Purple hibiscus

by Чимаманда Нгози Адичи

  Papa-Nnukwu smiled as he spoke. His few front teeth seemed a deeper yellow in the light, like fresh corn kernels. The wide gaps in his gums were tinged a subtle tawny color. "Chineke! Those who wish others well, keep them well. Those who wish others ill, keep them ill."

  Papa-Nnukwu drew the last line, longer than the rest, with a flourish. He was done. When Papa-Nnukwu rose and stretched, his entire body, like the bark of the gnarled gmelina tree in our yard, captured the gold shadows from the lamp flame in its many furrows and ridges. Even the age spots that dotted his hands and legs gleamed. I did not look away, although it was sinful to look upon another person's nakedness. The rumples in Papa-Nnukwu's belly did not seem so many now, and his navel rose higher, still enclosed between folds of skin. Between his legs hung a limp cocoon that seemed smoother, free of the wrinkles that crisscrossed the rest of his body like mosquito netting. He picked up his wrapper and tied it around his body, knotting it at his waist. His nipples were like dark raisins nestled among the sparse gray tufts of hair on his chest. He was still smiling as I quietly turned and went back to the bedroom. I never smiled after we said the rosary back home. None of us did.

  Papa-Nnukwu was back on the verandah after breakfast, sitting on the stool, with Amaka settled on a plastic mat at his feet. She scrubbed his foot gently with a pumice stone, soaked it in a plastic bowl of water, rubbed it over with Vaseline, and then moved to the other foot. Papa-Nnukwu complained that she would make his feet too tender, that even soft stones would pierce his soles now because he never wore sandals in the village, though Aunty Ifeoma made him wear them here. But he did not ask Amaka to stop. "I am going to paint him out here on the verandah, in the shade. I want to catch the sunlight on his skin," Amaka said, when Obiora joined them.

  Aunty Ifeoma came out, dressed in a blue wrapper and blouse. She was going to the market with Obiora, who she said figured out change faster than a trader with a calculator. "Kambili, I want you to help me do the orah leaves, so I can start the soup when I come back," she said.

  "Orah leaves?" I asked, swallowing.

  "Yes. Don't you know how to prepare orah?"

  I shook my head. "No, Aunty."

  "Amaka will do it, then," Aunty Ifeoma said. She unfolded and refolded her wrapper around her waist, knotting it at her side.

  "Why?" Amaka burst out. "Because rich people do not prepare orah in their houses? Won't she participate in eating the orah soup?"

  Aunty Ifeoma's eyes hardened-she was not looking at Amaka, she was looking at me. "O ginidi, Kambili, have you no mouth? Talk back to her!"

  I watched a wilted African lily fall from its stalk in the garden. The crotons rustled in the late morning breeze. "You don't have to shout, Amaka," I said, finally. "I don't know how to do the orah leaves, but you can show me."

  I did not know where the calm words had come from. I did not want to look at Amaka, did not want to see her scowl, did not want to prompt her to say something else to me, because I knew I could not keep up. I thought I was imagining it when I heard the cackling, but then I looked at Amaka-and sure enough, she was laughing. "So your voice can be this loud, Kambili," she said.

  She showed me how to prepare the orah leaves. The slippery, light green leaves had fibrous stalks that did not become tender from cooking and so had to be carefully plucked out. I balanced the tray of vegetables on my lap and set to work, plucking the stalks and putting the leaves in a bowl at my feet. I was done by the time Aunty Ifeoma drove in, about an hour later, and sank onto a stool, fanning herself with a newspaper. Sweat streaks had washed away her pressed powder in parallel lines of darker-colored skin down the sides of her face. Jaja and Obiora were bringing in the foodstuffs from the car, and Aunty Ifeoma asked Jaja to place the bunch of plantains on the verandah floor.

  "Amaka, ka? Guess how much?" she asked.

  Amaka stared at the bunch critically before she guessed an amount. Aunty Ifeoma shook her head and said that the plantains had cost forty naira more than what Amaka guessed. "Hei! For this small thing?" Amaka shouted.

  "The traders say it is hard to transport their food because there is no fuel, so they add on the costs of transportation, o di egwu," Aunty Ifeoma said.

