Purple Hibiscus

“No, I am fine. I am an old man now and my height is gone. I would not have fit in this car in my prime. In those days, I plucked icheku from the trees by just reaching out high; I did not need to climb.”

“Of course,” Aunty Ifeoma said, laughing again. “And could you not reach out and touch the sky, too?”

She laughed so easily, so often. They all did, even little Chima.

When we got to Ezi Icheke, cars lined the road almost bumper to bumper. The crowds that pressed around the cars were so dense there was no space between people and they blended into one another, wrappers blended into T-shirts, trousers into skirts, dresses into shirts. Aunty Ifeoma finally found a spot and eased the station wagon in. The mmuo had started to walk past, and often a long line of cars waited for an mmuo to walk past so they could drive on. Hawkers were at every corner, with glass-enclosed cases of akara and suya and browned chicken drumsticks, with trays of peeled oranges, with coolers the size of bathtubs full of Walls banana ice cream. It was like a vibrant painting that had come alive. I had never been to see mmuo, to sit in a stationary car alongside thousands of people who had all come to watch. Papa had driven us past the crowds at Ezi Icheke once, some years ago, and he muttered about ignorant people participating in the ritual of pagan masquerades. He said that the stories about mmuo, that they were spirits who had climbed out of ant holes, that they could make chairs run and baskets hold water, were all devilish folklore. Devilish Folklore. It sounded dangerous the way Papa said it.

“Look at this,” Papa-Nnukwu said. “This is a woman spirit, and the women mmuo are harmless. They do not even go near the big ones at the festival.” The mmuo he pointed to was small; its carved wooden face had angular, pretty features and rouged lips. It stopped often to dance, wiggling this way and that, so that the string of beads around its waist swayed and rippled. The crowds nearby cheered, and some people threw money toward it. Little boys—the followers of the mmuo who were playing music with metal ogenes and wooden ichakas—picked up the crumpled naira notes. They had hardly passed us when Papa Nnukwu shouted, “Look away! Women cannot look at this one!”

The mmuo making its way down the road was surrounded by a few elderly men who rang a shrill bell as the mmuo walked. Its mask was a real, grimacing human skull with sunken eye sockets. A squirming tortoise was tied to its forehead. A snake and three dead chickens hung from its grass-covered body, swinging as the mmuo walked. The crowds near the road moved back quickly, fearfully. A few women turned and dashed into nearby compounds.

Aunty Ifeoma looked amused, but she turned her head away. “Don’t look, girls. Let’s humor your grandfather,” she said in English. Amaka had already looked away. I looked away, too, toward the crowd of people that pressed around the car. It was sinful, deferring to a heathen masquerade. But at least I had looked at it very briefly, so maybe it would technically not be deferring to a heathen masquerade.

“That is our agwonatumbe,” Papa-Nnukwu said, proudly, after the mmuo had walked past. “It is the most powerful mmuo in our parts, and all the neighboring villages fear Abba because of it. At last year’s Aro festival, agwonatumbe raised a staff and all the other mmuo turned and ran! They didn’t even wait to see what would happen!”

“Look!” Obiora pointed at another mmuo moving down the road. It was like a floating white cloth, flat, taller than the huge avocado tree in our yard in Enugu. Papa-Nnukwu grunted as the mmuo went by. It was eerie, watching it, and I thought then of chairs running, their four legs knocking together, of water being held in a basket, of human forms climbing out of ant holes.

“How do they do that, Papa-Nnukwu? How do people get inside that one?” Jaja asked.

“Shh! These are mmuo, spirits! Don’t speak like a woman!” Papa-Nnukwu snapped, turning to glare at Jaja.

Aunty Ifeoma laughed and spoke in English. “Jaja, you’re not supposed to say there are people in there. Didn’t you know that?”

“No,” Jaja said.

She was watching Jaja. “You didn’t do the ima mmuo, did you? Obiora did it two years ago in his father’s hometown.”

“No, I didn’t,” Jaja mumbled.

I looked at Jaja and wondered if the dimness in his eyes was shame. I suddenly wished, for him, that he had done the ima mmuo, the initiation into the spirit world. I knew very little about it; women were not supposed to know anything at all, since it was the first step toward the initiation to manhood. But Jaja once told me that he heard that boys were flogged and made to bathe in the presence of a taunting crowd. The only time Papa had talked about ima mmuo was to say that the Christians who let their sons do it were confused, that they would end up in hellfire.

