"Jaja, Kambili, how are you?" he said, and before we could reply, he laughed his tinkling laugh and, gesturing to the baby, said, "You know they say the higher you throw them when they're young, the more likely they are to learn how to fly!"
The baby gurgled, showing pink gums, and reached out for his father's glasses. Ade Coker tilted his head back, threw the baby up again. His wife, Yewande, hugged us, asked how we were, then slapped Ade Coker's shoulder playfully and took the baby from him. I watched her and remembered her loud, choking cries to Papa.
"Do you like coming to the village?" Ade Coker asked us.
We looked at Papa at the same time; he was on the sofa, reading a Christmas card and smiling. "Yes," we said.
"Eh? You like coming to this bush place?" His eyes widened theatrically. "Do you have friends here?"
"No," we said.
"So what do you do in this back of beyond, then?" he teased.
Jaja and I smiled and said nothing. "They are always so quiet," he said, turning to Papa. "So quiet."
"They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God," Papa said, and I was certain that it was pride that stretched Papa's lips and lightened his eyes. "Imagine what the Standard would be if we were all quiet." It was a joke. Ade Coker was laughing; so was his wife, Yewanda. But Papa did not laugh.
Jaja and I turned and went back upstairs, silently.
The rustling of the coconut fronds woke me up. Outside our high gates, I could hear goats bleating and cocks crowing and people yelling greetings across mud compound walls. "Gudu morni. Have you woken up, eh? Did you rise well?" "Gudu morni. Did the people of your house rise well, oh?"*.
I reached out to slide open my bedroom window, to hear they sounds better and to let in the clean air tinged with goat droppings and ripening oranges. Jaja tapped on my door before ha came into my room. Our rooms adjoined; back in Enugu, they were far apart.
"Are you up?" he asked. "Let's go down for prayers before Papa calls us."
I tied my wrapper, which I had used as a light cover in the warm night, over my nightdress, knotted it under my arm, and followed Jaja downstairs.
The wide passages made our house feel like a hotel, as did the impersonal smell of doors kept locked most of the year, of unused bathrooms and kitchens and toilets, of uninhabited rooms. We used only the ground floor and first floor; the other two were last used years ago, when Papa was made a chief and took his omelora title. The members of our umunna had urged him for so long, even when he was still a manager at Leventis and had not bought the first factory, to take a title. He was wealthy enough, they insisted; besides, nobody among our umunna had ever taken a title. So when Papa finally decided to after extensive talks with the parish priest and insisting that all pagan undertones be removed from his title-taking ceremony, it was like a mini New Yam festival. Cars had taken up every inch of the dirt road running through Abba. The third and fourth floors had swarmed with people. Now I went up there only when I wanted to see farther than the road just outside our compound walls.
"Papa is hosting a church council meeting today," Jaja said. "I heard him telling Mama."
"What time is the meeting?"
"Before noon." And with his eyes he said, We can spend time together then. In Abba, Jaja and I had no schedules. We talked more and sat alone in our rooms less, because Papa was too busy entertaining the endless stream of visitors and attending church council meetings at five in the morning and town council meetings until midnight. Or maybe it was because Abba was different, because people strolled into our compound at will, because the very air we breathed moved more slowly.
Papa and Mama were in one of the small living rooms that led off the main living room downstairs. "Good morning, Papa. Good morning, Mama," Jaja and I said.
"How are you both?" Papa asked.
"Fine," we said.
Papa looked bright-eyed; he must have been awake for hours. He was flipping through his Bible, the Catholic version with the deuterocanonical books, bound in shiny black leather. Mama looked sleepy. She rubbed her crusty eyes as she asked if we had slept well.
I could hear voices from the main living room. Guests arrived with dawn here. When we had made the sign of the cross and gotten down on our knees, around the table, someone knocked on the door. A middle-aged man in a threadbare T-shirt peeked in.
"Omelora!" the man said in the forceful tone people used when they called others by their titles. "I am leaving now. I want to see if I can buy a few Christmas things for my children at Oye Abagana." He spoke English with an Igbo accent so strong it decorated even the shortest words with extra vowels. Papa liked it when the villagers made an effort to speak English around him. He said it showed they had good sense.
