"Will you confess it?" I asked Jaja, as we ate.
"What?"
"What you said today, that if we were thirsty, we would drink in Papa-Nnukwu's house. You know we can't drink in Papa-Nnukwu's house," I said.
"I just wanted to say something to make him feel better."
"He takes it well."
"He hides it well," Jaja said.
Papa opened the door then and came in. I had not heard him come up the stairs, and besides, I did not think he would come up because the church council meeting was still going on downstairs.
"Good afternoon, Papa," Jaja and I said.
"Kevin said you stayed up to twenty-five minutes with your grandfather. Is that what I told you?" Papa's voice was low.
"I wasted time, it was my fault," Jaja said.
"What did you do there? Did you eat food sacrificed to idols? Did you desecrate your Christian tongue?"
I sat frozen; I did not know that tongues could be Christian, too. "No," Jaja said.
Papa was walking toward Jaja. He spoke entirely in Igbo now. I thought he would pull at Jaja's ears, that he would tug and yank at the same pace as he spoke, that he would slap Jaja's face and his palm would make that sound, like a heavy book falling from a library shelf in school. And then he would reach across and slap me on the face with the casualness of reaching for the pepper shaker. But he said, "I want you to finish that food and go to your rooms and pray for forgiveness," before turning to go back downstairs.
The silence he left was heavy but comfortable, like a well-worn, prickly cardigan on a bitter morning. "You still have rice on your plate," Jaja said, finally.
I nodded and picked up my fork. Then I heard Papa's raised voice just outside the window and put the fork down.
"What is he doing in my house? What is Anikwenwa doing in my house?" The enraged timber in Papa's voice made my fingers cold at the tips.
Jaja and I dashed to the window, and because we could see nothing, we dashed out to the veranda and stood by the pillars. Papa was standing in the front yard, near an orange tree, screaming at a wrinkled old man in a torn white singlet and a wrapper wound round his waist. A few other men stood around Papa. "What is Anikwenwa doing in my house? What is a worshiper of idols doing in my house? Leave my house!"
"Do you know that I am in your father's age group, gbo?" the old man asked. The finger he waved in the air was meant for Papa's face, but it only hovered around his chest. "Do you know that I sucked my mother's breast when your father sucked his mother's?"
"Leave my house!" Papa pointed at the gate. Two men slowly ushered Anikwenwa out of the compound. He did not resist; he was too old to, anyway. But he kept looking back and throwing words at Papa. "Ifukwa gi! You are like a fly blindly following a corpse into the grave!"
I followed the old man's unsteady gait until he walked out through the gates.
Aunty Ifeoma came the next day, in the evening, when the orange trees started to cast long, wavy shadows across the water fountain in the front yard. Her laughter floated upstairs into the living room, where I sat reading. I had not heard it in two years, but I would know that cackling, hearty sound anywhere. Aunty Ifeoma was as tall as Papa, with a well-proportioned body. She walked fast, like one who knew just where she was going and what she was going to do there. And she spoke the way she walked, as if to get as many words out of her mouth as she could in the shortest time.
"Welcome, Aunty, nno," I said, rising to hug her. She did not give me the usual brief side hug. She clasped me in her arms and held me tightly against the softness of her body. The wide lapels of her blue, A-line dress smelled of lavender. "Kambili, kedu?" A wide smile stretched her dark-complected face, revealing a gap between her front teeth.
"I'm fine, Aunty."
"You have grown so much. Look at you, look at you." She reached out and pulled my left breast. "Look how fast these are growing!"
I looked away and inhaled deeply so that I would not start to stutter. I did not know how to handle that kind of playfulness.
"Where is Jaja?" she asked.
"He's asleep. He has a headache."
"A headache three days to Christmas? No way. I will wake him up and cure that headache." Aunty Ifeoma laughed. "We got here before noon; we left Nsukka really early and would have gotten here sooner if the car didn't break down on the road, but it was near Ninth Mile, thank God, so it was easy finding a mechanic."
"Thanks be to God," I said. Then, after a pause I asked, "How are my cousins?"
It was the polite thing to say; still, I felt strange asking about the cousins I hardly knew.
"They're coming soon. They're with your Papa-Nnukwu, and he had just started one of his stories. You know how he likes to go on and on."
