Purple Hibiscus Read online

  “No,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “I will do it.” She stood up then and hugged Obiora, and they held on to each other for a long time. I went toward the bathroom, the word ozu ringing in my ears. Papa-Nnukwu was an ozu now, a corpse.

  The bathroom door did not give when I tried to open it, and I pushed harder to make sure it was really locked. Sometimes it got stuck because of the way the wood expanded and contracted. Then I heard Amaka’s sobbing. It was loud and throaty; she laughed the way she cried. She had not learned the art of silent crying; she had not needed to. I wanted to turn and go away, to leave her with her grief. But my underwear already felt wet, and I had to move my weight from leg to leg to hold the urine back.

  “Amaka, please, I have to use the toilet,” I whispered, and when she did not respond, I repeated it loudly. I did not want to knock; knocking would intrude rudely on her tears. Finally, Amaka unlocked the door and opened it. I urinated as quickly as I could because I knew she stood just outside, waiting to go back in and sob behind the locked door.

  THE TWO MEN who came with Doctor Nduoma carried Papa-Nnukwu’s stiffening body in their hands, one holding his underarms and the other his ankles. They could not get the stretcher from the medical center because the medical administrative staff was on strike, too. Doctor Nduoma said “Ndo” to all of us, the smile still on his face. Obiora said he wanted to accompany the ozu to the mortuary; he wanted to see them put the ozu in the fridge. But Aunty Ifeoma said no, he did not have to see Papa-Nnukwu put in the fridge. The word fridge floated around in my head. I knew where they put corpses in the mortuary was different, yet I imagined Papa-Nnukwu’s body being folded into a home refrigerator, the kind in our kitchen.

  Obiora agreed not to go to the mortuary, but he followed the men and watched closely as they loaded the ozu into the station wagon ambulance. He peered into the back of the car to make sure that there was a mat to lay the ozu on, that they would not just lay it down on the rusty floor.

  After the ambulance drove off, followed by Doctor Nduoma in his car, I helped Aunty Ifeoma carry Papa-Nnukwu’s mattress to the verandah. She scrubbed it thoroughly with Omo detergent and the same brush Amaka used to clean the bathtub.

  “Did you see your Papa-Nnukwu’s face in death, Kambili?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, leaning the clean mattress against the metal railings to dry.

  I shook my head. I had not looked at his face.

  “He was smiling,” she said. “He was smiling.”

  I looked away so Aunty Ifeoma would not see the tears on my face and so I would not see the tears on hers. There was not much talking in the flat; the silence was heavy and brooding. Even Chima curled up in a corner for much of the morning, quietly drawing pictures. Aunty Ifeoma boiled some yam slices, and we ate them dipped in palm oil that had chopped red peppers floating in it. Amaka came out of the bathroom hours after we had eaten, her eyes swollen, her voice hoarse.

  “Go and eat, Amaka. I boiled yam,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  “I did not finish painting him. He said we would finish it today.”

  “Go and eat, inugo,” Aunty Ifeoma repeated.

  “He would be alive now if the medical center was not on strike,” Amaka said.

  “It was his time,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Do you hear me? It was simply his time.”

  Amaka stared at Aunty Ifeoma and then turned away. I wanted to hug her, to say “ebezi na” and wipe away her tears. I wanted to cry loudly, in front of her, with her. But I knew it might anger her. She was already angry enough. Besides, I did not have a right to mourn Papa-Nnukwu with her; he had been her Papa-Nnukwu more than mine. She had oiled his hair while I kept away and wondered what Papa would say if he knew. Jaja put his arm around her and led her into the kitchen. She shook free of him, as if to prove she did not need support, but she walked close to him. I stared after them, wishing I had done that instead of Jaja.

  “Somebody just parked in front of our flat,” Obiora said. He had taken off his glasses to cry, but now he had them back on, and he pushed them up the bridge of his nose as he got up to look outside.

  “Who is it?” Aunty Ifeoma asked, tiredly. She could not care less who it was.

  “Uncle Eugene.”

  I froze on my seat, felt the skin of my arms melding and becoming one with the cane arms of the chair. Papa-Nnukwu’s death had overshadowed everything, pushed Papa’s face into a vague place. But that face had come alive now. It was at the door, looking down at Obiora. Those bushy eyebrows were not familiar; neither was that shade of brown skin. Perhaps if Obiora had not said, “Uncle Eugene,” I would not have known that it was Papa, that the tall stranger in the well-tailored white tunic was Papa.

  “Good afternoon, Papa,” I said, mechanically.

  “Kambili, how are you? Where is Jaja?”

  Jaja came out of the kitchen then and stood staring at Papa. “Good afternoon, Papa,” he finally said.

  “Eugene, I asked you not to come,” Aunty Ifeoma said, in the same tired tone of one who did not really care. “I told you I would bring them back tomorrow,”

  “I could not let them stay an extra day,” Papa said, looking around the living room, toward the kitchen and then the hallway, as if waiting for Papa-Nnukwu to appear in a puff of heathen smoke.

  Obiora took Chima by the hand and went out to the verandah.

  “Eugene, our father has fallen asleep,” Aunty Ifeoma said.