  Amaka picked up the plantains and pressed each between her fingers, as if she would figure out why they cost so much by doing that. She took them inside just as Father Amadi drove in and parked in front of the flat. His windscreen caught the sun and glittered. He bounded up the few stairs to the verandah, holding his soutane up like a bride holding a wedding dress. He greeted Papa-Nnukwu first, before hugging Aunty Ifeoma and shaking hands with the boys. I extended my hand so that we could shake, my lower lip starting to tremble.

  "Kambili," he said, holding my hand a little longer than the boys'.

  "Are you going somewhere, Father?" Amaka asked, coming onto the verandah. "You must be baking in that soutane."

  "I am going over to give some things to a friend of mine, the priest who came back from Papua New Guinea. He returns next week."

  "Papua New Guinea. How did he say the place is, eh?" Amaka asked.

  "He was telling a story of crossing a river by canoe, with crocodiles right underneath. He said he is not sure which happened first, hearing the teeth of the crocodiles snapping or discovering that he had wet his trousers."

  "They had better not send you to a place like that," Aunty Ifeoma said with a laugh, still fanning herself and sipping from a glass of water.

  "I don't even want to think about your leaving, Father," Amaka said. "You still don't have an idea where and when, okwia?"

  "No. Sometime next year, perhaps."

  "Who is sending you?" Papa-Nnukwu asked, in his sudden way that made me realize he had been following every word spoken in Igbo.

  "Father Amadi belongs to a group of priests, ndi missionary, and they go to different countries to convert people," Amaka said. She hardly peppered her speech with English words when she spoke to Papa-Nnukwu, as the rest of us inadvertently did.

  "Ezi oktvu?" Papa-Nnukwu looked up, his milky eye on Father Amadi. "Is that so? Our own sons now go to be missionaries in the white man's land?"

  "We go to the white man's land and the black man's land, sir," Father Amadi said. "Any place that needs a priest."

  "It is good, my son. But you must never lie to them. Never teach them to disregard their fathers." Papa-Nnukwu looked away, shaking his head.

  "Did you hear that, Father?" Amaka asked. "Don't lie to those poor ignorant souls."

  "It will be hard not to, but I will try," Father Amadi said, in English. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.

  "You know, Father, it's like making okpa," Obiora said. "You mix the cowpea flour and palm oil, then you steam-cook for hours. You think you can ever get just the cowpea flour? Or just the palm oil?"

  "What are you talking about?" Father Amadi asked.

  "Religion and oppression," Obiora said.

  "You know there is a saying that it is not just the naked men in the market who are mad?" Father Amadi asked.

  "That streak of madness has returned and is disturbing you again, oktvia?" Obiora laughed, and so did Amaka, in that loud way it seemed only Father Amadi could get out of her.

  "Spoken like the true missionary priest, Father," Amaka said. "When people challenge you, label them mad."

  "See how your cousin sits quiet and watches?" Father Amadi asked, gesturing to me. "She does not waste her energy in picking never-ending arguments. But there is a lot going on in her mind, I can tell."

  I stared at him. Round, wet patches of sweat encircled his underarms, darkening the white of his soutane. His eyes rested on my face and I looked away. It was too disturbing, locking eyes with him; it made me forget who was nearby, where I was sitting, what color my skirt was. "Kambili, you did not want to come out with us the last time."

  "I… I… I was asleep."

  "Well, today, you're coming with me. Just you," Father Amadi said. "I will come and pick you up on my way back fr
om town. We're going to the stadium for football. You can play or watch."

  Amaka started to laugh. "Kambili looks frightened to death." She was looking at me, but it was not the look I was used to, the one where her eyes held me guilty of things I did not know. It was a different, softer look.

  "There is nothing to be frightened about, nne. You will have fun at the stadium," Aunty Ifeoma said, and I turned to stare blankly at her, too. Tiny beads of sweat, like pimples, covered her nose. She seemed so happy, so at peace, and I wondered how anybody around me could feel that way when liquid fire was raging inside me, when fear was mingling with hope and clutching itself around my ankles.

