Purple Hibiscus Read online

  “I…I…I was asleep.”

  “Well, today, you’re coming with me. Just you,” Father Amadi said. “I will come and pick you up on my way back from town. We’re going to the stadium for football. You can play or watch.”

  Amaka started to laugh. “Kambili looks frightened to death.” She was looking at me, but it was not the look I was used to, the one where her eyes held me guilty of things I did not know. It was a different, softer look.

  “There is nothing to be frightened about, nne. You will have fun at the stadium,” Aunty Ifeoma said, and I turned to stare blankly at her, too. Tiny beads of sweat, like pimples, covered her nose. She seemed so happy, so at peace, and I wondered how anybody around me could feel that way when liquid fire was raging inside me, when fear was mingling with hope and clutching itself around my ankles.

  After Father Amadi left, Aunty Ifeoma said, “Go and get ready so you don’t keep him waiting when he gets back. Shorts are best because even if you don’t play, it will get hotter before the sun falls and most of the spectator stands don’t have roofs.”

  “Because they have spent ten years building that stadium. The money has gone into peoples’ pockets,” Amaka muttered.

  “I don’t have shorts, Aunty,” I said.

  Aunty Ifeoma did not ask why, perhaps because she already knew. She asked Amaka to lend me a pair of shorts. I expected Amaka to sneer, but she gave me a pair of yellow shorts as if it were normal that I did not have any. I took my time putting on the shorts, but I did not stand in front of the mirror for too long, as Amaka did, because guilt would nibble at me. Vanity was a sin. Jaja and I looked in the mirror just long enough to make sure our buttons were done right.

  I heard the Toyota drive up to the front of the flat awhile later. I took Amaka’s lipstick from the top of the dresser and ran it over my lips. It looked strange, not as glamorous as it did on Amaka; it did not even have the same bronze shimmer. I wiped it off. My lips looked pale, a dour brown. I ran the lipstick over my lips again, and my hands shook.

  “Kambili! Father Amadi is horning outside for you,” Aunty Ifeoma called. I wiped the lipstick away with the back of my hand and left the room.

  FATHER AMADI’S CAR smelled like him, a clean scent that made me think of a clear azure sky. His shorts had seemed longer the last time I saw him in them, well past his knees. But now they climbed up to expose a muscular thigh sprinkled with dark hair. The space between us was too small, too tight. I was always a penitent when I was close to a priest at confession. But it was hard to feel penitent now, with Father Amadi’s cologne deep in my lungs. I felt guilty instead because I could not focus on my sins, could not think of anything except how near he was. “I sleep in the same room as my grandfather. He is a heathen,” I blurted out.

  He turned to me briefly, and before he looked away, I wondered if the light in his eyes was amusement. “Why do you say that?”

  “It is a sin.”

  “Why is it a sin?”

  I stared at him. I felt that he had missed a line in his script. “I don’t know.”

  “Your father told you that.”

  I looked away, out the window. I would not implicate Papa, since Father Amadi obviously disagreed.

  “Jaja told me a little about your father the other day, Kambili.”

  I bit my lower lip. What had Jaja said to him? What was wrong with Jaja, anyway? Father Amadi said nothing else until we got to the stadium and he quickly scanned the few people running on the tracks. His boys were not here yet, so the football field was empty. We sat on the stairs, in one of the two spectator stands that had a roof.

  “Why don’t we play set ball before the boys come?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how to play.”

  “Do you play handball?”

  “No.”

  “What about volleyball?”

  I looked at him and then away. I wondered if Amaka would ever paint him, would ever capture the clay-smooth skin, the straight eyebrows, which were slightly raised as he watched me. “I played volleyball in class one,” I said. “But I stopped playing because I…I was not that good and nobody liked to pick me.” I kept my eyes focused on the bleak, unpainted spectator stands, abandoned for so long that tiny plants had started to push their green heads through the cracks in the cement.

  “Do you love Jesus?” Father Amadi asked, standing up.

  I was startled. “Yes. Yes, I love Jesus.”

  “Then show me. Try and catch me, show me you love Jesus.”