We left Ezi Icheke soon afterward. Aunty Ifeoma dropped off a

sleepy Papa-Nnukwu first; his good eye was half closed while his going-blind eye stayed open, the film covering it looked thicker now, like concentrated milk. When Aunty Ifeoma stopped inside our compound, she asked her children if they wanted to come into the house, and Amaka said no, in a loud voice that seemed to prompt her brothers to say the same. Aunty Ifeoma took us in, waved to Papa, who was in the middle of a meeting, and hugged Jaja and me in her tight way before leaving.

That night, I dreamed that I was laughing, but it did not sound like my laughter, although I was not sure what my laughter sounded like. It was cackling and throaty and enthusiastic, like Aunty Ifeoma’s.

Papa drove us to Christmas Mass at St. Paul’s. Aunty Ifeoma and her children were climbing into their station wagon as we drove into the sprawling church compound. They waited for Papa to stop the Mercedes and then came over to greet us. Aunty Ifeoma said they had gone to the early Mass and they would see us at lunchtime. She looked taller, even more fearless, in a red wrapper and high heels. Amaka wore the same bright red lipstick as her mother; it made her teeth seem whiter when she smiled and said, “Merry Christmas.”

Although I tried to concentrate on Mass, I kept thinking of Amaka’s lipstick, wondering what it felt like to run color over your lips. It was even harder to keep my mind on Mass because the priest, who spoke Igbo throughout, did not talk about the gospel during the sermon. Instead he talked about zinc and cement. “You people think I ate the money for the zinc, okwia?” he shouted, gesticulating, pointing accusingly at the congregation. “After all, how many of you give to this church, gbo? How can we build the house if you don’t give? Do you think zinc and cement cost a mere ten kobo?”

Papa wished the priest would talk about something else, something about the birth in the manger, about the shepherds and the guiding star; I knew from the way Papa held his missal too tight, the way he shifted often on the pew. We were sitting in the first pew. An usher wearing a Blessed Virgin Mary medal on her white cotton dress had rushed forward to seat us, telling Papa in loud, urgent whispers that the front pews were reserved for the important people; Chief Umeadi, the only man in Abba whose house was bigger than ours, sat on our left, and His Royal Highness, the Igwe, was on our right. The Igwe came over to shake Papa’s hand during Peace and Love, and he said, “Nno nu, I will stop by later, so we can greet properly.”

After Mass, we accompanied Papa to a fund-raising in the multipurpose hall next to the church building. It was for the priest’s new house. An usher with a scarf tied tight across her forehead passed out pamphlets with pictures of the priest’s old house, uncertain arrows pointing at where the roof leaked, where termites had eaten up the door frames. Papa wrote a check and handed it to the usher, telling her he did not want to make a speech. When the M.C. announced the amount, the priest got up and started to dance, jerking his behind this way and that, and the crowd rose up and cheered so loudly it was like the rumblings of thunder at the end of rainy season.

“Let’s go,” Papa said, when the M.C. finally moved on to announce a new donation. He led the way out of the hall, smiling and waving at the many hands that reached out to grasp his white tunic as if touching him would heal them of an illness.

When we got home, all the couches and sofas in the living room were full; some people were perched on the side tables. The men and women all rose when Papa came in, and chants of “Omelora!” filled the air. Papa went about shaking hands and hugging and saying “Merry Christmas” and “God bless you.” Somebody had left the door that led to the backyard open, and the blue-gray firewood smoke that hung heavy in the living room blurred the facial features of the guests. I could hear the wives of the umunna, chattering in the backyard, scooping soup and stew from the huge pots on the fire into bowls that would be taken to serve the people.

“Come and greet the wives of our umunna,” Mama said to Jaja and me.

We followed her out to the backyard. The women clapped and hooted when Jaja and I said, “Nno nu.” Welcome.

They all looked alike, in ill-fitting blouses, threadbare wrappers, and scarves tied around their heads. They all had the same wide smile, the same chalk-colored teeth, the same sundried skin the color and texture of groundnut husks.

“Nekene, see the boy that will inherit his father’s riches!” one woman said, hooting even more loudly, her mouth shaped like a narrow tunnel.

“If we did not have the same blood in our veins, I would sell you my daughter,” another said to Jaja. She was squatting near the fire, arranging the firewood underneath the tripod. The others laughed.