"Oh," I said. I did not know that Papa-Nnukwu liked to go on and on. I did not even know that he told stories.
Mama came in holding a tray piled high with bottles of soft and malt drinks lying on their sides. A plate of chin-chin was balanced on top of the drinks. "Nwunye m, who are those for?" Aunty Ifeoma asked.
"You and the children," Mama said. "Did you not say the children were coming soon, okwia?"
"You should not have bothered, really. We bought okpa on our way and just ate it."
"Then I will put the chin-chin in a bag for you," Mama said. She turned to leave the room. Her wrapper was dressy, with yellow print designs, and her matching blouse had yellow lace sewn onto the puffy, short sleeves. "Ntvunye m," Aunty Ifeoma called, and Mama turned back.
The first time I heard Aunty Ifeoma call Mama "nwunye m," years ago, I was aghast that a woman called another woman "my wife." When I asked, Papa said it was the remnants of ungodly traditions, the idea that it was the family and not the man alone that married a wife, and later Mama whispered, although we were alone in my room, "I am her wife, too, because I am your father's wife. It shows that she accepts me."
"Nivunye m, come and sit down. You look tired. Are you well?" Aunty Ifeoma asked.
A tight smile appeared on Mama's face. "I am well, very well. I have been helping the wives of our umunna with the cooking."
"Come and sit down," Aunty Ifeoma said again. "Come and sit down and rest. The wives of our umunna can look for the salt themselves and find it. After all, they are all here to take from you, to wrap meat in banana leaves when nobody is looking and then sneak it home." Aunty Ifeoma laughed.
Mama sat down next to me. "Eugene is arranging for extra chairs to be put outside, especially on Christmas day. So many people have come already."
"You know our people have no other work at Christmas than to go from house to house," Aunty Ifeoma said. "But you can't stay here serving them all day. We should take the children to Abagana for the Aro festival tomorrow, to look at the mmuo."
"Eugene will not let the children go to a heathen festival," Mama said.
"Heathen festival, kwa? Everybody goes to Aro to look at the mmuo."
"I know, but you know Eugene."
Aunty Ifeoma shook her head slowly. "I will tell him we are going for a drive, so we can all spend time together, especially the children."
Mama fiddled with her fingers and said nothing for a while. Then she asked, "When will you take the children to their father's hometown?"
"Perhaps today, although I don't have the strength for Ifediora's family right now. They eat more and more shit every year. The people in his umunna said he left money somewhere and I have been hiding it. Last Christmas, one of the women from their compound even told me I had killed him. I wanted to stuff sand in her mouth. Then I thought that I should sit her down, eh, and explain that you do not kill a husband you love, that you do not orchestrate a car accident in which a trailer rams into your husband's car, but again, why waste my time? They all have the brains of guinea fowls." Aunty Ifeoma made a loud hissing sound. "I don't know how much longer I will take my children there."
Mama clucked in sympathy. "People do not always talk with sense. But it is good that the children go, especially the
boys. They need to know their father's homestead and the members of their father's umunna."
"I honestly do not know how Ifediora came from an umunna like that."
I I watched their lips move as they spoke; Mama's bare lips were pale compared to Aunty Ifeoma's, covered in a shiny bronze lipstick.
"Umunna will always say hurtful things," Mama said. "Did our own umunna not tell Eugene to take another wife because a man of his stature cannot have just two children? If people like you had not been on my side then…"
"Stop it, stop being grateful. If Eugene had done that, he would have been the loser, not you."
"So you say. A woman with children and no husband, what is that?"
"Me." Mama shook her head. "You have come again, Ifeoma. You know what I mean. How can a woman live like that?" Mama's eyes had grown round, taking up more space on her face.
"Nwunye m, sometimes life begins when marriage ends."
"You and your university talk. Is this what you tell your students?" Mama was smiling.
"Seriously, yes. But they marry earlier and earlier these days. What is the use of a degree, they ask me, when we cannot find a job after graduation?"
"At least somebody will take care of them when they marry."
"I don't know who will take care of whom. Six girls in my first-year seminar class are married, their husbands visit in Mercedes and Lexus cars every weekend, their husbands buy them stereos and textbooks and refrigerators, and when they graduate, the husbands own them and their degrees. Don't you see?"