  After Father Amadi left, Aunty Ifeoma said, "Go and get ready so you don't keep him waiting when he gets back. Shorts are best because even if you don't play, it will get hotter before the sun falls and most of the spectator stands don't have roofs."

  "Because they have spent ten years building that stadium. The money has gone into peoples' pockets," Amaka muttered.

  "I don't have shorts, Aunty," I said.

  Aunty Ifeoma did not ask why, perhaps because she already knew. She asked Amaka to lend me a pair of shorts. I expected Amaka to sneer, but she gave me a pair of yellow shorts as if it were normal that I did not have any. I took my time putting on the shorts, but I did not stand in front of the mirror for too long, as Amaka did, because guilt would nibble at me. Vanity was a sin. Jaja and I looked in the mirror just long enough to make sure our buttons were done right.

  I heard the Toyota drive up to the front of the flat awhile later. I took Amaka's lipstick from the top of the dresser and ran it over my lips. It looked strange, not as glamorous as it did on Amaka; it did not even have the same bronze shimmer. I wiped it off. My lips looked pale, a dour brown. I ran the lipstick over my lips again, and my hands shook.

  "Kambili! Father Amadi is horning outside for you," Aunty Ifeoma called. I wiped the lipstick away with the back of my hand and left the room.

  Father Amadi's car smelled like him, a clean scent that made me think of a clear azure sky. His shorts had seemed longer the last time I saw him in them, well past his knees. But now they climbed up to expose a muscular thigh sprinkled with dark hair. The space between us was too small, too tight. I was always a penitent when I was close to a priest at confession. But it was hard to feel penitent now, with Father Amadi's cologne deep in my lungs. I felt guilty instead because I could not focus on my sins, could not think of anything except how near he was.

  "I sleep in the same room as my grandfather. He is a heathen," I blurted out.

  He turned to me briefly, and before he looked away, I wondered if the light in his eyes was amusement. "Why do you say that?"

  "It is a sin."

  "Why is it a sin?"

  I stared at him. I felt that he had missed a line in his script. "I don't know."

  "Your father told you that."

  I looked away, out the window. I would not implicate Papa, since Father Amadi obviously disagreed.

  "Jaja told me a little about your father the other day, Kambili."

  I bit my lower lip. What had Jaja said to him? What was wrong with Jaja, anyway?

  Father Amadi said nothing else until we got to the stadium and he quickly scanned the few people running on the tracks. His boys were not here yet, so the football field was empty. We sat on the stairs, in one of the two spectator stands that had a roof. "Why don't we play set ball before the boys come?" he asked.

  "I don't know how to play."

  "Do you play handball?"

  "No."

  "What about volleyball?"

  I looked at him and then away. I wondered if Amaka would ever paint him, would ever capture the clay-smooth skin, the straight eyebrows, which were slightly raised as he watched me.

  "I played volleyball in class one," I said. "But I stopped playing because I… I was not that good and nobody liked to pick me." I kept my eyes focused on the bleak, unpainted spectator stands, abandoned for so long that tiny plants had started to push their green heads through the cracks in the cement.

  "Do you love Jesus?" Father Amadi asked, standing up.

  I was startled. "Yes. Yes, I love Jesus."

  "Then show me. Try and catch me, show me you love Jesus."

  He had hardly finished speaking before he dashed off and I saw the blue flash of his tank top. I did not stop to think; I stood up and ran after him. The wind blew in my face, into my eyes, across my ears. Father Amadi was like blue wind, elusive. I did not catch up until he stopped near the football goal post.

  "So you don't love Jesus," he teased.

  "You run too fast," I said, panting.

  "I will let you rest, and then you can have another chance to show me you love the Lord."

  We ran four more times. I did not catch him. We flopped down on the grass, finally, and he pushed a water bottle into my hand. "You have good legs for running. You should practice more," he said.

  I looked away. I had never heard anything like that before. It seemed too close, too intimate, to have his eyes on my legs, on any part of me.

  "Don't you know how to smile?" he asked.

  "What?"

  He reached across, tugged lightly at the sides of my lips. "Smile."

  I wanted to smile, but I could not. My lips and cheeks were frozen, unthawed by the sweat running down the sides of my nose. I was too aware that he was watching me.

