Aunty Ifeoma laughed. "Look at you, Obiora. A few years ago, you were always first to run after them."
"Besides, you should not speak of children with such contempt," Amaka teased. "After all, they are your own kind."
"I was never a child," Obiora said, heading for the door.
"Where are you going?" Amaka asked. "To chase aku?"
"I'm not going to run after those flying termites, I am just going to look," Obiora said. "To observe."
Amaka laughed, and Aunty Ifeoma echoed her. "Can I go, Mom?" Chima asked. He was already heading for the door.
"Yes. But you know we will not fry them."
"I will give the ones I catch to Ugochukwu. They fry aku in their house," Chima said.
"Watch that they do not fly into your ears, inugo! Or they will make you go deaf!" Aunty Ifeoma called as Chima dashed outside.
Aunty Ifeoma put on her slippers and went upstairs to talk to a neighbor. I was left alone with Amaka, standing side by side next to the railings. She moved forward to lean on the railings, her shoulder brushing mine. The old discomfort was gone. "You have become Father Amadi's sweetheart," she said. Her tone was the same light tone she had used with Obiora. She could not possibly know how painfully my heart lurched. "He was really worried when you were sick. He talked about you so much. And, amam, it wasn't just priestly concern."
"What did he say?"
Amaka turned to study my eager face. "You have a crush on him, don't you?"
"Crush" was mild. It did not come close to what I felt, how I felt, but I said, "Yes."
"Like every other girl on campus."
I tightened my grip on the railings. I knew Amaka would not tell me more unless I asked. She wanted me to speak out more, after all. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Oh, all the girls in church have crushes on him. Even some of the married women. People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It's exciting to have to deal with God as a rival." Amaka ran her hand over the railings, smearing the water droplets. "You're different. I've never heard him talk about anyone like that. He said you never laugh. How shy you are although he knows there's a lot going on in your head. He insisted on driving Mom to Enugu to see you. I told him he sounded like a person whose wife was sick."
"I was happy that he came to the hospital," I said. It felt easy saying that, letting the words roll off my tongue.
Amaka's eyes still bored into me. "It was Uncle Eugene who did that to you, okwia?" she asked.
I let go of the railings, suddenly needing to ease myself. Nobody had asked, not even the doctor at the hospital or Father Benedict. I did not know what Papa had told them. Or if he had even told them anything.
"Did Aunty Ifeoma tell you?" I asked.
"No, but I guessed so."
"Yes. It was him," I said, and then headed for the toilet. I did not turn to see Amaka's reaction.
The power went off that evening, just before the sun fell. The refrigerator shook and shivered and then fell silent. I did not notice how loud its nonstop hum was until it stopped. Obiora brought the kerosene lamps out to the verandah and we sat around them, swatting at the tiny insects that blindly followed the yellow light and bumped against the glass bulbs. Father Amadi came later in the evening, with roast corn and ube wrapped in old newspapers.
"Father, you are the best! Just what I was thinking about, corn and ube," Amaka said.
"I brought this on the condition that you will not raise any arguments today," Father Amadi said. "I just want to see how Kambili is doing."
Amaka laughed and took the package inside to get a plate.
"It's good to see you are yourself again," Father Amadi said, looking me over, as if to see if I was all there. I smiled. He motioned for me to stand up for a hug. His body touching mine was tense and delicious. I backed away. I wished that Chima and Jaja and Obiora and Aunty Ifeoma and Amaka would all disappear for a while. I wished I were alone with him. I wished I could tell him how warm I felt that he was here, how my favorite color was now the same fired-clay shade of his skin.
A neighbor knocked on the door and came in with a plastic container of aku, anara leaves, and red peppers. Aunty Ifeoma said she did not think I should eat any because it might disturb my stomach. I watched Obiora flatten an anara leaf on his palm. He sprinkled the aku, fried to twisted crisps, and the peppers on the leaf and then rolled it up. Some of them slipped out as he stuffed the rolled leaf in his mouth.