Mama shook her head. "University talk again. A husband crowns a woman's life, Ifeoma. It is what they want."
"It is what they think they want. But how can I blame them? Look what this military tyrant is doing to our country." Aunty Ifeoma closed her eyes, in the way that people do when they want to remember something unpleasant. "We have not had fuel for three months in Nsukka. I spent the night in the petrol station last week, waiting for fuel. And at the end, the fuel did not come. Some people left their cars in the station because they did not have enough fuel to drive back home. If you could see the mosquitoes that bit me that night, eh, the bumps on my skin were as big as cashew nuts."
"Oh." Mama shook her head sympathetically. "How are things generally at the university, though?"
"We just called off yet another strike, even though no lecturer has been paid for the last two months. They tell us the Federal Government has no money." Aunty Ifeoma chuckled with little humor. "Ifukwa, people are leaving the country. Phillipa left two months ago. You remember my friend Phillipa?"
"She came back with you for Christmas a few years ago. Dark and plump?"
"Yes. She is now teaching in America. She shares a cramped office with another adjunct professor, but she says at least teachers are paid there." Aunty Ifeoma stopped and reached out to brush something off Mama's blouse. I watched every movement she made; I could not tear my ears away. It was the fearlessness about her, about the way she gestured as she spoke, the way she smiled to show that wide gap. "I have brought out my old kerosene stove," she continued. "It is what we use now; we don't even smell the kerosene in the kitchen anymore. Do you know how much a cooking-gas cylinder costs? It is outrageous!"
Mama shifted on the sofa. "Why don't you tell Eugene? There are gas cylinders in the factory…"
Aunty Ifeoma laughed, patted Mama's shoulder fondly.
"Nwunye m, things are tough, but we are not dying yet. I tell you all these things because it is you. With someone else, I would rub Vaseline on my hungry face until it shone."
Papa came in then, on his way to his bedroom. I was sure it was to get more stacks of naira notes that he would give to visitors for igba krismas, and then tell them "It is from God, not me" when they started to sing their thanks.
"Eugene," Aunty Ifeoma called out. "I was saying that Jaja and Kambili should spend some time with me and the children tomorrow."
Papa grunted and kept walking to the door.
"Eugene!" Every time Aunty Ifeoma spoke to Papa, my heart stopped, then started again in a hurry. It was the flippant tone; she did not seem to recognize that it was Papa, that he was different, special. I wanted to reach out and press her lips shut and get some of that shiny bronze lipstick on my fingers.
"Where do you want to take them?" Papa asked, standing by the door.
"Just to look around."
"Sightseeing?" Papa asked. He spoke English, while Aunty Ifeoma spoke Igbo.
"Eugene, let the children come out with us!" Aunty Ifeoma sounded irritated; her voice was slightly raised. "Is it not Christmas that we are celebrating, eh? The children have never really spent time with one another. Imakwa, my little one, Chima, does not even know Kambili's name."
Papa looked at me and then at Mama, searched our faces as if looking for letters beneath our noses, above our foreheads, on our lips, that would spell something he would not like.
"Okay. They can go with you, but you know I do not want my children near anything ungodly. If you drive past mmuo, keep your windows up."
"I have heard you, Eugene," Aunty Ifeoma said, with an exaggerated formality.
"Why don't we all have lunch on Christmas day?" Papa asked. "The children can spend time together then."
"You know that the children and I spend Christmas day with their Papa-Nnukwu."
"What do idol worshipers know about Christmas?"
"Eugene…" Aunty Ifeoma took a deep breath. "Okay the children and I will come on Christmas day."
Papa had gone back downstairs, and I was still sitting on the sofa, watching Aunty Ifeoma talk to Mama, when my cousins arrived. Amaka was a thinner, teenage copy of her mother. She walked and talked even faster and with more purpose tha Aunty Ifeoma did. Only her eyes were different; they did not have the unconditional warmth of Aunty Ifeoma's. They were quizzical eyes, eyes that asked many questions and did not accept many answers. Obiora was a year younger, very light-skinned, with honey-colored eyes behind thick glasses, and hisl mouth turned up at the sides in a perpetual smile. Chima had skin as dark as the bottom of a burnt pot of rice, and was tall for a boy of seven. They all laughed alike: throaty, cackling sounds pushed out with enthusiasm. They greeted Papa, and when he gave them money for igbal krismas, Amaka and Obiora thanked him, holding out the two thick wads of naira notes. Their eyes were politely surprised, to show that they were not presumptuous, that they had not expected money.
