Purple Hibiscus (11 page)

“Did you hear about Aokpe, Uncle Eugene?” Amaka asked. “It's a tiny village in Benue. The Blessed Virgin is appearing there.”

I wondered how Amaka did it, how she opened her mouth and had words flow easily out.

Papa spent some time chewing and swallowing before he said, “Yes, I heard about it.”

“I plan to go on pilgrimage there with the children,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Maybe Kambili and Jaja can go with us.”

Amaka looked up quickly, surprised. She started to say something and then stopped.

“Well, the church has not verified the authenticity of the apparitions,” Papa said, staring thoughtfully at his plate.

“You know we will all be dead before the church officially speaks about Aokpe,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Even if the church says it is not authentic, what matters is why we go, and it is from faith.”

Papa looked unexpectedly pleased with what Aunty Ifeoma had said. He nodded slowly. “When do you plan to go?”

“Sometime in January, before the children resume school.”

“Okay. I will call you when we get back to Enugu to arrange for Jaja and Kambili to go for a day or two.”

“A week, Eugene, they will stay a week. I do not have monsters that eat human heads in my house!” Aunty Ifeoma laughed, and her children reproduced the throaty sounds, their teeth flashing like the insides of a cracked palm kernel. Only Amaka did not laugh.

THE NEXT DAY
was a Sunday. It did not seem like a Sunday, maybe because we had just gone to church on Christmas day. Mama came into my room and shook me gently, hugged me, and I smelled her mint-scented deodorant.

“Did you sleep well? We are going to the earlier Mass today because your father has a meeting right afterward.
Kunie
, get into the bathroom, it's past seven.”

I yawned and sat up. There was a red stain on my bed, wide as an open notebook.

“Your period,” Mama said. “Did you bring pads?”

“Yes.”

I barely let the water run over my body before I came out of the shower, so that I would not delay. I picked out a blue-and-white dress and tied a blue scarf around my head. I knotted it twice at the back of my neck and then tucked the ends of my cornrows underneath. Once, Papa had hugged me proudly, kissed my forehead, because Father Benedict told him that my hair was always properly covered for Mass, that I was not like the other young girls in church who let some of their hair show, as if they did not know that exposing your hair in church was ungodly.

Jaja and Mama were dressed and waiting in the living room upstairs when I came out. Cramps racked my belly. I imagined someone with buckteeth rhythmically biting deep into my stomach walls and letting go. “Do you have Panadol, Mama?”

“Cramps
abia
?”

“Yes. My stomach is so empty, too.”

Mama looked at the wall clock, a gift from a charity Papa donated to, oval shaped and embossed with his name in gold lettering. It was 7:37. The Eucharist fast mandated that the
faithful not eat solid food an hour before Mass. We never broke the Eucharistic fast; the table was set for breakfast with teacups and cereal bowls side by side, but we would not eat until we came home.

“Eat a little corn flakes, quickly,” Mama said, almost in a whisper. “You need something in your stomach to hold the Panadol.”

Jaja poured the cereal from the carton on the table, scooped in powdered milk and sugar with a teaspoon, and added water. The glass bowl was transparent, and I could see the chalky clumps the milk made with the water at the bottom of the bowl.

“Papa is with visitors, we will hear him as he comes up,” he said.

I started to wolf the cereal down, standing. Mama gave me the Panadol tablets, still in the silver-colored foil, which crinkled as I opened it. Jaja had not put much cereal in the bowl, and I was almost done eating it when the door opened and Papa came in.

Papa's white shirt, with its perfectly tailored lines, did little to minimize the mound of flesh that was his stomach. While he stared at the glass bowl of corn flakes in my hand, I looked down at the few flaccid flakes floating among the clumps of milk and wondered how he had climbed the stairs so soundlessly.

“What are you doing, Kambili?”

I swallowed hard. “I…I…”

“You are eating ten minutes before Mass? Ten minutes before Mass?”

“Her period started and she has cramps—” Mama said.

Jaja cut her short. “I told her to eat corn flakes before she took Panadol, Papa. I made it for her.”