"Ogbunambala!" Papa said. "Wait for me, I am praying with my family. I want to give you a little something for the children. You will also share my tea and bread with me."
"Hei! Omelora! Thank sir. I have not drank milk this year!"
The man still hovered at the door. Perhaps he imagined that leaving would make Papa's promise of tea with milk disappear.
"Ogbunambala! Go and sit down and wait for me."
The man retreated. Papa read from the psalms before saying the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Apostles Creed. Although we spoke aloud after Papa said the first few words alone, an outer silence enveloped us all, shrouding us. But when he said, "We will now pray to the spirit in our own words, for the spirit intercedes for us in accordance with His will," the silence was broken. Our voices sounded loud, discordant. Mama started with a prayer for peace and for the rulers of our country. Jaja prayed for priests and for the religious. I prayed for the Pope. Finally, for twenty minutes, Papa prayed for our protection from ungodly people and forces, for Nigeria and the Godless men ruling it, and for us to continue to grow in righteousness. Finally, he prayed for the conversion of our Papa-Nnukwu, so that Papa-Nnukwu would be saved from hell. Papa spent some time describing hell, as if God did not know that the flames were eternal and raging and fierce. At the end we raised our voices and said, "Amen!"
Papa closed the Bible. "Kambili and Jaja, you will go this afternoon to your grandfather's house and greet him. Kevin will take you. Remember, don't touch any food, don't drink anything. And, as usual, you will stay not longer than fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes."
"Yes, Papa." We had heard this every Christmas for the past few years, ever since we had started to visit Papa-Nnukwu. Papa-Nnukwu had called an umunna meeting to complain to the extended family that he did not know his grandchildren and that we did not know him. Papa-Nnukwu had told Jaja and me this, as Papa did not tell us such things. Papa-Nnukwu had told the umunna how Papa had offered to build him a house, buy him a car, and hire him a driver, as long as he converted and threw away the chi in the thatch shrine in his yard. Papa-Nnukwu laughed and said he simply wanted to see his grandchildren when he could. He would not throw away his chi; he had already told Papa this many times. The members of our umunna sided with Papa, they always did, but they urged him to let us visit Papa-Nnukwu, to greet him, because every man who was old enough to be called grandfather deserved to be greeted by his grandchildren. Papa himself never greeted 1111 Papa-Nnukwu, never visited him, but he sent slim wads of naira through Kevin or through one of our umunna members, slimmer wads than he gave Kevin as a Christmas bonus.
"I don't like to send you to the home of a heathen, but Goc will protect you," Papa said. He put the Bible in a drawer and then pulled Jaja and me to his side, gently rubbed the sides of our arms.
"Yes, Papa."
He went into the large living room. I could hear more voices, more people coming in to say "Nno nu" and complain about how hard life was, how they could not buy new clothes for their children this Christmas.
"You and Jaja can have breakfast upstairs. I will bring the things up. Your father will eat with the guests," Mama said.
"Let me help you," I offered.
/> "No, nne, go upstairs. Stay with your brother."
I watched Mama walk toward the kitchen, in her limping gait. Her braided hair was piled into a net that tapered to a golf-ball-like lump at the end, like a Father Christmas hat. She looked tired.
"Papa-Nnukwu lives close by, we can walk there in five minutes, we don't need Kevin to take us," Jaja said, as we went back upstairs. He said that every year, but we always climbed into the car so that Kevin could take us, so that he could watch us.
As Kevin drove us out of the compound later that morning, I turned to allow my eyes to stroke, once again, the gleaming white walls and pillars of our house, the perfect silver-colored water arch the fountain made. Papa-Nnukwu had never set foot in it, because when Papa had decreed that heathens were not allowed in his compound, he had not made an exception for his father.
"Your father said you are to stay fifteen minutes," Kevin said, as he parked on the roadside, near Papa-Nnukwu's thatch enclosed compound.
I stared at the scar on Kevin's neck before I got out of the car. He had fallen from a palm tree in his hometown in the Niger Delta area, a few years ago while on vacation. The scar ran from the center of his head to the nape of his neck. It was shaped like a dagger.
