"Yes, I paint sometimes."
"It's nice." I wished that I had known that my cousin painted realistic watercolors. I wished that she would not keep looking at me as if I were a strange laboratory animal to be explained and catalogued.
"Did something hold you girls in there?" Aunty Ifeoma called from the kitchen. I followed Amaka back to the kitchen and watched her slice and fry the plantains. Jaja soon came back with the boys, the bottles of soft drinks in a black plastic bag. Aunty Ifeoma asked Obiora to set the table. "Today we'll treat Kambili and Jaja as guests, but from tomorrow they will be family and join in the work," she said.
The dining table was made of wood that cracked in dry weather. The outermost layer was shedding, like a molting cricket, brown slices curling up from the surface. The dining chairs were mismatched. Four were made of plain wood, the land of chairs in my classroom, and the other two were black and padded. Jaja and I sat side by side. Aunty Ifeoma said the grace, and after my cousins said "Amen," I still had my eyes closed.
"Nne, we have finished praying. We do not say Mass in the name of grace like your father does," Aunty Ifeoma said with a chuckle.
I opened my eyes, just in time to catch Amaka watching me.
"I hope Kambili and Jaja come every day so we can eat like this. Chicken and soft drinks!" Obiora pushed at his glasses as he spoke.
"Mommy! I want the chicken leg," Chima said.
"I think these people have started to put less Coke in the bottles," Amaka said, holding her Coke bottle back to examine it. I looked down at the jollof rice, fried plantains, and half of a drumstick on my plate and tried to concentrate, tried to get the food down. The plates, too, were mismatched. Chima and Obiora used plastic ones while the rest of us had plain glass plates, bereft of dainty flowers or silver lines. Laughter floated over my head. Words spurted from everyone, often not seeking and not getting any response. We always spoke with a purpose back home, especially at the table, but my cousins seemed to simply speak and speak and speak.
"Mom, biko, give me the neck," Amaka said.
"Didn't you talk me out of the neck the last time, gfoop'?" Aunty Ifeoma asked, and then she picked up the chicken neck on her plate and reached across to place it on Amaka's plate.
"When was the last time we ate chicken?" Obiora asked.
"Stop chewing like a goat, Obiora!" Aunty Ifeoma said.
"Goats chew differently when they ruminate and when they eat, Mom. Which do you mean?"
I looked up to watch Obiora chewing. "Kambili, is something wrong with the food?" Aunty Ifeona asked, startling me. I had felt as if I were not there, that I was just observing a table where you could say anything at any time to anyone, where the air was free for you to breathe as you wished.
"I like the rice, Aunty, thank you."
"If you like the rice, eat the rice," Aunty Ifeoma said.
"Maybe it is not as good as the fancy rice she eats at home," Amaka said.
"Amaka, leave your cousin alone," Aunty Ifeoma said.
I did not say anything else until lunch was over, but I listened to every word spoken, followed every cackle of laughter and line of banter. Mostly, my cousins did the talking and Aunty Ifeoma sat back and watched them, eating slowly. She looked like a football coach who had done a good job with her team and was satisfied to stand next to the eighteen-yard box and watch.
After lunch, I asked Amaka where I could ease myself, although I knew that the toilet was the door opposite the bedroom. She seemed irritated by my question and gestured vaguely toward the hall, asking, "Where else do you think?" The room was so narrow I could touch both walls if I stretched out my hands. There were no soft rugs, no furry cover for the toilet seat and lid like we had back home. An empty plastic bucket was near the toilet. After I urinated, I wanted to flush but the cistern was empty; the lever went limply up and down. I stood in the narrow room for a few minutes before leaving to look for Aunty Ifeoma. She was in the kitchen, scrubbing the sides of the kerosene stove with a soapy sponge.
"I will be very miserly with my new gas cylinders," Aunty Ifeoma said, smiling, when she saw me. "I'll use them only for special meals, so they will last long. I'm not packing away this kerosene stove just yet."
I paused because what I wanted to say was so far removed from gas cookers and kerosene stoves. I could hear Obiora's laughter from the verandah. "Aunty, there's no water to flush the toilet."
"You urinated?"
"Yes."
"Our water only runs in the morning, o di egwu. So we don't flush when we urinate, only when there is actually something to flush. Or sometimes, when the water does not run for a few days, we just close the lid until everybody has gone and then we flush with one bucket. It saves water." Aunty Ifeoma was smiling ruefully.
