Purple Hibiscus Read online

  “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 out so 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 n
ight 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 going on, 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.

  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 mu
ch 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 would come 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.