  "What is that reddish stain on your hand?" he asked.

  I looked down at my hand, at the smudge of hastily wiped lipstick that still clung to the sweaty back of my hands. I had not realized how much I had put on. "It's… a stain," I said, feeling stupid.

  "Lipstick?"

  I nodded.

  "Do you wear lipstick? Have you ever worn lipstick?"

  "No," I said. Then I felt the smile start to creep over my face, stretching my lips and cheeks, an embarrassed and amused smile. He knew I had tried to wear lipstick for the first time today. I smiled. I smiled again.

  "Good evening, Father!" echoed all around, and eight boys descended on us. They were all about my age, with shorts that had holes in them and shirts washed so often I didn't know what color they had originally been and similar crusty spots from insect bites on their legs. Father Amadi took his tank top off and dropped it on my lap before joining the boys on the football field. With his upper body bare, his shoulders were a broad square. I did not look down at his tank top on my lap as I inched my hand ever so slowly toward it. My eyes were on the football field, on Father Amadi's running legs, on the flying white-and-black football, on the many legs of the boys, which all looked like one leg. My hand had finally touched the top on my lap, moving over it tentatively as though it could breathe, as though it were a part of Father Amadi, when he blew a whistle for a water break. He brought peeled oranges and water wrapped into tight cone shapes in plastic bags from his car. They all settled down on the grass to eat the oranges, and I watched Father Amadi laugh loudly with his head thrown back, leaning to rest his elbows on the grass. I wondered if the boys felt the same way I did with him, that they were all he could see. I held on to his tank top while I watched the rest of the play. A cool wind had started to blow, chilling the sweat on my body, when Father Amadi blew the final whistle, three times with the last time drawn out. Then the boys clustered around him, heads bowed, while he prayed.

  "Good-bye, Father!" echoed around as he made his way toward me. There was something confident about his gait, like a rooster in charge of all the neighborhood hens.

  In the car, he played a tape. It was a choir singing Igbo worship songs. I knew the first song: Mama sang it sometimes when Jaja and I brought our report cards home. Father Amadi sang along. His voice was smoother than the lead singer's on the tape. When the first song ended, he lowered the volume and asked, "Did you enjoy the game?"

  "Yes."

  "I see Christ in their faces, in the boys' faces."

  I looked at him. I could not reconcile the blond Christ han
ging on the burnished cross in St. Agnes and the sting-scarred legs of those boys. "They live in Ugwu Oba. Most of them don't go to school anymore because their families can't afford it. Ekwueme- remember him, in the red shirt?"

  I nodded, although I could not remember. All the shirts had seemed similar and colorless.

  "His father was a driver here in the university. But they retrenched him, and Ekwueme had to drop out of Nsukka High School. He is working as a bus conductor now, and he is doing very well. They inspire me, those boys."

  Father Amadi stopped talking to join in the chorus. "I na-asi m esona ya! I na-asi in esona ya!"

  I nodded in time to the chorus. We really did not need the music, though, because his voice was melody enough. I felt that I was at home, that I was where I had been meant to be for a long time.

  Father Amadi sang for a while; then he lowered the volume to a whisper again. "You haven't asked me a single question," he said.

  "I don't know what to ask."

  "You should have learned the art of questioning from Amaka. Why does the tree's shoot go up and the root down? Why is there a sky? What is life? Just why?"

  I laughed. It sounded strange, as if I were listening to the recorded laughter of a stranger being played back. I was not sure I had ever heard myself laugh.

  "Why did you become a priest?" I blurted out, then wished I had not asked, that the bubbles in my throat had not let that through. Of course he had gotten the call, the same call that all the Reverend Sisters in school talked about when they asked us to always listen for the call when we prayed. Sometimes I imagined God calling me, his rumbling voice British-accented. He would not say my name right; like Father Benedict, he would place the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first.

  "I wanted to be a doctor at first. Then I went to church once and heard this priest speak and I was changed forever," Father Amadi said.

  "Oh."

  "I was joking," Father Amadi glanced at me. He looked surprised I did not realize that it was a joke. "It's a lot more complicated than that, Kambili. I had many questions, growing up. The priesthood came closest to answering them."