Purple Hibiscus

I knew that Jaja meant from Papa, but I did not say anything about protecting the baby. Instead, I asked, “How do you know it will be a he?”

“I feel it. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Jaja sat on my bed for a while longer before he went downstairs to have lunch; I pushed my textbook aside, looked up, and stared at my daily schedule, pasted on the wall above me. Kambili was written in bold letters on top of the white sheet of paper, just as Jaja was written on the schedule above Jaja’s desk in his room. I wondered when Papa would draw up a schedule for the baby, my new brother, if he would do it right after the baby was born or wait until he was a toddler. Papa liked order. It showed even in the schedules themselves, the way his meticulously drawn lines, in black ink, cut across each day, separating study from siesta, siesta from family time, family time from eating, eating from prayer, prayer from sleep. He revised them often. When we were in school, we had less siesta time and more study time, even on weekends. When we were on vacation, we had a little more family time, a little more time to read newspapers, play chess or monopoly, and listen to the radio.

It was during family time the next day, a Saturday, that the coup happened. Papa had just checkmated Jaja when we heard the martial music on the radio, the solemn strains making us stop to listen. A general with a strong Hausa accent came on and announced that there had been a coup and that we had a new government. We would be told shortly who our new head of state was.

Papa pushed the chessboard aside and excused himself to use the phone in his study. Jaja and Mama and I waited for him, silently. I knew he was calling his editor, Ade Coker, perhaps to tell him something about covering the coup. When he came back, we drank the mango juice, which Sisi served in tall glasses, while he talked about the coup. He looked sad; his rectangular lips seemed to sag. Coups begat coups, he said, telling us about the bloody coups of the sixties, which ended up in civil war just after he left Nigeria to study in England. A coup always began a vicious cycle. Military men would always overthrow one another, because they could, because they were all power drunk.

Of course, Papa told us, the politicians were corrupt, and the Standard had written many stories about the cabinet ministers who stashed money in foreign bank accounts, money meant for paying teachers’ salaries and building roads. But what we Nigerians needed was not soldiers ruling us, what we needed was a renewed democracy. Renewed Democracy. It sounded important, the way he said it, but then most of what Papa said sounded important. He liked to lean back and look upwards when he talked, as though he were searching for something in the air. I would focus on his lips, the movement, and sometimes I forgot myself, sometimes I wanted to stay like that forever, listening to his voice, to the important things he said. It was the same way I felt when he smiled, his face breaking open like a coconut with the brilliant white meat inside.

The day after the coup, before we left for evening benediction at St. Agnes, we sat in the living room and read the newspapers; our vendor delivered the major papers every morning, four copies each, on Papa’s orders. We read the Standard first. Only the Standard had a critical editorial, calling on the new military government to quickly implement a return to democracy plan. Papa read one of the articles in Nigeria Today out aloud, an opinion column by a writer who insisted that it was indeed time for a military president, since the politicians had gone out of control and our economy was in a mess.

“The Standard would never write this nonsense,” Papa said, putting the paper down. “Not to talk of calling the man a ‘president.’”

“‘President’ assumes he was elected,” Jaja said. “‘Head of state’ is the right term.”

Papa smiled, and I wished I had said that before Jaja had.

“The Standard editorial is well done,” Mama said.

“Ade is easily the best out there,” Papa said, with an offhand pride, while scanning another paper. “‘Change of Guard.’ What a headline. They are all afraid. Writing about how corrupt the civilian government was, as if they think the military will not be corrupt. This country is going down, way down.”

“God will deliver us,” I said, knowing Papa would like my saying that.

“Yes, yes,” Papa said, nodding. Then he reached out and held my hand, and I felt as though my mouth were full of melting sugar.

In the following weeks, the newspapers we read during family time sounded different, more subdued. The Standard, too, was different; it was more critical, more questioning than it used to be. Even the drive to school was different. The first week after the coup, Kevin plucked green tree branches every morning and stuck them to the car, lodged above the number plate, so that the demonstrators at Government Square would let us drive past. The green branches meant Solidarity. Our branches never looked as bright as the demonstrators’, though, and sometimes as we drove past, I wondered what it would be like to join them, chanting “Freedom,” standing in the way of cars.

