Purple Hibiscus (16 page)

I sat on the verandah, with the book on my lap, watching one of the children chase a butterfly in the front yard. The butterfly dipped up and down, and its black-spotted yellow wings flapped slowly, as if teasing the little girl. The girl's hair, held atop her head like a ball of wool, bounced as she ran. Obiora was sitting on the verandah, too, but outside the shade, so he squinted behind his thick glasses to keep the sun out of his eyes. He was watching the girl and the butterfly while repeating the name Jaja slowly, placing the stress on both syllables, then on the first, then on the second. “
Aja
means sand or oracle, but
Jaja
? What kind of name is Jaja? It is not Igbo,” he finally pronounced.

“My name is actually Chukwuka. Jaja is a childhood nickname that stuck.” Jaja was on his knees. He wore only a pair of denim shorts, and the muscles on his back rippled, smooth and long like the ridges he weeded.

“When he was a baby, all he could say was Ja-Ja. So everybody called him Jaja,” Aunty Ifeoma said. She turned to Jaja and added, “I told your mother that it was an appropriate nickname, that you would take after Jaja of Opobo.”

“Jaja of Opobo? The stubborn king?” Obiora asked.

“Defiant,” Aunt Ifeoma said. “He was a defiant king.”

“What does defiant mean, Mommy? What did the king do?” Chima asked. He was in the garden, doing something on his knees, too, although Aunty Ifeoma often told him “
Kwusia
, don't do that” or “If you do that again, I will give you a knock.”

“He was king of the Opobo people,” Aunty Ifeoma said, “and when the British came, he refused to let them control all the trade. He did not sell his soul for a bit of gunpowder like the other kings did, so the British exiled him to the West Indies. He never returned to Opobo.” Aunt Ifeoma continued watering the row of tiny banana-colored flowers that clustered in bunches. She held a metal watering can in her hand, tilting it to let the water out through the nozzle. She had already used up the biggest container of water we fetched in the morning.

“That's sad. Maybe he should not have been defiant,” Chima said. He moved closer to squat next to Jaja. I wondered if he understood what “exiled” and “sold his soul for a bit of gunpowder” meant. Aunty Ifeoma spoke as though she expected that he did.

“Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Defiance is like marijuana—it is not a bad thing when it is used right.”

The solemn tone, more than the sacrilege of what she said, made me look up. Her conversation was with Chima and Obiora, but she was looking at Jaja.

Obiora smiled and pushed his glasses up. “Jaja of Opobo was no saint, anyway. He sold his people into slavery, and besides, the British won in the end. So much for the defiance.”

“The British won the war, but they lost many battles,” Jaja said, and my eyes skipped over the rows of text on the page. How did Jaja do it? How could he speak so easily? Didn't he have the same bubbles of air in his throat, keeping the words back, letting out only a stutter at best? I looked up to watch him, to watch his dark skin covered with beads of sweat that gleamed in the sun. I had never seen his arm move this way, never seen this piercing light in his eyes that appeared when he was in Aunty Ifeoma's garden.

“What happened to your little finger?” Chima asked. Jaja looked down, too, as if he were just then noticing the gnarled finger, deformed like a dried stick.

“Jaja had an accident,” Aunty Ifeoma said, quickly. “Chima, go and get me the container of water. It is almost empty, so you can carry it.”

I stared at Aunty Ifeoma, and when her eyes met mine, I looked away. She knew. She knew what had happened to Jaja's finger.

When he was ten, he had missed two questions on his catechism test and was not named the best in his First Holy Communion class. Papa took him upstairs and locked the door. Jaja, in tears, came out supporting his left hand with his right, and Papa drove him to St. Agnes hospital. Papa was crying, too, as he carried Jaja in his arms like a baby all the way to the car. Later, Jaja told me that Papa had avoided his right hand because it is the hand he writes with.

“This is about to bloom,” Aunt Ifeoma said to Jaja, pointing
at an ixora bud. “Another two days and it will open its eyes to the world.”

“I probably won't see it,” Jaja said. “We'll be gone by then.”

Aunty Ifeoma smiled. “Don't they say that time flies when you are happy?”

The phone rang then, and Aunty Ifeoma asked me to pick it up, since I was closest to the front door. It was Mama. I knew something was wrong right away, because it was Papa who always placed the call. Besides, they did not call in the afternoon.

“Your father is not here,” Mama said. Her voice sounded nasal, as if she needed to blow her nose. “He had to leave this morning.”