“Has the devil asked you all to go on errands for him?” The Igbo words burst out of Papa's mouth. “Has the devil built a tent in my house?” He turned to Mama. “You sit there and watch her desecrate the Eucharistic fast,
maka nnidi
?”

He unbuckled his belt slowly. It was a heavy belt made of layers of brown leather with a sedate leather-covered buckle. It landed on Jaja first, across his shoulder. Then Mama raised her hands as it landed on her upper arm, which was covered by the puffy sequined sleeve of her church blouse. I put the bowl down just as the belt landed on my back. Sometimes I watched the Fulani nomads, white jellabas flapping against their legs in the wind, making clucking sounds as they herded their cows across the roads in Enugu with a switch, each smack of the switch swift and precise. Papa was like a Fulani nomad—although he did not have their spare, tall body—as he swung his belt at Mama, Jaja, and me, muttering that the devil would not win. We did not move more than two steps away from the leather belt that swished through the air.

Then the belt stopped, and Papa stared at the leather in his hand. His face crumpled; his eyelids sagged. “Why do you walk into sin?” he asked. “Why do you like sin?”

Mama took the belt from him and laid it on the table.

Papa crushed Jaja and me to his body. “Did the belt hurt you? Did it break your skin?” he asked, examining our faces. I felt a throbbing on my back, but I said no, that I was not hurt. It was the way Papa shook his head when he talked about liking sin, as if something weighed him down, something he could not throw off.

We went to the later Mass. But first we changed our clothes, even Papa, and washed our faces.

WE LEFT ABBA
right after New Year's. The wives of the umunna took the leftover food, even the cooked rice and beans that Mama said were spoiled, and they knelt in the backyard dirt to thank Papa and Mama. The gate man waved with both hands over his head as we drove off. His name was Haruna, he had told Jaja and me a few days before, and in his Hausa-accented English that reversed
P
and
F
, he told us that our pather was the best Big Man he had ever seen, the best emfloyer he had ever had. Did we know our pather faid his children's school pees? Did we know our pather had helfed his wipe get the messenger job at the Local Government oppice? We were lucky to have such a pather.

Papa started the rosary as we drove onto the expressway. We had driven for less than half an hour when we came to a checkpoint; there was a traffic jam, and policemen, many more than was usual, were waving their guns and diverting traffic. We didn't see the cars involved in the accident until we were in the thick of the jam. One car had stopped at the checkpoint, and another had rammed into it from behind. The second car was crushed to half of its size. A bloodied corpse, a man in blue jeans, lay on the roadside.

“May his soul rest in peace,” Papa said, crossing himself.

“Look away,” Mama said, turning back to us.

But Jaja and I were already looking at the corpse. Papa was talking about the policemen, about how they set up the roadblocks in wooded parts, even if it was dangerous for motorists, just so that they could use the bushes to hide the money they
extorted from travelers. But I was not really listening to Papa; I was thinking of the man in the blue jeans, the dead man. I was wondering where he was going and what he had planned to do there.

PAPA CALLED AUNTY IFEOMA
two days later. Perhaps he would not have called her if we had not gone to confession that day. And perhaps then we would never have gone to Nsukka and everything would have remained the same.

It was the feast of the Epiphany, a holy day of obligation, so Papa did not go to work. We went to morning Mass, and although we did not usually visit Father Benedict on holy days of obligation, we went to his house afterward. Papa wanted Father Benedict to hear our confession. We had not gone in Abba because Papa did not like to make his confession in Igbo, and besides, Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and mighty statues. You would never see white people doing that.

