Purple Hibiscus

‘May his soul rest in perfect peace.’ Afterward, he hands me the pen. I look over a few entries – most people have written, cryptically, ‘RIP’ – before writing, ‘May he rest in peace.’ I place the pen down reluctantly. I want to write more. I want to ask why Nsukka is fading, why the palm tree outside, in the middle of their yard, is shrunken, not the hulking thing I remember.
    The widow comes out and we hug her and say, ‘
Ndo
, sorry.’ Her face is free of makeup, dulled by grief. I remember her with a bright gash as lips; she always wore the reddest lipstick. She talks quietly to my dad, telling him about the arrangements, when the cultural funeral will be, who will formally inform the village elders, when the church service will be. I am not really listening. I want to reach out and smooth her uncombed hair because it strikes me then how alone she is: her husband is gone and her children live far away – in Brazil, Benin, Canada.
    They will be coming home for the funeral, even though she asked them not to, especially her son in Brazil. ‘He only just left and it’s too expensive, really,’ she says. She looks at the condolence register, to make sure we have signed it, and then she runs afinger over the vase. It is full of dried flowers. Not intentionally dried, that kind you can get in a fancy florist’s, but dried from being there, on that table, for too long. The croton leaves droop, the lavender bougainvillea are rumpled, each of them fragile and papery. I imagine her gathering the dried flowers up later, when her husband will be long buried, when the guests will no longer troop in. I imagine her crushing them in her hands, perhaps sniffing them first, only they will have no scent. She will cry and remember him, and the years he played tennis at the university staff club, the years before their house became silent, before Nsukka became silent. The same years my brothers and I rode our Chopper bicycles around the campus, flying over speed bumps, when our friends came over to visit still chewing on their chicken bones from lunch, and we played raucously until someone got hurt and an adult made everyone go home. Or until our friends’ mother hooted ‘Cuckoo!’ from across the street. Or until the sun went down and it got too dark to see. The years when we raced to the Children’s Library and I sat on the cool linoleum floor and entered Enid Blyton’s world. The years when I threw stones at the boy I liked, and he threw stones back at me. A stone rain. I still remember the delicious pain of stones coloured red by mud, of a fleeting unfettered infatuation.
    As my dad drives us home, I see that the men are sitting with their backs against the tree trunk, eating mangoes and laughing. Life has continued for them, I realize, lifecontinues, even though my father’s friend has died, even though nothing remains the same.
    ‘
Nekene
, these men must have finished the mangoes on that tree,’ my dad says, pointing, amused. I did not know he had noticed them. I laugh with him. Then I turn and watch him, this seventy-one-year-old man whom I adore. I notice that his face is wrinkled, that his front tooth, wiggly for a while, has fallen out and left a crooked gap. His mortality strikes me with a fierce clutch at my throat, a squeeze of alarm. He used to have the smoothest skin, dark like over-ripe grapes. He used to be invincible. He used to never sleep; we heard him walking around at night, muttering statistical formulas.
    I sit outside that evening, on the stairs that lead to the backyard, and watch the sun fall. Near me is an avocado tree and it slants, sideways, like a tired old woman whose back is curved from years of bending over smoky firewood. There are cracks etched onto the bark. Deep divisions, they are beautiful and revolting at the same time. In my memory the bark was always smooth. I used to hate the fruits from that tree because they tasted sour. Like a slap on the face, I remember telling my brothers. Now it has no fruits. I wish it did, because I would eat them, and I would savor the sourness.
    I get up and walk around the yard. In our old garage, full of dusty cartons and crates thick with cobwebs, I see the blackboard. There is writing on it, in my carefully curved hand:
Are AEIOU called vowels
?
    I remember writing that, on a hot afternoon in 1987, as an English test for myseven-year-old brother. I remember that I was wearing a pair of blue shorts and my cornrows were held up