"We know," Jaja said. Jaja swung open Papa-Nnukwu's creaking wooden gate, which was so narrow that Papa might have to enter sideways if he ever were to visit. The compound was barely a quarter of the size of our backyard in Enugu. Two goats and a few chickens sauntered around, nibbling and pecking at drying stems of grass. The house that stood in the middle of the compound was small, compact like dice, and it was hard to imagine Papa and Aunty Ifeoma growing up here. It looked just like the pictures of houses I used to draw in kindergarten: a square house with a square door at the center and two square windows on each side. The only difference was that Papa-Nnukwu's house had a verandah, which was bounded by rusty metal bars. The first time Jaja and I visited, I had walked in looking for the bathroom, and Papa-Nnukwu had laughed and pointed at the outhouse, a closet-size building of unpainted cement blocks with a mat of entwined palm fronds pulled across the gaping entrance. I had examined him that day, too, looking away when his eyes met mine, for signs of difference, of Godlessness. I didn't see any, but I was sure they were there somewhere. They had to be.
Papa-Nnukwu was sitting on a low stool on the verandahj bowls of food on a raffia mat before him. He rose as we came in. A wrapper was slung across his body and tied behind his neck, over a once white singlet now browned by age and yeU lowed at the armpits. "Neke! Neke! Neke! Kambili and Jaja have come to greet their old father!" he said. Although he was stooped with age, it was easy to see how tall he once had been. He shook Jaja'S hand and hugged me. I pressed myself to him just a moment longer, gently, holding my breath because of the strong, unpleasant smell of cassava that clung to him.
"Come and eat," he said, gesturing to the raffia mat. The enamel bowls contained flaky fufu and watery soup bereft of chunks of fish or meat. It was custom to ask, but Papa Nnukwu expected us to say no-his eyes twinkled with mischief.
"No, thank sir," we said. We sat on the wooden bench next to him. I leaned back and rested my head on the wooden window shutters, which had parallel openings running across them.
"I hear that you came in yesterday," he said. His lower lip quivered, as did his voice, and sometimes I understood him a moment or two after he spoke because his dialect was ancient; his speech had none of the anglicized inflections that ours had.
"Yes," Jaja said.
"Kambili, you are so grown up now, a ripe agbogho. Soon the suitors will start to come," he said, teasing. His left eye was going blind and was covered by a film the color and consistency of diluted milk. I smiled as he stretched out to pat my shoulder; the age spots that dotted his hand stood out because they were so much lighter than his soil-colored complexion.
"Papa-Nnukwu, are you well? How is your body?" Jaja asked.
Papa-Nnukwu shrugged as if to say there was a lot that was wrong but he had no choice. "I am well, my son. What can an old man do but be well until he joins his ancestors?" He paused to mold a lump of fufu with his fingers. I watched him, the smile on his face, the easy way he threw the molded morsel out toward the garden, where parched herbs swayed in the light breeze, asking Ani, the god of the land, to eat with him. "My legs ache often. Your Aunty Ifeoma brings me medicine when she can put the money together. But I am an old man; if it is not my legs that ache, it will be my hands."
"Will Aunty Ifeoma and her children come back this year?" I asked.
Papa-Nnukwu scratched at the stubborn white tufts that clung to his bald head. "Ehye, I expect them tomorrow."
"They did not come last year," Jaja said. "Ifeoma could not afford it."
Papa-Nnukwu shook his head. "Since the father of her children died, she has seen hard times. But she will bring them this year. You will see them. It is not right that you don't know them well, your cousins. It is not right."
Jaja and I said nothing. We did not know Aunty Ifeoma or her children very well because she and Papa had quarreled about Papa-Nnukwu. Mama had told us. Aunty Ifeoma stopped speaking to Papa after he barred Papa-Nnukwu from coming to his house, and a few years passed before they finally started speaking to each other.
"If I had meat in my soup," Papa Nnukwu said, "I would offer it to you."
"It's all right, Papa-Nnukwu," Jaja said.
