Purple Hibiscus Read online

  After the rosary, Aunty Ifeoma asked if we knew any of the songs.

  “We don’t sing at home,” Jaja answered.

  “We do here,” Aunty Ifeoma said, and I wondered if it was irritation that made her lower her eyebrows.

  Obiora turned on the TV after Aunty Ifeoma said good night and went into her bedroom. I sat on the sofa, next to Jaja, watching the images on TV, but I couldn’t tell the olive-skinned characters apart. I felt as if my shadow were visiting Aunty Ifeoma and her family, while the real me was studying in my room in Enugu, my schedule posted above me. I stood up shortly and went into the bedroom to get ready for bed. Even though I did not have the schedule, I knew what time Papa had penciled in for bed. I fell off to sleep wondering when Amaka would come in, if her lips would turn down at the corners in a sneer when she looked at me sleeping.

  I DREAMED THAT A MAKA submerged me in a toilet bowl full of greenish-brown lumps. First my head went in, and then the bowl expanded so that my whole body went in, too. Amaka chanted, “Flush, flush, flush,” while I struggled to break free. I was still struggling when I woke up. Amaka had rolled out of bed and was knotting her wrapper over her nightdress.

  “We’re going to fetch water at the tap,” she said. She did not ask me to come, but I got up, tightened my wrapper, and followed her.

  Jaja and Obiora were already at the tap in the tiny backyard; old car tires and bicycle parts and broken trunks were piled in a corner. Obiora placed the containers under the tap, aligning the open mouths with the rushing water. Jaja offered to take the first filled container back to the kitchen, but Obiora said not to worry and took it in. While Amaka took the next, Jaja placed a smaller container under the tap and filled it. He had slept in the living room, he told me, on a mattress that Obiora unrolled from behind the bedroom door and covered with a wrapper. I listened to him and marveled at the wonder in his voice, at how much lighter the brown of his pupils was. I offered to carry the next container, but Amaka laughed and said I had soft bones and could not carry it.

  When we finished, we said morning prayers in the living room, a string of short prayers punctuated by songs. Aunty Ifeoma prayed for the university, for the lecturers and administration, for Nigeria, and finally, she prayed that we might find peace and laughter today. As we made the sign of the cross, I looked up to seek out Jaja’s face, to see if he, too, was bewildered that Aunty Ifeoma and her family prayed for, of all things, laughter.

  We took turns bathing in the narrow bathroom, with half-full buckets of water, warmed for a while with a heating coil plunged into them. The spotless tub had a triangular hole at one corner, and the water groaned like a man in pain as it drained. I lathered over with my own sponge and soap—Mama had carefully packed my toiletries—and although I scooped the water with a shallow cup and poured it slowly over my body, I still felt slippery as I stepped on the old towel placed on the floor.

  Aunty Ifeoma was at the dining table when I came out, dissolving a few spoonfuls of dried milk in a jug of cold water. “If I let these children take the milk themselves, it will not last a week,” she said, before taking the tin of Carnation dried milk back to the safety of her room. I hoped that Amaka would not ask me if my mother did that, too, because I would stutter if I had to tell her that we took as much creamy Peak milk as we wanted back home. Breakfast was okpa that Obiora had dashed out to buy from somewhere nearby. I had never had okpa for a meal, only for a snack when we sometimes bought the steam-cooked cowpea-and-palm-oil cakes on the drive to Abba. I watched Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma cut up the moist yellow cake and did the same. Aunty Ifeoma asked us to hurry up. She wanted to show Jaja and me the campus and get back in time to cook. She had invited Father Amadi to dinner.

  “Are you sure there’s enough fuel in the car, Mom?” Obiora asked.

  “Enough to take us around campus, at least. I really hope fuel comes in the next week, otherwise when we resume, I will have to walk to my lectures.”

  “Or take okada,” Amaka said, laughing.

  “I will try that soon at this rate.”

  “What are okada?” Jaja asked. I turned to stare at him, surprised. I did not think he would ask that question or any other question.

  “Motorcycles,” Obiora said. “They have become more popular than taxis.”

  Aunty Ifeoma stopped to pluck at some browned leaves in the garden as we walked to the car, muttering that the harmattan was killing her plants.

  Amaka and Obiora groaned and said, “Not the garden now, Mom.”

  “That’s a hibiscus, isn’t it, Aunty?” Jaja asked, staring at a plant close to the barbed wire fencing. “I didn’t know there were purple hibiscuses.”

  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. “And over 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 and fireplaces,” 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 to peel 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 neighborh
ood video game with Chima.

  My cousins chattered as much as before, but they waited until Father Amadi 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.”