Purple Hibiscus (24 page)

My class girls visited me that afternoon, their eyes wide with awed admiration. They had heard I had survived an accident. They hoped I would come back with a cast that they could all scribble their signatures on. Chinwe Jideze brought me a big card that read “Get well soon to someone special,” and she sat by my bed and talked to me, in confidential whispers, as if we had always been friends. She even showed me her report
card—she had come second. Before they left, Ezinne asked, “You will stop running away after school, now, won't you?”

Mama told me that evening that I would be discharged in two days. But I would not be going home, I would be going to Nsukka for a week, and Jaja would go with me. She did not know how Aunty Ifeoma had convinced Papa, but he had agreed that Nsukka air would be good for me, for my recuperation.

Rain splashed across the floor of the verandah, even though the sun blazed and I had to narrow my eyes to look out the door of Aunty Ifeoma's living room. Mama used to tell Jaja and me that God was undecided about what to send, rain or sun. We would sit in our rooms and look out at the raindrops glinting with sunlight, waiting for God to decide.

“Kambili, do you want a mango?” Obiora asked from behind me.

He had wanted to help me into the flat when we arrived earlier in the afternoon, and Chima had insisted on carrying my bag. It was as if they feared my illness lingered somewhere within and would pounce out if I exerted myself. Aunty Ifeoma had told them mine was a serious illness, that I had nearly died.

“I will eat one later,” I said, turning.

Obiora was pounding a yellow mango against the living room wall. He would do that until the inside became a soft pulp. Then he would bite a tiny hole in one end of the fruit and suck it until the seed wobbled alone inside the skin, like a person in oversize clothing. Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma were eating mangoes too, but with knives, slicing the firm orange flesh off the seed.

I went out to the verandah and stood by the wet metal railings, watching the rain thin to a drizzle and then stop. God had decided on sunlight. There was the smell of freshness in the air, that edible scent the baked soil gave out at the first touch of rain. I imagined going into the garden, where Jaja was on his knees, digging out a clump of mud with my fingers and eating it.

“
Aku na-efe! Aku
is flying!” a child in the flat upstairs shouted.

The air was filling with flapping, water-colored wings. Children ran out of the flats with folded newspapers and empty Bournvita tins. They hit the flying aku down with the newspapers and then bent to pick them up and put them in the tins. Some children simply ran around, swiping at the aku just for the sake of it. Others squatted down to watch the ones that had lost wings crawl on the ground, to follow them as they held on to one another and moved like a black string, a mobile necklace.

“Interesting how people will eat
aku
. But ask them to eat the wingless termites and that's another thing. Yet the wingless ones are just a phase or two away from
aku
” Obiora said.

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 abada 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 said. “Shut up if you do not want to lose your job because you can be fired
fiam
, 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.