“Is he well?” I asked.

“He is well.” She paused, and I could hear her talking to Sisi. Then she came back to the phone and said that yesterday soldiers had gone to the small, nondescript rooms that served as the offices of the
Standard
. Nobody knew how they had found out where the offices were. There were so many soldiers that the people on that street told Papa it reminded them of pictures from the front during the civil war. The soldiers took every copy of the entire press run, smashed furniture and printers, locked the offices, took the keys, and boarded up the doors and windows. Ade Coker was in custody again.

“I worry about your father,” Mama said, before I gave the phone to Jaja. “I worry about your father.”

Aunty Ifeoma seemed worried, too, because after the phone call, she went out and bought a copy of the
Guardian
although she never bought newspapers. They cost too much; she read them at the paper stands when she had the time. The story of
soldiers closing down the
Standard
was tucked into the middle page, next to advertisements for women's shoes imported from Italy.

“Uncle Eugene would have run it on the front page of his paper,” Amaka said, and I wondered if the inflection in her voice was pride.

When Papa called later, he asked to talk to Aunty Ifeoma first. Afterward he talked to Jaja and then me. He said he was fine, that everything was fine, that he missed us and loved us very much. He did not mention the
Standard
or what had happened to the editorial offices. After we hung up, Aunty Ifeoma said, “Your father wants you to stay here a few days longer,” and Jaja smiled so widely I saw dimples I did not even know he had.

THE PHONE RANG EARLY
, before any of us had taken a morning bath. My mouth went dry because I was sure it was about Papa, that something had happened to him. The soldiers had gone to the house; they had shot him to make sure he would never publish anything again. I waited for Aunty Ifeoma to call Jaja and me, though I tightened my fist and willed her not to. She stayed for a few moments on the phone, and when she came out, she looked downcast. Her laughter did not ring out as often for the rest of the day, and she snapped at Chima when he wanted to sit next to her, saying, “Leave me alone!
Nekwa anya
, you are no longer a baby.” One half of her lower lip disappeared into her mouth, and her jaw quivered as she chewed.

Father Amadi dropped by during dinner. He pulled a chair from the living room and sat, sipping water from a glass Amaka had brought him.

“I played football at the stadium and afterward I took some of the boys to town, for
akara
and fried yams,” he said, when Amaka asked what he had done today.

“Why didn't you tell me you would be playing today, Father?” Obiora asked.

“I'm sorry I forgot to, but I will pick you and Jaja up next weekend so we can play.” The music of his voice lowered in apology. I could not help staring at him, because his voice pulled me and because I did not know a priest could play football. It seemed so ungodly, so common. Father Amadi's eyes met mine across the table, and I looked away quickly.

“Perhaps Kambili will play with us also,” he said. Hearing my name in his voice, in that melody, made me feel taut inside. I filled my mouth, as if I might have said something but for the food I had to chew. “Amaka used to play with us when I first came here, but now she spends her time listening to African music and dreaming unrealistic dreams.”

My cousins laughed, Amaka the loudest, and Jaja smiled. But Aunty Ifeoma did not laugh. She chewed her food in little bites; her eyes were distant.

“Ifeoma, is something wrong?” Father Amadi asked.

She shook her head and sighed, as though she had just realized that she was not alone. “I got a message from home today. Our father is sick. They said he did not rise well three mornings in a row. I want to bring him here.”

“Ezi okwu
?” Father Amadi's brows furrowed. “Yes, you should bring him here.”

“Papa-Nnukwu is sick?” Amaka asked shrilly. “Mom, when did you know?”

“This morning, his neighbor called. She is a good woman, Nwamgba, she went all the way to Ukpo to find a phone.”

“You should have told us!” Amaka shouted.

“O gini
? Have I not told you now?” Aunty Ifeoma snapped.

“When can we go to Abba, Mom?” Obiora asked, calmly, and at that moment, as in many others I had observed since we came, he seemed so much older than Jaja.

“I don't have enough fuel in the car to reach even Ninth Mile, and I don't know when fuel will come. I cannot afford to charter a taxi. If I take public transport, how will I bring back a sick old man in those buses so packed with people your face is in the next person's smelly armpit?” Aunty Ifeoma shook her head. “I am tired. I am so tired…”

“We have some emergency fuel reserves in the chaplaincy,” Father Amadi said quietly. “I am sure I could get you a gallon.
Ekwuzina
, don't sound that way.”