In later weeks, when Kevin drove past Ogui Road, there were soldiers at the roadblock near the market, walking around, caressing their long guns. They stopped some cars and searched them. Once, I saw a man kneeling on the road beside his Peugeot 504, with his hands raised high in the air.

But nothing changed at home. Jaja and I still followed our schedules, still asked each other questions whose answers we already knew. The only change was Mama’s belly: it started to bulge, softly and subtly. At first it looked like a deflated football, but by Pentecost Sunday, it had elevated her red and gold-embroidered church wrapper just enough to hint that it was not ju

st the layer of cloth underneath or the knotted end of the wrapper. The altar was decorated in the same shade of red as Mama’s wrapper. Red was the color of Pentecost. The visiting priest said Mass in a red robe that seemed too short for him. He was young, and he looked up often as he read the gospel, his brown eyes piercing the congregation. He kissed the Bible slowly when he was done. It could have seemed dramatic if someone else had done it, but with him it was not. It seemed real. He was newly ordained, waiting to be assigned a parish, he told us. He and Father Benedict had a close mutual friend, and he was pleased when Father Benedict asked him to visit and say Mass. He did not say how beautiful our St. Agnes altar was, though, with its steps that glowed like polished ice blocks. Or that it was one of the best altars in Enugu, perhaps even in the whole of Nigeria. He did not suggest, as all the other visiting priests had, that God’s presence dwelled more in St. Agnes, that the iridescent saints on the floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows stopped God from leaving. And halfway through his sermon, he broke into an Igbo song: “Bunie ya enu…”

The congregation drew in a collective breath, some sighed, some had their mouths in a big O. They were used to Father Benedict’s sparse sermons, to Father Benedict’s pinch-your-nose monotone. Slowly they joined in. I watched Papa purse his lips. He looked sideways to see if Jaja and I were singing and nodded approvingly when he saw our sealed lips.

After Mass, we stood outside the church entrance, waiting while Papa greeted the people crowded around him.

“Good morning, praise God,” he said, before shaking hands with the men, hugging the women, patting the toddlers, and tugging at the babies’ cheeks. Some of the men whispered to him, Papa whispered back, and then the men thanked him, shaking his hand with both of theirs before leaving. Papa finally finished the greetings, and, with the wide churchyard now mostly emptied of the cars that had cluttered it like teeth in a mouth, we headed to our car.

“That young priest, singing in the sermon like a Godless leader of one of these Pentecostal churches that spring up everywhere like mushrooms. People like him bring trouble to the church. We must remember to pray for him,” Papa said, as he unlocked the Mercedes door and placed the missal and bulletin on the seat before turning toward the parish residence. We always dropped in to visit Father Benedict after Mass.

“Let me stay in the car and wait, biko,” Mama said, leaning against the Mercedes. “I feel vomit in my throat.”

Papa turned to stare at her. I held my breath. It seemed a long moment, but it might have been only seconds.

“Are you sure you want to stay in the car?” Papa asked.

Mama was looking down; her hands were placed on her belly, to hold the wrapper from untying itself or to keep her bread and tea breakfast down. “My body does not feel right,” she mumbled.

“I asked if you were sure you wanted to stay in the car.”

Mama looked up. “I’ll come with you. It’s really not that bad.”

Papa’s face did not change. He waited for her to walk toward him, and then he turned and they started to walk to the priest’s house. Jaja and I followed. I watched Mama as we walked. Till then I had not noticed how drawn she looked. Her skin, usually the smooth brown of groundnut paste, looked like the liquid had been sucked out of it, ashen, like the color of cracked harmattan soil. Jaja spoke to me with his eyes: What if she vomits? I would hold up my dress hems so Mama could throw up into it, so we wouldn’t make a big mess in Father Benedict’s house.