In Father Benedict's house, Mama and Jaja and I sat in the living room, reading the newspapers and magazines that were spread on the low, coffin-like table as if they were for sale while Papa talked with Father Benedict in the adjoining study room. Papa emerged and asked us to prepare for confession; he would go first. Even though Papa shut the door firmly, I heard his voice, words flowing into each other in an endless rumble like a revving car engine. Mama went next, and the door remained open a crack, but I could not hear her. Jaja took the shortest time. When he came out, still crossing himself as if he had
been in too much of a hurry to leave the room, I asked him with my eyes if he had remembered the lie to Papa-Nnukwu, and he nodded. I went into the room, barely big enough to hold a desk and two chairs, and pushed the door to make sure it shut properly.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said, sitting on the very edge of the chair. I longed for a confessional, for the safety of the wood cubicle and the green curtain that separated priest and penitent. I wished I could kneel, and then I wished I could shield my face with a file from Father Benedict's desk. Face-to-face confessions made me think of Judgment Day come early, made me feel unprepared.

“Yes, Kambili,” Father Benedict said. He sat upright on his chair, fingering the purple stole across his shoulders.

“It has been three weeks since my last confession,” I said. I was staring fixedly at the wall, right below the framed photo of the Pope, which had a signature scrawled underneath. “Here are my sins. I lied two times. I broke the Eucharistic fast once. I lost concentration during the rosary three times. For all I have said and for all I have forgotten to say, I beg pardon from your hands and the hands of God.”

Father Benedict shifted on his chair. “Go on, then. You know it's a sin against the Holy Spirit to willfully keep something back at confession.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Go on, then.”

I looked away from the wall to glance at him. His eyes were the same green shade of a snake I had seen once, slithering across the yard near the hibiscus bushes. The gardener had said it was a harmless garden snake.

“Kambili, you must confess all your sins.”

“Yes, Father. I have.”

“It is wrong to hide from the Lord. I will give you a moment to think.”

I nodded and stared back at the wall. Was there something I had done that Father Benedict knew about that I did not know? Had Papa told him something?

“I spent more than fifteen minutes at my grandfather's house,” I said finally. “My grandfather is a pagan.”

“Did you eat any of the native foods sacrificed to idols?”

“No, Father.”

“Did you participate in any pagan rituals?”

“No, Father.” I paused. “But we looked at
mmuo
. Masquerades.”

“Did you enjoy that?”

I looked up at the photo on the wall and wondered if the Pope himself had actually signed it. “Yes, Father.”

“You understand that it is wrong to take joy in pagan rituals, because it breaks the first commandment. Pagan rituals are misinformed superstition, and they are the gateway to Hell. Do you understand that, then?”

“Yes, Father.”

“For your penance say the Our Father ten times, Hail Mary six times, and the Apostles' Creed once. And you must make a conscious effort to convert everyone who enjoys the ways of heathens.”

“Yes, Father.”

“All right, then, make the Act of Contrition.”

While I recited the Act of Contrition, Father Benedict murmured blessings and made the sign of the cross.

Papa and Mama were still sitting on the sofa, heads bent, when I came out. I sat next to Jaja, bent my head, and made my penance.

As we drove home, Papa talked loudly, above the “Ave Maria.” “I am spotless now, we are all spotless. If God calls us right now, we are going straight to Heaven. Straight to Heaven. We will not require the cleansing of Purgatory.” He was smiling, his eyes bright, his hand gently drumming the steering wheel. And he was still smiling when he called Aunty Ifeoma soon after we got back home, before he had his tea.

“I discussed it with Father Benedict, and he says the children can go on pilgrimage to Aokpe but you must make it clear that what is happening there has not been verified by the church.” A pause. “My driver, Kevin, will take them.” A pause. “Tomorrow is too soon. The day after.” A long pause. “Oh, all right. God bless you and the children. Bye.”

Papa put the phone down and turned to us. “You will leave tomorrow, so go up and pack your things. Pack for five days.”

“Yes, Papa,” Jaja and I said together.

“Maybe,
anam asi
,” Mama said, “they should not visit Ifeoma's house empty-handed.”

Papa stared at her as if surprised that she had spoken. “We will put some food in the car, of course, yams and rice,” he said.

“Ifeoma mentioned that gas cylinders were scarce in Nsukka.”

“Gas cylinders?”

“Yes, cooking gas. She said she uses her old kerosene stove now. You remember the story of adulterated kerosene that was blowing up stoves and killing people? I thought maybe you might send one or two gas cylinders to her from the factory.”