Purple Hibiscus

“Did you travel abroad?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say, but I wanted Ezinne to know that I appreciated that she was always nice to me even though I was awkward and tongue-tied. I wanted to say thank you for not laughing at me and calling me a “backyard snob” the way the rest of the girls did, but the words that came out were, “Did you travel?”

Ezinne laughed. “Me? O di egwu. It’s people like you and Gabriella and Chinwe who travel, people with rich parents. I just went to the village to visit my grandmother.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Why did your father come this morning?”

“I…I…” I stopped to take a breath because I knew I would stutter even more if I didn’t. “He wanted to see my class.”

“You look a lot like him. I mean, you’re not big, but the features and the complexion are the same,” Ezinne said.

“Yes.”

“I heard Chinwe took the first position from you last term. Abi?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure your parents didn’t mind. Ah! Ah! You have been coming first since we started class one. Chinwe said her father took her to London.”

“Oh.”

“I came fifth and it was an improvement for me because I came eighth the term before. You know, our class is very competitive. I used to always come first in my primary school.”

Chinwe Jideze came over to Ezinne’s table then. She had a high, birdlike voice. “I want to remain class prefect this term, Ezi-Butterfly, so make sure you vote for me,” Chinwe said. Her school skirt was tight at the waist, dividing her body into two rounded halves like the number 8.

“Of course,” Ezinne said.

I was not surprised when Chinwe walked past me to the girl at the next desk and repeated herself, only with a different nickname that she had thought up. Chinwe had never spoken to me, not even when we were placed in the same agricultural science group to collect weeds for an album. The girls flocked around her desk during short break, their laughter ringing out often. Their hairstyles were usually exact copies of hers—black, thread-covered sticks if Chinwe wore isi owu that week, or zigzagging cornrows that ended in a pony tail atop their heads if Chinwe wore shuku that week. Chinwe walked as if there were a hot object underfoot, raising each leg almost as soon as her other foot touched the floor. During long break, she bounced in front of a group of girls as they went to the tuck shop to buy biscuits and coke. According to Ezinne, Chinwe paid for everyone’s soft drinks. I usually spent long break reading in the library.

“Chinwe just wants you to talk to her first,” Ezinne whispered. “You know, she started calling you backyard snob because you don’t talk to anybody. She said just because your father owns a newspaper and all those factories does not mean you have to feel too big, because her father is rich, too.”

“I don’t feel too big.”

“Like today, at assembly, she said you were feeling too big, that was why you didn’t start the pledge the first time Mother Lucy called you.”

“I didn’t hear the first time Mother Lucy called me.”

“I’m not saying you feel too big, I am saying that is what Chinwe and most of the girls think. Maybe you should try and talk to her. Maybe after school you should stop running off like that and walk with us to the gate. Why do you always run, anyway?”

“I just like running,” I said, and wondered if I would count that as a lie when I made confession next Saturday, if I would add it to the lie about not having heard Mother Lucy the first time. Kevin always had the Peugeot 505 parked at the school gates right after the bells rang. Kevin had many other chores to do for Papa and I was not allowed to keep him waiting, so I always dashed out of my last class. Dashed, as though I were running the 200-meters race at the interhouse sports competition. Once, Kevin told Papa I took a few minutes longer, and Papa slapped my left and right cheeks at the same time, so his huge palms left parallel marks on my face and ringing in my ears for days.

“Why?” Ezinne asked. “If you stay and talk to people, maybe it will make them know that you are really not a snob.”

“I just like running,” I said again.

I remained a backyard snob to most of my class girls until the end of term. But I did not worry too much about that because I carried a bigger load—the worry of making sure I came first this term. It was like balancing a sack of gravel on my head every day at school and not being allowed to steady it with my hand. I still saw the print in my textbooks as a red blur, still saw my baby brother’s spirit strung together by narrow lines of blood. I memorized what the teachers said because I knew my textbooks would not make sense if

I tried to study later. After every test, a tough lump like poorly made fufu formed in my throat and stayed there until our exercise books came back.

School closed for Christmas break in early December. I peered into my report card while Kevin was driving me home and saw 1/25, written in a hand so slanted I had to study it to make sure it was not 7/25. That night, I fell asleep hugging close the image of Papa’s face lit up, the sound of Papa’s voice telling me how proud of me he was, how I had fulfilled God’s purpose for me.

DUST-LADEN WINDS of harmattan came with December. They brought the scent of the Sahara and Christmas, and yanked the slender, ovate leaves down from the frangipani and the needlelike leaves from the whistling pines, covering everything in a film of brown. We spent every Christmas in our hometown. Sister Veronica called it the yearly migration of the Igbo. She did not understand, she said in that Irish accent that rolled her words across her tongue, why many Igbo people built huge houses in their hometowns, where they spent only a week or two in December, yet were content to live in cramped quarters in the city the rest of the year. I often wondered why Sister Veronica needed to understand it, when it was simply the way things were done.

The morning winds were swift on the day we left, pulling and pushing the whistling pine trees so that they bent and twisted, as if bowing to a dusty god, their leaves and branches making the same sound as a football referee’s whistle. The cars were parked in the driveway, doors and boots open, waiting to be loaded. Papa would drive the Mercedes, with Mama in the front seat and Jaja and me in the back. Kevin would drive the factory car with Sisi, and the factory driver, Sunday, who usually stood in when Kevin took his yearly one-week leave, would drive the Volvo.

Papa stood by the hibiscuses, giving directions, one hand sunk in the pocket of his white tunic while the other pointed from item to car. “The suitcases go in the Mercedes, and those vegetables also. The yams will go in the Peugeot 505, with the cases of Remy Martin and cartons of juice. See if the stacks of okporoko will fit in, too. The bags of rice and garri and beans and the plantains go in the Volvo.”