"Our people say that after aku flies, it will still fall to the toad," Father Amadi said. He dipped a hand into the bowl and threw a few into his mouth. "When I was a child, I loved chasing aku. It was just play, though, because if you really wanted to catch them, you waited till evening, when they all lost their wings and fell down." He sounded nostalgic.
I closed my eyes and let his voice caress me, let myself imagine him as a child, before his shoulders grew square, chasing aku outside, over soil softened by new rains.
Aunty Ifeoma said I would not help fetch water just yet, until she was sure I was strong enough. So I woke up after everyone else, when the sun's rays streamed steadily into the room, making the mirror glitter.
Amaka was standing at the living room window when I came out. I went over and stood by her. She was looking at the verandah, where Aunty Ifeoma sat on a stool, talking. The woman seated next to Aunty Ifeoma had piercing academic eyes and humorless lips and wore no makeup.
"We cannot sit back and let it happen, mba. Where else have you heard of such a thing as a sole administrator in a university?" Aunty Ifeoma said, leaning forward on the stool. Tiny cracks appeared in her bronze lipstick when she pursed her lips. "A governing council votes for a vice chancellor. That is the way it has worked since this university was built, that is the way it is supposed to work, oburia?"
The woman looked off into the distance, nodding continuously in the way that people do when searching for the right words to use. When she finally spoke, she did so slowly, like someone addressing a stubborn child. "They said there is a list circulating, Ifeoma, of lecturers who are disloyal to the university. They said they might be fired. They said your name is on it."
"I am not paid to be loyal. When I speak the truth, it becomes disloyalty."
"Ifeoma, do you think you are the only one who knows the truth? Do you think we do not all know the truth, eh? But, gwakenem, will the truth feed your children? Will the truth pay their school fees and buy their clothes?"
"When do we speak out, eh? When soldiers are appointed lecturers and students attend lectures with guns to their heads? When do we speak out?" Aunty Ifeoma's voice was raised. But the blaze in her eyes was not focused on the woman; she was angry at something that was bigger than the woman before her.
The woman got up. She smoothed her yellow-and-blue abarla skirt that barely let her brown slippers show. "We should go. What time is your lecture?"
"Two."
"Do you have fuel?"
"Ebekwanu? No."
"Let me drop you. I have a little fuel."
I watched Aunty Ifeoma and the woman walk slowly to the door, as though weighed down by both what they had said and what they had not said.
Amaka waited for Aunty Ifeoma to shut the door behind them before she left the window and sat down on a chair. "Mom said you should remember to take your painkiller, Kambili," she said.
"What was Aunty Ifeoma talking about with her friend?" I asked. I knew I would not have asked before. I would have wondered about it, but I would not have asked.
"The sole administrator," Amaka said, shortly, as if I would immediately understand all that they had been talking about. She was running her hand down the length of the cane chair, over and over.
"The university's equivalent of a head of state," Obiora said. "The university becomes a microcosm of the country."
I had not realized that he was there, reading a book on the living room floor. I had never heard anyone use the word microcosm.
"They are telling Mom to shut up," Amaka sai
d. "Shut up if you do not want to lose your job because you can be fired, just like that." Amaka snapped her fingers to show how fast Aunty Ifeoma could be fired.
"They should fire her, eh, so we can go to America," Obiora said.
"Mechie onu" Amaka said. Shut up.
"America?" I looked from Amaka to Obiora.
"Aunty Phillipa is asking Mom to come over. At least people there get paid when they are supposed to," Amaka said, bitterly, as though she were accusing someone of something.
"And Mom will have her work recognized in America, without any nonsense politics," Obiora said, nodding, agreeing with himself in case nobody else did.
"Did Mom tell you she is going anywhere, gbo?" Amaka jabbed the chair now, with fast motions.
"Do you know how long they have been sitting on her file?" Obiora asked. "She should have been senior lecturer years ago."