  He had hardly finished speaking before he dashed off and I saw the blue flash of his tank top. I did not stop to think; I stood up and ran after him. The wind blew in my face, into my eyes, across my ears. Father Amadi was like blue wind, elusive. I did not catch up until he stopped near the football goal post. “So you don’t love Jesus,” he teased.

  “You run too fast,” I said, panting.

  “I will let you rest, and then you can have another chance to show me you love the Lord.”

  We ran four more times. I did not catch him. We flopped down on the grass, finally, and he pushed a water bottle into my hand. “You have good legs for running. You should practice more,” he said.

  I looked away. I had never heard anything like that before. It seemed too close, too intimate, to have his eyes on my legs, on any part of me.

  “Don’t you know how to smile?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He reached across, tugged lightly at the sides of my lips. “Smile.”

  I wanted to smile, but I could not. My lips and cheeks were frozen, unthawed by the sweat running down the sides of my nose. I was too aware that he was watching me.

  “What is that reddish stain on your hand?” he asked.

  I looked down at my hand, at the smudge of hastily wiped lipstick that still clung to the sweaty back of my hands. I had not realized how much I had put on. “It’s…a stain,” I said, feeling stupid.

  “Lipstick?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you wear lipstick? Have you ever worn lipstick?”

  “No,” I said. Then I felt the smile start to creep over my face, stretching my lips and cheeks, an embarrassed and amused smile. He knew I had tried to wear lipstick for the first time today. I smiled. I smiled again.

  “Good evening, Father!” echoed all around, and eight boys descended on us. They were all about my age, with shorts that had holes in them and shirts washed so often I didn’t know what color they had originally been and similar crusty spots from insect bites on their legs. Father Amadi took his tank top off and dropped it on my lap before joining the boys on the football field. With his upper body bare, his shoulders were a broad square. I did not look down at his tank top on my lap as I inched my hand ever so slowly toward it. My eyes were on the football field, on Father Amadi’s running legs, on the flying white-and-black football, on the many legs of the boys, which all looked like one leg. My hand had finally touched the top on my lap, moving over it tentatively as though it could breathe, as though it were a part of Father Amadi, when he blew a whistle for a water break. He brought peeled oranges and water wrapped into tight cone shapes in plastic bags from his car. They all settled down on the grass to eat the oranges, and I watched Father Amadi laugh loudly with his head thrown back, leaning to rest his elbows on the grass. I wondered if the boys felt the same way I did with him, that they were all he could see.

  I held on to his tank top while I watched the rest of the play. A cool wind had started to blow, chilling the sweat on my body, when Father Amadi blew the final whistle, three times with the last time drawn out. Then the boys clustered around him, heads bowed, while he prayed. “Good-bye, Father!” echoed around as he made his way toward me. There was something confident about his gait, like a rooster in charge of all the neighborhood hens.

  In the car, he played a tape. It was a choir singing Igbo worship songs. I knew the first song: Mama sang it sometimes when Jaja and I brought our report cards home. Father Amadi sang along. His vo
ice was smoother than the lead singer’s on the tape. When the first song ended, he lowered the volume and asked, “Did you enjoy the game?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see Christ in their faces, in the boys’ faces.”

  I looked at him. I could not reconcile the blond Christ hanging on the burnished cross in St. Agnes and the sting-scarred legs of those boys.

  “They live in Ugwu Oba. Most of them don’t go to school anymore because their families can’t afford it. Ekwueme—remember him, in the red shirt?”

  I nodded, although I could not remember. All the shirts had seemed similar and colorless.

  “His father was a driver here in the university. But they retrenched him, and Ekwueme had to drop out of Nsukka High School. He is working as a bus conductor now, and he is doing very well. They inspire me, those boys.” Father Amadi stopped talking to join in the chorus. “I na-asi m esona ya! I na-asi m esona ya!”

  I nodded in time to the chorus. We really did not need the music, though, because his voice was melody enough. I felt that I was at home, that I was where I had been meant to be for a long time. Father Amadi sang for a while; then he lowered the volume to a whisper again. “You haven’t asked me a single question,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to ask.”

  “You should have learned the art of questioning from Amaka. Why does the tree’s shoot go up and the root down? Why is there a sky? What is life? Just why?”

