a swoosh in the air. A low
voice was saying, “Please, biko, please.” More stings. More slaps. A salty
wetness warmed my mouth. I closed my eyes and slipped away into quiet.
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I knew at once that I was not in my bed. The
mattress was firmer than mine. I made to get up, but pain shot through my
whole body in exquisite little packets. I collapsed back.
“Nne, Kambili. Thank God!” Mama stood up and pressed her hand to my
forehead, then her face to mine. “Thank God. Thank God you are awake.”
Her face felt clammy with tears. Her touch was light, yet it sent needles
of pain all over me, starting from my head. It was like the hot water Papa had
poured on my feet, except now it was my entire body that burned. Each
movement was too painful to even think about.
“My whole body is on fire,” I said.
“Shhh,” she said. “Just rest. Thank God you are awake.”
I did not want to be awake. I did not want to feel the breathing pain at
my side. I did not want to feel the heavy hammer knocking in my head. Even
taking a breath was agony. A doctor in white was in the room, at the foot of
my bed. I knew that voice; he was a lector in church. He was speaking slowly
and precisely, the way he did when he read the first and second readings, yet I
could not hear it all. Broken rib. Heal nicely. Internal bleeding. He came close
and slowly lifted my shirtsleeve. Injections had always scared me—whenever
I had malaria, I prayed I would need to take Novalgin tablets instead of
chloroquine injections. But now the prick of a needle was nothing. I would
take injections every day over the pain in my body. Papa’s face was close tomine. It seemed so close that his nose almost brushed mine, and yet I could
tell that his eyes were soft, that he was speaking and crying at the same time.
“My precious daughter. Nothing will happen to you. My precious daughter.” I
was not sure if it was a dream. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, Father Benedict stood above me. He was
making the sign of the cross on my feet with oil; the oil smelled like onions,
and even his light touch hurt. Papa was nearby. He, too, was muttering
prayers, his hands resting gently on my side. I closed my eyes.
“It does not mean anything. They give extreme unction to anyone who is
seriously ill,” Mama whispered, when Papa and Father Benedict left.
I stared at the movement of her lips. I was not seriously ill. She knew
that. Why was she saying I was seriously ill? Why was I here in St. Agnes
hospital?
“Mama, call Aunty Ifeoma,” I said.
Mama looked away. “Nne, you have to rest.”
“Call Aunty Ifeoma. Please.”
Mama reached out to hold my hand. Her face was puffy from crying, and
her lips were cracked, with bits of discolored skin peeling off. I wished I
could get up and hug her, and yet I wanted to push her away, to shove her so
hard that she would topple over the chair.
FATHER AMADI’S FACE was looking down at me when I opened my eyes. I
was dreaming it, imagining it, and yet I wished that it did not hurt so much to
smile, so that I could.
“At first they could not find a vein, and I was so scared.” It was Mama’s
voice, real and next to me. I was not dreaming.
“Kambili. Kambili. Are you awake?” Father Amadi’s voice was deeper,
less melodious than in my dreams.
“Nne, Kambili, nne.” It was Aunty Ifeoma’s voice; her face appeared
next to Father Amadi’s. She had held her braided hair up, in a huge bun that
looked like a raffia basket balanced on her head. I tried to smile. I felt woozy.
Something was slipping out of me, slipping away, taking my strength and my
sanity, and I could not stop it.
“The medication knocks her out,” Mama said.“Nne, your cousins send greetings. They would have come, but they are
in school. Father Amadi is here with me. Nne…” Aunty Ifeoma clutched my
hand, and I winced, pulling it away. Even the effort to pull it away hurt. I
wanted to keep my eyes open, wanted to see Father Amadi, to smell his
cologne, to hear his voice, but my eyelids were slipping shut.
“This cannot go on, nwunye m,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “When a house is on
fire, you run out before the roof collapses on your head.”
“It has never happened like this before. He has never punished her like
this before,” Mama said.
“Kambili will come to Nsukka when she leaves the hospital.”
“Eugene will not agree.”
“I will tell him. Our father is dead, so there is no threatening heathen in
my house. I want Kambili and Jaja to stay with us, at least until Easter. Pack
your own things and come to Nsukka. It will be easier for you to leave when
they are not there.”
“It has never happened like this before.”
“Do you not hear what I have said, gbo?” Aunty Ifeoma said, raising her
voice.
“I hear you.”
The voices grew too distant, as if Mama and Aunty Ifeoma were on a
boat moving quickly to sea and the waves had swallowed their voices. Before
I lost their voices, I wondered where Father Amadi had gone. I opened my
eyes hours later. It was dark, and the light bulbs were off. In the glimmer of
light from the hallway that streamed underneath the closed door, I could see
the crucifix on the wall and Mama’s figure on a chair at the foot of my bed.
“Kedu? I will be here all night. Sleep. Rest,” Mama said. She got up and
sat on my bed. She caressed my pillow; I knew she was afraid to touch me
and cause me pain. “Your father has been by your bedside every night these
past three days. He has not slept a wink.”
It was hard to turn my head, but I did it and looked away.
