Purple Hibiscus

turned onto the dirt road, and soon I heard the
screech-screech-screech
of the low underbelly of the Mercedes scraping the bumpy, sun-baked dirt road. As we drove past, people waved and called out Papa’s title:
“Omelora
!” Mudand-thatch huts stood close to three-story houses that nestled behind ornate metal gates. Naked and seminaked children played with limp footballs. Men sat on benches beneath trees, drinking palm wine from cow horns and cloudy glass mugs. The car was coated in dust by the time we got to the wide black gates of our country home. Three elderly men standing under the lone ukwa tree near our gates waved and shouted, “
Nno nu! Nno nu
! Have you come back? We will come in soon to say welcome!” Our gateman threw the gates open.
    “Thank you, Lord, for journey mercies,” Papa said as he drove into the compound, crossing himself.
    “Amen,” we said.
    Our house still took my breath away, the four-story white majesty of it, with the spurting fountain in front and the coconut trees flanking it on both sides and the orange trees dotting the front yard. Three little boys rushed into the compound to greet Papa. They had been chasing our cars down the dirt road.
    “
Omelora
! Good afun, sah!” they chorused. They wore only shorts, and each one’s belly button was the size of a small balloon.
    “Kedu nu
?” Papa gave them each ten naira from a wad of notes he pulled out of his hold-all. “Greet your parents, make sure you show them this money.”
    “Yes sah! Tank sah!” They dashed out of the compound, laughing loudly.
    Kevin and Sunday unpacked the foodstuffs while Jaja and I unpacked the suitcases from the Mercedes. Mama went to the backyard with Sisi to put away the cast iron cooking tripods. Our food would be cooked on the gas cooker inside the kitchen, but the metal tripods would balance the big pots that would cook rice and stews and soups for visitors. Some of the pots were big enough to fit a whole goat. Mama and Sisi hardly did any of that cooking; they simply stayed around and provided more salt, more Maggi cubes, more utensils, because the wives of the members of our umunna came over to do the cooking. They wanted Mama to rest, they said, after the stress of the city. And every year they took the leftovers—the fat pieces of meat, the rice and beans, the bottles of soft drink and maltina and beer—home with them afterward. We were always prepared to feed the whole village at Christmas, always prepared so that none of the people who came in would leave without eating and drinking to what Papa called a reasonable level of satisfaction. Papa’s title was omelora, after all, The One Who Does for the Community. But it was not only Papa who received visitors; the villagers trooped to every big house with a big gate, and sometimes they took plastic bowls with firm covers. It was Christmas.
    Jaja and I were upstairs unpacking when Mama came in and said, “Ade Coker came by with his family to wish us a merry Christmas. They are on their way to Lagos. Come downstairs and greet them.”
    Ade Coker was a small, round, laughing man. Every time I saw him, I tried to imagine him writing those editorials in the
Standard
; I tried to imagine him defying the soldiers. And I could not. He looked like a stuffed doll, and because he was always smiling, the deep dimples in his pillowy cheeks looked like permanent fixtures, as though someone had sunk a stick into his cheeks. Even his glasses looked dollish: they were thicker than window louvers, tinted a strange bluish shade, and framed in white plastic. He was throwing his baby, a perfectly round copy of himself, in the air when we came in. His little daughter was standing close to him, asking him to throw her in the air, too.
    “Jaja, Kambili, how are you?” he said, and before we could reply, he laughed his tinkling laugh and, gesturing to the baby, said, “You know they say the higher you throw them when they’re young, the more likely they are to learn how to fly!” The baby gurgled, showing pink gums, and reached out for his father’s glasses. Ade Coker tilted his head back, threw the baby up again.
    His wife, Yewande, hugged us, asked how we were, then slapped Ade Coker’s shoulder playfully and took the baby from him. I watched her and remembered her loud, choking cries to Papa.
    “Do you like coming to the village?” Ade Coker asked us.
    We looked at Papa at the same time; he was on the sofa, reading a Christmas card and smiling.