  I laughed. It sounded strange, as if I were listening to the recorded laughter of a stranger being played back. I was not sure I had ever heard myself laugh.

  “Why did you become a priest?” I blurted out, then wished I had not asked, that the bubbles in my throat had not let that through. Of course he had gotten the call, the same call that all the Reverend Sisters in school talked about when they asked us to always listen for the call when we prayed. Sometimes I imagined God calling me, his rumbling voice British-accented. He would not say my name right; like Father Benedict, he would place the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first.

  “I wanted to be a doctor at first. Then I went to church once and heard this priest speak and I was changed forever,” Father Amadi said.

  “Oh.”

  “I was joking,” Father Amadi glanced at me. He looked surprised I did not realize that it was a joke. “It’s a lot more complicated than that, Kambili. I had many questions, growing up. The priesthood came closest to answering them.”

  I wondered what questions they were and if Father Benedict, too, had those questions. Then I thought, with a fierce, unreasonable sadness, how Father Amadi’s smooth skin would not be passed on to a child, how his square shoulders would not balance the legs of his toddler son who wanted to touch the ceiling fan.

  “Ewo, I am late for a chaplaincy council meeting,” he said, looking at the clock. “I’ll drop you off and leave right away.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? I’ve spent an enjoyable afternoon with you. You must come with me to the stadium again. I will tie your hands and legs up and carry you if I have to.” He laughed.

  I stared at the dashboard, at the blue-and-gold Legion of Mary sticker on it. Didn’t he know that I did not want him to leave, ever? That I did not need to be persuaded to go to the stadium, or anywhere, with him? The afternoon played across my mind as I got out of the car in front of the flat. I had smiled, run, laughed. My chest was filled with something like bath foam. Light. The lightness was so sweet I tasted it on my tongue, the sweetness of an overripe bright yellow cashew fruit.

  Aunty Ifeoma was standing behind Papa-Nnukwu on the verandah, rubbing his shoulders. I greeted them.

  “Kambili, nno,” Papa-Nnukwu said. He looked tired; his eyes were dull.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, smiling.

  “Yes, Aunty.”

  “Your father called this afternoon,” she said, in English.

  I stared at her, studying the black mole above her lip, willing her to laugh her loud, cackling laugh and tell me it was a joke. Papa never called in the afternoon. Besides, he had called before he went to work, so why had he called again? Something had to be wrong.

  “Somebody from the village—I’m sure it was a member of our extended family—told him that I had come to take your grandfather from the village,” Aunty Ifeoma said, still in English so Papa-Nnukwu would not understand. “Your father said I should have told him, that he deserved to know that your grandfather was here in Nsukka. He went on and on about a heathen being in the same house as his children.” Aunty Ifeoma shook her head as if the way Papa felt were just a minor eccentricity. But it was not. Papa would be outraged that neither Jaja nor I had mentioned it when he called. My head was filling up quickly with blood or water or sweat. Whatever it was, I knew I would faint when my head got full.

  “He said he would come here tomorrow to take you both back, but I calmed him down. I told him that I would take you and Jaja home the day after tomorrow, and I think he accepted that. Let’s hope we find fuel,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  “Okay, Aunty.” I turned to go into the flat, feeling dizzy.

  “Oh, and he has gotten his editor out of prison,” Aunty Ifeoma said. But I hardly heard her.

  AMAKA SHOOK ME although her movements had already woken me. I had been teetering on that boundary that divides sleep and wakefulness, imagining Papa coming to get us himself, imagining the rage in his red-tinged eyes, the burst of Igbo from his mouth.

  “Let’s go and fetch water. Jaja and Obiora are already out,” Amaka said, stretching. She said that every morning now. She let me carry one container in now, too.

  “Nekwa, Papa-Nnukwu is still asleep. He will be upset that the medicines made him oversleep and he did not wake to watch the sun rise.” She bent and shook him gently.

  “Papa-Nnukwu, Papa-Nnukwu, kunie.” She turned him over slowly when he did not stir. His wrapper had come undone to reveal a pair of white shorts with a frayed elastic band at the waist. “Mom! Mom!” Amaka screamed. She moved a hand over Papa-Nnukwu’s chest, feverishly, searching for a heartbeat. “Mom!”