MY PRIVATE TUTOR came the following week. Mama said Papa had
interviewed ten people before he picked her. She was a young Reverend Sister
and had not yet made her final profession. The beads of the rosary, which
were twisted around the waist of her sky-colored habit, rustled as she moved.Her wispy blond hair peeked from beneath her scarf. When she held my hand
and said, “Kee ka ime?” I was stunned. I had never heard a white person
speak Igbo, and so well. She spoke softly in English when we had lessons and
in Igbo, although not often, when we didn’t. She created her own silence,
sitting in it and fingering her rosary while I read comprehension passages. But
she knew a lot of things; I saw it in the pools of her hazel eyes. She knew, for
example, that I could move more body parts than I told the doctor, although
she said nothing. Even the hot pain in my side had become lukewarm, the
throbbing in my head had lessened. But I told the doctor it was as bad as
before and I screamed when he tried to feel my side. I did not want to leave
the hospital. I did not want to go home.
I took my exams on my hospital bed while Mother Lucy, who brought
the papers herself, waited on a chair next to Mama. She gave me extra time
for each exam, but I was finished long before the time was up. She brought
my report card a few days later. I came first. Mama did not sing her Igbo
praise songs; she only said, “Thanks be to God.”
My class girls visited me that afternoon, their eyes wide with awed
admiration. They had heard I had survived an accident. They hoped I would
come back with a cast that they could all scribble their signatures on. Chinwe
Jideze brought me a big card that read “Get well soon to someone special,”
and she sat by my bed and talked to me, in confidential whispers, as if we had
always been friends. She even showed me her report card—she had come
second. Before they left, Ezinne asked, “You will stop running away after
school, now, won’t you?”
Mama told me that evening that I would be discharged in two days. But I
would not be going home, I would be going to Nsukka for a week, and Jaja
would go with me. She did not know how Aunty Ifeoma had convinced Papa,
but he had agreed that Nsukka air would be good for me, for my recuperation.
Rain splashed across the floor of the verandah, even though the sun
blazed and I had to narrow my eyes to look out the door of Aunty Ifeoma’s
living room. Mama used to tell Jaja and me that God was undecided about
what to send, rain or sun. We would sit in our rooms and look out at the
raindrops glinting with sunlight, waiting for God to decide.
“Kambili, do you want a mango?” Obiora asked from behind me.
He had wanted to help me into the flat when we arrived earlier in the
afternoon, and Chima had insisted on carrying my bag. It was as if they fearedmy illness lingered somewhere within and would pounce out if I exerted
myself. Aunty Ifeoma had told them mine was a serious illness, that I had
nearly died.
“I will eat one later,” I said, turning.
Obiora was pounding a yellow mango against the living room wall. He
would do that until the inside became a soft pulp. Then he would bite a tiny
hole in one end of the fruit and suck it until the seed wobbled alone inside the
skin, like a person in oversize clothing. Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma were eating
mangoes too, but with knives, slicing the firm orange flesh off the seed.
I went out to the verandah and stood by the wet metal railings, watching
the rain thin to a drizzle and then stop. God had decided on sunlight. There
was the smell of freshness in the air, that edible scent the baked soil gave out
at the first touch of rain. I imagined going into the garden, where Jaja was on
his knees, digging out a clump of mud with my fingers and eating it.
“Aku na-efe! Aku is flying!” a child in the flat upstairs shouted.
The air was filling with flapping, water-colored wings. Children ran out
of the flats with folded newspapers and empty Bournvita tins. They hit the
flying aku down with the newspapers and then bent to pick them up and put
them in the tins. Some children simply ran around, swiping at the aku just for
the sake of it. Others squatted down to watch the ones that had lost wings
crawl on the ground, to follow them as they held on to one another and moved
like a black string, a mobile necklace.
“Interesting how people will eat aku. But ask them to eat the wingless
termites and that’s another thing. Yet the wingless ones are just a phase or two
away from aku” Obiora said.
Aunty Ifeoma laughed. “Look at you, Obiora. A few years ago, you were
always first to run after them.”
“Besides, you should not speak of children with such contempt,” Amaka
teased. “After all, they are your own kind.”
“I was never a child,” Obiora said, heading for the door.
“Where are you going?” Amaka asked. “To chase aku?”
“I’m not going to run after those flying termites, I am just going to
look,” Obiora said. “To observe.”
Amaka laughed, and Aunty Ifeoma echoed her.
“Can I go, Mom?” Chima asked. He was already heading for the door.“Yes. But you know we will not fry them.”
“I will give the ones I catch to Ugochukwu. They fry aku in their house,”
Chima said.
“Watch that they do not fly into your ears, inugo? Or they will make you
go deaf!” Aunty Ifeoma called as Chima dashed outside.
Aunty Ifeoma put on her slippers and went upstairs to talk to a neighbor.
I was left alone with Amaka, standing side by side next to the railings. She
moved forward to lean on the railings, her shoulder brushing mine. The old
discomfort was gone.
“You have become Father Amadi’s sweetheart,” she said. Her tone was
the same light tone she had used with Obiora. She could not possibly know
how painfully my heart lurched. “He was really worried when you were sick.
He talked about you so much. And, amam, it wasn’t just priestly concern.”