"Oh," I said.
Amaka had come in as Aunty Ifeoma spoke. I watched her walk to the refrigerator. "I'm sure that back home you flush every hour, just to keep the water fresh, but we don't do here," she said.
"Amaka, o gini? I don't like that tone!" Aunty Ifeoma said.
"Sorry," Amaka muttered, pouring cold water from a plastic bottle into a glass. I moved closer to the wall darkened by kerosene smoke, wishing I could blend into it and disappear. I wanted to apologize to Amaka, but I was not sure what for.
"Tomorrow, we will take Kambili and Jaja around to show them the campus," Aunty Ifeoma said, sounding so normal that I wondered if I had just imagined the raised voice.
"There's nothing to see. They will be bored."
The phone rang then, loud and jarring, unlike the mute purr of ours back home. Aunty Ifeoma hurried to her bedroom to pick it up. "Kambili! Jaja!" she called out a moment later. I knew it was Papa. I waited for Jaja to come in from the verandah so we could go in together. When we got to the phone, Jaja stood back and gestured that I speak first. "Hello, Papa. Good evening," I said, and then I wondered if he could tell that I had eaten after saying a too short prayer.
"How are you?"
"Fine, Papa."
"The house is empty without you."
"Oh."
"Do you need anything?"
"No, Papa."
"Call at once if you need anything, and I will send Kevin. I'll call every day. Remember to study and pray."
"Yes, Papa."
When Mama came on the line, her voice sounded louder than her usual whisper, or perhaps it was just the phone. She told me Sisi had forgotten we were away and cooked lunch for four.
When Jaja and I sat down to have dinner that evening, I thought about Papa and Mama, sitting alone at our wide dining table. We had the leftover rice and chicken. We drank water because the soft drinks bought in the afternoon were finished. I thought about the always full crates of Coke and Fanta and Sprite in the kitchen store back home and then quickly gulped my water down as if I could wash away the thoughts. I knew that if Amaka could read thoughts, mine would not please her.
There was less talk and laughter at dinner because the TV was on and my cousins took their plates to the living room. The older two ignored the sofa and chairs to settle on the floor while Chima curled up on the sofa, balancing his plastic plate on his lap. Aunty Ifeoma asked Jaja and me to go and sit in the living room, too, so we could see the TV clearly. I waited to hear Jaja say no, that we did not mind sitting at the dining table, before I nodded in agreement.
Aunty Ifeoma sat with us, glancing often at the TV as she ate. "I don't understand why they fill our television with second rate Mexican shows and ignore all the potential our people have," she muttered.
"Mom, please don't lecture now," Amaka said.
"It's cheaper to import soap operas from Mexico," Obiorftj said, his eyes still glued to the television.
Aunty Ifeoma stood up. "Jaja and Kambili, we usually say the rosary every night before bed. Of course, you can stay up as long as you want afterward to watch TV or whatever else."
Jaja shifted on his chair before pulling his schedule out of his pocket. "Aunty, Papa's schedule says we should st
udy in the evenings; we brought our books."
Aunty Ifeoma stared at the paper in Jaja's hand. Then she started to laugh so hard that she staggered, her tall body bending like a whistling pine tree on a windy day. "Eugene gave you a schedule to follow when you're here? Nekwanu anya, what does that mean?" Aunty Ifeoma laughed some more before she held out her hand and asked for the sheet of paper. When she turned to me, I brought mine, folded in crisp quarters, out of my skirt pocket.
"I will keep them for you until you leave."
"Aunty…" Jaja started.
"If you do not tell Eugene, eh, then how will he know that you did not follow the schedule, gbo? You are on holiday here, and it is my house, so you will follow my own rules."
I watched Aunty Ifeoma walk into her room with our schedules. My mouth felt dry, my tongue clinging to the roof.
"Do you have a schedule at home that you follow every day?" Amaka asked. She lay face up on the floor, her head resting on one of the cushions from a chair.
"Yes," Jaja said.
"Interesting. So now rich people can't decide what to do day by day, they need a schedule to tell them."
"Amaka!" Obiora shouted.
