Purple Hibiscus

our classrooms. My class went through the routine of settling down, scraping chairs, dusting desks, copying the new term timetable written on the board.
    “How was your holiday, Kambili?” Ezinne leaned over and asked.
    “Fine.”
    “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