“What did he say?”
Amaka turned to study my eager face. “You have a crush on him, don’t
you?”
“Crush” was mild. It did not come close to what I felt, how I felt, but I
said, “Yes.”
“Like every other girl on campus.”
I tightened my grip on the railings. I knew Amaka would not tell me
more unless I asked. She wanted me to speak out more, after all. “What do
you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, all the girls in church have crushes on him. Even some of the
married women. People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s
exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.” Amaka ran her hand over the
railings, smearing the water droplets. “You’re different. I’ve never heard him
talk about anyone like that. He said you never laugh. How shy you are
although he knows there’s a lot going on in your head. He insisted on driving
Mom to Enugu to see you. I told him he sounded like a person whose wife
was sick.”
“I was happy that he came to the hospital,” I said. It felt easy saying that,
letting the words roll off my tongue. Amaka’s eyes still bored into me.
“It was Uncle Eugene who did that to you, okwia?” she asked.
I let go of the railings, suddenly needing to ease myself. Nobody had
asked, not even the doctor at the hospital or Father Benedict. I did not knowwhat Papa had told them. Or if he had even told them anything. “Did Aunty
Ifeoma tell you?” I asked.
“No, but I guessed so.”
“Yes. It was him,” I said, and then headed for the toilet. I did not turn to
see Amaka’s reaction.
THE POWER WENT OFF that evening, just before the sun fell. The
refrigerator shook and shivered and then fell silent. I did not notice how loud
its nonstop hum was until it stopped. Obiora brought the kerosene lamps out
to the verandah and we sat around them, swatting at the tiny insects that
blindly followed the yellow light and bumped against the glass bulbs. Father
Amadi came later in the evening, with roast corn and ube wrapped in old
newspapers.
“Father, you are the best! Just what I was thinking about, corn and ube,”
Amaka said.
“I brought this on the condition that you will not raise any arguments
today,” Father Amadi said. “I just want to see how Kambili is doing.”
Amaka laughed and took the package inside to get a plate.
“It’s good to see you are yourself again,” Father Amadi said, looking me
over, as if to see if I was all there. I smiled. He motioned for me to stand up
for a hug. His body touching mine was tense and delicious. I backed away. I
wished that Chima and Jaja and Obiora and Aunty Ifeoma and Amaka would
all disappear for a while. I wished I were alone with him. I wished I could tell
him how warm I felt that he was here, how my favorite color was now the
same fired-clay shade of his skin.
A neighbor knocked on the door and came in with a plastic container of
aku, anara leaves, and red peppers. Aunty Ifeoma said she did not think I
should eat any because it might disturb my stomach. I watched Obiora flatten
an anara leaf on his palm. He sprinkled the aku, fried to twisted crisps, and
the peppers on the leaf and then rolled it up. Some of them slipped out as he
stuffed the rolled leaf in his mouth.
“Our people say that after aku flies, it will still fall to the toad,” Father
Amadi said. He dipped a hand into the bowl and threw a few into his mouth.
“When I was a child, I loved chasing aku. It was just play, though, because if
you really wanted to catch them, you waited till evening, when they all lost
their wings and fell down.” He sounded nostalgic.I closed my eyes and let his voice caress me, let myself imagine him as a
child, before his shoulders grew square, chasing aku outside, over soil
softened by new rains.
AUNTY IFEOMA SAID I would not help fetch water just yet, until she was
sure I was strong enough. So I woke up after everyone else, when the sun’s
rays streamed steadily into the room, making the mirror glitter. Amaka was
standing at the living room window when I came out. I went over and stood
by her. She was looking at the verandah, where Aunty Ifeoma sat on a stool,
talking. The woman seated next to Aunty Ifeoma had piercing academic eyes
and humorless lips and wore no makeup.
“We cannot sit back and let it happen, mba. Where else have you heard
of such a thing as a sole administrator in a university?” Aunty Ifeoma said,
leaning forward on the stool. Tiny cracks appeared in her bronze lipstick
when she pursed her lips. “A governing council votes for a vice chancellor.
That is the way it has worked since this university was built, that is the way it
is supposed to work, oburia?”
The woman looked off into the distance, nodding continuously in the
way that people do when searching for the right words to use. When she
finally spoke, she did so slowly, like someone addressing a stubborn child.
“They said there is a list circulating, Ifeoma, of lecturers who are disloyal to
the university. They said they might be fired. They said your name is on it.”
“I am not paid to be loyal. When I speak the truth, it becomes
disloyalty.”
“Ifeoma, do you think you are the only one who knows the truth? Do you
think we do not all know the truth, eh? But, gwakenem, will the truth feed
your children? Will the truth pay their school fees and buy their clothes?”
“When do we speak out, eh? When soldiers are appointed lecturers and
students attend lectures with guns to their heads? When do we speak out?”
Aunty Ifeoma’s voice was raised. But the blaze in her eyes was not focused
on the woman; she was angry at something that was bigger than the woman
before her.
The woman got up. She smoothed her yellow-and-blue abada skirt that
barely let her brown slippers show. “We should go. What time is your
lecture?”
“Two.”

『••✎••』