Aunty Ifeoma came out holding a huge rosary with blue beads and a metal crucifix. Obiora turned off the TV as the credits started to slide down the screen. Obiora and Amaka went to get their rosaries from the bedroom while Jaja and I slipped ours out of our pockets. We knelt next to the cane chairs and Aunty Ifeoma started the first decade. After we said the last Hail Mary, my head snapped back when I heard the raised, melodious voice. Amaka was singing! "Ka m bunie afa gi enu.." Aunty Ifeoma and Obiora joined her, their voices melding. My eyes met Jaja's. His eyes were watery, full of suggestions. No! I told him, with a tight blink. It was not right. You did not break into song in the middle of the rosary. I did not join in the singing, and neither did Jaja. Amaka broke into song at the end of each decade, uplifting Igbo songs that made Aunty Ifeoma sing in echoes, like an opera singer drawing the words from the pit of her stomach.
After the rosary, Aunty Ifeoma asked if we knew any of the songs. "We don't sing at home," Jaja answered.
"We do here," Aunty Ifeoma said, and I wondered if it was irritation that made her lower her eyebrows.
Obiora turned on the TV after Aunty Ifeoma said good night and went into her bedroom. I sat on the sofa, next to Jaja, watching the images on TV, but I couldn't tell the olive-skinned characters apart. I felt as if my shadow were visiting Aunty Ifeoma and her family, while the real me was studying in my room in Enugu, my schedule posted above me. I stood up shortly and went into the bedroom to get ready for bed. Even though I did not have the schedule, I knew what time Papa had penciled in for bed. I fell off to sleep wondering when Amaka would come in, if her lips would turn down at the corners in a sneer when she looked at me sleeping.
I dreamed that Amaka submerged me in a toilet bowl full of greenish-brown lumps. First my head went in, and then the bowl expanded so that my whole body went in, too. Amaka chanted, "Flush, flush, flush," while I struggled to break free. I was still struggling when I woke up. Amaka had rolled out of bed and was knotting her wrapper over her nightdress. "We're going to fetch water at the tap," she said. She did not ask me to come, but I got up, tightened my wrapper, and followed her. Jaja and Obiora were already at the tap in the tiny backyard, old car tires and bicycle parts and broken trunks were piled in a corner. Obiora placed the containers under the tap, aligning the open mouths with the rushing water. Jaja offered to take the first filled container back to the kitchen, but Obiora said not to worry and took it in. While Amaka took the next,]M placed a smaller container under the tap and filled it. He had slept in the living room, he told me, on a mattress that Obiofl unrolled from behind the bedroom door and covered with a wrapper. I listened to him and marveled at the wonder in his voice, at how much lighter the brown of his pupils was. I ofered to carry the next container, but Amaka laughed and said I had soft bones and could not carry it.
When we finished, we said morning prayers in the living room, a string of short prayers punctuated by songs. Aunt Ifeoma prayed for the university, for the lecturers and administration, for Nigeria, and finally, she prayed that we might find peace and laughter today. As we made the sign of the cross, I looked up to seek out Jaja's face, to see if he, too, was bewildered that Aunty Ifeoma and her family prayed for, of all things, laughter. We took turns bathing in the narrow bathroom, with half full buckets of water, warmed for a while with a heating coil plunged into them. The spotless tub had a triangular hole at one corner, and the water groaned like a man in pain as it drained. I lathered over with my own sponge and soap-Mama had carefully packed my toiletries-and although I scooped the water with a shallow cup and poured it slowly over my body, I still felt slippery as I stepped on the old towel placed on the floor.
Aunty Ifeoma was at the dining table when I came out, dissolving a few spoonfuls of dried milk in a jug of cold water. "If I let these children take the milk themselves, it will not last a week," she said, before taking the tin of Carnation dried milk back to the safety of her room. I hoped that Amaka would not ask me if my mother did that, too, because I would stutter if I had to tell her that we took as much creamy Peak milk as we wanted back home.
Breakfast was okpa that Obiora had dashed out to buy from somewhere nearby. I had never had okpa for a meal, only for a snack when we sometimes bought the steam-cooked cowpea-and-palm-oil cakes on the drive to Abba. I watched Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma cut up the moist yellow cake and did the same. Aunty Ifeoma asked us to hurry up. She wanted to show Jaja and me the campus and get back in time to cook. She had invited Father Amadi to dinner.