"Aunty Ifeoma told you that?" I asked, stupidly, not even sure what I meant, because I could think of nothing else to say, because I could no longer imagine life without Aunty Ifeoma's family, without Nsukka.
Neither Obiora nor Amaka responded. They were glaring at each other silently, and I felt that they had not really been talking to me. I went outside and stood by the verandah railings.
It had rained all night. Jaja was kneeling in the garden, weeding. He did not have to water anymore because the sky did it. Anthills had risen in the newly softened red soil in the yard, like miniature castles. I took a deep breath and held it, to savor the smell of green leaves washed clean by rain, the way I imagined a smoker would do to savor the last of a cigarette. The allamanda bushes bordering the garden bloomed heavily with yellow, cylindrical flowers. Chima was pulling the flowers down and sticking his fingers in them, one after the other. I watched as he examined flower after flower, looking for a suitable small bloom that would fit onto his pinky.
That evening, Father Amadi stopped by on his way to the stadium. He wanted us all to go with him. He was coaching some boys from Ugwu Agidi for the local government high-jump championships. Obiora had borrowed a video game from the flat upstairs, and the boys were clustered in front of the TV in the living room. They didn't want to go to the stadium because they would have to return the game soon. Amaka laughed when Father Amadi asked her to come. "Don't try to be nice, Father, you know you would rather be alone with your sweetheart," she said. And Father Amadi smiled and said nothing.
I went alone with him. My mouth felt tight from embarrassment as he drove us to the stadium. I was grateful that he did not say anything about Amaka's statement, that he talked about the sweet-smelling rains instead and sang along with the robust Igbo choruses coming from his cassette player. The boys from Ugwu Agidi were already there when we got to the stadium. They were taller, older versions of the boys I had seen the last time; their hole-ridden shorts were just as worn and their faded shirts just as threadbare. Father Amadi raised his voice-it lost most of its music when he did-as he gave encouragement and pointed out the boys' weaknesses. When they were not looking, he took the rod up a notch, then yelled, "One more time: set, go!" and they jumped over it, one after the other. He raised it a few more times before the boys caught on and said, "Ah! Ah! Fada!" He laughed and said he believed they could jump higher than they thought they could. And that they had just proved him right.
It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked to them, in what she expected of them. She did it all the time believing they would scale the rod. And they did. It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't.
"What clouds your face?" Father Amadi asked, sitting down beside me. His shoulder touched mine. The new smell of sweat and old smell of cologne filled my nostrils.
"Nothing."
"Tell me about the nothing, then."
"You believe in those boys," I blurted out.
"Yes," he said, watching me. "And they don't need me to believe in them as much as I need it for myself."
"Why?"
"Because I need to believe in something that I never question."
He picked up the water bottle, drank deeply from it. I watched the ripples in his throat as the water went down. I wished I were the water, going into him, to be with him, one with him. I had never envied water so much before.
His eyes caught mine, and I looked away, wondering if he had seen the longing in my eyes. "Your hair needs to be plaited," he said.
"My hair?"
"Yes. I will take you to the woman who plaits your aunt's hair in the market."
He reached out then and touched my hair. Mama had plaited it in the hospital, but because of my raging headaches, she did not make the braids tight. They were starting to slip out of the twists, and Father Amadi ran his hand over the loosening braids, in gentle, smoothing motions. He was looking right into my eyes. He was too close. His touch was so light I wanted to push my head toward him, to feel the pressure of his hand. I wanted to collapse against him. I wanted to press his hand to my head, my belly, so he could feel the warmth that coursed through me.
He let go of my hair, and I watched him get up and run back to the boys on the field.
It was too early when Amaka's movements woke me up the next morning; the room was not yet touched by the lavender rays of dawn. In the faint glow from the security lights outside, I saw her tying her wrapper round her chest. Something was wrong; she did not tie her wrapper just to go to the toilet. "Amaka, o gini?"
"Listen," she said.