Aunty Ifeoma nodded and thanked Father Amadi. But her face did not brighten, and later, when we said the rosary, her voice did not rise when she sang. I struggled to meditate on the joyful Mysteries, all the time wondering where Papa-Nnukwu would sleep when he came. There were few choices in the small flat—the living room was already full with the boys, and Aunt Ifeoma's room was so busy, serving as food store and library and bedroom for her and Chima. It would have to be the other bedroom, Amaka's—and mine. I wondered if I would have to confess that I had shared a room with a heathen. I paused then, in my meditation, to pray that Papa would never find out that Papa-Nnukwu had visited and that I had shared a room with him.

At the end of the five decades, before we said the Hail Holy Queen, Aunty Ifeoma prayed for Papa-Nnukwu. She asked God to stretch a healing hand over him as he had stretched over the apostle Peter's mother-in-law. She asked the Blessed Virgin to pray for him. She asked the angels to take charge of him.

My “Amen” was a little delayed, a little surprised. When Papa prayed for Papa-Nnukwu, he asked only that God convert him and save him from the raging fires of hell.

FATHER AMADI CAME EARLY
the next morning, looking even more unpriestly than before, in khaki shorts that stopped just below his knees. He had not shaved, and in the clear morning sunlight, his stubble looked like tiny dots drawn on his jaw. He parked his car next to Aunty Ifeoma's station wagon and took out a can of petrol and a garden hose that had been cut to a quarter of its length.

“Let me do the sucking, Father,” Obiora said.

“Make sure you don't swallow,” Father Amadi said. Obiora inserted one end of the hose in the can and then enclosed the other end in his mouth. I watched his cheeks inflate like a balloon and then deflate. He swiftly took the hose out of his mouth and inserted it into the stations wagon's petrol tank. He was sputtering and coughing.

“Did you swallow too much?” Father Amadi asked, tapping Obiora's back.

“No,” Obiora said, between coughs. He looked proud.

“Well done.
Imana
, you know sucking fuel is a skill you need these days,” Father Amadi said. His wry smile did little to mar the perfect clay smoothness of his features. Aunty Ifeoma came
out dressed in a plain black boubou. She wore no shiny lipstick, and her lips looked chapped. She hugged Father Amadi. “Thank you, Father.”

“I can drive you to Abba later this afternoon, after my office hours.”

“No, Father. Thank you. I will go with Obiora.”

Aunty Ifeoma drove off with Obiora in the front seat, and Father Amadi left soon after. Chima went upstairs to the neighbor's flat. Amaka went into her room and turned on her music, high enough that I heard it clearly from the verandah. I could tell her culturally conscious musicians apart now. I could distinguish the pure tones of Onyeka Onwenu, the brash power of Fela, the soothing wisdom of Osadebe. Jaja was in the garden with Aunt Ifeoma's shears, and I sat with the book I was almost finished reading, watching him. He held the shears with both hands, above his head, clipping away.

“Do you think we're abnormal?” I asked, in a whisper.

“Gini
?”

“Amaka said we're abnormal.”

Jaja looked at me, then away, toward the line of garages in the front yard. “What does abnormal mean?” he asked, a question that did not need or want an answer, and then went back to trimming the plants.

Aunty Ifeoma came back in the afternoon when the buzz of a bee around the garden was almost lulling me to sleep. Obiora helped Papa-Nnukwu out of the car, Papa-Nnukwu leaning against him as they walked into the flat. Amaka ran out and pressed her side lightly to Papa-Nnukwu's. His eyes drooped, his lids looked as though they had weights placed on them, but he smiled and said something that made Amaka laugh.

“Papa-Nnukwu,
nno
,” I said.

“Kambili,” he said, weakly.

Aunty Ifeoma wanted Papa-Nnukwu to lie down on Amaka's bed, but he said he preferred the floor. The bed was too springy. Obiora and Jaja dressed the spare mattress and placed it on the floor, and Aunty Ifeoma helped Papa-Nnukwu lower himself onto it. His eyes closed almost at once, although the lid of his going-blind eye remained slightly open, as if he were stealing a peek at all of us from the land of tired, ill sleep. He seemed taller lying down, occupying the length of the mattress, and I remembered what he had said about simply reaching out to pluck icheku from the tree, in his youth. The only icheku tree I had seen was huge, with branches grazing the roof of a duplex. Still, I believed Papa-Nnukwu, that he had simply raised his hands to pluck the black icheku pods from the branches.