"Are you sure there's enough fuel in the car, Mom?" Obiora asked.
"Enough to take us around campus, at least. I really hope fuel comes in the next week, otherwise when we resume, I will have to walk to my lectures."
"Or take okada," Amaka said, laughing.
"I will try that soon at this rate."
"What are okada?" Jaja asked.
I turned to stare at him, surpprised. I did not think he would ask that question or any other question.
"Motorcycles," Obiora said. "They have become more popular than taxis."
Aunty Ifeoma stopped to pluck at some browned leaves in the garden as we walked to the car, muttering that the harmattan was killing her plants. Amaka and Obiora groaned and said, "Not the garden now, Mom!"
"That's a hibiscus, isn't it, Aunty?" Jaja asked, staring at a plant close to the barbed wire fencing. "I didn't know there were purple hibiscuses."
Aunty Ifeoma laughed and touched the flower, colored a deep shade of purple that was almost blue. "Everybody has that reaction the first time. My good friend Phillipa is a lecturer in botany. She did a lot of experimental work while she was here. Look, here's white ixora, but it doesn't bloom as fully as the red."
Jaja joined Aunty Ifeoma, while we stood watching them. "O maka, so beautiful," Jaja said. He was running a finger over a flower petal. Aunty Ifeoma's laughter lengthened to a few more syllables.
"Yes, it is. I had to fence my garden because the neighborhood children came in and plucked many of the more unusual flowers. Now I only let in the altar girls from our church or the Protestant church."
"Mom, o zugo. Let's go," Amaka said.
But Aunty Ifeoma spent a little longer showing Jaja her flowers before we piled into the station wagon and she drove off. The street she turned into was steep and she switched the ignition off and let the car roll, loose bolts rattling. "To save fuel," she said, turning briefly to Jaja and me.
The houses we drove past had sunflower hedges, and the palm-size flowers brightened the foliage in big yellow polka dots. The hedges had many gaping holes, so I could see the backyards of the houses-the metal water tanks balanced on unpainted cement blocks, the old tire swings hanging from guava trees, the clothes spread out on lines tied tree to tree. At the end of the street, Aunty Ifeoma turned the ignition on because the road had be
come level. "That's the university primary school," she said. "That's where Chima goes. It used to be so much better, but now look at all the missing louvers in the windows, look at the dirty buildings."
The wide schoolyard, enclosed by a trimmed whistling pine hedge, was cluttered with long buildings as if they had all sprung up at will, unplanned. Aunty Ifeoma pointed at a building next to the school, the Institute of African Studies, where her office was and where she taught most of her classes. The building was old; I could tell from the color and from the windows, coated with the dust of so many harmattans that they would never shine again. Aunty Ifeoma drove through a roundabout planted with pink periwinkle flowers and lined with bricks painted alternating black and white. On the side of the road, a field stretched out like green bed linen, dotted by mango trees with faded leaves struggling to retain their color against the drying wind. "That's the field where we have our bazaars," Aunty Ifeoma said. "And over there are female hostels. There's Mary Slessor Hall. Over there is Okpara Hall, and this is Bello Hall, the most famous hostel, where Amaka has sworn she will live when she enters the university and launches her activist movements." Amaka laughed but did not dispute Aunty Ifeoma. "Maybe you two will be together, Kambili."
I nodded stiffly, although Aunty Ifeoma could not see me. I had never thought about the university, where I would go or what I would study. When the time came, Papa would decide.
Aunty Ifeoma horned and waved at two balding men in tie dye shirts standing at a corner as she turned. She switched the ignition off again, and the car hurtled down the street. Gmelina and dogonyaro trees stood firmly on either side. The sharp, astringent scent of the dogonyaro leaves filled the car, and Amaka breathed deeply and said they cured malaria. We were in a residential area, driving past bungalows in wide compounds with rose bushes and faded lawns and fruit trees. The street gradually lost its tarred smoothness and its cultivated hedges, and the houses became low and narrow, their front doors so close together that you could stand at one, stretch out, and touch the next door. There was no pretense at hedges here, no pretense at separation or privacy, just low buildings side by side amid a scattering of stunted shrubs and cashew trees. These were the junior-staff quarters, where the secretaries and drivers lived, Aunty Ifeoma explained, and Amaka added, "If they are lucky enough to get it."
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