Papa-Nnukwu took his time swallowing his food. I watched the food slide down his throat, struggling to get past his sagging Adam's apple, which pushed out of his neck like a wrinkled nut. There was no drink beside him, not even water.
"That child that helps me, Chinyelu, will come in soon. I will send her to go and buy soft drinks for you two, from Ichie's shop," he said.
"No, Papa-Nnukwu. Thank sir," Jaja said.
"Ezi okwu? I know your father will not let you eat here because I offer my food to our ancestors, but soft drinks also? Do I not buy that from the store as everyone else does?"
"Papa-Nnukwu, we just ate before we came here," Jaja said. "If we're thirsty, we will drink in your house."
Papa-Nnukwu smiled. His teeth were yellowed and widely spaced because of the many he had lost. "You have spoken well, my son. You are my father, Ogbuefi Olioke, come back. He spoke with wisdom."
I stared at the fufu on the enamel plate, which was chipped of its leaf-green color at the edges. I imagined the fufu, dried to crusts by the harmattan winds, scratching the inside of Papa-Nnukwu's throat as he swallowed.
Jaja nudged me. But I did not want to leave; I wanted to stay so that if the fufu clung to Papa-Nnukwu's throat and choked him, I could run and get him water. I did not know where the water was, though.
Jaja nudged me again and I still could not get up. The bench held me back, sucked me in. I watched a gray rooster walk into the shrine at the corner of the yard, where Papa-Nnukwu's god was, where Papa said Jaja and I were never to go near. The shrine was a low, open shed, its mud roof and walls covered with dried palm fronds. It looked like the grotto behind St. Agnes, the one dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.
"Let us go, Papa-Nnukwu," Jaja said, finally, rising.
"All right, my son," Papa-Nnukwu said. He did not say "What, so soon?" or "Does my house chase you away?" He was used to our leaving moments after we arrived. When he walked us to the car, balancing on his crooked walking stick made from a tree branch, Kevin came out of the car and greeted him, then handed him a slim wad of cash.
"Oh? Thank Eugene for me," Papa-Nnukwu said, smiling. "Thank him."
He waved as we drove off. I waved back and kept my eyes on him while he shuffled back into his compound. If Papa-Nnukwu minded that his son sent him impersonal, paltry amounts of money through a driver, he didn't show it. He hadn't shown it last Christmas, or the Christmas before. He had never shown it.
It was so different from the way Papa had treated my maternal grandfather until he died five years ago. When we arrived at Abba every Christmas, Papa would stop by Gran
dfather's house at our ikwu nne, Mother's maiden home, before we even drove to our own compound. Grandfather was very light-skinned, almost albino, and it was said to be one of the reasons the missionaries had liked him. He determinedly spoke English, always, in a heavy Igbo accent. He knew Latin, too, often quoted the articles of Vatican I, and spent most of his time at St. Paul's, where he had been the first catechist. He had insisted that we call him Grandfather, in English, rather than Papa-Nnukwu or Nna-Ochie. Papa still talked about him often, his eyes proud, as if Grandfather were his own father. He opened his eyes before many of our people did, Papa would say; he was one of the few who welcomed the missionaries. Do you know how quickly he learned English? When he became an interpreter, do you know how many converts he helped win? Why, he converted most of Abba himself! He did things the right way, the way the white people did, not what our people do now!
Papa had a photo of Grandfather, in the full regalia of the Knights of St. John, framed in deep mahogany and hung on our wall back in Enugu. I did not need that photo to remember Grandfather, though. I was only ten when he died, but I remembered his almost-green albino eyes, the way he seemed to use the word sinner in every sentence.
"Papa-Nnukwu does not look as healthy as last year," I whispered close to Jaja's ear as we drove off. I did not want Kevin to hear.
"He is an old man," Jaja said.
When we got home, Sisi brought up our lunch, rice and fried beef, on fawn-colored elegant plates, and Jaja and I ate alone. The church council meeting had started, and we heard the male voices rise sometimes in argument, just as we heard the up-down cadence of the female voices in the backyard, the wives of our umunna who were oiling pots to make them easier to wash later and grinding spices in wooden mortars and starting fires underneath the tripods.
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