  Papa stared at her for a while, surprise widening the narrow eyes that so easily became red-spotted. “When?”

  “This morning. In his sleep. They took him to the mortuary just hours ago.”

  Papa sat down and slowly lowered his head into his hands, and I wondered if he was crying, if it would be acceptable for me to cry, too. But when he looked up, I did not see the traces of tears in his eyes. “Did you call a priest to give him extreme unction?” he asked.

  Aunty Ifeoma ignored him and continued to look at her hands, folded in her lap.

  “Ifeoma, did you call a priest?” Papa asked.

  “Is that all you can say, eh, Eugene? Have you nothing else to say, gbo? Our father has died! Has your head turned upside down? Will you not help me bury our father?”

  “I cannot participate in a pagan funeral, but we can discuss with the parish priest and arrange a Catholic funeral.”

  Aunty Ifeoma got up and started to shout. Her voice was unsteady. “I will put my dead husband’s grave up for sale, Eugene, before I give our father a Catholic funeral. Do you hear me? I said I will sell Ifediora’s grave first! Was our father a Catholic? I ask you, Eugene, was he a Catholic? Uchu gba gi!” Aunty Ifeoma snapped her fingers at Papa; she was throwing a curse at him. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She made choking sounds as she turned and walked into her bedroom.

  “Kambili and Jaja, come,” Papa said, standing up. He hugged us at the same time, tightly. He kissed the tops of our heads, before saying, “Go and pack your bags.”

  In the bedroom, most of my clothes were in the bag already. I stood staring at the window with the missing louvers and the torn mosquito netting, wondering what it would be like if I tore through the small hole and leaped out.

  “Nne.” Aunty Ifeoma came in silently and ran a hand over my cornrows. She handed me my schedule, still folded in crisp quarters.

  “Tell Father Amadi that I have left, that we have left, say good-bye for us,” I said, turning. She had wiped the tears from her face, and she looked the same again, fearless.

  “I will,” she said.

  She held my hand in hers as we walked to the front door. Outside, the harmatten wind tore across the front yard, ruffling the plants in the circular garden, bending the will and branches of trees, coating the parked cars with more dust. Obiora carried our bags to the Mercedes, where Kevin waited with the boot open. Chima started to cry; I knew he did not want Jaja to leave.

  “Chima, o zugo. You will see Jaja again soon. They will come again,” Aunty Ifeoma said, holding him close. Papa did not say yes to back up what Aunty Ifeoma h
ad said. Instead, to make Chima feel better he said, “O zugo, it’s enough,” hugged Chima, and stuffed a small wad of naira notes into Aunty Ifeoma’s hand to buy Chima a present, which made Chima smile. Amaka blinked rapidly as she said good-bye, and I was not sure if it was from the gritty wind or to keep more tears back. The dust coating her eyelashes looked stylish, like cocoa-colored mascara. She pressed something wrapped in black cellophane into my hands, then turned and hurried back into the flat. I could see through the wrapping: it was the unfinished painting of Papa-Nnukwu. I hid it in my bag, quickly, and climbed into the car.

  MAMA WAS AT THE DOOR when we drove into our compound. Her face was swollen and the area around her right eye was the black-purple shade of an overripe avocado. She was smiling. “Umu m, welcome. Welcome.” She hugged us at the same time, burying her head in Jaja’s neck and then in mine. “It seems so long, so much longer than ten days.”

  “Ifeoma was busy tending to a heathen,” Papa said, pouring a glass of water from a bottle Sisi placed on the table. “She did not even take them to Aokpe on pilgrimage.” “Papa-Nnukwu is dead,” Jaja said. Mama’s hand flew to her chest. “Chi m! When?” “This morning,” Jaja said. “He died in his sleep.” Mama wrapped her hands around herself. “Ewuu, so he has gone to rest, ewuu.”

  “He has gone to face judgment,” Papa said, putting his glass of water down. “Ifeoma did not have the sense to call a priest before he died. He might have converted before he died.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to convert,” Jaja said.

  “May he rest in peace,” Mama said quickly.

  Papa looked at Jaja. “What did you say? Is that what you have learned from living in the same house as a heathen?”

  “No,” Jaja said.

  Papa stared at Jaja, then at me, shaking his head slowly as if we had somehow changed color. “Go and bathe and come down for dinner,” he said.

  As we went upstairs, Jaja walked in front of me and I tried to place my feet on the exact spots where he placed his. Papa’s prayer before dinner was longer than usual: he asked God to cleanse his children, to remove whatever spirit it was that made them lie to him about being in the same house as a heathen. “It is the sin of omission, Lord,” he said, as though God did not know. I said my “amen” loudly. Dinner was beans and rice with chunks of chicken. As I ate, I thought how each chunk of chicken on my plate would be cut into three pieces in Aunty Ifeoma’s house.

  “Papa, may I have the key to my room, please?” Jaja asked, setting his fork down. We were halfway through dinner. I took a deep breath and held it. Papa had always kept the keys to our rooms.

  “What?” Papa asked.

  “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 me when 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. He was 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 h
ad 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 to unwrap 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.