"You have satellite here, don't you?" Amaka asked me. It was the first thing she said after we greeted each other. Her hair was cut short, higher at the front and gradually reducing in an arch until it got to the back of her head, where there was little hair.
"Yes."
"Can we watch CNN?"
I forced a cough out of my throat; I hoped I would not stutter.
"Maybe tomorrow," Amaka continued, "because right now I think we're going to visit my dad's family in Ukpo."
"We don't watch a lot of TV," I said.
"Why?" Amaka asked. It was so unlikely that we were the same age, fifteen. She seemed so much older, or maybe it was her striking resemblance to Aunty Ifeoma or the way she stared me right in the eyes. "Because you're bored with it? If only we all had satellite so everybody could be bored with it."
I wanted to say I was sorry, that I did not want her to dislike us for not watching satellite. I wanted to tell her that although huge satellite dishes lounged on top of the houses in Enugu and here, we did not watch TV. Papa did not pencil in TV time on our schedules.
But Amaka had turned to her mother, who was sitting hunched with Mama. "Mom, if we are going to Ukpo, we should leave soon so we can get back before Papa-Nnukwu falls asleep."
Aunty Ifeoma rose. "Yes, nne, we should leave." She held Chima's hand as they all walked downstairs. Amaka said something, pointing at our banister, with its heavy hand carved detail, and Obiora laughed. She did not turn to say good-bye to me, although the boys did and Aunty Ifeoma waved and said, "I'll see you and Jaja tomorrow."
Aun
ty Ifeoma drove into the compound just as we finished breakfast. When she barged into the dining room upstairs, I imagined a proud ancient forebear, walking miles to fetch water in homemade clay pots, nursing babies until they walked and talked, fighting wars with machetes sharpened on sun-warmed stone. She filled a room. "Are you ready, Jaja and Kambili?" she asked. "Nuwnye m, will you not come with us?"
Mama shook her head. "You know Eugene likes me to stay around."
"Kambili, I think you will be more comfortable in trousers," Aunty Ifeoma said as we walked to the car.
"I'm fine, Aunty," I said. I wondered why I did not tell her that all my skirts stopped well past my knees, that I did not own any trousers because it was sinful for a woman to wear trousers. Her Peugeot 504 station wagon was white and rusted to an unpleasant brown at the fenders. Amaka was seated in the front; Obiora and Chima were in the back seat. Jaja and I climbed into the middle seats. Mama stood watching until the car disappeared from her sight. I knew because I felt her eyes and felt her presence. The car made rattling sounds as if some bolts had come loose and were shaking with every rise and fall of the bumpy road. There were gaping rectangular spaces on the dashboard instead of air-conditioner vents, so the windows were kept down. Dust sailed across my mouth, into my eyes and nose.
"We're going to pick up Papa-Nnukwu, he will come with us," Aunty Ifeoma said.
I felt a lurch in my stomach and I glanced at Jaja. His eyes met mine. What would we tell Papa? Jaja looked away; he did not have an answer.
Before Aunty Ifeoma stopped the engine in front of the mud-and-thatch-enclosed compound, Amaka had opened the front door and bounded out. "I'll fetch Papa-Nnukwu!" The boys climbed out of the car and followed Amaka past the small wooden gate.
"Don't you want to come out?" Aunty Ifeoma asked, turning to Jaja and me.
I looked away. Jaja was sitting as still as I was. "You don't want to come into your Papa-Nnukwus compound? But didn't you come to greet him two days ago?" Aunty Ifeoma widened her eyes to stare at us.
"We are not allowed to come here after we've greeted him," Jaja said.
"What kind of nonsense is that, eh?" Aunty Ifeoma stopped then, perhaps remembering that the rules were not ours. "Tell me, why do you think your father doesn't want you here?"
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