Purple Hibiscus

“Mom, how did it go? Did you get it?”

“I got it,” Aunty Ifeoma said, coming onto the verandah.

“You got the visa!” Obiora screamed, and Chima promptly repeated him, rushing over to hug his mother. Amaka and Jaja and I did not stand; we said welcome to Aunty Ifeoma and watched her go inside to change. She came out soon, with a wrapper tied casually around her chest. The wrapper that stopped above her calves would stop above the ankles of an average-size woman. She sat down and asked Obiora to get her a glass of water.

“You do not look happy, Aunty,” Jaja said.

“Oh, nna m, I am. Do you know how many people they refuse? A woman next to me cried until I thought that blood would run down her cheeks. She asked them, ‘How can you refuse me a visa? I have shown you that I have money in the bank. How can you say I will not come back? I have property here, I have property.’ She kept saying that over and over: ‘I have property.’ I think she had wanted to attend her sister’s wedding in America.”

“Why did they refuse her?” Obiora asked.

“I don’t know. If they are in a good mood, they will give you a visa, if not, they will refuse you. It is what happens when you are worthless in somebody’s eyes. We are like footballs that they can kick in any direction they want to.”

“When are we leaving?” Amaka asked, tiredly, and I could tell that right now she did not care about the woman who had nearly cried blood or about Nigerians being kicked around or about anything at all.

Aunty Ifeoma drank the whole glass of water before speaking. “We have to move out of this flat in two weeks. I know they are waiting to see that I don’t, so they can send security men to throw my things out on the street.”

“You mean we leave Nigeria in two weeks?” Amaka asked, shrilly.

“Am I a magician, eh?” Aunty Ifeoma retorted. The humor was lacking in her tone. There was nothing in her tone to speak of, really, except for fatigue. “I have to get the money for our tickets first. They are not cheap. I will have to ask your Uncle Eugene to help, so I think we will go to Enugu with Kambili and Jaja, perhaps next week. We will stay in Enugu until we are ready to leave, that will also give me an opportunity to talk to your Uncle Eugene about Kambili and Jaja going to boarding school.” Aunty Ifeoma turned to Jaja and me. “I will convince your father in any way I can. Father Amadi has offered to ask Father Benedict to talk to your father, too. I think it is the best thing for you both now, to go to school away from home.”

I nodded. Jaja got up and walked into the flat. Finality hung in the air, heavy and hollow.

FATHER AMADI’S LAST DAY sneaked up on me. He came in the morning, smelling of that masculine cologne I had come to smell even when he was not there, wearing the same boyish smile, wearing the same soutane.

Obiora looked up at him

and intoned, “From darkest Africa now come missionaries who will reconvert the West.”

Father Amadi started to laugh. “Obiora, whoever gives you those heretical books should stop.”

His laugh was the same, too. Nothing seemed to have changed about him, yet my new, fragile life was about to break into pieces. Anger suddenly filled me, constricting my air passages, pressing my nostrils shut. Anger was alien and refreshing. With my eyes, I traced the lines of his lips, the flare of his nose, as he spoke to Aunty Ifeoma and my cousins, all the while nursing my anger. Finally, he asked me to walk him to the car.

“I have to join the chaplaincy council members for lunch; they are cooking for me. But come and spend an hour or two with me, while I do the final cleaning up at the chaplaincy office,” he said.

“No.”

He stopped to stare at me. “Why?”

“No. I don’t want to.”

I was standing with my back to his car. He moved toward me and stood in front of me. “Kambili,” he said.

I wanted to ask him to say my name in a different way because he did not have the right to say it the old way. Nothing should be the same, was the same anymore. He was leaving. I breathed through my mouth now. “The first day you took me to the stadium, did Aunty Ifeoma ask you to?” I asked.

“She was worried about you, that you could not hold a conversation with even the children upstairs. But she didn’t ask me to take you.” He reached out to straighten the sleeve of my shirt. “I wanted to take you. And after that first day, I wanted to take you with me every day.”

I bent down to pick up a grass stalk, narrow like a green needle.

“Kambili,” he said. “Look at me.”

But I did not look at him. I kept my eyes on the grass in my hand as if it held a code I could decipher by concentrated staring, as if it could explain to me why I wished he had said he didn’t want to take me even that first time so that I would have a reason to be angrier, so that I would not have this urge to cry and cry.

He climbed into his car and started it. “I will come back and see you this evening.”

I stared at his car until it disappeared down the slope that led to Ikejiani Avenue. I was still staring when Amaka walked over to me. She placed her arm lightly on my shoulder.

“Obiora says you must be having sex, or something close to sex, with Father Amadi. We have never seen Father Amadi look so bright-eyed.” Amaka was laughing.