I could make out Aunty Ifeoma's voice from the verandah, and I wondered what she was doing up so early. Then I heard the singing. It was the measured singing of a large group of people, and it came in through the window. "Students are rioting," Amaka said.
I got up and followed her into the living room. What did it mean, that students were rioting? Were we in danger?
Jaja and Obiora were on the verandah with Aunty Ifeoma. The cool air felt heavy against my bare arms, as if it were holding on to raindrops that were reluctant to fall.
"Turn off the security lights," Aunty Ifeoma said. "If they pass and see the light, they might throw stones up here."
Amaka turned off the lights. The singing was clearer now, loud and resonant. There had to be a least five hundred people. "Sole administrator must go. He doesn't wear pant oh! Head of State must go. He doesn't wear pant oh! Where is running water? Where is light? Where is petrol?"
"The singing is so loud I thought they were right outside," Aunty Ifeoma said.
"Will they come here?" I asked.
Aunty Ifeoma put an arm around me and drew me close. She smelled of talcum powder. "No, nne, we are fine. The people who might worry are those that live near the vice chancellor. Last time, the students burned a senior professor's car."
The singing was louder but not closer. The students were invigorated now. Smoke was rising in thick, blinding fumes that blended into the star-filled sky. Crashing sounds of breaking glass peppered the singing. "All we are saying, sole administrator must go! All we are saying, he must go! No be so? Na so!" Shouts and yells accompanied the singing. A solo voice rose, and the crowds cheered. The cool night wind, heavy with the smell of burning, brought clear snatches of the resonating voice speaking pidgin English from a street away. "Great Lions and Lionesses! We wan people who dey wear clean underwear, no be so? Abi the Head of State dey wear common underwear, see, talkless of clean one? No!"
"Look," Obiora said, lowering his voice as if the group of about forty students jogging past could possibly hear him. They looked like a fast-flowing dark stream, illuminated by the torches and burning sticks they held.
"Maybe they are catching up with the rest from down campus," Amaka said, after the students had passed.
We stayed out to listen for a little while longer before Aunty Ifeoma said we had to go in and sleep.
Aunty Ifeoma came home that afternoon with the ne
ws of the riot. It was the worst one since they became commonplace some years ago. The students had set the sole administrator's house on fire; even the guest house behind it had burned to the ground. Six university cars had been burned down, as well. "They say the sole administrator and his wife were smuggled out in the boot of an old Peugeot 404, o di egwu," Aunty Ifeoma said, waving around a circular. When I read the circular, I felt a tight discomfort in my chest like the heartburn I got after eating greasy akara. It was signed by the registrar. The university was closed down until further notice as a result of the damage to university property and the atmosphere of unrest. I wondered what it meant, if it meant Aunty Ifeoma would leave soon, if it meant we would no longer come to Nsukka.
During my fitful siesta, I dreamed that that the sole administrator was pouring hot water on Aunty Ifeoma's feet in the bathtub of our home in Enugu. Then Aunty Ifeoma jumped out of the bathtub and, in the manner of dreams, jumped into America. She did not look back as I called to her to stop.
I was still thinking about the dream that evening as we all sat in the living room, watching TV. I heard a car drive in and park in front of the flat, and I clasped my shaky hands together, certain it was Father Amadi. But the banging on the door was unlike him; it was loud, rude, intrusive.
Aunty Ifeoma flew off her chair. "Onyezi? Who wants to break my door, eh?" She opened the door only a crack, but two wide hands reached in and forced the door ajar. The heads of the four men who spilled into the flat grazed the door frame. Suddenly, the flat seemed cramped, too small for the blue uniforms and matching caps they wore, for the smell of stale cigarette smoke and sweat that came in with them, for the raw bulge of muscle under their sleeves.
"What is it? Who are you?" Aunty Ifeoma asked.
"We are here to search your house. We're looking for documents designed to sabotage the peace of the university. We have information that you have been in collaboration with the radical student groups that staged the riots…"
Purple hibiscus Page 18