  Aunty Ifeoma hurried into the room. She had not tied her wrapper over her nightdress, and I could make out the downward slope of her breasts, the slight swell of her belly underneath the sheer fabric. She sank to her knees and clutched Papa-Nnukwu’s body, shaking it.

  “Nna anyi! Nna anyi!” Her voice was desperately loud, as if raising it would make Papa-Nnukwu hear better and respond. “Nna anyi!” When she stopped speaking, grasping Papa-Nnukwu’s wrist, resting her head on his chest, the silence was broken only by the crow of the neighbor’s cock. I held my breath—it suddenly seemed too loud for Aunty Ifeoma to hear Papa-Nnukwu’s heartbeat.

  “Ewuu, he has fallen asleep. He has fallen asleep,” Aunty Ifeoma said, finally. She buried her head on Papa-Nnukwu’s shoulder, rocking back and forth.

  Amaka pulled at her mother. “Stop it, Mom. Give him mouth to mouth! Stop it!”

  Aunty Ifeoma kept rocking, and for a moment, because Papa-Nnukwu’s body moved back and forth as well, I wondered if Aunty Ifeoma was wrong and Papa-Nnukwu was only really asleep.

  “Nna m o! My father!” Aunty Ifeoma’s voice rang out so pure and high it seemed to come from the ceiling. It was the same tone, the same piercing depth, that I heard sometimes in Abba when mourners danced past our house, holding the photograph of a dead family member, shouting.

  “Nna m o!” Aunty Ifeoma screamed, still clutching Papa-Nnukwu. Amaka made feeble attempts to pull her off. Obiora and Jaja dashed into the room. And I imagined our forebears a century ago, the ancestors Papa-Nnukwu prayed to, charging in to defend their hamlet, coming back with lolling heads on long sticks.

  “What is it, Mom?” Obiora asked. The bottom of his trousers clung to his leg where water from the tap had splashed on it.

  “Papa-Nnukwu is alive,” Jaja said in English, with authority, as if doing so would make his words come true. The same tone God must have used wh
en He said “Let there be Light.” Jaja wore only the bottom of his pajamas, which was also splattered with water. For the first time, I noticed the sparse hair on his chest.

  “Nna m o!” Aunty Ifeoma was still clutching Papa-Nnukwu.

  Obiora started to breathe in a noisy, rasping way. He bent over Aunty Ifeoma and grasped her, slowly prying her away from Papa-Nnukwu’s body. “O zugo, it is enough, Mom. He has joined the others.” His voice had a strange timber. He helped Aunty Ifeoma up and led her to sit on the bed. She had the same blank look in her eyes that Amaka had, standing there, staring down at Papa-Nnukwu’s form.

  “I will call Doctor Nduoma,” Obiora said.

  Jaja bent down and covered Papa-Nnukwu’s body with the wrapper, but he did not cover his face even though the wrapper was long enough. I wanted to go over and touch Papa-Nnukwu, touch the white tufts of hair that Amaka oiled, smooth the wrinkled skin of his chest. But I would not. Papa would be outraged. I closed my eyes then so that if Papa asked if I had seen Jaja touch the body of a heathen—it seemed more grievous, touching Papa-Nnukwu in death—I could truthfully say no, because I had not seen everything that Jaja did. My eyes remained closed for a long time, and it seemed that my ears, too, were closed, because although I could hear the sound of voices, I did not make out what they said. When I finally opened my eyes, Jaja sat on the floor, next to Papa-Nnukwu’s sheathed frame. Obiora sat on the bed with Aunty Ifeoma, who was speaking. “Wake Chima up, so we can tell him before the people from the mortuary come.”

  Jaja stood up to go and wake Chima. He wiped at the tears that slid down his cheeks as he went.

  “I will clean where the ozu lay, Mom,” Obiora said. He let out sporadic choking sounds, crying deep in his throat. I knew that the reason he did not cry out loud was because he was the nwoke in the house, the man Aunty Ifeoma had by her side.